‘Seems like a ridiculous proposition — sounding like you…but where a voice talent gets waylaid is in reading the directions that accompany the audition script.
What’s even worse is when the casting director sends along a link to a YouTube video, and they want you to emulate the style of voice on the video for the project they’re sending you.
Top VO coaches — Nancy Wolfson, for example — admonish their students for letting the specs too heavily influence the actor’s choices in advance of making those choices, though it’s never a bad idea to check the specs AFTER the text analysis process and before submitting the final audition. So the approach becomes: read the directions for any specific distinct requests, but mostly deliver your best read according to your analysis of the script. The idea being that many VO talents can do a fine job with the given script, but only YOU can bring YOUR touch, your interpretation, and your experience to the copy.
There’s actually a very good article about “how to sound like you” on the website “Internet Voice Coach“.
CourVO
