2. Sounding Natural
One of my goals in creating engaging video tutorials is to develop a warm, personable, natural voice, like the voice of an encouraging friend or mentor.
In search of this more personable voice, last year I attended a voiceover workshop in my area. The voiceover coach explained that good voiceover artists start by imagining a situation—in their minds they imagine who they are, who they’re talking to, and what kind of situation and environment they’re in.
Voiceover artists have to stick carefully with the script they’ve been given, my coach explained. But they can inflect, add emphasis to control meaning, and play with the rhythm and intonation to bring it to life.
People told me that if I want to focus on the audio like this, I would be better off narrating the audio first and then recording the screen later—in two separate steps, rather than at the same time. I recorded at least 40 different video tutorials like this, narrating first (while trying to imagine myself in a situation); after recording the narration, I listened to the narration while following along to record the screen. Syncing it up took a little practice, but not much.
No matter how hard I tried, though, the narration always sounded stiff, slow, and a little dull. If I put too much inflection and rhythm into it, the narration sounded cheesy and fake. Maybe a background in acting would make it sound as if I weren’t reading a script, but I could never figure this acting thing out. It never sounded completely natural.
Not long ago, I decided to ramp up on PowerPoint through the video tutorials on Lynda.com. As I listened to the tutorials, the narrator’s voice epitomized the natural, personable voice I’d been trying to develop. He didn’t seem to be acting, nor was he a seasoned voiceover pro performing a pre-written script. He didn’t seem to have a script at all. He was just explaining, like a mentor, how various parts of the application worked. But it was perfect, and I quickly learned the more advanced parts of PowerPoint.
I was curious whether he even had a script, so I contacted him to find out. No, he said, he doesn’t record a pre-written narration script first. And neither do any of the Lynda.com trainers, he explained. He records the screen at the same time as he narrates. He did rehearse what he was going to do beforehand.
If all the Lynda.com trainers record this way, and I enjoy these tutorials, I realized that I should probably do the same. So I started to record the screen at the same time as I narrate. I still wrote out a general script beforehand, but I didn’t read it or follow it verbatim. I used my script more like an outline, glancing at it every so often to remember where I was going and what to include.
At times when I needed to explain a concept, I read a few sentences, because articulating complicated concepts in real-time can be tough to pull off with exactness (at least for me). But because the sentences that I read were mixed in with the unscripted narration, they blended well.
My opinion after recording and narrating at the same time? It works. And it has helped me achieve more of a natural voice—something I could never quite do reading scripts. The method isn’t perfect, but it’s better than before.
The downside with unscripted narration, unsurprisingly, is that I make mistakes. Listen to any real speech and you hear a smattering of slurs, missteps, poorly pronounced words, and other fumbles.
But I’ve found that I can re-record these problem patches and splice in my fixes somewhat seamlessly. A half a sentence here, a full sentence there. Sometimes it’s tricky to match the sound, but if I listen to 10 seconds before and repeat it a couple of times before rerecording the fixed sentence, it usually blends in indistinguishably.
I didn’t mean to turn comments off for this post. I must have inadvertently cleared those two check boxes that appear way below the post (somehow).
Tom,
I wanted you to know that your posts on the best equipment for screen casts made me look like a rock star when recommending a mic for a new project at work.
This series of posts arrive at the perfect time as well. I’m recording screen casts for several workflows. Right now I’m an intern and your expertise has helped me impress my colleagues. Thank you!
Glad to hear it. Actually, I just bought a new mic: the Electro-Voice RE20. It sounds great. I’ll try to post a sample. Kind of a pricey mic ($400), but I wanted to try it. The pop filter is something I didn’t really emphasize previously, but that turns out to be quite important to have.
Glad to hear you found the post helpful. One mic I really like is the Electro-Voice RE20. In an upcoming post I’ll dive more deeply into mics. Dynamic cariod is the type of mic you want. Whether USB or XLR depends on other factors.
By the way, New Media Gear‘s site is great for mic comparisons and analysis.
