Tips for Directing Voice Over Talent
                     Tips For Directing Voice Over Talent
Identify the Talent’s Role
Is your talent playing the bold announcer? The 
knowledgeable educator? The gentle best friend? 
Let them know the role the voice is playing. 
Experienced voice over actors will create their 
own personal back story to get into that role and 
execute it with conviction.
Give a Clear Rundown on Your 
Audience
What will the VO be used for? Where will it be 
played? Who are we talking to?  Although these 
might seem obvious to you, they may not be 
obvious to the voice over talent. Certainly, 
announcing speakers at a conference of toy 
manufacturers would have a different feel versus 
narrating a video for buyers of a luxury car.
Describe Your Desired Sound
Use highly specific descriptive words to indicate 
how you want a script to sound. Good choices are 
words like warm, friendly, concerned, 
emotionless, comic, serious, quirky, hip, brassy, 
sassy, movie-trailer big. Not-so-good choices are 
words like nice, flat, conversational. These tend to 
be much too general and open to many differing 
interpretations.
Video, Slide Show or Music
It helps immensely when the talent knows the 
visuals and music that will be paired with his or 
her voice. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a 
video is worth 100,000 words and the music is 
worth about 50,000 (give or take a thousand). I’ve 
even recorded VO with the background music in 
my headset, to get me in the proper mood during 
the session.
Be Clear on Timing Specs
If the voice track needs to be timed to a video or 
fit a specific timeframe, make sure you give the 
talent a head’s up in advance. Most pros work 
with stopwatch in hand and are extremely aware 
of how to fit copy into the desired timeframe. But 
also, make sure that the copy can fit into the 
timeline.  It can be frustrating to talent when they 
get a :30 spot, that’s way over-written.  Do your 
best to provide an accurately timed script.
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