DVD and Voice Talents

Q:  What advice do you have for DVD voicing?

DVDs is an excellent medium for voice-overs, both lip sync and narration.  DVDs is also a great medium for subtitling.  Or, a combination of the two.  DVDs come in a variety of authoring styles, from simple straight video chapters, to broken peacemeal training courses that are comprised of high numbers of mini-audio pieces, silences, screen test voice prompts, and the voice recordings may include both narration and perhaps  with some lip sync pieces.  The effect of voice on DVD is powerful, and brings  great life to a media piece.  When translating the foreign voice versions of such peacemeal products, our recommendation is to be sure to use true professionals, highly experienced in excellently timed voiceovers.  Lip sync talents, even when used for narration in this circumstance, are excellent for this.  Not using such professionals may result eventually in a good DVD, but the time consumption will drag far far far beyond that by a true pro.  And the end result will usually not be comparable.  A true pro will breeze into the studio, and breeze out, saving a ton of money in the process, and rendering great recordings.  Thus, when seeking talent prices, try hard to remember that value of talent is not just the sound of the voice, it is the speed and impeccable results that you get from the great ones on the first “take”, not the 4th or 5th take.  The more complex the DVD, the faster and more professional the talent should be to save time, money and assure an outstanding, impressive final product.  Some of the greatest lip sync talents sound almost like “normal human beings” rather than beautiful narration voice talents.  Yet, of course, they sound “better than normal”.  Such “normal” voiceover approaches bring a humanity, a credibility and truthfulness to a recording that a beautiful narrator does not bring.

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