So… You Want to Be a Professional Voiceover Actor?

Andrea Rooz (00:02):

You are listening to the Stories and Strategies podcast, the most listened to public relations podcast in the world. Here's your host, Doug Downs. Okay,

Doug Downs (00:12):

Andrea. Andrea. It's good. It's good. I think we need to pump stories and strategies. That's the name of the company, right? So can we pull that one out a little bit? Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Rooz (00:21):

Okay. Alright. You're listening to the Stories and Strategies podcast. The most listened to public relations podcast in the world. Andrea.

Doug Downs (00:31):

Andrea. Andrea. It's good. A good pump there. It needs to have a little more emotional appeal around that most listened to because like this is, we're saying it's the most right.

Andrea Rooz (00:42):

I hear you. Emotion. Thanks. You are listening to the Stories and Strategies podcast. The most listened to public.

Doug Downs (00:51):

Andrea, Andrea. It's good. It's good. Can we maybe double time pick up a bit more? Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Andrea Rooz (00:59):

Alright. Okay. You're listening to the Stories and Strategies podcast. The most Listened to public relations podcast in the world.

Doug Downs (01:06):

Here's your host. Good. Good, good, good. Fast. Okay. Let's pick it up a little bit more fast.

Andrea Rooz (01:09):

Really? You

Doug Downs (01:10):

Want me to go fast? More emotional appeal and have some fun with it, babe. Okay,

Andrea Rooz (01:15):

Babe. Okay.

Doug Downs (01:25):

My name is Doug Downs. Just a quick note off the top. I want to thank Chloe Carlo, who left us a review on Castbox. We're growing like weeds on Castbox. It's been great to see. She says, Chloe says, "Looking forward to diving into Stories and Strategies. As a student seeking to grasp the intricacies of effective communication in the digital age, I believe this resource will be invaluable." Chloe, thank you so much. All reviews, we love to read them on the show. And from the bottom of my heart, they're so appreciated because that's organic growth, right? That's when you do that. People are more inclined to want to listen. My guest this week is Andrea Rooz joining today from Toronto. Hey Andrea.

Andrea Rooz (02:07):

Hello, Doug. How are you?

Doug Downs (02:10):

I'm good. So I'll ask how things are in Toronto. I know the baseball team is losing a lot of games and we're into May. So hockey is, that's playoffs. The Leafs

Andrea Rooz (02:20):

Aren't there? Oh my gosh, that was so heartbreaking. They we're rallying at the end and we just, but you know what? As I told my kids, you're going to get used to this feeling. It's really sad.

Doug Downs (02:35):

But yeah, especially with Boston, that is your death star. Andrea. You're the voice of a thousand different things. Subways,

Andrea Rooz (02:41):

Cars,

Doug Downs (02:42):

Video games, TV shows, like Breaking

Andrea Rooz (02:45):

Bad. Well, the Described, yeah, the described video for Breaking Bad for the Visually

Doug Downs (02:49):

Impaired. Now there's a whole nother reason for me to go back and watch it again and put the described video on so I can hear your

Andrea Rooz (02:56):

Voice. Yeah, it's really interesting actually. That's one of my favourite jobs to do, by the way.

Doug Downs (03:00):

And you're on lots of radio stations. If you've ever taken a subway in Toronto, the TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission, that's Andrea's voice. Next stop. DuPont.

Andrea Rooz (03:08):

Actually, it's more like that. If you see something, say something, line one is closed between Finch and Shepard Stations. It's that kind of thing.

Doug Downs (03:18):

There's people listening, lots of listeners in Toronto, they're going, wait now, okay, I know who this is.

Andrea Rooz (03:23):

Do you know how excited people get when they hear that I'm the voice? That is my big claim to fame. Everyone gets very excited when I tell them that, and then I have to do the voice for them and they're like, oh yeah, it's you. It's crazy.

Doug Downs (03:40):

Awesome. If you ever hear the telephony for US Bank and T-Mobile, that's Andrea's voice in the us. You've been doing this kind of work since 2001, and before that it was radio. Of course you and I share that love. You got to work on the Howard Stern Show and later with John Deringer. So it's awesome to have you on the podcast. Thank you. Let's start with the basic To get into this kind of work voiceover work, do you just need to have some kind of God-given voice? Either it's the dulce tones or for, I suppose men that big bassy Morgan Freeman voice or the Yeardley Smith, absolutely unique. Lisa Simpson voice. Is it about God-given stuff, or can anybody do this?

Andrea Rooz (04:25):

It used to be back in the eighties that was, they were looking for the radio voice, the male Don LaFontaine trailer voice, the voice of God is what they call it actually. And that is no longer the case. Now the trend is they want real people selling them stuff. Like I get, for a lot of the commercials I do, the direction is just sound like you're telling your best friend. So it's got to be that they want the every man, regular human voice now. So it's changed. It is definitely changed.

