It feels good to hear a clear and emotion-filled narration on a video, be it an animated movie, cartoon, commercial, corporate presentation, or e-learning material. Dull and unclear audio can be detrimental to your project’s success. Choosing a professional custom voice over services provider is crucial. You can be rest assured your project will be nothing short of excellent.
Times are changing, and nowadays, you can get a great voice over recording from an AI. That’s right, artificial intelligence is taking over the voice over sector, and some are good at it. But what if you are skeptical about the whole AI thing or want a human touch in your project?
Qualities of a Good Voice Over Artist
A good voice over artist should have the following qualities:
Diction and Enunciation
A voice over artist’s most important asset is their voice. How they let out the words is everything to the success of your project. Enunciation entails how a voice over artist forms clear sounds and articulates the words in the right tone.
Enunciation can build or wreck your project. Suppose your voice over artist is unclear or their words don’t portray the tone your audience is looking for. In that case, you will lose the connection with the audience. Look for professional voice over artists with good diction and enunciation.
Flexibility
A good voice over artist is not a master or one, but rather a jack of many trades. In this scenario, a great artist will speak several languages, do different accents and articulate all these naturally.
In addition, they should be able to embody different personalities, showcase different emotions and tones. For instance, if you have an audiobook narration project, you want an artist who can correctly express all your characters’ emotions. This requires flexibility.
Perfect Pacing
A professional voice over artist should be adaptable to different speech rhythms, especially if the project is translated. They should let out words in a clear and natural flow, without hesitation. Sound timing is essential because the wrong rhythm can leave the audience bored or feel rushed.
Have you ever paused a video to read the subtitles or slowed down the playback to get what the narrator says? That is what a poorly paced voice recording does to your project. It can make you lose subscribers or clients, so hire a voice over artist with a perfect pacing.
Voice Intensity and Articulation
Don’t you love confident voices on TV commercials and corporate narration? These narrators have the right articulation, tone, accent and voice intensity. Native speakers have a better voice intensity and presentation. The sounds come naturally, and they don’t have to hesitate in pronouncing a foreign word.
It is crucial to hire a native speaker for your project. For instance, if you have a documentary targeted at the British audience, a British native narration will feel natural to your audience than when done by an American.
Custom voice over services with multilingual capabilities come in handy when you need your project recorded in several languages.
Excellent Voice Acting
A good voice over artist should also be a natural actor. This is because they do projects for different clients. This individual should be able to express the tones and emotions that a particular project demands.
For instance, an artist needs high spirits to record a liquor commercial. The same artist needs a grumpy voice when advertising a painkiller to express the pain the audience experiences. The ability to act in these separate recordings makes a good voice over artist.
Offer Additional Services
Custom voice over services providers don’t stop at the recording step. A good voice over service provider does other related services such as translation, captioning, subtitling and video and audio editing.
Why waste time juggling several service providers for different tasks when you can get inclusive services under one roof? Go for an all-around service provider. Most of them are certified and have professional experience. This saves you money and assures you of professionalism.
Types of Custom Voice Over Service
Voice over services have been there for quite a while now. Before the internet came and revolutionized things, these services were reserved for few sectors such as TV and radio commercials, movies, and documentaries.
Today, almost every business needs a voice over service. The following are the common types of custom voice over services:
Commercial Voice Over
This type of voice over entails recording audio and video commercials, advertisements for marketing reasons. These include TV commercials, YouTube ads, radio classifieds, promotional videos, etc. This kind of voice over needs an artist who can combine creativity, a good grasp of the narration language and vocal emotions.
Entertainment Voice Over
This category includes voice over service for animations, documentaries, films, and other entertainment videos. In this internet era, entertainment channels and celebrity gossip vlogs demand professional voice over artists.
This kind of service demands a good storyteller, creative and a person in touch with the entertainment industry.
Educational Voice Over
E-learning has grown immensely over the last decade, and lectures and classes no longer depend on physical attendance. Academic narrations such as instructional videos, lessons, assignments, audio journals and research materials need a professional voice over artist.
Corporate Voice Over
This category entails recording audio for human resource materials, explainer and promotional videos to introduce new products or services to clients. It can also be a telephone Interactive Voice Recording (IVR) to interact and inform your callers.
This category requires a voice artist with a professional tone, perfect pace and captivating narration.
Audiobook Voice Over
Due to busy schedules, many people have resorted to audiobooks, which they can listen to as they drive, clean the house, etc. Voice over artists convert the written text to clear and expressive audio. These audios bring the same experience as reading your favourite book, with the same emotions, humour, sarcasm, etc.
Conclusion
Custom voice over services demands good voice actors who can deliver your content to your intended audience properly. A good voice over artist should be flexible to embody different characters and emotions required by various projects. They should also have good diction, speech rhythm, articulation and voice intensity.
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