Voiceover and the Visually Impaired

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Voiceover & the Visually Impaired This chapter was intended for the 4th edition of The Art of Voice Acting, but was not published due to space limitations. It is included here in its entirety.

As voice actors, we tend to take our sight and our ability to read and interpret a script for granted. But what would you do if you were blind? How would you deal with a script? How could you possibly record and edit your voice tracks? How would you handle your marketing? The questions go on and on. Each of us is born with certain talents and abilities that we nurture and hone as we go through our lives. And each of us has certain challenges that we must overcome and learn how to use to our advantage if we are going to survive and be successful. If you’ve garnered anything from reading this book, it should be that voiceover work is not about your voice, but rather, what you can do with your voice — and, more importantly, what you can do with the words in the script to meet the needs of your client. It doesn’t matter what you look like, how strong you are, how fast you can run, how high you can jump, how white your teeth are, how long your fingers are, the clothes you wear, how much hair you have, or any other physical characteristics or abilities. In other words, voiceover is entirely about your acting ability. A gift for acting and performing is not something that can be taught. You either have it… or you don’t. It is something you are born with. And, as with many other individual characteristics and skills, acting ability has little to do with physical limitations or challenges that some might perceive as impossible roadblocks to success. Believe it or not, visual impairment — or to be accurate, blindness — is something that several very successful voice actors deal with on a daily basis. These talented performers have chosen to pursue a natural ability for story telling, creating characters, and acting. But mastering their craft was, for most, a long and difficult task. 1

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Not only must a blind voice actor learn how to act and create characters, but they must also learn how to use, and adapt to, the unique equipment and communication skills of working in Braille. Training is generally on a one-on-one basis with a professional voiceover coach who is willing to take the time necessary to help the blind student master these skill sets. Tina Wilson (www.tinawilsontalent.com), a blind voice actor based in Orange County, CA says: “Perseverance is critical. You must be pretty thickskinned in the face of rejection in order to survive. Confidence in your abilities is a must.” Tina notes that recording at home is essential and that she will usually get her scripts enough in advance for her to convert them to Braille, or that she will simply transcribe to Braille while the script is dictated by her client. She also observes that her clients really don’t care that she is blind, and they are generally very willing to give her the additional time that might be needed to accommodate copy changes during a session. According to Tina, “What matters most, is that I’m able to tell their story in an interesting way.”

Queen of the Sound Picture Maureen Young is a born story teller who refers to herself as the “Queen of the Sound Picture” (www.queenmaureenvo.com). She is a voice talent-singer-teacher, and has been interpreting copy and lyrics since the age of seven. Along the way, this has included many national commercials, industrial narrations, promos, staged readings, and teaching voiceover privately and at the School for Film and Television in New York. To hear her perform, you would never know that Maureen is blind. The following chat between John Florian of VoiceoverXtra.com and Maureen Young might forever change the way you approach voiceover copy (www.voiceoverxtra.com). Maureen, I get a sense from your demos, from your style, that you are very much a storyteller. Thank you. Did you feel that way about all of my demos narration, telephony, characters - or just with commercials? With everything - it’s like you’re telling me an interesting story, and I want to talk with you on that. How would you describe your style? Actually, I do like to reel them into a scenario, come to think of it. Even with my friends, I like to set the stage when I’m just giving them information. Life to me is like a series of stories in

