When you’ve got an eye-dazzling video and a perfectly wordsmithed script, you need only the best for your voice narration, too. We’ve compiled some of the voice industry’s best tips for creating the best possible voice over. From script prep to post-production, these eight hacks get you the results. Ready?
If you’ve used one of the newer text to speech services, you’ve witnessed the huge improvements this industry has seen in the past decade. The voices we have today are much more lifelike than those most people associate with “text to speech.” When you’re working with TTS, you can produce even better quality files when you follow these few simple steps.
Today’s text-to-speech empowers content creators to bring their words to life. Where once authors hired voice actors or went without voice altogether, text to speech (TTS) allows them to narrate on their own schedules.
Voice is a fundamental communication medium we have as humans, yet voice production simply does not scale. Talent can only speak 3-4 hours a day and editing voice is not iterative. This is restrictive and costly to creatives who need to add voice narration to their stories.
One of the biggest fears that eLearning content developers share is the disengaged learner. Modern instructional design models, authoring tools, and storytelling best practices aim to address this concern. At the end of the day, the goal is to help others understand and apply new concepts. Given the advancement of digital experiences, accomplishing that today through a digital medium is a tall order. In the enterprise, this phenomenon was very real. Coined the “Consumerization of IT,” this was the moment when big companies realized user expectation was higher given the services and experiences they enjoyed on similar devices, but in different contexts. eLearning is facing this same reality today.
Sometimes creativity flows easily. Words find their way on the page effortlessly, requiring minimal editing. Each word knows its place, and I’m simply a conduit through which they flow.
And sometimes… sometimes, the tap’s a bit rusted over. The creative process is anything but smooth or fluid. I wrestle each word onto the page. Each successful sentence is a fight.
Product tours on video offer a scalable and delighting experience to onboard new users, showcase a new product feature, and even convert free trial users into paying customers. Complex products benefit the most from product tours and training videos. The ultimate goal is to help your users self-serve and answer questions that will help them accomplish a specific goal and subsequently realize the value of the offering.
I’m the last to jump on any bandwagons. I resisted Harry Potter until well after all the movies came out. Only when a close friend finally wore me down, I read them… and reread them… and immediately tried to get everyone I knew to read them because, yes, they’re that good.
Voice over production is an arduous, multi-step process. Before you get to the final cut, you have to generate the script, audition and hire a voice actor, and record initial takes and retakes in the studio. Each part of the process offers its own rewards and challenges that affect how long a project will take and, ultimately, influence its quality. In short, the voice over workflow impacts your schedule and your budget.