Fred Greenhalgh has always prefered to film his radio shows on location. So when a part of his show The Cleansed called for a scene in a canoe, it wasn’t a big surprise when he recorded the scene in an actual canoe, in the water.
There was a problem though—the script called for choppy waters, while in real life the waves were far too calm. Greenhalgh decided to take matters into his own hands, and give the canoe some sudden pushes, without the actors knowing.
“I was sort of simulating the water. The water itself was still, but I would push the canoe suddenly, and the actors would go “woah!” and that was realistic,” Greenhalgh said.
The result of Greenhalgh’s work will be released on the Internet in the form of a half-hour online audio podcast. The people Greenhalgh uses for his show are voice actors, and in an industry that’s been changed by the advent of the Internet, voice acting is making a popular resurgence.
The invisible actor
Voice acting, according to Stephanie Ciccarelli, the co-author of Voice Acting for Dummies, is the art of conveying a message using an invisible actor.
“You’re just relying on the voice, so there’s no visual component. The actor can’t use their body to communicate something that may be unspoken, or may be in the lines,” she said.
Ciccarelli is also the chief marketing officer of voices.com, a website that specializes in connecting voice actors to jobs, and vice versa.
The jobs can range from doing voice overs for commercials, to voice roles in animated films or video games, and even video trailers for weddings.
The most important skill voice actors can have, she said, is timing and knowing how to articulate their words.
“Timing is a huge thing. People need to know how to phrase. Like a musician. When you look at a score there are certain parts where you might pause or take your time,” she said.
“[There are] different ways in which you might punctuate a sentence or breathe,” she said.
Greenhalgh said the ability to convey emotion or feeling is one of the most important skills he looks for when casting actors for his plays. He said there is a fine difference in acting for voice and acting for screen or stage.
“Actors who have stage experience can sometimes overact for radio because they have to sound great to cast their voice through the theatre. And the problem with film actors is they’ll underdo it because they’re used to their facial expression being important. It’s only the voice that we care about here, I don’t care about how dashing you look,” he said.
“Most actors I work with are more experienced doing films . . . or live stage theatre, and if you put them in front of a microphone in a studio you get a kind of boxy flavour where they’re not really acting. But if you put them in a canoe, now they get it,” he said.
Who does voice acting?
One of the most popular uses of voice actors is in animated movies. Most of these movies nowadays have big names attached to them, Ciccarelli said. Whether it’s Will Smith voicing the main character in Shark Tale or Kristen Bell in Disney’s Frozen, voice work for movies is being done by big-name screen actors. But 20 or 30 years ago, the voice work for movies was being done by a small group of mostly unknown actors, she said.
“It was just an everyday actor who specialized in doing voices for animation, and sometimes this talent would also do commercial voice overs as well. There was a small pool of people that would do pretty much everything,” she said.
With the market for movies going to big names, another market has opened up for those hoping to break into the business: podcasts and online radio plays.
Greenhalgh said podcasts have given people the opportunity to not only record shows, but also broadcast them to a worldwide audience.
“Prior to podcasting, audio content was really the domain of radio stations or audiobooks, and that was the only kind of audio programming out there. You didn’t have this amazing, crazy thing with podcasting where everybody with a radio and an Internet connection can have a show,” he said.
For those hoping this means more money for voice actors, the reality is a little disappointing. Though he tries to compensate the actors he uses in his shows, Greenhalgh said a large part of voice actors do it for other reasons than money.
“I don’t know that it’s making much more money, but there’s plenty of people doing it not for the money but because they find it creatively fulfilling . . . that’s what keeps me going,” he said.
Another problem with podcasts is they’re usually available for free on the Internet. Some are able to attract sponsors, which can offset some of the cost of making the podcast.
Companies like Audible offer podcasts sponsorship deals. Audible will pay a podcast $15 every time a person signs up using a specific code.
Greenhalgh’s podcast The Cleansed offers its first two episodes for free, and then sells the others.
Living off your vocal chords
For anybody who wants to quit their day job and do voice work full-time, it’s possible if they work hard enough, Ciccarelli said.
Based on the work actors can get through her site, she said freelancing voice actors who know how to market themselves and are educated in voice work can make a living.
“If someone is really dedicated, trained, know how to run a business and have a recording studio up and running, working all day long, those people could be looking at $50,000 a year,” she said.
A big opportunity for new actors, she said, is doing voice work for smartphone apps and games.
Back when the games were first being released, Ciccarelli said, the developers would often do their own voice work. She mentioned Angry Birds as an example.
“I did an interview once with the fellow who did [the Angry Birds theme song]. The voices they first had for the game were the people who were working on the app. But that’s all changing,” she said.
Where apps before could get away with having mediocre voiceovers, she said that’s no longer an option, which means the developers often look for voice actors to do work for them.
Another example, she said, was children’s books, which are increasingly turned into interactive phone and tablet apps. For those, she said, good voice work is crucial.
“You have to tell a story, you have to get into it. You can’t just have bad voice overs in games,” she said.
Greenhalgh said despite a lot of work on his end being done for free, the opportunities for voice actors are far more common than they ever were.
“The good news is there’s much more going on than there ever has been,” he said.
“You have to go through the charge, make some stuff, make mistakes, and get better.”
