Who Are You Talking To?

Who are you talking to?

HINT: It isn't "the audience."

Last night, I was asked to listen to a voice-over audition to provide feedback before the actor submitted it for casting. "Does it sound good?"

She sounded great: approachable, relatable, and marketable. She had a strong grasp of the copy both intellectually and emotionally, and that's all that matters, right?

Kind of.

How effective was the message? How strongly did the call to action land?

This is often the "next step" for new voice actors.

Better questions give us more complete answers.

Any time we are auditioning or performing script analysis, we always want to ask "why" questions, not "how." Asking "why this word, or this transition, or why these two thoughts are connected" will yield far more useful answers than "how should this sound, or how do I make this more clear, or how believable is this?"

We also have to answer the foundational questions: WHO AM I? & WHO AM I TALKING TO?

Most actors know on an intellectual level that "specificity" is what books jobs and gives the performance that indescribable "totally real" quality, but unfortunately that knowledge often adds a pressure to perform rather than serving as a useful guide to script analysis.

(A full-color spread of the destination in a magazine rather than a roadmap of how to get there, if you will.)

In coaching sessions, when I ask, "Who are you talking to?"

9 times out of 10 the actor will say something like, "I'm a [mom], talking to other [moms] about the best way to [handle meal times]." Or, "I'm a [teacher/professor/trainer] teaching a group of [students/new employees/kids] about this topic."

And here's the rub, the AUDIO (the commercial, the eLearning module, the explainer video, talking kiosk ad, etc.) is engaging an audience of multiple people to tell, teach, or sell them on the best way to do something or about that topic...

But YOU the actor (and the character you are portraying) are not.

Who are YOU? Who aren't YOU?

You the ACTOR are standing (or sitting!) in your voice-over booth looking at the script, imagining the scene and all the nuanced context/subtext that it needs to work.

You the CHARACTER are spontaneously coming up with each thought and interacting with your scene partner [the unseen listener].

You the character do not know that you only have 30 seconds to speak, or likewise that there will be 25 minutes of information to come; only you the actor are aware of that fact, because YOU have the script.

The only entity that ever engages "THE AUDIENCE" [aka the "demographic"] is the final AV product and the person(s) who market it. You are NOT the product. You are NOT the outcome.

I highly recommend the excellent teachings of Cicely Berry and her protégé Patsy Rodenburg of RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company] fame. They dive more deeply into the way language and interactions work than I can in a social media newsletter. But here's the basic gist:

First circle communication is the dialogue we have internally with ourselves.

Our reflections, our inner monologue, and/or our quest to understand, react, or judge something.

Second circle communication is the dialogue we have 1:1 with another person.

This is when we are speaking and listening to another human. Conversations are 2nd circle, as are most VO scripts.

When the specs say, "like a friend chatting over a cup of coffee at a café" but the script has tongue-spraining techno jargon, this is what they mean: they need the thing to be spoken from one person to one person, not that the copy "sounds" café-conversational as written.

Third circle communications are messages that are presented 1:many.

This is the professor who teaches a class. This is a social media meme that is blasted to the masses. This is that drunk friend from college who is talking AT and not to you (and whomever will listen) about... whatever in the world his first circle monologue is anchored to.

The microphone can only handle small side-steps into 1st and 3rd circle communication, it really prefers 2nd circle.

The microphone likes conversations more than presentations or representations.

I'll say it again, the microphone likes conversations more than presentations or representations.

You will always have to create the imaginary world around your character as the actor (who is in reality alone in your booth, and that's why it is HARD, but people who do it well make it look EASY), but you must, at all costs, have a dialogue (a 1:1, 2nd circle conversation) rather than a monologue, a rant, a diatribe, or a presentation of information!

The bad news is... It isn't about YOU. How good you sound, how marketable, talented, or charming you are. Your ego will survive, because...

The good news is... It isn't about YOU! It's about the message. It's about the LISTENER. It's about how the message impacts the listener. (Or at least how certain the casting director and client are in choosing the version they think will have the most impact.)

Isn't that wonderfully freeing? It isn't ever personal. You can really lighten up and find a sense of play!

The safest space for any actor to be is in the scene. That means you can get out of your head and out of your own way. It also means you need to spend more time, energy, and focus on YOUR LISTENER than on yourself, or whomever you think "the audience is."

Let the finished product talk to "other moms," "teach students about that topic," or "train new employees on that service." YOU use your imagination and have a 1:1 conversation with the one person who singularly really needs to hear this message.

I may know that the spot will air to moms of 7-year-old girls, but I am going to pull up my best friend, Julia, I will see her just as she is, loving her daughter and her life, but also feeling a little frazzled trying to balance it all. In my mind's eye I will choose to soothe her anxiety about "how it will work out" I will choose to get her excited about a new possibility, I will imagine all of her questions and objections, and I will see that the script answers them all in a very logical and reasonable way.

But I won't see that path... until I see Julia. If I just try to see "stressed out moms" it's all very generic, jargon-filled, and quite frankly, pretty boring, both for myself, and for whomever eventually gets the audition.

See your listener. There are so many ways to "see" them, it doesn't have to be visual, you can hear them, sense them, imagine what they might do or say in whatever way your particular mind works, even if you do not "see" a single image. But however you do it... DO IT! ?

You'll find the gains you have in nuanced authenticity, impact, and having fun in the process are immeasurable. The view changes everything. So picture your listener or your scene partner, and forget about the casting director and "the audience." They having nothing to do with your practice, process, or business.

So, why bother with them?

Thanks for reading! Please let me know if you have questions, and/ or if you have a topic you'd like to hear about. I really do love helping actors and business professionals understand our whackadoodle industry as best as can be done! ?

Lauren Goode

www.goodevoice.com