Communication - The Twenty Five Percent

Voice acting can be tricky, especially if you, like me, have only ever known stage acting. Luckily, I had Liam Gerrard (aka The Voice Over Chap) to run me through basics. He showed us that there are many different types of voice acting - not just your standard animated advert, but also voices in games, audiobooks, on trains/in lifts etc that I had never considered before. Despite there being so many different variations, they all have one thing in common: the level of communication.

In voice acting, communication is essential. 70% of communication is done through visuals – someone’s facial expression and body language. If you wanted to test this skill, you could read a scripted duologue in a language you don’t speak. You can know the vague outline of the scene, but not the individual lines themselves. This forces an actor to rely on both their own body language but also the other persons to progress through a scene and make it coherent. Though this may sound difficult at first, you know that you additionally have your facial and vocal expression to convey your point.

5% of communication comes from text – which is why written word could have so many different meanings, depending on the tone and where you put the stress. Try it with the sentence ‘I didn’t steal your money’ putting stress on a different word each time. See how several different meanings could be extrapolated from one sentence? As a voice actor working with a script, this is particularly useful in allowing your tone and vocal inflections to give away parts of your backstory, which wouldn’t otherwise be obvious due to the lack of visual input.

Vocal expression alone only makes up 25% of communication, which is why it’s so important for voice actors to really heighten the emotion in their voice to get messages, such as the character, where they are, how they feel about their situation etc, across. There will be a Foley artist working alongside the production of the audio, who can use sound to provide the audience with a bit more context, but there is still a significant amount down to the voice actor, especially compared to stage or screen work. Additionally, how you use your voice varies depending on the kind of work you’re doing. For example, an advert for a theme park might have a bright and enthusiastic voice, whereas an audiobook would have a much calmer, deeper tone, with only slight inflections for different characters.

To conclude, the emphasis on communication in voice acting was big – and understandably so! Without the visual input, audiences have only voices to rely on for a whole lot of information. The type of voice you use emphasises the genre and target audience as well as saying everything an audience member needs to know about your character/s.