Synergy

Voice over is often a synergy between the voice, copy, visuals & music. Just like when you mix a movie trailer, some choices of background music don't seem to "fit" but are none the less beautiful pieces of music in their own right. I try to remember this when I don't book something. You won't be right choice for every job you audition for & that's okay. It would be terribly boring if the same voice overs were booking all the jobs and it isn't a reflection on your talent or lack of.

To some extent our job is to pre-empt the aesthetic because we don't always receive much information at audition stage. We need to make it as easy as possible for someone to visualize us in the role.

I'm sure you've heard commercials or games that you didn't book and you exclaim "well if I knew that's what they wanted I'd have done it differently!". Maybe in these cases we just didn't quite grasp the vision as well as someone else & though with direction we'd have got there, they'd rather go with the person who got there first.

Of course sometimes producers have no idea what they want, they just know it when they hear it. Or they'll adapt the music or even the character around your VO. But generally we're coming in towards the end of the production process when the vision is already pretty established.

When it comes to animation, as well as clues from the copy you may be told where the series will be shown e.g. Nick Jr, Disney Plus, Adult Swim....again that's useful to know as the styles are quite different. Similarly certain Game Developers often produce a certain style of game whether it's hyper realistic, cinematic games like The Last of Us or Red Dead Redemption, or something more zany and outlandish like Ratchet and Clank or a Mario Game.

So next time you get an audition brief, be a detective and try and absorb all the clues you can be it text, visuals, music, company ethos, previous work, reference videos/voices.... then if you record and it still doesn't feel true to you or authentic....ignore all that information and do your own interpretation 🤣. Well what have you got to lose? If you aren't feeling the synergy you probably wouldn't book it anyway so trust your training and instincts & take that risk.