One trend I think we’ll see more and more is the decrease of professional voiceover actors in screencasts when those voiceover actors are merely reading a script they don’t understand. As an example, watch some of the tutorials at lynda.com. The narrators may not be professional voiceover actors, but they are subject matter experts. You can tell they’re not just saying words they don’t understand. They’re narrating … more »

Catalyst 1: Audiovisual Role With the instability of contract renewal pending and the lack of housing in the desert, I switched jobs to a non-profit organization, the LDS Church, which had an agile environment and about 600 IT employees and was growing rapidly. They had already been coding an application for about six months and realized that they would need a professional technical writer to … more »

When you present at the STC Summit, you’re supposed to submit a proceedings paper describing your presentation. Given that only a fraction of my followers are members of the STC, and an even smaller fraction are attending the Summit, I’m providing my proceedings paper here: “Developing a Personal Voiceover in Audio” (PDF). (It’s allowed under the STC copyright agreement.) As you know, I wrote about this … more »

If you don’t want to sound as if you’re reading copy (if you want to instead sound as if you’re speaking conversationally to the user), consider using more inflection. Inflection is a change in the pitch in your voice, moving up or down the scale as you talk. Lack of inflection pretty much defines the reading voice. If you read a paragraph of text in … more »

When you’re recording screencasts, a lot of people think about microphones, and focus on the technical setup behind your sound. But really, your audio starts with the vocal cords in your larynx, the upper part of your throat.  Your voice is your main instrument, not the microphone. (Here’s a picture of some vocal cords.) One of my biggest problems when narrating a screencast is that … more »

Voiceover professionals often recommend that you smile while you narrate. Smiling injects a touch of warmth and charisma in your voice. Just a few touches here and there can make the entire tone of your voice noticeably warmer. I recorded three samples for comparison. In the first, I just read a paragraph in my normal reading voice. In the second, I actually scrunched my eyebrows … more »

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 … more »

In a recent design review meeting, I showed some of my screencasts to our team for feedback. We also reviewed some screencasts created by voiceover talents in our audiovisual department and screencasts created by trainers. In listening to my voice in the screencasts, it’s clear that I still have a lot to learn. I’m not even close to the personal, conversational-sounding audio voice that I … more »

The Right Way to Create Release Notes: WordPress › Blog » WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” Video

E-learning voice over demos and voice talent profiles|E-LearningVoices.com. This site has great examples of professional voiceovers with e-learning and training content. Can you make your voice sound like this?

At the last voice workshop I attended, the instructor (Scott) gave us scripts to read and then critiqued our performance. I tried to imagine myself talking to a friend rather than reading the script, but it didn’t come across with much effect. Scott said I was being too reserved, too monotone. I realized that my conversation technique with voice overs, which I wrote about with … more »