DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

In case you haven’t heard, next week I’m conducting a very cool workshop for voice actors:

IMPROVABILITY:
Enhancing Your Voice Over Talents Via Improv

It’s equally valuable for copywriters, comedy writers and radio personalities. (It won’t help much with voice tracking.)

Why improv? Especially “my” version of improv?

For me, improvisation is discovering reality where moments ago there was nothing.

That sounds New Age-y until you realize that’s what we experience constantly in our lives. We’re minding our own business, something happens, we react, and now we’re “fully committed” to a new “scene.”

We don’t have to pretend; we don’t even have to try. It just happens. All we need to do is be conscious, pay attention, and respond to life.

If you decide to join us, don’t worry about “being funny.” All you’ll need to do is “be real.” And you are real, aren’t you?

Admittedly, improvisation is scary. Notice how terrified those guys are?

(Photos taken from an abbreviated workshop version I conducted at our last Radio Production Summit.)

On Saturday, February 23, I’ll be conducting a special workshop for voice actors:

IMPROVABILITY: Enhancing Your Voice Over And Writing Talents Via Improv

I don’t try to get people to give “better” performances. My job is to help them discover new approaches.

I call it “discovering reality.”

One of my favorite techniques involves the creation of “backstories.”

But not in the way you’d guess; the backstories I give voice actors often have nothing to do with what’s on the page.

For example, here’s a very good voice actor delivering her first take on a piece of radio commercial copy.

Then I give her a backstory that in no way is suggested by the copy.

Then she delivers a completely different, more interesting performance.

Yes, if she were to use that newly discovered attitude & voice, her delivery would need to be speeded up to fit the small commercial frame.

But that wouldn’t have been difficult. Her new character wasn’t different because she talked slowly; that same character could speak more quickly while preserving the attitude that gives her that special quality.

Do you agree — was the second read clearly more interesting and compelling?

Here’s where to register for my IMPROVABILITY workshop.

On Saturday, February 23, I’ll be conducting a special workshop for voice actors:

IMPROVABILITY
Enhancing Your Voice Over And Writing Talents Via Improv

I use a number of techniques to get new performances from voice actors or new story approaches from writers.

All are related in some way to improvisation. (I have a long background in improv, but that’s another posting sometime).

One of the techniques I use is the creation of improvised “backstories” for the performers.

Some very good coaches use backstories. I use them very differently.

It’s much easier to demonstrate than to explain. But my backstories ultimately have a single goal: to lead the performer to an interpretation (or the writer to an expression) they otherwise never would’ve arrived at.

In short, to “discover reality.” (If you come to the workshop, you’ll hear that phrase from me at least a few times.)

Here’s a “Before” and “After” example from the 2011 (and last) International Radio Creative & Production Summit. In this video, the two voice actors deliver the copy according to their own natural instincts.

After that reading, I gave each performer his own backstory.

Obviously, the bland “announcer” copy needed the most help. But notice the change in the Russian character, too.

Did you notice a difference in either or both performances?

This video of my critiquing a radio commercial for a catering company was recorded at the last International Radio Creative & Production Summit.

View this radio advertising critique video on YouTube.