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Hitting or Noticing Words

Lesson 9 from: Voice-Over for Real People: Complete Freelancing Guide

Keith Harris

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Lesson Info

9. Hitting or Noticing Words

Next Lesson: Becoming an Actor

Lessons

Class Trailer

Welcome to the world of Voice Over

1

Introduction

02:13

What Is Voice Over?

2

Myth Busting

03:17
3

Where is all the money?

02:54
4

Quiz: What Is Voice Over

The Voice Over Performance

5

A Conversation With One Person

03:34

Lesson Info

Hitting or Noticing Words

we've already discussed speed and the impact changing the talking speed can have on your performance. A great subset of speed is elongation. This can also be called hitting or I prefer noticing a word in the script. It is common in the voiceover industry to use the word hit. Can you hit that word a little more? The issue I have with hit is that it's easy to over strike the word instead. I prefer the word notice or even elongate if we simply notice a word, we can bring it out and still sound natural in our read. Elongation is also a great idea because you might actually be changing speed on that one word to bring it out. For example, if you are reading at a medium pace, you might elongate a word by slowing down on just that one word. I have a fun exercise you can use with any sentence to practice elongation. This exercise is also great for keeping fresh and changing up your reads. Sometimes a client will ask for three different options for example, and this exercise will make sure that ...

those three options all sound slightly different. Let's go back to our basic practice sentence every day. Bill takes his dog to the park. Your job is to read the sentence monotone. Try that first. No special words stick out and the speed is totally neutral. This is basically a non emotional read. Don't worry, I'll show you why in a moment. Try this. Now, every day Bill takes his dog to the park. Very good. Now we're going to elongate one word in the sentence while keeping the rest of the sentence monotone. One word gets elongated or noticed or has special emotion and the rest of the sentence stays the same. We'll start with the first word, then the second word, then the third word and so on until every word in the sentence gets its turn at being elongated. I think you'll be surprised at how different this sentence sounds based on which word is noticed. I'll do one and then you repeat and then pause the video and finish the sentence. Every day. Bill takes his dog to the park. Every day Bill takes his dog to the park. Every day. Bill takes his dog to the park every day. Bill takes his dog to the park if you haven't done so yet. I recommend stopping the video here and practicing the rest of this sentence as well as any others from your practice material separating these skills as we're doing in this course is like exercise at the gym. You might work on a specific muscle at the gym, but you don't worry about that muscle when you're walking around town you let that work sink in on its own. So practicing these voiceover scales separately is very much the same, spend time becoming fluent with these exercises and then when you go to read for a client, you'll be surprised how you practice time will automatically influence your reads in the next lesson. We're going to discuss what it means to be an actor.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Audio Assignment
Tongue Twisters
Practice Scripts
Video Template (mp4 video)

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Keith Harris is an amazing teacher. His coarse is timeless. Thank you Keith. Please come up with another coarse.

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