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real time. In life, those stories become chapters in an expanding book. Yeah, I guess you could characterize me as a story-teller. So, when you are performing a voice-over, you are really telling your client’s story. I think two things. You get into the character, and you get into the text, which is the presentation of a story. For instance, let’s say I’m going to talk about the new three-stack cheeseburger, whatever it is. This is really exciting! They are giving three great burgers for the price of one! So depending upon the copy, the story here is that if you like to eat that kind of juicy burger, and you like more of a good thing, now is the time to eat it. Less for more, bigger is better, like that. So the character you create in your mind to express that feeling is really jazzed - the whole thing is just too cool! You are sounding very convincing … Well, there is a story embedded in every commercial. And you have little time to set the stage and tell it. There is always a plot or a scenario. So, how do you approach the copy? You get the script. And then what goes through your mind - breaking down the copy to find that story? I think first of all, in voice-over - like anything else - you have to have the raw ability. Having a distinct sound is just the license to perform. When I get a script, I study it, and the first thing I think about is the text. What am I listening for? What is it I want the listener to hear? Then I need to listen to the words - speaking them as thoughts in my mind-speak. In doing that, colors evolve. The scenario takes shape. Let me give you an example. Okay. Let’s take the first commercial on my demo, the one for Snuggles. Now, you want that kid to sleep, right? And you want that kid to stay asleep - whether it is a princess or any other kid. But if there is a pea under the mattress, you know that it will make the mattress uncomfortable and unlovable. Think about that: “Gee, if there is something under the mattress, how could we get it out of there so the kid can sleep?” So I conclude: “all things can be made perfect - mom to the rescue.” I don’t know if I consciously think that through for a long time, but that is the story of that commercial. And you definitely want to create sort of a lullaby feeling to it. I don’t break it down that much consciously, though. The first time I read it, I sort of see the scenario. I like a more organic read. I like to spontaneously react after I’ve read it to myself and internalize it once or twice.

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The Art of Voice Acting There are other things to consider ... Yes, it’s also a matter of learning where to pause, learning how to pace. I ask, “Come on, what are you trying to say here? What’s really happening here? Who’s telling the story? Who’s listening to it? What is the scenario?” That’s a word I use a lot. I try to get really invested in the copy. That’s how I break it down. Because if I’m invested, the pauses and the pacing will come quite naturally. For some folks, it’s a struggle. They have to go through several reads before they can perform with wild and reckless abandon. So you’re saying, “Don’t over-think it. It’s kind of intuitive? For me it has been that way, yes. But it isn’t that way for everybody. And I think sometimes that people can get too much coaching, or too much input from ”supposed experts.” They wind up getting all locked up. You mean, just allow yourself to express what you’re feeling. Yes - what you are feeling when you read that commercial. That’s the end result we want. Maureen, tell me about your career now. Starting from whenever. I started voiceover work when I was about seven or eight, working for a network affiliate out of Chicago, which is where I am from, singing the opening jingle for a kid’s program. I always loved doing kid stuff, always. So, at the age of seven, I did that. Because I was a precocious kid and probably drove my mother crazy, she took me to a voice lesson. The singing teacher knew the producer, and the producer heard me sing, and I was such a cute little kid with this voice and tra-lala-la-la. So I got the job singing that little jingle every week. And from there? I kept doing voice work, and actually was working with a lot of older, very well-known men in voiceover in Chicago at that time Russ Reed, Herb Graham, Harry Elders - a lot of the greats. They were protective of me like a father would be, and they would send me around to various people. I got an agent who sent me out on a lot of auditions. In those days, you could make the rounds, as they used to call it. You could actually call somebody, get a live person on the phone and make an appointment, walk around, bring in your demo, have a cup of coffee, or sit there and talk to someone about what you like to read. It wasn’t so insulated and isolated, like today with the Internet. There was more emphasis on human contact.