Doug Downs (05:08):

So what makes, not to gender this, but what makes a good male voice and what makes a good female voice and any other voices that fit within there? Well,

Andrea Rooz (05:19):

Your voice is great, for instance, because,

Doug Downs (05:21):

Oh, go on. Seriously, go on, keep going.

Andrea Rooz (05:25):

You sound like you sound like every man. You sound like the guy next door. You just sound like a regular guy, like a dude that you'd want to hang out with. And that is very similar for the females. Of course. It depends on what you're selling. If it's chocolate, you're going to have to have a little bit more gravitas and that luscious sound. But if it's, I dunno, Tampax, you're selling to other women. Women and they want to hear. Right, right. So it really does depend on what you're selling. But yeah, and the trend, thank God has gone away for a while. We were hearing a lot of vocal fry. That's that. Thank you Kardashians, and thank God that's gone. So yeah, now it's just be yourself, talk to your friend.

Doug Downs (06:25):

So why does the voiceover count? And I think I can almost answer my own question because when you described that you would need a particular tone to sell chocolate, does the voiceover count? Because ultimately it's part of the experience of the advertisement or the experience of the show, if that's what you're doing or the

Andrea Rooz (06:45):

Brand or you are basically like the sound of the brand. So those things have to all align

Doug Downs (06:57):

And how do you appeal to the every person? And I get that because study after study says, the person I trust the most is someone just like me. I trust scientists. I do. And we can get into whole debate there because not always depends on whether the scientist agrees with me, but I do trust someone just like me so that every person read. How do you do that?

Andrea Rooz (07:22):

That it has to be the hardest thing to do? Because often, especially if you're given a commercial, it's not how people talk. You're not talking about APR financing at 3.25% and yada, yada, yada. The way they, and so what we've been taught actually is before you, because obviously we're recording and editing, so before you go into something you're saying, I say to my best friend, I'm like, Hey Gabby, did you hear that this car is like, you can get this for 4.25% at this discounted rate. And so you sort of lead in, especially if you're doing commercials with that and you try to take things off the page so you not just almost have to memorize your copy. Right. You almost memorizing your copy. You're not reading exactly verbatim what is on the page. You're trying to interpret that in a way that people speak

Doug Downs (08:30):

The affected read. And that is, men we're famous for it, sixties, seventies, eighties. You are listening to the Stories and Strategies podcast. What you're describing is we're fading out of that. Yes. Has it though gone completely away? Because if it's an every person read, then any person could theoretically do it. And yet we have professionals who are paid large sums of money in some case to be the one to read the voice. Where is that?

Andrea Rooz (09:03):

Morgan Freeman? Yeah. Again, it depends on what you're doing, right? It depends on the brand and certain things like CNN, you are going to need that voice as opposed to CNN. But there are some TV and radio stations that actually want that. You're going to hear more of that casual read for, I don't know what they call it anymore, the oxygen. So again, if it's National Geographic is going to have a very different sound than CNN or Fox News. So it's amazing how audio really affects how you feel about something and it automatically kicks something into you that, oh, this is that this is serious, this is lighthearted, whatever. It's a interesting how there's room for all those reads basically.

Doug Downs (10:12):

And it comes down to your ability to interpret what the brand wants and sometimes, which is a different thing, what the brand actually needs as well as the audience here. So age, demographic, you can pick a lot of different ways to split demographics, but let's pick an age demographic. Does an older demographic, does it find the authoritative voice more appealing and the younger demographic? You're nodding your head as I speak, so obviously. Okay, alright.

Andrea Rooz (10:42):

Yeah, I mean listen, you've, you've got the Gen Z, gen Gen Z, who obviously don't want to be told. They want to just hear it as casual information. Whereas I think people of an older generation who grew up with Walter Cronkite telling them and making them feel informed and safe, that's a very different, so yeah, demographics is a

Doug Downs (11:16):

Lot. One of the things that every person speaks with is the tendency to end a lot of sentences on a verbal uplift that we know a lot of people who talk like that are there actually voiceover reads where that's part of the requirement.

Andrea Rooz (11:33):

Not, I mean, certain sentences maybe, but my gosh, if we're hearing that throughout a commercial, we're it stops us in our tracks. It's unsettling. You don't want to hear that all the time. No. Again, that's part of that whole vocal fry group that Oh my God.

Doug Downs (11:56):

Right, right. Okay. So I was going to say, how do you get into this? Do you have to go through radio first? Do you just create a demo and start pumping it out there, meet and greet, shake some hands, do a few gigs? Is that the essence of it?

