Taking care of your voice during cold and flu season really just involves paying extra special attention to the normal tricks and habits that most voice over professionals should already be considering. For instance, be sure to drink LOTS of water with a minimum eight glasses of water of day to ensure proper hydration. In the winter this is especially true because the air tends to be dryer than usual, therefore vocal cords tend to become stressed with the relatively low humidity. In addition, many of us often drink extra coffee or tea to warm ourselves up, however these things, in combination with the dry air, only serve to dehydrate the body even more and, as a result, strains the vocal cords.

The common cold and flu prevention techniques will also keep your voice humming true during the winter season. Make sure you stay away from others with colds, wash your hands frequently, maintain a nutritious diet, get adequate sleep, and exercise your body and voice properly. If you do happen to come down with a cold, be sure to cough softly or not at all. Coughing and clearing your throat can seriously strain the vocal cords, thereby extending the period of time in which your voice is not working properly. Try swallowing or drinking some water when you first feel that tickle, and, as a last resort, cough GENTLY. Remembering this trick can shave days off the devastation of losing your voice. Also, try to avoid eating chocolate or drinking milk before performing, as these will coat your throat your voice will not sound as clear thus causing your to clear your throat more frequently.

In addition to illness and disease, winter also brings with it some exciting events. But, when you randomly run into your best friend from a decade ago, don’t go running up and screaming and shouting! Football season is nearing the playoffs, basketball is kicking off, and sports fanatics are sure to be rooting for their home teams. By all means, demonstrate your enthusiasm, but try doing so by dressing in full gear or with a giant foam finger rather than losing your main commodity in a heated fit of excitement.. One of the worst ways to lose your voice during the winter is with excessive cheer. When you shout or even talk, the cold and dry winter air is inhaled in greater volumes and dries the vocal cords faster. So, if you’re not drinking enough water, the vocal cords become more brittle and strained.

So, what’s the best advice we can give you for maintaining your voice during the winter season? Always keep a personal water bottle handy, don’t share it with anyone else, and be sure to keep your hands sanitized. Enjoy your winter season, but with the contained enthusiasm that will also leave you with a working voice in the aftermath.

Do you have other special tips or tricks to keeping your voice through cold and flu season?

What?! I thought I was getting into a fun industry?!

If you have ventured into the world of animation and video games, you know exactly what I’m referring to. The wonderful thing about make believe, is that anything can happen. I’ll never forget my time on DragonBall – I played a character named ‘Mai’ and she died in what seemed like 50% of the episodes. You have to get very creative in your death scenes. You can only die so many times and in the world of video games, you can die over and over again. The interesting thing about a death scene is that this isnt’ something we can truly relate to ourselves. And the way we die in animations isn’t realistic to most deaths we know. So we have to become very creative and think outside the box.

While you start practicing and developing your characters – add another layer to them that you may not have thought through – how many ways can your character die? What would it sound like if you are falling out of an airplane as opposed to falling from the top of the building? What does it sound like when you get stabbed to death? When you are being slain by a demon? When you catch on fire? Falling into a dark hole? Melting? …..there is no end to the options of a dying character.

Something I suppose you didn’t give much thought to….. until now. Why don’t you YouTube animated death scenes or Google and rent some animations with characters that are similar to your range and see what other greats before you have done. Record your findings in the studio so you will be able to mimic them again in the future. Just listen and watch the animation or create your own death scene in your head. See it all happening and try and feel and physically act out the scene with as many human sfx as you can add to it. Don’t forget your sound of struggle (if there is one) before and after the death. Add the proximity affect (for example are you falling; change your vocal sounds to give the sound of distance – and don’t forget to land with impact.)

The point is, our vocal instruments guide the scene and it’s our job to vocally assist it along and create the scene using only our imaginations and our human sounds and words.

The true key to this technique, is that your character gets brought back to life….that’s the true art to dying. Coming back for another episode or season, until next time everyone.

We hope you have been enjoying the videos and let us know if there are other topics you would like to see! We’ll be covering topics like voice matching, the voice over recording process, handling multiple characters, voice over directing and much more.

This video features Charlie Bodin giving his audition advice for aspiring voice actors. His tip: take risks. He stresses the importance of reach above and beyond your comfort zones and not going with the most obvious choice.

Let us know in the comments what you think of these videos, thank you!

We want to hear your feedback! We’ll be covering topics like voice matching, the voice over recording process, handling multiple characters, voice over directing and much more. For companies and projects, you’ll also find out more about the services we provide, some feedback & testimonials around our projects & inside looks at our process working with some the best brands in the business.

These two videos feature actors we have had in the studio, giving their audition advice for aspiring voice actors. Katie Crown shares that you must always know the tone of the project you are working on and how that can lead to success in the booth! Kate Higgins then lets us know the importance of really taking the time to listen to the director and not get stuck in your own head. Check them out!

Let us know in the comments what you think of these videos, thank you!

Grab a handkerchief and follow along to learn how to perform “Baby in a Hanky.” Brought to you by the Resnick Interactive Group, your voice over production company.

And most of the stuff I learned — although I went to school, and I got an MFA in Acting — I learned at recess. Or I picked up from other people. And one of the tricks that I love is, I call “Baby in a Hanky.” And I was doing a show with Mel Blanc — Captain Caveman, at Hanna-Barbera — and they said “Mel, we need your baby,” and he reached in his pocket and he took out his handkerchief, and this is what I heard: .

And it was like, oh my goodness. The whole room stilled. And the way you do it, is you go, in a high pitch: , and then you go a little like the baby’s lungs are being fulled. And then we he gets real fussy, you jump an octave . Right? But when you muffle it , you get that baby sound.

And I’ve done pilots, and I’ve done all sorts of covering babies in case, you know, they have to cry on cue, I’m backstage at a microphone with my hanky. And you get calls on the phone for auditions for those, you know, you’ll just literally call the producers and go, “Okay, give me a baby.” And I go, “What baby? What do you want? You want an Italian baby? Oh, oh, Jewish baby?” Who knew.

Pat truly loves teaching and sharing his tips and advice with other voice actors, so we were excited to sit down with him and hear some of his advice for aspiring voice actors. Here is his response:

If you’re confident, if you can just be confident and committed to your choices, you can’t be bad. I mean, think about Paul Lynde as Hamlet, right? He wouldn’t be bad. He’d be wrong, but hey, you know, “To be or not to be, that’s the question .” Or, uh, who else was I thinking I’d love to see? Oh, well, you know, Jack Nicholson: “Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I.” Not bad, just wrong. But the confidence, if you’re wrong for the part, they call you back. They’ll call you back, because they’ll be interested in what you do, and eventually they’ll land on a role for you.