Actors ask themselves a lot of questions when they’re preparing for a role:Who am I? Who am I talking to? What’s the backstory? How do I feel? And what am I trying to say as this character? If you read anything closely enough you get the answers to all of these questions. And in front of a camera, you could stop there and deliver a good performance. Behind a microphone there’s one more question that I started asking myself which opened up a whole new world in my approach to voice acting.
Where am I?
Unlike on-camera actors, the voice actor is responsible for creating their own environment. In a way it’s like the flipside of miming, except you’re using your voice instead of silent gestures to convey objects or people, or an entire environment that isn’t there. Your audience is basically in the dark unless you convey something more. I’ve always thought of the voice actor’s job as shining a flashlight around this environment so that it becomes clear to whoever is listening. 
Some people stop at proximity – the question of how far away your listener or another character is always affects the way your read comes out. But I find if I ask myself why I am in this person’s office, how I got to this deli counter, or how I feel about being in the passenger seat of a car going 95 miles an hour on a residential street, it almost doesn’t even matter who I am. The ‘where’ gives you the context of your lines and gives you hints about where your character is coming from, where they’re going, and what else is going on around them.
And for those who think of acting as ‘reacting,’ constructing the environment in your imagination gives you real things to react to, and then the moment being recorded isn’t just about a person’s disembodied voice in a dark abyss.
This is also a technique for connecting with your audience. Even now, if you’re listening to me read this or reading it yourself, I figure you’re on your computer or your phone probably at home. And I’m choosing to write and read to you like I’m right there with you so that it makes sense, but also feels like a real conversation we’d be having over a cup of coffee.
Some of the greatest voice acting on radio commercials deliberately contradicts this idea and has the effect of engaging the audience’s imagination, and mixed with the right sound design totally transports the listener to the time and space you’ve imagined for them.
If you’re stuck making a ‘new choice’ for a quick ABC read, you can also consider changing the ‘where’ in your mind, provided that it still makes sense with the copy. You can change the whole environment, going from inside to outside, tiny living room or big hallway, or you can change the lighting in your mind to reflect the dramatic mood of your scene, think about the weather and the number of people within earshot, what other noise might be going on around you, and react to the set you build.
That’s what I love about voice acting – you may be a person in a closet talking into a microphone, but when you start treating your booth like your very own Star Trek holo-deck, you really can go anywhere you want.
