Smart Pets Around the World
Voice Direction:
This simulated audition is seeking a friendly, natural voice, to engage pet lovers from all corners of the world. There will be on-going “in-show narrations” including show-intros, segues, outros, sponsored by announcements, and promos. The voice actor must have a genuine smile, warmth, and fun attitude, with pet passion. Nothing hokey, nothing announcer-ish, nothing radio-ish.
Script:
Our pets delight us…
Surprise us…
And show their smarts in many different ways…
They’re funny.
Crafty.
Athletic.
Heroic.
And unconditionally loving.
This summer, we’re searching for Smart Pets Around the World!
Congratulations to Kerry Manfredi, Maryanne Weeks, and Layne Ihde. In this simulated voice acting audition about people’s pets, they were loyal to the Voice Direction, while each smartly added a distinctive quality that made their performance special. Here are some tips to help show your smarts in future auditions.
For further perspective: Review the recording of Chief Edge Officer David Goldberg’s April 8, 2024, live session, where he – and a wide range of voice actors – review a random selection of this contest’s entries. It gives insight into the casting review process – demonstrating how a casting person quickly moves through hundreds of submissions to create their shortlist. But — unlike real casting projects — David explains what casting teams listen for and how their decisions are made.
Watch David Goldberg review and explain why some entries wouldn’t make the cut, some get short-listed, and one gets cast.
EDGE STUDIO TIP 1: Assure you will be understood. Remember — your listener doesn’t have the script. Many factors go into helping the listener understand what you say. One of them is enunciation. Some entrants gave us “new words” such as “smarpets,” “heroric,” and “dlydus.” Another factor is speed. Many entrants sounded like they were directed to see how quickly they could get through the script. (More on that below.) Especially avoid rushing the first word or phrase. Your listener isn’t yet mentally on-board with you, and it’s a common error that causes audition reviewers to stop right there.
Some of these performance behaviors are more easily noted than corrected, but it will help if you practice on them for a brief time daily. Record yourself and listen back. Being able to “hear” yourself dispassionately, critically, analytically is part of what goes into being a professional voice actor. Each time you record, each time you listen, focus on one of these factors. Have you done it well — without overdoing it? Once you have it down, focus on another of these factors. And when you think you have it all together, ask a friend to listen and give their honest, candid thoughts. Eventually, natural understandability should become a habit. That will let you focus on the thoughts you are voicing, rather than technical details such as these.
EDGE STUDIO TIP 2: Smooth it out, and watch your pacing. Above, we promised to elaborate on the subject of speed. But “speed” is not just one issue. Overall speed is obviously a concern. It’s common for even an experienced voice actor to sometimes read a script too quickly. Consider: Your listener doesn’t know what you’re going to say, and if they don’t catch what you said, they can’t ask you to repeat. So in that way, even a “conversational” read isn’t like a conversation. You need to enunciate, without sounding unnatural. At the other extreme, many people spoke too slowly. And yet others vacillated between fast and slow, without apparent logic to the changes.
What’s the correct speed? It depends on the genre, the medium, the audience, the tone of the subject matter, and more. A video narration will need more pauses (to allow editing and to let the viewer absorb the visual). Some other genres demand fewer pauses. To adjust your speed, we suggest you record yourself, slowing down one “notch” at a time. Listen back and see if it sounds more natural. Often, you should pause where the script indicates a pause — e.g., a period or “…”– and some pauses might be shorter than others. (In fact, you may not need to pause at every comma; some — as after “This summer,” — may just be typography.) Or pause only where you need to take a natural breath.
EDGE STUDIO TIP 3: Read the direction. And the script’s title. And look for repeated words. They’re clues to what words to emphasize. In the case of this script, the word “smart” appears in the title, and twice in the script. That suggests that “smart” is a word to be given special value. Don’t “throw it away.” It also indicates an effective mindset. As a voice actor, your mental self-image comes across in your voice. All those other adjectives (“funny, crafty, athletic, loving,” etc.) are ways of showing smarts. Casting reviewers will recognize your smarts when you demonstrate that you understand the underlying message.
Oh, and if there’s a client or brand name in the script, even if it’s only once, pay special attention to that. How can you hit it in a natural way?
EDGE STUDIO TIP 4: Incorporate relevant non-verbal vocal moments. By “non-verbal,” we mean almost anything that is not an actual word. Unless directed to ad-lib, never change the script, and do not add or overlook words. But a sigh, chuckle, laugh, “hmmm” or even (if appropriate) a sneeze is often seen as inventive — the kind of special quality that reviewers listen for.
As you listen to our winners and also-rans, you’ll hear many such moments. Even in the many reads that came in well off the mark, there are some that have a non-verbal utterance or phrase that is particularly effective, or very real. For example, in one case, it was a sigh. In another, the word “unconditionally loving.” The goal is to achieve that sense of reality throughout the script.
1st place winner: Kerry Manfredi
Judge's Comments
Great! She’s light, trusting of her voice, with great emotion and variety. There are some things, though, to work on. Her first word sounds like “Har.” And we don’t love the break between “and” and “unconditionally.” From the script layout and punctuation, it seems the client has already thought about where they want pauses and where they don’t. (Unlike some clients.) So we don’t suggest adding pauses of your own. The recording’s technical quality is good. There are some mouth clicks, but not horrible, and a few bad edits (mostly audible during breaths).
2nd place winner: Maryanne Weeks
Judge's Comments
Quite good! Each word and phrase has emotion that will nicely match the likely visual. There’s also good variety, and good consistency. She speaks with a nice smile, and she hit all the emotions the client requested. Three areas of improvement:
1) She’d sound even better if she stopped thinking about how she’s speaking, as that would eliminate the very, very slight ‘vocal rigidness.’ (Vocal “rigidness” or “stiffness” covers a range of symptoms and effects. In this case, we mean simply a sense of tension, reflected in glottal stops and a certain tense quality in her vocalization.)
2) She should learn how to avoid the ‘click’ sound at the end of words ending after “ing.” (for example, she said “loving-ck”). This is a habit with some people, perhaps regional.
3) She should better value the last few words (seemingly the name of the show that’s being promoted), instead of rushing through the last few words and losing a bit of steam.
Her recording’s technical quality is not so great. It has consistent hiss, lots of room ambience, and room clicks (perhaps her headphone cable bouncing into something).
3rd place winner: Layne Ihde
Judge's Comments
Terrific use of emotions and variety, with great timing. But he sounds too announcerish. This is partly because his natural voice has an announcer tone to it. But he also sounds announcerish because he’s “working his voice” more than necessary. We suggest relaxing and just speaking naturally, of course bearing in mind the qualities mentioned in our Tips above. The recording quality is great, except that he did a poor job of removing breaths. We urge keeping the breaths in recordings that are supposed to sound real, natural or spontaneous. Breaths do more than just pass air through your body….they also communicate emotion (consider a sexy breath vs a gasp or a long bellow). If breaths must be cut, then ensure they don’t cut off the end of words, and worse, don’t cause an unnatural abrupt end to the breath, both of which occur in this audition.
