A Voice Actor on Perky Duty
- Pilar Uribe
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
A routine early-morning session reveals how voiceover trends have shifted—and why flexibility matters more than personal taste. For a seasoned voice actor, success comes from trusting the copy, following direction, and delivering exactly what sells the product
Pajama Pants Are Still Business Casual
I love early morning VoiceOver sessions. It's quiet; no leaf blowers in the neighborhood until later. The great thing about working from home in the VO booth is that you never have to show your face. For a 7am work session, my alarm goes off at 6:15. I have a green apple, drink some water, sing a few scales and I'm ready to go. On this particularly breezy morning, I change into an LA Dodgers sweatshirt. The client doesn't need to know I'm wearing pajama bottoms. I download the scripts, go over them again and I'm ready. At 6:59, I go to google meet and wait for the engineer and the client to hop on. They arrive at 7:01 and we get to work. In his email, Paul from the ad agency specifically asked for a directed session. That's fine with me. All I have to do is press record, save the wav file and send it via WeTransfer, no editing needed. I love my job.
I do my first two takes and wait for instructions. After a long silence. Miranda, the client pipes up.
"We need you to sound more perky." I obligingly do another take . Miranda steps in again.
"Can you be more sing-songy? And end on a high note at the end like a question?" Now it's my turn to be silent.
Lower, Flatter, Don’t Try So Hard
Voiceover has undergone changes over the years. When I started as a voice actor in Miami back in 2009, I was used to hearing the traditional announcer voice. "Get this wonderful product on sale NOW! Hurry! Supplies going fast!" etc. When I arrived in LA, I was told by reputable coaches as well as my agent that that was completely out of style. The trend now is what I like to call the 'underannouncer,' everything at a low, almost bored pitch. This isn't for every piece of commercial copy but I've done plenty of spots where the client's main direction is "make sure you don't give us announery, sound grounded, like yourself." I've spent six and a half years following the 'lower, flatter, don't try so hard' direction; exactly the opposite of what they're asking me to sound like in this moment. I take a deep breath, relax my shoulders, put on a big smile and proceed with the copy. Miranda and Paul burst in after I give them two takes. "We love it! That's exactly what we're looking for!"
The trend now is what I like to call the 'underannouncer,' everything at a low, almost bored pitch.
A Voice Actor Doesn’t Judge—She Delivers
Moral of the story? It's not this voice actor's job to judge commercial copy in voiceover. Copywriters spend hours, days, even weeks on it while it gets reviewed by a dozen other people. After the final edit, then they bring in the voiceover actor to record the spot. The client knows the product better than anyone. It's up to me to make it come alive. If they want upspeak, they'll get upspeak because that will help them sell their product.
Once I give Miranda and Paul what they want to hear, we go on to the rest of the spots and we're done in fifteen minutes. They thank me profusely as we say goodbye, I send the wav file, then check to make sure Paul has downloaded it. Off to my next gig.