Professional Voiceover for Your Animation or Video Production
Most animations and some videos require voiceover. We can go about this in two ways:
- The client provides the talent. Some clients think it's important to use an internal person such as the CEO, to be the voiceover. This particularly makes sense for videos that are meant to be used as an internal message from the CEO to company employees. Or, maybe Jerry from HR just has a really fabulous voice and you want him to do voiceover. No problem, we are happy to record whatever talent is provided.
- Or, what we recommend for most instances, go the professional voiceover talent route. It is actually not any more expensive than us recording your provided talent. And the quality and service we'll get from these professionals is exceptional. We've never had a client who was unhappy with a professional voiceover.
The Professional Voiceover Process as You'll Experience It
What we do is arrange an audition with 10-15 voice talents. From that audition, the client can then pick their top two favorite voices. We will then arrange and manage the voiceover recording.
Let us know what your preferred gender is to audition. Or if unsure, we can audition both genders. (More advice on what gender to use for your voiceover below.)
If You Want to be Part of the Recording Process of the Professional Voice Talent
The voiceover is done remotely. Normally, the script is sent to the voice talent with instructions on how it should be read, they record on their own time, then send it back. Most often a voice talent sends only one take, occasionally two takes depending on the talent.
However, if the client would like to do a live directing session via phone or video call, most voice talents are willing to facilitate that. You, Kohlitz and the voice talent will do a call where we can give them live direction as they read our script.
Revisions of Voiceover Once Recorded and Delivered
As for revisions after the recording, a voice talent will typically offer one free round of very minimum changes. Each talent defines this differently so it's usually best to ask if you do end up having changes to make.
But to give you a rough idea, if more than 20% of the script is changed/needs to be redone, they will certainly charge for that.
Male vs Female Voice Talent
If you want advice on making your decision on what gendered voice to use, studies have shown that Americans view women's voices as helpful, hence the reason Siri, Alexa, and your GPS's default voices are all female.
Male voices are viewed as knowledgeable and authoritative. Think of the voiceover in a Home Depot commercial.
Obviously, this falls into stereotyped categories. We'll leave it to you if you want to shake up the stereotype or not :)
Also, you may want to consider the primary gender of your audience. If it's mostly one or the other, you should focus on that gender.
No matter the method you choose, we will advise on how to best approach the voiceover process. We and the professional voice talent will make it easy and smooth for you.