Professional Narration Voiceover Has Many Advantages

This is Part 2 in a series on the advantages of hiring professional narration voiceover talent for your business narration projects. Please also read Part 1, “Voiceover Narration: Do It Yourself or Pay for a Pro?”

No one wants to lose the audience for their corporate video after only a sentence or two, so a pleasant, listener-friendly voice is a must for effective narration. It is also the top reason to hire a full-time VO pro outlined in part one of our series.

Reason #2, also discussed in the previous article,  is the ability to produce a vocal style that meshes with your company vibe. Whether you need an authoritative and serious tone, or a voice that reminds listeners of a trusted friend, professional VO talent can deliver it each and every time.

That covers the first couple of reasons to hire a professional narration voiceover talent for your corporate video narration projects. Now we move on to the last three.

3. We can keep your style for the long haul.

Once we’ve mastered your company’s style, professional narration voiceover actors can do two very important things with it:

• Maintain it
• Reproduce it

Holding an accent, keeping up a specific tone and otherwise maintaining a consistent vocal style through an extended narration is no easy feat for the untrained voice talent. Experienced professionals, however, have what it takes.

Reproducing the exact sound of a vocal style used in previous projects is another big plus with VO pros. This especially holds true for medical narration or e-learning narrations that may regularly update information or change facts that need to be inserted into the video at a later date.

You want any additions or changes to blend seamlessly with the existing content, with your audience not even being able to tell that that any additions or changes even took place.

Choosing a seasoned professional voice talent means you’ll have consistency, getting the same style that matches the original recording whether you need the voice three weeks or even three years down the line.

If you have a few changes in your narration but your voice is out of the business, or was never really in the business in the first place and is now nowhere to be found, you’ll probably be stuck having to re-record the narration for the entire project. A few quick changes suddenly turned into an extensive and expensive project.

This generally doesn’t happen when you hire a professional narration voiceover talent with a long and sustained track record. I often still have the original recording that I may have completed several years ago for a client. When they contact me to make changes or redo a portion of their audio file, I can usually search my archives and retrieve the original recording, making it much easier to match whatever script changes are needed.

You’ll keep your narration projects more affordable and efficient by always hiring an experienced, professional voiceover talent straight out of the gate.

4. We can quickly and easily take direction.

Tell a novice voiceover actor to add more gravitas or to pull the energy back 10 percent, and you may get a series of retakes or, worse yet, a totally blank stare. Tell an experienced VO talent the same and you’ll get, well, more gravitas or slightly less energy in the narration.

Quality voiceover actors are skilled at quickly taking direction. Our overall goal is to give you what you want, and the quicker and more effectively we can do that, the happier everyone will be.

Voiceover talent that’s really on the ball will offer a phone patch that lets clients listen in to the remote recording session in real-time, while the actor is actually recording it. I’ve found the phone patch is immensely helpful for allowing clients to direct and give feedback right on the spot.

This allows me to make needed changes as we move through the narration project, eliminating the risk of the client getting a finished recording and realizing it’s not what they wanted at all.

5. Professional narration voiceover talent can provide direction (and script help!).

Thanks to reading thousands of scripts over a career, an experienced voiceover actor has a keen eye and a natural sense for copy. We can edit on the fly, make suggestions to improve the flow, or even offer up different word choices that could better express your message.

Since many voice over pros also have acting experience, we can also offer input on the most effective ways to connect with your audience.

Refining copy comes with the VO territory, and many of us can spot a run-on sentence or grammatical gaffe about 100 miles away. Hiring a full-time VO actor gives your company a professional voice and a professional script editor in a single, comprehensive package.

The Bottom Line

Even if recruiting Jane from reception or a member of your in-house production team for your corporate video narration may seem like a good idea on the surface, if you dig a little deeper you’ll quickly see it’s probably not. Full-time, professional voiceover actors have the experience, skills, equipment and know-how to give you what you want in a fraction of the time, and without any of the novice hassles.

“Why didn’t we find you in the first place!” is one of the most common phrases I hear from clients who come to me for help after they’ve been stuck with a substandard narration they can’t even use. While it feels great to be able to save the day, it feels even better to get the job done right the first time around.