Increase Your VO Accuracy, And You’ll Increase Your VO Profits
Photo by Stephan Henning on Unsplash
Hey there!
A bit of counterintuitive advice today, but advice that might make you more money.
And it has to do with, of all things, the width of your script’s window in Preview, Word, or whatever app you use to narrate from.
Hope this helps!
David
Raw Youtube Captioning
hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
and if you like me you love movies
sometimes you love going to Blockbuster
tentpole movies superhero movies and it
always seems to be great
on the bigger screens the IMAX screens
the massive screens except if you’re so
close to the screen like I love sitting
way in the back because I can see the
whole screen in my field of vision but
if you’re forced because it’s a really
popular movie and you can’t get tickets
anywhere else to be further up even in
the in the very front rows you can look
in the screen is like way like you have
to like if somebody fires a bullet from
that corner over to there you have to
like physically move your head to follow
the action you know and after about 2
hours of that it can cause headaches eye
strain your neck hurts I mean all of
those things because what you’re looking
at is not in your field of vision and we
have an application for that in the
world of voiceover as well so this is my
desktop and on my desktop is secrets of
screen acting which is a book that I
narrated I love it it’s awesome Patrick
Tucker changed my life you know the
story if you don’t know the story just
google it you’ll see but if you look at
the screen here your immediate notion is
wow that is small type and what really
should happen is I need to blow that
screen up and make the type fill the
screen and make it as big as possible so
when you do that you are hang on one
second you do that you make it bigger
all the way so that it’s as wide as the
screen is then you think oh the text is
nice and big but here’s the thing when
you go to read it your eyes are moving
from one side of the screen to the other
and you have a higher chance of making a
mistake
so let’s fix that let’s actually make it
smaller so that your eyes aren’t moving
as much but you can still see the work
right when it was first published in
1993 secrets of screen acting broke new
ground and explaining how acting for the
cameras different blah blah blah the
point is your eyes are only traveling
just a tiny little bit right they’re not
going the whole width of your screen and
for those of you that have really really
big monitors and you go this route
you’re like physically moving your head
which means you’re changing your
approach and your attack on the
microphone as well so the narrower you
can make it and still be able to read
the words well to be able to make out
the words perfectly the better find a
balance between narrow page and size of
type if you do that you’re gonna
increase your accuracy and if you
increase your accuracy and by that I
mean you’re minimizing the number of
mistakes that you make other than
performance mistakes and you do pickups
but when your eye travels from the
right-hand side of the line over here
all the way back to the left-hand side
you could miss something you could make
a mistake if it’s narrower your eye
isn’t moving so much right but if it’s
the full width of the screen it’s like a
big distance now yes the the font is
bigger the type is bigger especially if
you’re working with a PDF file where the
characters don’t reflow the words don’t
reflow like they would in a Kindle
document but the point here is if you
make it narrow enough that you don’t
have to have your eyes travel so much
you won’t make as many mistakes and if
you don’t make as many mistakes that
means you’re gonna get the book done
faster or you’re gonna get the narration
done faster or you’re gonna get whatever
you’re working on done faster and you
can move on to another project which
means it’ll take you less time to make
money with each project that you do
you’ll be able to do more projects in
total and you’ll be able to make more
money over time that’s why this article
is titled along lines of the more
accurate you are the more profitable
you’ll be and it’s really
counterintuitive right could you think
well if I make the
bigger it’s easier to see that makes
sense yeah but your I won’t have to
travel so far that helps that’s
something that you’d thought about maybe
you fell prey to the whole make the make
the script as wide as the screen is
thing let me know in the comments below
if you’re watching this video anywhere
but on VOD go TOCOM go there we’ve got
all kinds of great stuff for you over
there that’ll help you be a better
voice-over talent and performer in
general if you’d like to subscribe to my
youtube channel go ahead and click on my
head there if there’s no head then find
a subscribe button somewhere on the page
and if you’d like to see the latest
episode of these videos go ahead and
click on that frame and you’ll go right
over to youtube and they’ll play it for
you I’m David H Lawrence xvii thank you
so much for watching and I will talk to
you soon.
I do have a wide monitor–which is why I prefer putting Preview and Audacity up side-by-side. It improves focus on Preview, and allows me to keep a fraction of an eye on Audacity to make sure it’s continuing to work as I do. There’s a nifty utility called Spectacle that allows me to throw an app to that monitor, then stick it in the right half or left half of the monitor, using keystrokes. It’s now instinctive to open Audacity, then hit the pair of keystroke combinations that place it where I want it, ready to work.
I actually like using my iPad Pro 9.7″ for the script. I set the microphone at a ~45 degree angle to my DAW screen, then actually turn my chair so I’m directly facing the mic, and not distracted by the DAW. It also makes interaction with the script very natural and noiseless, since I’m only touching the screen to move it. Bliss!
I convert any .pdf to Word, change the margins, make the font bigger, then save as .pdf. Works like a charm! If I get a .pdf that is made from a .jpeg, then I use the + and – iconsat the top left to size the page. Hope that makes sense!
And what about making the window narrower? That’s the only thing you didn’t mention.
This is why I put my script on a 7 inch tablet that I put on a stand. Scrolling makes no noise and there is no potential adverse affect to my DAW.
I like my iPad for reading script/copy. I have a stand for it and it works very well in preventing eye strain and no constant movement of the eyes. No sound of rustling paper and no need for split screen on my computer when recording. Works very well.
But I really like your take on less eye movement makes for quicker reads leading to fewer mistakes and more income potential.
David, when you first taught this method of script reading in class it was literally an eye opener. It improved my reading accuracy noticeably.
I still can’t read off the monitor for physical reasons—I even went back to try it on my new, big, curved monster. So like most of the other folks who commented, I use a tablet. It is attached to my mic arm so everything is always perfectly placed.
To be sure the font is the proper size and the line length is narrow enough, I always convert to MS Word.
A bit old fashioned here with word doc, but hands down when I enlarge font, I smoothly get through my reads…when I book with my Agent and have to go into a studio, I also ask if they can make the text larger. I like your idea of a more narrow margin, that is awesome!!
Can’t wait to get on the mic today!