By Darren Gilbert
If you have ever wanted to pursue a career as a voice-over artist but believe it’s beyond your grasp, don’t give up just yet. In fact, wait until you finish reading this article before making a final decision. Because this is the thing: you don’t need to have a good voice to be in the business. Instead, to be good, you need to understand what you are doing with it. These are not my words, by the way, but rather those of Adam Behr, a man who has already done all the hard work. “You are the instrument of a message, an idea or a character,” he says. Of course, there are techniques and things that need to be learned, but the clichéd fact remains: if you can dream it, you can do it.
If you were to ask Behr, a multiple award-winning voice-over artist, whether he had the same ambition growing up, you’d get a surprising answer. Born into a family with a humourist for a grandfather, it was tradition to tell stories in funny voices or imitate others while speaking over the phone. He admits it still happens today. However, Behr found himself drawn to a career in animatronics puppetry. You can point your finger at Yoda, Jabba the Hutt and the rest of the puppets that featured in Star Wars if you want an answer to the question ‘why’.
Regardless of his motivation, this spawned a successful animatronic puppetry career that began in the late 1980s following a diploma in special effects make-up and a four-year dramatic arts degree from Wits. From The X-Files, Tales from the Crypt and I, Robot to Cats and Dogs where he worked with David Barclay (who helped build the Yoda and Jabba the Hutt puppets), Behr has had his fair share of exposure to Hollywood. Now, if you are wondering about how animatronics could ever branch out to into a career of voice-over artistry, you’d only have to glance at the sci-fi TV series, Stargate SG-1, where he eventually ended up as the lead animatronic puppeteer.
“While I was puppeteering on the show(s), I found myself helping out with the voices as well. While they were only scratch voices, as I began to do it more often I realised that I really enjoyed it.” Having moved to Canada in 1993 to further his career in animatronics puppetry, by 2004, with a taste of voice-over work, he realised that his bent was in performance rather than puppet-building. It wasn’t the only reason though. “I also sensed a change in the animatronics industry. A lot of the stuff was becoming computer-generated and budgets were being cut.”
In short, it made mathematical sense to change his angle. “I felt this voice calling to me more and more so I went in search of a coach. I also gave myself five years to make it as a full-time voice-over artist.” Finding voice coach Nancy Wolfson of Braintracksaudio in 2004 was a good start, as was the construction of a home studio in 2005. Come 2012, Behr has created a reputation for himself, as one of the more versatile voice artists in the business with over 25 different accents and a piece of the much sought-after movie trailer and video game trailer pie.
It all makes sense, though, if you look at how he treats work. “[As a voice-over artist] you need to be like that familiar brand in the supermarket so that when people see you, they will know what you are about and what they’d get.” Expect to pay a lot of money just to set yourself up, too. “I studied with the best people, paid for the best demo producers and built my own studio.” And kept in line with the latest trends of the business, a problem which Behr believes plagues the South African market. “Many just don’t know what the trends are. You need to remember that this is a business.” Of course, it also comes down to how the industry is treated with many “moonlighting actors and actresses” believing they can slip in and out of jobs, he adds.
However, do that and you can expect to talk more about work than do any. “I can’t see anyone going that route and having a career. You might have an odd job every now and then but [that’s hardly a career].” It also won’t be long before you disappear, seeing as the industry is becoming more professional. Another problem, according to Behr, is that while some attempted accents are useable, they’re from a South African perspective. It’s not a good thing. “Sometimes when I hear South African announcers doing American accents, I can tell whether they have lived in North America or not. How? It’s because there is a different cultural mindset between South Africans and Americans. They also each have different speech patterns.”
That is where the true artistry lies. “When it comes to my work, I look at the character [behind the voice]. The accent is all costume, if you like,” he adds. What is more important is getting into the head of the characters he portrays so as to make it more believable to listeners. “Whenever I get a piece of copy, I look for the patterns that the human mind relates to in terms of language and the way we put language points together to make meaning.” Find that, he says, and you’ll find those emotional hooks that connect you to your audience. However, Behr takes it further, asking questions about his characters to better understand them.
It’s a method that helped Behr develop the brand voice of insurance company, Frank.net, which won a Gold Loerie last year for the campaign. “Fox P2 [the agency] wanted something that was coming from a particular place. As an insurance company, it’s very upfront with what it offers and so we needed someone who was salt of the earth. So I realised that meant we needed a working class man. But he had to be smart because he needed to know what he was talking about.” So who would this man be? “Well, we have this blue collar guy. What happens when that guy is smarter than his station in life? You’ll probably have gone to the University of Hard Knocks, that’s what.”
“That means he will either be tough or a victim. For this guy, I wanted to make him both, but also a bit more wounded. He would have a chip on his shoulder. So what you get is this complex character. There is a history and he has an [emotional] place that he is coming from.” What follows is the external posture, which includes the use of props to make Behr feel like he’s more than just a voice. “When looking at characters, I’d think about how they’d look and act. For a 72-year-old rural farmer, I’d use a broom handle as a stick and pose like him so that I can feel his age. For a troll, I’d pull the microphone away from me to indicate that I’m short.”
That’s voice-over artistry for you though. It’s not just about what you hear. Instead, it’s the little things that you never get to see, like the shoes that Behr puts on specifically when he is going to voice a certain role. It tends to be more of a science than art, he adds. “It’s only when you own and embody all the components that make up your character that the voice will begin to ring true.” Until you can achieve that, all you’ll ever sound like are those South Africans pretending to sound American, but never quite getting it right.