Hm, record the narration with the screens? OK. I’ll give this a try.
Somebody told me to smile while I record voice. I thought that was kind of cheesy, since I’m off-screen. Who will see me smile?
But the truth is, smiling is audible! It is, I’m not kidding. I can’t explain how, but smiling while I record adds a degree of excitement about the product that isn’t otherwise discernible.
You’re right about the smiling technique. However, when I’m recording and narrating at the same time, it’s hard to do this. But I agree that smiling does add some charisma and excitement to your voice.
Tom: Something I read a long time ago mentioned using a mirror when recording so that you can see if you are smiling or not.
Lew
Thanks for the tip. Yes, smiling is a voiceover technique. I haven’t touched on it yet, but I do plan to. I’ve heard of the mirror trick as well.
Thanks for bringing up the smiling technique. Someone else mentioned it too. I’m not a great smiler when I record, but today I’m giving it a full go and will hopefully have some good commentary on that for an upcoming post.
Tom, thank you for another great post. I’m bookmarking the URLs of your series, because I’m starting to work on elearning projects again after a period of dormancy. Even though the tools have greatly advanced, a lot of the development and production problems obviously remain the same.
When I served as narrator on past projects, I experienced the same difficulty with finding a private space to record narration. I was eventually allowed to use my home office, but I relied on software effects to round out the sound and didn’t have an optimized recording setup.
I always scripted my narration and sometimes improvised parts of it, but I could never record it in real time. The pressure of recording and multi-tasking seemed to guarantee that I would make mistakes. I recorded each fragment as a short video file and sequenced the files in my output (Flash).
One thing that I found challenging was that my voice sounded different during various times of day–more resonant in the morning and more tired in the afternoon. So editing was, for me, a real challenge. I tried to do all sequences in the same sitting.
You bring up some great points about the challenges of recording and narrating at the same time. I also make mistakes when I record and narrate at the same time, but I patch in fixes afterwards for the sentences that I fumble. If you have the exact same environment and you do the patches right afterwards and you get good at matching the tones and rhythms, it’s doable. But yeah, that old voice changes constantly depending on a variety of things.
Yes, agree with Eddie. My voice sounds different at various times, too.
If you as a parent instilled the moral values necessary for him to be a strong man, you have nothing to worry about.
great stuff tom. to follow up, smiling really works wonders. you can also try changing your body position (sitting v. moving), etc. there are so many variables that go into how your voice comes out…
Interesting points here, thanks everyone. As for whether or not to script your narration, I think a few factors influence the decision.
1. Purpose of the video. For an informal tutorial that leads viewers through steps in the UI, unscripted makes sense. They can imagine themselves similarly talking aloud as they perform the same steps, and expect less of someone who’s talking while performing the steps. For a video that deals with more concepts than hands-on steps, or for a more formal marketing video, scripted is better.
2. Identification with the narrator. If I introduce myself at the beginning of the video as “Paul from the Information Development group,” and especially if there’s a series of such videos where viewers feel like they get to know me, I can get away with looser speech. Viewers will forgive Paul a bit of rambling more than they will a nameless narrator. They expect that person to be a polished, professional voiceover artist. So if you’re anonymous, scripted is better.
3. Simultaneous vs. separate. If you’re using a tool like Captivate that allows you to edit your recorded “video” to change the timing of actions, then you can more easily record audio and video separately and sync them up afterward. You can read scripted narration. But if you don’t have this capability and must record narration while recording your onscreen actions, reading a script makes for too much to do at the same time and unscripted is better.
4. Running time. When you’re talking unscripted you’re more likely to ramble a bit and to take more time between sentences while you think of what to say. If you need to keep your video as short as possible, script it so that you can say what needs to be said in the fewest number of words.
Paul, I don’t think I ever replied to your comment. Thanks for your insight here. What you say makes a lot of sense. I’m just going through these posts as I put together my presentation on voiceover for the Summit. Excellent tips in your comments. Thanks.