B is for ...  As actors we use our bodies to express our mood, our thoughts and emotions - and of course the essence of the character we're playing. Gesture, posture, the way you walk, the speed of your general movement is a powerful way of expressing yourself. The way you use your body speaks volumes to the observer showing your age, your personality and even your outlook on life without you having to speak a word. The way the body works is an essential part of character creation - let's face it, Charlie Chaplin's whole career was linked to his unique walk. We are all increasingly aware of the value of exercise and keeping fit and while many of us are interested in improving our physical appearance and stamina, traditional keep fit and gym training doesn't necessarily give us the kind of workout and body training that fulfills our needs as performers - needs which are quite different from the kind of physicality needed to be an athlete. For an actor the emphasis is on flexibility, stamina, expressiveness, characterisation, on motivated movement with purpose as well as on posture, relaxation, stillness and control. But what relevance has this for a voice actor? An actor’s body is on show and under scrutiny and unless the intention is to draw attention to a character’s particular physical attributes, then the ability to move in an easy and fluid way that doesn’t distract the audience’s eye is a valuable attribute. An actor needs to develop a healthy body and maintain it in good working order - a actor's body needs to have an extraordinary level of control and stillness and be flexible and expressive. For an actor, any exercise regime is targeted on a different set of goals than simply gaining strength or losing weight; strength and stamina are obviously important; acting can be physically challenging – dancing and fighting occur in a great many plays and films! Movement training for an actor will normally include dance (incorporating period dance), gesture, fencing, stage fighting and tumbling.
Dancing, fencing and tumbling have no immediate relevance to voice acting; indeed you may wonder whether 'the body' and its fitness and flexibility has anything at all to do with voice acting. When you're in a small padded room in front of a microphone, you can't move around very much, you can't gesture and no one can see your posture or the physicality of your character. However - especially for long form narration, stamina is vital - so is the reduction of physical stress which affects the voice, so body training and awareness combined with specialist forms of movement and relaxation such as the Alexander Technique and the Laban method are relevant and play a significant role in a regime that helps to build stamina, good breath control and vocal flexibility - all vital requirements for voice actors. Your body is part of your vocal equipment and you owe it to yourself to stay generally in as good a shape as you can manage. Being generally fit is a great blessing and an asset to all performers and aids stamina and the ability to breathe properly. Let's delve a little deeper. . .
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 | Your voice is your voice … or is it? There is a lot of talk about ‘authenticity’ buzzing around at the moment. Just Google ‘Authentic Voice’ and you’ll see 11,000,000 results. Many of them are about writing, urging authors to find their ‘authentic voice’, but ‘authentic’ also seems increasingly to be seen as a desirable asset for actors. Everyone, it seems, is trying to achieve that ‘an authentic performance’. Surely there can be no such thing! A performance by definition isn't 'real' or 'natural' or 'authentic' - it can never be. It is a performance. |
I think most people have a variety of voices and regularly adopt a slightly altered voice for different occasions. If you’re chatting with your friends, you're likely to speak differently from the way you would speak if called upon to make an after dinner speech, or recite a poem. The 'telephone voice' is a phenomenon witnessed all over the world in all communities from Tiverton to Timbuktu.
I became ‘bi-lingual’ within a few days of starting school because I knew that if I spoke at school the way I spoke at home, I would sound too different to be accepted by my peers. So I am left struggling with the concept of one voice being more authentic than another - particularly within an audiobook, or any other kind of vocal performance.
I became ‘bi-lingual’ within a few days of starting school because I knew that if I spoke at school the way I spoke at home, I would sound too different to be accepted by my peers. So I am left struggling with the concept of one voice being more authentic than another - particularly within an audiobook, or any other kind of vocal performance.
We are actors … it is our job to make whatever we are doing believable and authentic. When we act, we aim to create something that is credible and convincing even though we may be playing a character light years away from ourselves in age, in experience and in attitude. And the joy of narration is that we get to play all of the characters - many that we would never be cast as in any other genre - and the narrator's skill is to make every single one of those voice sound 'authentic'.
My vocal training was perhaps rather old fashioned when viewed in retrospect. It was focused on clarity and pronunciation; on developing a wide vocal range and extending my natural pitch and tone to make my voice more flexible and expressive. My 'natural' voice was honed to make it more responsive, my vocal technique was tweaked so that undesirable noises such as sibilance, nasality, 'vocal fry' and repetitive inflections were reduced. And my flat Midland vowels were definitely discouraged.
Does this mean that I lost my ‘authentic’ voice? Does the fact that I (and many other actors and narrators) speak with a neutral ‘RP’ accent, make our voices less authentic than someone a voice with a regional dialect?
I don’t believe so … and actually I am inclined to think that applying the word ‘authentic’ to a voice is just so much gobbledygook!
Does this mean that I lost my ‘authentic’ voice? Does the fact that I (and many other actors and narrators) speak with a neutral ‘RP’ accent, make our voices less authentic than someone a voice with a regional dialect?
I don’t believe so … and actually I am inclined to think that applying the word ‘authentic’ to a voice is just so much gobbledygook!
About me
Photo Credit: Paul Haynes
I've gleaned quite a lot of knowledge over the years, knowledge that might be of interest to others, especially authors, actors and voice actors. Because I read so much, for pleasure and professionally, I also occasionally write reviews of what I read - so they're here too.
My opinions are mine and my views are my own!
My opinions are mine and my views are my own!
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