Add SPARK to your voice! Gabby explains how important facial muscles can be in helping your voiceovers be on point! Don't be afraid to get physical in the booth and practice often in front of a mirror! Think of it as Voiceover meets Crossfit. Voicefit??
Crazy Faces = Better Voiceovers! - 4:41
Hey guys, it’s Gabby. So yeah, making faces, that's what today is all about. Here's the thing, and as a voiceover coach this is something I have known about for years. I've experienced firsthand with many, many students, and it has to be addressed really early on, especially with folks who are just getting going. Chances are right now you don't make enough faces. Common problem. Those of us who are lacking in acting background when we get started in voiceover tend to be really stiff, and stand very stoic, and very expressionless on the mic.
One of the reasons why a lot of people do this is because they’re so focused on their voice. They’re so focused on the clarity and the attributes that make up a quality vocal that they forget all about the acting, and they forget about the things that make us believable, make us human, make us humble, make us someone that an audience can relate to. And all that comes from personality. When we get too straight-laced, when we sort of devoid of an expression, everything gets really, really boring. Beginners often suffer from this. Their reads are kind of dead, kind of lifeless. They lack spark. You may not understand why. Faces are the reason. So a couple things I want to talk to you about and help you with.
The first is practice in front of a mirror. It’s fun, it’s silly, it’s goofy, it’s freeing. Make every silly, goofy, stupid, weird expression that you can think of because that mirror, that action is going to help you to understand how much facial muscle and movement you have at your advantage. The next part of that is bring a script in there with you. Pick a face, pick a grumpy face. Read. Pick a really, really ecstatic face and read. Pick a quizzical face… and read. And see what happens. See how making these really expressive faces helps and how it changes your voice, ok? Going to quote the great Bob Bergen again, “physically play the role and your voice will follow.” Your face is absolutely a huge part of that.
Watch other YouTube videos of voice actors in the booth. Watch us at work. We make the craziest faces. We do the goofiest stuff. Watch five minutes of Rob Paulsen. You’re going to be like, holy cow. It looks like some kind of weird vocal calisthenics. It’s great. It’s tons of fun. It’s all of those facial muscles moving, and working, and put to use, and absolutely has a tremendous impact.
You need some more inspiration, you need another place to look for ideas, here's a great one. Go to Google and look up a therapy face chart. Sounds really funny, I know. It’s actually something that’s commonly used in counseling and therapy sessions mainly with children as a way for a patient to identify how they’re feeling that day. Sometimes people have a really hard time expressing that and expressing in words how it is they’re feeling, so they point to the picture, and the picture helps to identify. You can use that face chart kind of in reverse. You can use it as an inspiration for an idea for a performance and contort your own face to match that feeling, to match that emotion. If you have kids, look to them as well for inspiration points.
Kids are so facially expressive. They do this all the time. They do it naturally. Adults have just kind of become stuck in our ways, and we’re so concerned about what other people think that we’ve learned to just kind of blank out our expressions. Everybody thinks they have to have a poker face. In voiceover, it’s the exact opposite.
Hey guys, thanks for watching. If you want more advice from me, please go to my website, GabrielleNistico.com, or you can subscribe for my monthly videos. And if you want to see more, here's a couple to take a look at.
704-674-8294 / GabrielleNistico.com / gabby@voiceovervixen.com
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