How to do Voice Over like a Real Pro: The Complete Guide

With the help of voice, sound effects, and music, your video becomes alive and dynamic. It acquires meaning and value. However, some production studios may often rely on visual effects and music, completely neglecting the voice acting. A voice-over is a must for your video to be of high quality and make the ultimate sense. Let’s see how to do voice-over for your business video professionally.

What is a voice-over?

Voice-over is a video explainer production technique. During this process, an off-camera actor or other person records a dialogue according to a script of the film, commercial, TV show, documentary, or any other while in the post-production process. Voice may also be recorded over a sequence of video clips that tell a story. Productions may use voice-over content to provide additional context to the narration, to the visuals, or as a form of allocation, etc.

Why it is important?

 The truth is that in some videos voice-overs form storylines and cannot be avoided. In every film, voice overs are more likely applied to move the plotlines and narrate the stories to the fullest. It’s hard to provide an intimate insight into the characters’ minds or souls. They better aid the film’s visual composition and build a greater audience connection to the happening. They impact by means of triggering sublime emotions or simply providing clarity.

Key elements of a voice over

For the average person, all types of voice acting are the same, while industry professionals may distinguish a range of elements for various voice over types. Let’s check them out.

Pronunciation and enunciation

How articulate the voice-over will play a significant role in the quality of the process. Another thing to consider is enunciation speaking.

Enunciation in voice-over is such a speaking manner where all the words or sounds sound slurred, under-articulated, or blended. Thus, adults with similar enunciation concerns may tend to move their mouths less as compared to the average person during the speech, or speak faster than average, etc. This and any other technique is used while voicing the videos depending on the script.

Audio clarity and volume

Great video voice audio over should comprise several elements, and Audio clarity and volume is one. Here specific volume is added to particular tones to make speech more audible or sound effects, voice effects, etc. Besides, the studio equipment is used to provide clarity. Thus, using a gate improves the voice-over quality by removing background noises and so much more. Mixing & mastering also refers to the process of enhancing your audio’s sound quality.

Vocal tone and inflection

Using changing the pitch or loudness of the voice, you achieve vocal tone and inflection. You may also apply it to the words: changing them to mark such distinctions as those of case, number, gender, tense, person, mood, or voice, etc.

Thus, inflection allows you to point out the keywords or key emotions from the speech and help to convey the exact meaning to the audience in a more intense way. For example, speaking the sentence, “I know the answer,” with various focuses just by changing your voice inflection will produce different effects.

7 Steps to Record a Voice Over

To record a voice over, you need actors, a lot of acting skills are required, not just acting, but also knowledge of voice over techniques, the studio equipment, and so on. Here are the steps you may take to voice over and produce a top-notch video for your business.

Preparing to record

When the customer is through with the ideas and the video concept, the whole process begins. To prepare the recording, the brand audience is researched, the characters are defined, the script is going to be written in the case the client has not one, etc.  If the actors are needed for the process, they are auditioned to pick the necessary talents, etc.

Write a script

Determine the type of content and the platform:

• a training video,
• entertaining video,
• explainer video,
• product description,
• instructional video,
• product usage scenario,
• crypto video, etc.

If the clients have not provided the script, the authors develop the script ideas. Then they are approved/changed and handled by the team for acting it out. To understand which speaker to choose, first figure out what effect you want to achieve and write a detailed script for the video.

Do a test recording

The actors prepare their voices for voice-over. Research their characters before the tests, so they are already warmed up and understand the peculiarities of voicing. All that’s left is to immerse into the role and act the script out to the fullest for the final recording. The voice should correspond to the tone of the vice that the business adheres to when communicating with the users.

Record your voice over

 All records start from the reciting slowly and carefully. The actors may speak each phrase about three times before finding the best pitch and rhythm, gradually increasing the speed each time. Here they use a room and professional recording studio equipment or powerful yet simplified apps that can do audio dubbing, effects, or whatsoever.

Edit your audio

When the audio is ready and approved for the final cuts, the edits are made to the voice over if needed. Import your audio into your video editor, master it to meet the client’s demands, and proceed with it to the production final.

Do you want to create your own video? – Feel free to contact us!

As you see at present, voice acting or voice-over is a separate full-fledged profession that requires unique properties both on the actors and the studio. How to make a voice-over video to avoid multiple edits and launch to the market asap? That’s a great question to ask the professional video maker. Video for marketing experts at Explain Ninja are always ready with the answers. Feel free to try them. 

Conclusion

How to do a voiceover on a video? You need to take specific steps to launch the process. The target audience is indicated. And the type of voice is chosen, adult voice, cartoon, native speaker, etc. With this information, it is easier to determine the pitch and tone.

With the help of voice, sound effects, and music, your brand video becomes alive and dynamic. It acquires meaning and value. When you are through the process, you get a high-quality video for any distribution, social network, marketing section or video channels, etc. Also, deal with the process with the help of professionals to make it smooth and minimize the costs.