HOW TO THINK LIKE A VOICE ACTOR
“I find voice acting interesting and want to test my skills,” you think to yourself. Well, how do you start testing your skills? One of the most desirable traits you can have is to be an intelligent, thinking actor! Leveling that up first is a great start, and begs the root question- “How do I think like a voice actor?”
To be blunt there is a dearth of knowledge that lies beyond the question, but to start, you engage with reality. Art is expression and if you ever want someone to resonate with that art, it has to have meaning- to be real to them. “Okay, so I engage with reality. What does that entail?” Thank you disembodied voice I created to ask a leading question! What that entails is to first think about the performance differently. Acting isn’t putting on a half-hearted emotion and talking loudly for all to hear, it’s letting the emotion itself be authentic and real to you! If it’s real to you, it’s real to the people experiencing your art. Let’s take a step back to establish a few prerequisite thoughts to help you understand exactly what I mean when I say “Let it be real to you.”
The Actor’s Questions- The foundation of the questions you ask yourself when trying to connect with a specific scene. They proceed as follows;
“Who am I?”
“Where am I?”
“Who am I talking to?”
“What am I doing?”
“What is my goal?”
“How do I feel?”
“How do I want the person I’m talking to to feel?”
“What is our relationship?”
These all sound basic, and in fact they are! With that said, you would be surprised how many details you can overlook when you don’t ask them. So, when you pick up that script for the first time or the thousandth time, these are the go-to tools to immerse yourself. The big point there is to immerse yourself. Find ways to connect with the words on the page, create ideas that stir your emotions and tell stories that compel you! When you engage from a point of passion, it’s a lot easier to get your emotions involved and put them on display for all to see.
Tangible Scene Creation- A follow-up concept to the Actor’s Question “What am I doing?.” An idea founded on the principle that there will be an audible difference in our performances when we engage with them physically. Think about this for a moment; when you go running- you don’t tell yourself the mandatory exhalations, wheezing sounds, grunts, bouncing impacts of your feet landing in a rhythmic fashion, bursts of exhilaration and so on that you experience while performing the act. They come out naturally and intermingle as they would, simply because you are living. All of those behaviors are paramount, however, to have the running sound real! This, by the way, is just one application of digging deeper into the Actor’s Questions. Profound analysis lies within each and everyone of them.
Logic vs Emotion- Both have their place, but knowing when to leverage one over the other is crucial when developing your thoughts about acting. To categorize it as simple as possible; logic belongs in the planning and preparation phase of a scene (like answering the Actor’s Questions), while emotion belongs within the scene itself- leading the charge. So, in a way we are doing the logic work right now! And let’s think about it… you never (or mostly never) tell yourself how you have to feel, you simply feel your emotions and respond accordingly to the situation that triggered the behavior. Essentially, your thoughts and subsequently your words are informed by your emotions. Correlating this to performing- the more we manipulate and logically control the performance, the less real it becomes. Why? Because that isn’t experiencing reality, it’s artificially creating it based on what we perceive belongs and where it belongs. Humans are very intuitive, let me tell you. They can smell a fake performance a hundred miles away.
All of this additional context to constitute- behind genuinely every concept, you can always ask more questions about it to find new information and new perspectives. That process of unending questions in the pursuit of truth and reality is the crux of thinking like a voice actor. After that, the only thing you have to do is make sure the reality you are delivering is the one the script, writer, director and/or producer is looking for… haha… But we can save that piece of the puzzle for another day. For now- go read a script, a book or whatever you can get your hands on and think about how to make it sound real. Also, voice acting isn’t just about thinking! Put those thoughts into practice and record something with all your heart. Talk soon. Bye!