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And you continued as a singer? Yes, I started in classical music when I was a teenager studying at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. Then I went to the University of Illinois for a communications degree, and after that, studied with the late Oran Brown and Beverly Johnson, my singing teachers at Juilliard. I studied classical, but I always loved to sing musical theater stuff. On my own, I memorized all the Broadway songs that I liked. I still do that. Keep that karaoke busy here! And what’s your career like now? Well, I’ve come back full circle. I still have musical theater students, some notable ones, in fact. But the economy has hit the singing teacher business hard. So, I was always very successful in voiceover, having done a lot of network stuff. I still have the voice, thank God, and can do the reads - so I’m back into voiceover, straddling both worlds. Maureen, through all of this, you haven’t mentioned that you are blind … Well, I guess I never think about it much. Other people do. But it is not my focus, you know. I don’t mind talking about it, but it’s just not my focus, that’s not where I’m at. Maureen, being blind, how do you go about learning a script? First, I am going to tell you how it used to be. In the old days before computers, which is when I started - when people had human contact - I would call the secretary who would read the script to me over the phone. Those secretaries were not actresses. I wasn’t listening to their inflections. I just wanted the words. So I would write down the words very quickly in Braille. There is something called Braille shorthand, but I abbreviated that with my shorthand, and could get a 60-second commercial down in probably 25 seconds. Today, I have the copy emailed or sent as an attachment or faxed to me. Lots of narration comes to sighted VOs in advance that way, you know. My computer reads it in speech, and I copy it quickly, at the speed of sound shall I say, with a Braille typewriter. What software do you use as that screen reader? It’s called JAWS – Job Access With Speech (Google it for details). You scan things into the computer and they read as synthetic speech. What does it sound like? Does that have inflection, also? No it’s just a monotone – no inflection whatsoever, and you can set the rate of speed at which JAWS reads, and you get used to it.

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The Art of Voice Acting What is the percentage of jobs that you do at home, as opposed to going to a studio now? Well in New York City, fortunately, most voice work is in studios. That is my preference, too. I like being around people. I am very much a people person. Right. But tell us about your home studio. I have an Audio-Technica mic, a Mackie eight-channel mixer, AKG studio-grade headphones, and a pop filter. And oh gosh, I use Sound Forge to record and edit - in the heavily blanketed walk-in closet here. I use my speech screen reader, and use keyboard strokes in the place of what the mouse will do. For example, when I want to click on something, I push the ENTER key. And when they say click on such and such, I go to a link and ENTER on it. When you’ve recorded a script and you are editing, and say, you want to edit out a cough or something, how do you tell where that is? By listening. How do you know the beginning of that and the end of it? I hear it. I’m pretty good at getting it right up to the spot where I need to make the cut. But a lot of it is knowing pausing and pacing and when there is too much dead air and stuff like that. You know, there are a lot of fine professional recording engineers who are blind. I had this discussion with the owner of a recording studio recently. He was comfortable enough to say to me, “I suppose since you’re blind, you hear better.” Well, I do not think I hear any better than anybody else. We all have the capacity to hear. What I do is listen better. You pay more attention. I pay more attention because I have to. If I’m out in traffic, you’d better believe I’m listening to hear turning cars. And when I am in a voice studio, I sure am listening for edits. When you are blind, you have to focus on detail a lot in your life. Where did I put this? And where is that? And how do I do this, and how do I accommodate that? You have to be very organized. Not every blind person is organized, but I am - I’m very organized, I admit it. My friends tease me about that. In fact, my nickname is "Ducks," as in "ducks in a row." I have incorporated my blindness so much into who I am that I don’t think about it as my label. It’s a part of my identity, one aspect of me, the part that can’t convey concepts through vision. I know it’s harder to be blind than to be sighted, but I don’t dwell on that or I’d probably never get anything done.

