: Voiceovers

: acting, advertising, nancy, overs, wolfson

VOICE OVER ACTING FOR ADVERTISING - Nancy Wolfson

Is there a difference between “real” acting and voice acting for radio commercials or TV advertising? Nancy Wolfson explains what actors for voice overs need to lot of the training that I do falls under the heading of “acting for advertising.” I have actors who study with me in Los Angeles and New York and all over the world who come to me reluctantly, thinking, “I’m already an actor. Why do I need to study acting for advertising?”In most circles, especially in the Old School, it was considered a little gauche and a little tacky to do the acting that’s necessary for advertising. In fact, they didn’t even look upon it as acting. There was acting for stage and film and screen and theater, and then there was shucking and jiving and selling cornflakes and sausages and life insurance. And that didn’t seem like it’s ALL acting. It’s acting for advertising. So I tell everybody DJs who come from radio backgrounds, people who come from advertising backgrounds, people who come from musical backgrounds it’s absolutely acting, and you need to learn the acting you need to learn in order to do acting for time you pick up a script and try to perform it as if it were your idea to say it, that’s back to the question that a lot of actors ask me “If I’m already an actor, why would I need to take a class or a lesson on how to do acting for advertising? If I can play Hamlet, why would I need to learn how to sell corn flakes or car insurance?”It’s because there are some specific patterns that are important to recognize in the way that ad copy is written. Once you know them, you can perform them better. So it’s about learning patterns, pattern recognition, so you can take the acting you’ve learned how to do in other classes and apply it to this territory of acting.