I’ve just been in an ISDN VO session doing a voiceover for a radio ad. I’ve always wondered what being one of the umpires at Wimbledon is like and this VO session gave me a chance to find out. Sort of…

I was playing the part of an umpire at a tennis match. I was imagining how you’d find the right voice tone to deal with those spectators that call out to players. Ever since, during a match years ago, someone once called out to Jimmy Connors  “C’mon Jimmy” and he replied “I’m trying fer Chrissakes!” people keep on doing it in the hope of getting a reaction. In recent years it’s tended to be “C’mon Andy” – However I don’t think Mr Murray has ever responded to it – but you get the idea.

So that’s kind of what I was imagining in my head for one of the lines I had to say in my script which was “Ladies and Gentlemen, Silence please”.  Of course the people in the studio at the other end of my ISDN connection had their own idea of what they wanted to hear too.  Sometimes in these kinds of situations you get people who really struggle to convey to you exactly what it is that they want you to do with the voiceover, and what they want to hear – however, luckily, on this occasion that wasn’t the problem.

Nevertheless it still took many takes until I finally nailed the correct intonation (for the client) for “Silence please”.

I only had 5 words for this voiceover session but they seemed to take longer to get right than in other sessions where I’ve got the whole script to do. This seems to happen a lot in radio ad voiceovers – I suppose one day I’ll work out why.

The ad was being produced by BKP