Andrea Rooz (12:09):

So what people don't really understand about this is it's voice acting. So the best way to get into this is really take acting classes and you are an improv and all of those things because you are constantly pulling on those skills as opposed to, especially because they want the every person. Now you want to be relatable, but you also, you're embodying a character with your voice, which is interesting because you don't have the ability to show emotion with your facial expressions or your hands or your movements. It all has to be with your voice. They have to hear that character through one thing, only their ears. Right.

Doug Downs (13:06):

The technical setup. You've invested a lot into that. You have a good microphone. You have a home studio because the paid studio, I don't know how you feel about this, but my own look at the paid studio is that it's going the way of the payphone that kind of, even for music sort, don't really need those big expensive studios anymore, which

Andrea Rooz (13:29):

Is really sad. Yeah, it's sad because I love that because that's part of, that was a charm, a collaborative process too, because you would have a producer, you would have a director, you would have your audio engineer all together, and you guys are creating something special as opposed to now I'm sitting in my very sweaty booth by myself with my picture of Jerry Garcia beside me. It's dark. It's dark, and it's kind of sad. Do you want me to show you around the studio a little bit?

Doug Downs (14:06):

Yeah. What is the technical set up? What mic do you use? And then actually I do want to see

Andrea Rooz (14:10):

The studio. Well, first of all, it's a tiny little, so I'm reading off of my iPad. There's my Sennheiser four 16, which is a boom mic, which means that I can be far away from it. Or if I need to go a little bit closer and be a little more intimate, I can do that. But apparently for my voice, I don't know that one works, but it's literally, oh, Jesus. Yeah. There's my light and my Jerry Garcia picture. It's fully padded. I don't know if you can see that in here.

Doug Downs (14:47):

You're in a padded cell. Yes, you

Andrea Rooz (14:49):

Are. I'm in a padded cell. Yep. And

Doug Downs (14:53):

Is that egg curtain?

Andrea Rooz (14:54):

Yeah.

Doug Downs (14:55):

Right.

Andrea Rooz (14:56):

It's old school. I don't have any kind of ventilation in here. So it is hot and it gets really uncomfortable after a while.

Doug Downs (15:07):

Okay.

Andrea Rooz (15:09):

But yeah, it's a fully drywalled stand. It's part of my house now. If I sell my house, I'm going to have to tear it down according to my real estate agent. Nobody wants this, so. Yeah. Yeah. But it was very important. Obviously I just moved in October and I had to have a place that had a space for this. Right.

Doug Downs (15:38):

Yeah. And microphone technique, I mean, I work with a lot of clients and there's a tendency they don't want the mic right in their face, so they move it away from them. And I try to move it closer to go. Okay, is that better? Does that sound? Well, that's a little better, but where do you want the mic to be ultimately to sound?

Andrea Rooz (15:55):

So again, it depends on the kind of microphone you're using with a boom mic, which is literally used in movies and television shows. They put it way up high over the actor's heads and they're hearing it. So this, I can move back, but if you're using a regular mic, this is actually one of the things that, A technique

Doug Downs (16:20):

You're doing the thumb and the pinky finger thing? Yeah. Basically

Andrea Rooz (16:23):

To

Doug Downs (16:23):

Show six inches. Yeah.

Andrea Rooz (16:26):

I have really small hands, but yeah, so it's about that.

Doug Downs (16:31):

Okay. So you want to be fairly close to the mic.

Andrea Rooz (16:34):

Yeah. If you're using, if it's a USB mic, probably yes. Having a mic sock over your microphone is probably also good for plosives and your Ss, which I always

Doug Downs (16:52):

Have. Do I talk right into the mic?

Andrea Rooz (16:54):

No, no. Where you are, obviously you've got good mic technique

Doug Downs (16:58):

I learned from you.

Andrea Rooz (17:00):

That's

Doug Downs (17:00):

Nice. So off to the side. And my role is about

Andrea Rooz (17:04):

A little bit off to the side fist. Yeah, that works. But definitely off to the side. For most microphones. You don't want to be right on, because that will give you lots up plos,

Doug Downs (17:16):

Which nobody wants. The best way to prepare my voice is to go outside and have a smoke before I get ready. Right. Just puff on a cigarette. That's the

Andrea Rooz (17:27):

Cigar. Cigarettes a

Doug Downs (17:28):

Cigar. That's a big read. Yeah.

