The Mic Guy: Adventures in Voiceover

At last evening’s workshop, one of my fellow actors shared an epiphany she’d experienced in a private coaching session earlier in the day.

“How would you describe yourself?” the coach had asked her.

“Strong,” my colleague replied. “Authoritative. Forceful.”

“But you’re not that way at all,” said the coach. “You’re funny. Friendly. Lively. Engaging. And warm.”

“Then I realized,” continued my actor friend, “that I was describing the persona I put on when I’m at work. That’s how I think of myself. But that’s not the person I really am. Or, at least, it’s not the entire person I am.”

I’ve come to that same realization along my voice acting journey. There are aspects of my existence where I put on, not a false front, but a persona designed to craft a certain perception. Certainly, that persona is a facet of me, but it’s not the complete me — nor even the greater portion of me.

The me that comes out at the microphone is often quite different from the me that I once expected to find there. Like my friend, I anticipated a voice that would project the aura that I often project in my non-acting life. But the microphone reveals facets of my personality that I often conceal — some, in fact, that I didn’t even know were in there.

More often than not, it is those hidden facets that seem the easiest, the most transparent, in the voiceover booth. It’s those voices and colors that shine in my performances, whereas those that I am more accustomed to exposing in daily life require far more nuance to ring true.

As Hamlet once said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

It appears that there are more things within each of us than we’ve dreamt of, as well.

This entry was posted on May 15, 2009 at 8:30 PM and is filed under Reflection, Voice acting, Voiceover, Voicetrax, Workshops. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.