The voice over brief: the method in four questions

“A warm, upbeat voice, on the young side, but credible.” That is, give or take a word, the most sent voice over brief in the business. It comes from a good intention, it fits on one line, and it says nothing: out of a hundred voices in the catalogue, sixty could claim to answer it. The casting that follows runs on gut feeling, the session discovers the real expectations live, and the retakes pile up for a reason that has nothing to do with the actor.

The problem isn’t you, it is the tool. Adjectives describe a feeling, and a feeling cannot be directed. “Warm,” for one person, means low, settled, almost intimate. For another it means smiling and energetic. Both are right, and that is exactly the trouble: until the word is turned into decisions, everyone is directing their own version of the film.

Four questions replace the adjectives. They fit on one page, they take no audio expertise, and they hold everything a casting, a voice direction and a quote need.

Question 1: who are we talking to?

Not the media target. The real listener, in their real listening situation.

“Adults 25 to 49, upper income” is a line from a media plan, and it tells an actor nothing. What informs an actor is who is listening, where, on what device, doing what, in what state of mind. An employee sitting through mandatory training at four on a Thursday afternoon does not listen the way a prospect meeting your brand in a six-second pre-roll listens, and neither listens the way a customer already sold on you does while holding on the phone.

This question alone settles half the interpretation: the distance of the voice, its energy level, how familiar it gets to be. You do not speak to somebody in a hurry the way you speak to somebody who is stuck with you, and a voice that addresses everybody ends up addressing nobody.

Question 2: what do we want it to do?

What should the message produce in the person hearing it? The answer fits in one verb: reassure, get them to act, explain, make them remember, make them want. Not five verbs. One.

This is the question briefs dodge most, because it forces a choice. “We want to inform, but keep it engaging, and it should give a premium image”: three intentions, three directions of delivery that cannot hold at the same instant. An actor asked to do all of it at once flattens all of it, and the result is that correct, forgettable read the business calls a corporate voice in casting sessions.

One dominant intention per message. If your text really carries two, chances are it should be two messages, and finding that out is worth more before the booth than after.

Question 3: where will it run, and for how long?

The question looks logistical. It is strategic, and it is the only one of the four that commits the budget.

The channels first determine technical and writing choices, because a radio spot, an internal film, a training module and a pre-roll are not delivered at the same pace and do not forgive the same lengths. They then determine the scope of the usage rights: where the message is used, on which media, for how long. Two campaigns with identical copy, one running three months on the French web, the other a year on international television, are not the same project, and a serious quote needs that answer before it can say anything reliable.

Answering early heads off the two classic accidents: paying for usage you will never need, or finding out mid-campaign that a planned release was never covered. In both cases the error does not come from a calculation, it comes from a brief that never asked the question.

Question 4: what do we absolutely not want?

This is the most powerful of the four, and the least asked.

Positive references are useful but misleading, since “like the voice on that documentary” carries dozens of parameters without saying which one you liked. The anti-reference is surgical. “Nothing announcery” wipes out a whole register in one stroke, the push, the pasted-on smile, the rise at the end of every line. “No 2010s corporate voice,” “no forced chumminess,” “no solemn slowness”: each of those sentences directs more precisely than three positive adjectives.

The anti-reference has another merit. It brings up before the session the vetoes that would otherwise land at approval time, in the mouth of somebody who had not yet given an opinion. Better to have the chief executive’s “absolutely not” in the brief than in the notes on version 3.

What these four answers change in practice

To measure the difference, set the two versions of the same brief side by side. Adjective version: “a warm, upbeat voice for our brand film.” Four-question version: “small business owners watching this film on a trade show stand, headphones on; the effect we want is reassurance; running on the stand and on the web for one year; nothing announcery, no forced chumminess.” Same project, and near enough the same time spent writing. The second version lets you cast, direct and price. The first lets you hope.

Written down in black and white, the four answers then change every stage of the project.

Casting tightens up. Instead of twelve possible voices, you get three argued proposals, chosen because they answer the brief and not because they fail to contradict it. Listening gets fast, and the choice becomes defensible internally, because you can say why this voice, which changes everything the day approval goes up a level.

The session changes nature. The actor is no longer hunting for the intention live, they execute it and refine it. The retakes that remain are precision retakes, not changes of course. And the back and forth after the session, that moment when everyone finds out they were expecting something else, shrinks back to what it should always have been: adjustments.

Write your four answers now

Take the project you have in hand and answer in writing. Who is listening, for what effect, running where and for how long, and what do we absolutely not want. One page is enough, and if a question stays unanswered, you have just identified the conversation to have internally before you contact anybody.

Then put those answers to work. Our quote form is built on this method: it asks you those questions, in that order, and your answers land straight in the hands of the casting team. Four answers in a brief, and you’ll find that a well-framed project moves surprisingly fast.