Music is an incredible addition to your creative box of tricks as a director.

A single, well-chosen piece of music can set the tone and give your project pace and attitude. Plus, crucially, it gives it an emotional context.

Which is magic for your voiceover artist.

As a creative, you’ve chosen a piece of music for your video, commercial or promo that is designed to make your audience feel something: such as hope, confidence, outrage, desire or excitement.

And, just as the music will take your audience somewhere else, it will also allow your voice actor to quickly understand what you need them to do, and how to deliver your script.

Music is a very simple, very quick way to bring your voice actor on board with the tone of your project. And it can be a crucial part of briefing your actor before they start recording their session.

But perhaps your project doesn’t have any music – it could be a phone message or an e-Learning course. In that instance, if you’ve got a mnemonic or a music sting or even just a music track that sums up your brand – sharing that will allow your voice to quickly get to the heart of your project.

You don’t even need to spend time editing it – this is a quick win.

It can simply be used as an emotional or tonal suggestion – another part of the brief. You don’t have to do anything fancy here.

Simply send it off with your brief and your script and voila! You’ll have given your voice talent an extra piece to the puzzle. Saving you – and them – time and money as well as enhancing the end product.

If you do nothing else this week, remember to include some music with your project brief to help your voiceover get to the heart of your project and understand what you’re trying to do.

It even works for auditions.

Heck – it especially works for auditions. Start including music with your auditions, along with the character and narrator outlines and scripts, and you will get far better auditions landing in your in-box. Guaranteed. 

 

 

For more tips and ideas that will help you make the most of every voiceover booking – do subscribe to my podcast Talking Creative, the Art of Voiceover Directing – you can listen here or find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

And please do connect or follow me on LinkedIn here for more chat about voiceovers, directing and all kinds of creative stuff. I’d love to link up.