For this week’s staff spotlight, we’d like to introduce you to one of our live class instructors, Bridget Renshaw!

Such A Voice: Hi Bridget, thanks for joining us today! We’re excited to have you on the SAV team. What inspired you to become a voice-over instructor?

Renshaw: I love what I do and teaching people about it. I think that learning to use your voice is so powerful and I’ve always loved helping and encouraging others.

Such A Voice: What do you consider your niche in VO to be?

Renshaw: I have a youthful voice, so my sweet spot in commercials is a teenage girl. I also do a lot of millennial driven commercials, kid voices, and characters.

Such A Voice: What character has been your favorite to voice?

Renshaw: The voices for Guan Yinping and Dong Bai in Dynasty Warriors 9. Video games are always fun because there is so much expression and play involved. Always a good time.

Such A Voice: What part of the voice-over industry do you enjoy talking about the most in your classes? Why?

Renshaw: I enjoy working with the students on voice-over techniques. It’s fun to play around with everyone’s unique voices and personalities when they are reading through the scripts.

Such A Voice: Out of all the places you’ve traveled to for classes, which has been your favorite state to visit?

Renshaw: I loved Savannah, Georgia. Such a cool area with good people.

Such A Voice: What songs/type of music do you listen to on the road?

Renshaw: Anything I can belt out at the top of my lungs or really jam to. If it’s a longer drive, I listen to non-fiction audiobooks and podcasts. I’m always trying to learn something new.

Such A Voice: Would you rather have unlimited sushi for life or unlimited tacos for life?  

Renshaw: Tacos.

Such A Voice: How would you explain your basic life philosophy?

Renshaw: I believe that your thoughts and dreams create your reality and if you believe in yourself, the world will believe in you too. Follow the things that set your soul on fire, chase joy, and not fear. You can create whatever life you imagine and set forth to create. And don’t rely on the opinions or thoughts of others too much, nobody knows what they’re doing anyways. Do you.

Such A Voice: What exciting gigs/trips do you have coming up?

Renshaw: I’m excited to voice the main character on an animated cartoon pilot and do the dubbing voice for a teenage girl on a Russian short film that’s being converted to English. Never a dull day.

Had a positive experience with Bridget as a voice-over coach? Write about it here.

Source

There will come a time in the voice-over world for you to pull out a character voice. If you have a place to pull that character from, you’ll be able to transition to that voice with ease and make your client happy. Whether you’re making your voice sound older or younger, speaking with an accent, or creating a unique sounding voice, you can start to file these characters away and build your voice-over character library.

Your voice-over character library not only pertains to animation work, but commercial and narration work as well. When you have a list of characters to choose from, you are better prepared with an arsenal of voices for any needed situation. Whether you’re recording an audiobook,
video game, commercial, e-learning video, or a narration piece, you’ll have a list of characters right in your back pocket to pull from and you’ll be ready when the opportunity presents itself.

So, how do you create a voice-over character library?

First, you’ll need a place where you can keep track of your characters. Whether it’s in a document, a spreadsheet, a folder in your e-mail, or the notepad on your phone, find a place to store your list of characters.

Once you’ve decided on a method for keeping your characters organized, you’re ready to start building your character list. There are many ways to create character voices, even if you’ve never done so before.

Here are some various ingredients that you can play with when cooking up your character voices! Using this list, you can create a multitude of characters.

• Timing: How fast or slow does your character talk?
• Pitch or Intonation:The rise and fall of your voice when speaking.
• Inflection: The stressing of certain words or the pattern of pitch variation.
• Imitation: Characterizing your voice so that it sounds like a specific type of person. This could be a celebrity, someone you know, or just someone you hear when you’re walking down the street.
• Texture: Does your character have a smooth, sultry voice or is it more gravely? You can also add more to your character with textures like breathy, nasal, guttural, hoarse, etc.
• Volume and Tone: Does your character speak softly or loudly? Do they carry a sharp tone, friendly tone, or bored tone? Play around with what volume and tone works best for the character you’re trying to represent.
• Enunciation: How, precisely, does your character pronounce each word? Do they slur over certain sounds or are they very accurate with their speaking?
• Attitude: What is the character’s attitude like? Are they usually a happy person? Excitable? Stressed? Irritable?
• Accents: Whether it’s Southern drawl or a Jersey guy, accents are fun to play with. If you don’t have accents in your wheelhouse already, try characterization or imitations of people with accents.

Create names for your characters and write down the traits that are unique to them. Naming them will help you remember who they are so you can go back to them easily. You can use descriptive names like “Valley Girl” or you can give your characters specific names. If you have multiple Southern accents for example, like a deep south, a country hillbilly, and a Southern Belle, you can name them Dixie, Mary Sue, and Caroline, for example. Doing this helps you decipher between similar characters.

Lastly, have fun, practice, and OWN IT! Have fun playing with your character voices. You can even have them talk to each other so you can switch back and forth between characters quickly. Dig deep and own those character voices. These are voices that you created and that are unique to you. You may think you’re overacting, but with character voices, it’s okay to go over the top a little bit.

Having a list of character voices in your wheelhouse makes it easy to pull out something unique and strong at just the right moment. Whether it’s part of the voice-over work you’re doing, a request from the client, or you just want to liven up a piece with a unique spin, having a voice-over character library in your back pocket is always a great tool for any voice-over artist to have.

Check out our VO Pro Membership and the Such A Voice blog for more content like this!

There are two other ways in which you can tune into our blog!

You can access the audio version of this article on the Such A Voice Soundcloud.

We’re also on YouTube. Check out the video for this post:

                         About the Author

With eight years of experience in the industry, Bridget Renshaw’s voice can be heard in commercials, animations, voice dubbing, corporate videos, eLearning, and video games. She has voiced numerous commercials including Samsung, Audible, Transitions Lenses, Scholastic, Simple Skincare, Classic Mazda, and more.

Source