Have you ever walked down a busy street in London, LA or New York or stepped onto the underground and looked a person you didn’t know in the eyes and smiled really warmly at them?
In busy metropolitan cities like London such an occurrence isn’t immediately welcomed.
Cities are teeming with people on their way to fulfilling obligations in order to pay for a home, food and the living of a life.
So, if it is simply challenging enough to engage in this way with a stranger (for good reason) how much bigger is the task for us creators of content?
For commercials, corporate videos, e-learning projects, audiobooks, animations and games, how do we achieve the same feat, that is impossible in public?
How do we connect to the human being, beyond their busy life of pressing commitments?
The first part is skill. That ingredient developed over years of practice. That is why content creation is a team sport. The skilled motion graphics designer, the lead animator, the storyboard artist, the sound lead, the producer and the voiceover artist. All coming together
The second is something that all these people provide as one entity.
Why?
Beyond the financial element, why are we all coming together to make this project happen? What’s the point? The answer has something to do with making an impact on people's lives. It’s why videos made by artists go viral all the time. There is so much energy, passion and purpose infused into it, with not much thought to the financial element. Take "The Watchtower of Turkey" that catapulted the film maker to the attention of creative agencies around the world:
The same is true of voiceover. It cannot just be words. They must be infused with something that is hard to measure or put your finger on. Something that years of practice make. And also something more – a deep connection to the purpose of speaking these words, at this time, in this moment to these people in the UK, the US and around the world.
When that happens you get something like Iceland’s Banned Christmas 2018 commercial, repurposed from an original film by Greenpeace. Moving, powerful and strongly connected to it’s why:
If you like, please share.
Paul Mclaughlin © Versatile Voiceovers
www.versatilevoiceovers.com