Andrea Rooz (17:32):

Listen, there are, so one of the things that I usually have in my studio is a green apple, which is a very common technique amongst voice actors, because that takes away the mouth noise. Nobody wants to hear that it's an awful noise. So that, but it doesn't last very long. So you literally have to be like, hang on, I'm taking a bit of my apple. Suck on it for a little bit and then swallow and then keep going. Or there's also these, they're like breath mitts. They're called reath, the breath, but the breath, I have it somewhere around me. Oh, here. Yes. The breath dry mouth. Right. See most people, right, you want to sort of, when your mouth is dry, that's pretty much when you're making most of the noise. Right. And there's also gum I use, especially the Trident, where is it? My Trident vibe gum. That somehow is very juicy. It lasts a long time. And then I do that whole, what was that show where movie? Oh, he would take the piece of gum. He was a singer. It was a comedy. He would take the piece of gum, put it behind his ear. He is like, one minute. What was that movie?

(19:03):

Now it's going to drive me crazy. Anyway, so it is a very famous scene in a movie. Yeah. So I will literally chew on a piece of gum, hold it in my finger, and then pop it back in my mouth and do that a bunch of times to make sure that I'm not, I don't have mouth noise.

Doug Downs (19:21):

So when I'm watching the Breaking Bad, not the closed captioning

Andrea Rooz (19:26):

Reading video, described

Doug Downs (19:27):

Video, can I picture you with a piece of gum on your big finger? And you're described that's all standing. Yes. What about water? Water versus coffee? Should I have a coffee beside

Andrea Rooz (19:46):

Me or what? No water for sure. And you really need to hydrate before, for the day before you're working. Right. You should constantly be hydrating. You can't just have a glass of water and expect that your voice is going to sound great because you're drinking water at that moment. You have to be constantly hydrated.

Doug Downs (20:09):

You have a cool job when people say, what do you do? I do voiceover.

Andrea Rooz (20:16):

I'm a voice actor. I'm a voice

Doug Downs (20:18):

Actor. Actress do see the eyes light up. And they're like, do they? Yeah.

Andrea Rooz (20:22):

Yes. Yeah. They're like, oh, that's very interesting. And then of course they ask me, what does that mean? Right. So it means a million different things, which is why this is so fun. Did my first video game last year, which again, I got to play all these interesting characters. And yes, there's a lot of corporate and commercial. It's a lot of auditioning. And boy, oh boy, do you have to have a tough skin because everybody seems to want to do this now. And over the pandemic, a lot of actors ended up creating their own studios. So now the competition is intense. And you hear no a lot. They're very, so you better be tough. The

Doug Downs (21:13):

Little skit you and I did off the top there where you were voicing very well, and I was being the producer jerk. Yeah. That's very real. Whether it's the producer or the client. What are some of the requests that you get?

Andrea Rooz (21:28):

So I once did, I literally had a tagline for a commercial. I obviously won't say the product, but it was probably three words, and we were there for four hours. They obviously didn't know what they wanted. So I'm just saying the same thing. How diverse can you get with these three words? We obviously, I think they went back to the first or the second take. Oh, no. Yeah. And then there's also, let's read 90 seconds worth of copy in 25 seconds, in 30

Doug Downs (22:07):

Seconds. Yes, yes.

Andrea Rooz (22:09):

So things like that are very frustrating, but when you work with professionals like yourself, it's easy. And it's the best gig in the

Doug Downs (22:19):

World. You're saying, Andrea is saying this because she and I have worked in that. I have a client who insists on using Andrea's voice, and I've counseled them many times. Let's mix this up. Let's move beyond this ruse character.

Andrea Rooz (22:32):

Let's not, we really like this.

Doug Downs (22:35):

Yeah. And it's gone. It's gone exceptionally well. Thank you. But speed up different emphasis. Yeah.

Andrea Rooz (22:43):

Yeah. And again, the thing that we hear most nowadays is tell it to me like you're talking to a friend, which is a really tough point.

Doug Downs (22:55):

Right. Andrew, I have really enjoyed this. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. This was fascinating and I'm associated with it. Thank

Andrea Rooz (23:03):

You. Yes, thank you so much. Thank you. Now the name of the movie is going to drive me crazy. They're like a rock band. And the guy from Shirley, Laverne, and Shirley. You

Doug Downs (23:16):

Mean this one goes to 11? Is that the movie? Yes.

Andrea Rooz (23:19):

This goes to

Doug Downs (23:20):

11

Andrea Rooz (23:21):

Spinal tap.

Doug Downs (23:23):

Ding.

Andrea Rooz (23:23):

Thank you. I've got it. Thank

Doug Downs (23:27):

You'd like to send a message to my guest, Andrea Rooz. We've got her contact information in the show notes, stories and strategies as a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and strategies, podcasts. If you like this episode, please leave a rating, possibly a review. Those mean the world to us when we read those reviews on future episodes. Big thanks to Emily Page, our producer for this podcast. We are also on YouTube and YouTube music, full audio episodes, and we publish short video segments as well. Lastly, do us a favour forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.