Welcome to the second of my blogs about lists in voiceover

 

I’ll be sharing more with you about the techniques for identifying and understanding how lists are used in both commercial and non-commercial advertising.  To help you understand this, I’ve created a FREE audio voiceover lesson, so when you’re ready for the lesson, just press play and read along with the post.

 

 

 

First, Let’s Look at a ‘Check’ List. 

I’m using a sample from a Non-commercial ‘Explainer Video’.   I’ll read the first paragraph as it appeared on the page.  See if you can identify the list.

“As a new online retailer, you’ve done your homework.  You’ve built a good business model. Your logistics are fine-tuned and you’ve created a great e-commerce website that showcases your products to their best advantage.”

So, reading that script you might question, “Where is the list”?

Let’s break it down.

The first line.  ‘As a new online retailer, you’ve done your homework’, is not part of the list.

It’s a headline.  A statement.  Designed to identify and capture the ears and eyes of the intended audience, someone who’s new in online retailing.

Don’t forget!  The clues are always in the text.

The next two sentences are where the list appears.  And I’ll remind you again, that when we’re converting ‘written word’ to ‘spoken word’, we’re not looking at punctuation to guide us.  We always need to question punctuation.  Does it help me?  Does it serve the message?  Do I need to add or remove punctuation to get the meaning right?

And there may well be two sentences, but the final sentence has two different thoughts, linked by the word ‘and’.  Let’s have a look.

 

Here’s the Check List

‘You’ve built a good business model.’  Check✅

‘Your logistics are fine-tuned.’  Check✅

‘And you’ve created a great e-commerce website that showcases your products to their best advantage.’ Check✅

So, let’s analyse that list and work out why this language?  And what it all means.

‘You’ve built a good business model.’  

‘Your logistics are fine-tuned.’ 

Your attitude needs to make these new online retailers feel good about what believe they’ve achieved.

And the final item in the list is designed to make them feel good, that they’re onto a winner.

‘And you’ve created a great e-commerce website that showcases your products to their best advantage.’

Just a note.  You will always need give a slight pause between each different thought or idea, so the listener can…well…congratulate themselves on how successful it’s all going to be.

Notice also that the inflections are more musical.  The final words in each are neutral, upward and downward inflections.

Have one more listen, ‘You’ve built a good business model. Neutral.   Your logistics are fine-tuned.  Upwards.  And you’ve created a great e-commerce website that showcases your products to their best advantage’. Downward.

So that’s a check list.

 

Now Let’s Look at a Dot Point List

Items on any list can range from 3 to several.  Dot point lists will almost always have several.  And here’s an example.   Notice how it’s written ‘on’ the page.

It’s structured like a slide presentation 🤷🏻‍♀️

And now you need to work out how to make it sound completely natural, because we don’t ever speak in colon or dot point.

I’ll read it following ‘written word’ structure.

“Step-by-step scenarios will assist you:

• To improve document creation and storage
• increase understanding of practice performance at a customer level
• use multiple data sources to better target, engage and convert clients
• plan staffing, holidays and cash flow, and
• identify ways to work smarter, not harder.”

Mmmmmm!  Here are the mistakes I made!  One.  I let myself be guided by the punctuation and dot point structure, and to be guided by how it appears as written word ‘on’ the page

Wrong!  And my read was pretty boring, right!  I just read it.

Two.  I used the same neutral inflection in the final word of every point.  So, it had no flow, no natural rhythms.  And that meant I gave no meaning to each individual item.

So, I didn’t manage to engage the listener, or convince them of anything.

This is a huge part of what you’re doing in voiceover.  It’s the art of convincing delivery.

Now I’ll give you some tips on how to convert it to ‘spoken word’.

 

Let’s Jazz Up That Clunky Script 

What you need to do is convert this somewhat cliched, corporate language, into a read that engages and inspires the listening, or viewing audience.

First, you need to analyse the language in this list.

You always need to know who you’re talking to and what you’re saying.   Unless you know this, the meaning will never be clear.

So, who are you talking to?

It’s clear from the text, that this has been created for business owners, who may need to update their internal and public facing communication system.

And here’s a great method to sort out a clunky script if you’re working from a home studio, which you often are in Non-commercial.

Simply cut and paste the whole script into a doc and restructure it for spoken word.

To make it easier to read, first you need to remove the colon after the word ‘you’, and all the dot points.

And then join ‘Step-by-step scenarios will assist you’ to the first dot point sentence of, ‘to improve document creation and storage’, so that it becomes one thought, which it is.

So, you’ll see below that I’ve already done that.  I’ve given each different thought or idea, a line of its own.

Can you see how different it looks.  Especially the first line with the colon deleted.  Now hear how much more smoothly it runs.   Here we go.

“Step-by-step scenarios will assist you to improve document creation and storage,

increase understanding of practice performance at a customer level,                                          

use multiple data sources to better target, engage and convert clients,                                      

plan staffing, holidays and cash flow,                                                                                                                  

and identify ways to work smarter, not harder.”

Just a little note about that third last dot point.  There’s a three-word-check-list within the point.  ‘use multiple data sources to better target, engage and convert clients’.

Then there’s another in the next line.  ‘Plan staffing, holidays and cash flow.’

I remember when I was coaching at a Convention in the US, another coach called this rhythm an NBC gong list.   Doong, doong, doong!  It’s a note thing really and it’s just a simple technique to make the words ‘sound’ right.

Always work out how you’ll use the inflection techniques of neutral, upward and downward.  Finding the right rhythm using that technique will ensure your read always hits the mark.

Practice it.

And just to finish, you have that little word ‘and’ just hanging on the end of that line.

Move it to the beginning of the next line and it’ll sound much more natural.  No pause between the ‘and’.  So it sounds like.

‘And identify ways to work smarter, not harder.’

It’s this kind of study of the details of technique in voiceover that you need to do.

VO is full of different skills and techniques that create a different meaning in the overall.

Make sure you find those differences and deliver it like a pro.

And just as the script says, ‘work smarter, not harder’.

Happy voiceovering!!