Here’s a post for agencies and companies looking to use a video with a voice-over. I’ve written it to help you understand how to get the best from this widely used tool, what pit-falls to look out for and some tips on writing a successful and impactful script.
Voice over, often just shortened to VO is the “voice of an unseen narrator, or of an onscreen character not seen speaking”. It’s known by other terms like commentary, narration or, if you’re old school BBC like me “out of vision voice” or OOVV.
VO can be recorded in the video edit suite to save a bit of money, which is fine for some applications and often will be good enough. If however the viewers will be listening on a more sophisticated audio set-up you really can’t beat a proper sound studio. Get one with video playback facilities so the words can be matched to the correct speed and timings for the film. Voice overs can take a while to get right but with a professional actor and a focused director you can do a 3 minute film in an hour without too much difficulty.
The key to a sparkling script is to read it out loud as you write it. A busy production house has people staring at screens talking loudly to no one as they check the words… it does feel a little odd the first time you do it but it shows where particular sentences and grammar structure just don’t work. When you’re writing remember that a conversational style works better than a written one, so think about sentence structures that you would use if you were talking to someone.
Finally when you take your script into the recording sessions make sure you double space the lines of script so there’s plenty of room to make changes on the fly.. and you’ll need four copies for the actor, director, dubbing mixer and you!