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Your web site theme is that you are the Queen of the Sound Picture. Where does that come from? Well, I figure if Latifa could be a queen, why can’t I? I thought Queen Maureen – Queen of the Sound Picture - would be memorable. And, isn’t a voiceover a picture in sound? It’s a concept conveyed through sound that I came up with one night after a couple of glasses of wine! I don’t do voiceovers - I do sound pictures. That’s true! Now, is there anything that I did not ask you that would be important to tell readers? Well, let me think. Yes, I want to reiterate this point: One of the things that happens to people - and it happens in the music business, too - is that we become inundated with people telling us that: “This is the way … This is the answer … Come to my class … Do this and you will make it ... Follow my instructions to the letter and you will make it.” Well, I don’t think that. I believe that everybody has to find his or her own way in this business. I mean, you take a little from this one, a little from that one, and you put it together for yourself. It’s rarely a straight line. Anything else? Yes, one of those “Did you know?” things about audiobooks. They got their start with books for the blind. The Library of Congress has done lots of recordings - or what they call ”talking books” - and that is how many books are recorded for blind people. Also, there is something called “book share” where you can hear thousands of books if you are blind, by signing up and paying whatever they charge. Somebody scans a book into the computer and you hear them all in synthesized speech. Most of us who are blind are used to that. I have a girlfriend who has read thousands of books for the American Foundation for the Blind - some about acting, and so on. And now she has branched out into reading commercially produced audiobooks and is supporting a big family that way. But she started working with books for the blind. So audiobooks have us to thank for that vehicle. Maureen, thank you. It’s been tremendously enlightening to chat with you.

Argue for Your Limitations, and they are Yours That’s a phrase worth considering! A common theme among Maureen, Tina, and many other professional voice actors who are

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visually, or otherwise, impaired, is that your physical “limitations” are only limitations if you allow them to be. It’s up to you, individually, to be persistent and learn how to overcome your personal obstacles and use them to your advantage to pursue your passion and live your dreams. The moment you start to believe that you “can’t do it” because [put your favorite excuse here], or you buy into someone else telling you what you can and cannot do, is the moment your dreams will start to die. Just because you are struggling to learn a technique or get past some personal issues with performing does not necessarily mean you should quit your dream. We once had a very talented student — I’ll call him Steve — who told us the reason he took our workshop was so he could “get out of his head.” His day job was as a technician working in a highly left-brain technology design business. He wanted and needed a creative outlet and he thought voiceover had good potential. And he was right! During class, Steve would sit very quietly off to the side of the room. He didn’t participate in much of the discussion and at first, we actually began to wonder why he was there. But when it was his turn on mic, his personality opened up and he was electric. We saw an incredibly talented side of Steve that he had very successfully learned how to keep hidden. After training with us for a little over a year, Steve decided it was time to start learning from other VO coaches, something that we encourage all of our students to do. After several classes, this other coach told Steve that he didn’t have what it takes and that he would never make it in voiceover. Unfortunately, Steve believed this and there was nothing we could do to change his mind. He sold off his home studio equipment and completely separated himself from anything that had to do with voiceover. He even asked us to remove his demo from our web site. It’s one thing to have a serious conversation with someone to discuss their strengths and weaknesses and what they need to do to move forward. It’s another thing entirely to be so brutally “honest” that someone’s dream and creative outlet is completely destroyed. But it wasn’t the coaches fault entirely. When this other coach told Steve he’d never make it in voiceover, Steve searched within himself for every possible “lack of ability” that would fit and ultimately accepted those “limitations.” The moment he did that, he had no other choice but to quit. Do you believe you have the acting talent do voiceover? Do you know what you do well, and what skills you need to work on? Or do you argue for your “limitations?” Think about it for a moment. You are reading this book because you can see — and you have a strong desire to learn what it takes to

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be a professional voice actor. If someone who is blind, like Tina or Maureen, can be successful in voiceover… what is it that’s stopping you? Of course, you must have the acting ability, knowledge of the business, and proper training. But if you never explore the possibilities, you’ll never know what you can do. Even if you discover that voiceover isn’t for you, or perhaps that your acting ability isn’t competitive or what you had hoped for, the performing and verbal communication skills you’ll learn can be applied to many areas of your life. And if you do have the critical talents, develop the skills, learn about the business, and choose to pursue your voiceover dream, your attitude will play a large role in your progress and success. Any area of show business will be a challenge to break into, and voiceover can be one of the most challenging. Nobody said it would be easy — and if they did, they lied to you. So, when you hit that brick wall (and, at some point, you will), think about these talented voice actors who are blind and the challenges they have overcome. It will help to put things in a clearer perspective, and may just be what you need to get over that bump in the road.