Take Action #15: Front-Mid-Back Sounds

1. Using a “nee, nee, nee, nee” sound, try squinting your eyes or scrunching your face muscles between the sounds and on some of the sounds to create a more nasal resonance2. Switch to humming to feel a very mid mouth placement 3. Now move the sound to the back of the mouth and throat by making a “guh, guh, guh guh” sound. 4. Try switching between the “nee”, the hum and the “guh” tofeel how your voice resonates in different areas of your body.

It can be very fun to learn to control your voice and be able to switch between a voice that is more frontal and a voice that is further back. Try reading this paragraph out loud in your natural voice and while doing so, move the sound toward your nose for a bit, and then reverse it and move it toward your throat and belly. Pay attention to where your voice is most comfortable as well as where it’s beginning to expand to offer you new and exciting options.

Take Action #5 - Read Aloud

We stress the importance of reading out loud. It may seem simple, and maybe you haven’t done it in years, but it can be hugely effective in improving everything from your acting to your ability to quickly assess a script, make choices, and pull the words off the page. Sir Ian McKellen claims that reading out loud was how he learned to act, and I think most of us will agree that he knows his stuff in that area. So, good enough for Sir Ian, good enough for us. Here’s a simple exercise you can almost anywhere and on your own time: Pick three things to read. Any bit of written media will work. Start small if you want. A pamphlet, a matchbook, a newspaper article, a newspaper ad, a comic book, a shopping list, someone’s blog, anything. Over the course of the day, collect those three things. Now-- and this is where it gets tricky –read them. Out loud.

Read each one at least once through, and if you’ve got time and you’re enjoying yourself, read them through again. See if each time through differs for you. See how the writings may be different from each other. Is one a story? Is one just trying to sell a product? Is one using a story to try and sell a product? Is one just a list of numbers on a receipt? If you’re having fun, give a different “character” to each one, or even switch it up within the writings.

You may not feel a change after doing this exercise, but trust us, it gets your brain and mouth working in all the right ways. Most importantly, as long as you’re reading out loud there is no wrong way to do this exercise. Unless of course you’re a monk who had, until this exercise, taken a vow of silence. Or if you’re in a library where they frown on doing anything out loud.

Have fun!

Take Action #4: The Business Side of Acting

As actors we can sometimes become too focused on the craft of acting and neglect something that's equally important: the business side of acting. This may not be as "fun", but just as important as tuning your vocal instrument is finding out who might hire you to use your voice and where they are. It's a pro-active way of forwarding your career in voice-over. So for a moment look at VO as a military objective. This week's exercise focuses on selecting a few targets and doing a little recon, or research. And you won't even need to get your hands dirty. Start with what you like. For example, if you really like the show Naruto, you might search and find out that in the United States, Naruto is licensed by a company called Viz. A little more looking (with your friend Google) might turn up that the English dub for Naruto is recorded at Studiopolis. Voila! You now have a production company to add to your hit list when you have a demo to mail out! With commercials, you might have to be a little more investigative, but there are resources (such as adforum.com) out there that can help you find the ad agency who produced the commercial and who's associated with the promotion of that product.

So, for this exercise, pick an area to start with: animation, video games, or commercials. Now choose three of your favorite shows/movies, video games or commercials. Begin to do a little Internet legwork. Find out who the production company is, and in the case of commercials, the ad agency who commissioned the spot. Try and discover if the company/agency casts their projects in-house, or if they have a relationship with a separate casting company. In some cases, you may even find that the same studio/ad agency produced more than one of your selections, then you know they're definitely somebody you want to target.

There is plenty of information available on the Web, and a little digging could turn up e-mail addresses or maybe phone numbers that you could use to contact the company and find out who might be best to send your reel to. Start a file and keep the info you find for future reference. Good hunting!