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VOICE ACTING Connect With Your Breath To Power Up Your Voice-Over Auditions. Here's How ...  By Jean-Marc BerneVoice Actor & Coach Sometimes all you need is to reconnect to your breath to create a
state of calm and mindfulness in your body. Why do I bring this up and
how does this relate to voice-overs?
If you're a working voice talent you know how stressful it can be
to be running from one audition to the other and rushing to make it on
time. This can create a state of anxiety and throw you off your game
when preparing for an audition. So what do you do? First off, I
recommend that you give yourself extra time to arrive about 20 minutes
before your audition time. Then, connect with your
breath. One of the things I teach all my clients is that your breath is
your center of power. It fuels your lungs and your whole body, which in
turn, powers your performance. FEEL THE BREATH ... To start, breathe in through your mouth. Place one hand right below
your belly button, on your diaphragm. Take a deep breath through the
mouth. You should feel your diaphragm expanding frontwards, to the
sides, toward your back, and down toward your pelvis. Feel that? This
is your full lung capacity. Now this next part is a breathing technique that I have borrowed
from one of my mentors, Manuel Herrera, and have adapted with some Yoga
technique. It's called "Square Breathing." This is how you do it:
This exercise will help you feel relaxed, energized and more alert. It will create a state of calm and mindfulness in your
body and mind, which in turn will help you focus on the audition at
hand. The more mindful you can be of your breath, the more mindful
you'll be of how you speak, and the more present you can be with
yourself and the people you're auditioning for. Making you more
malleable and flexible to take on any direction. Now, go rock that
audition!
May "The Voice" be with you. ---------------------------- ABOUT JEAN-MARC Jean-Marc Berne is
president of Berne Media Enterprises and a busy voice talent, audio producer, singer-songwriter, voice-over coach, best-selling author, and a bilingual international professional public speaker. He is the voice-over coach fot the hit animated series The Octonauts on
The Disney Channel and created a series of workshops, including "Power
Marketing For The Voice Over Actor,"
"Branding For Voice Overs," "Spanish
Voice Over Technique," "Dubbing For Video Game Animation" and "Kids
Voice Over
Technique." He's voiced, produced
and cast hundreds of multimedia projects in English, Spanish and French,
and has been the creative
consultant for print and radio ads for HUD, the National Fair Housing
Alliance,
the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, and the National Crime
Prevention Council. His list of commercial work includes Bud Light,
McDonald's,
Western Union, Timberland, Pollo Loco, McKinsey, Pfizer, VNSNY, Xfinity,
NFHA,
HUD, National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, Metro Cable and
Eclipse Gum
to name a few. He also narrated Pulitzer Prize and McArthur Genius Grant
winner Junot Díaz's audiobook "Negocios,"
and Nobel Literature Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa's audiobook, "La
Fiesta Del Chivo." He's spoken on
stages and voice trained public speaking organizations in Dubai,
Bahrain,
Cairo, Dominican Republic and all over Canada and the U.S.
Email: jeanmarcberne@gmail.com |
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I also want to add that I found some time ago that the more I included cardio workouts, including swimming, the better my lung capacity - which in turn improved the breath control for narration-type copy.