The art of good directing is to make those breaths work for the text, rather than experiencing them as a disruptive element. A natural pause creates calm and credibility. If we were to digitally cut out all breaths during editing, what remains is a sterile, almost robotic voice. The humanity lies precisely in those small pauses.
The director at the controls
As a voice director, you don't listen to the words themselves, but to the space between the words. Directing a voice actor requires a very specific approach. My most important practical director's tip: if a voice needs to sound warmer, we don't simply ask the voice actor to speak with a warmer tone. Instead, we ask them to physically smile broadly during the recording, and then reduce that smile by half afterwards. This physical change in the oral cavity immediately results in a friendlier and more open timbre. It is a technique we apply daily to get the best out of the 92 publicly available voices on our platform.
From the raw recording to the finishing touches
Once the recording is complete, the fine-grained finishing begins in the studio. We polish the recording without losing authenticity. This process follows a fixed structure:
- Manually muting excessively loud breaths, making them softer rather than completely erasing them.
- Filtering out distracting clicks and mouth noises using specific software.
- Mastering, which ensures the voice sounds consistent on both a smartphone and a professional sound system.
Regarding the costs of such a process, we work with a clear structure. For commercial work, such as a radio spot, we apply a fixed base rate for the recording, supplemented by a buy-out for the usage rights that depends on the medium and the duration. For non-commercial work, such as aFor corporate videos or e-learning, we calculate the price per word or per project. This way, you know exactly what to expect in advance.
