Web Resource World

I teach and coach professional voice over artists, helping them to prepare a voice over demo that leads to their obtaining voice over jobs.

A lot of the teaching that I do falls under the heading of “acting for advertising.” I have actors who study with me in Los Angeles, in New York, and from all over the world via telephone sessions. They don’t always come to me willingly. They think, “I already have a career as an actor. Why do I need to study acting for advertising?”

You see, in most circles, especially in the old school, it was considered a little gauche and a little tacky to do the acting that’s necessary for advertising. As a matter of fact, they didn’t even consider it acting. There was stage acting and there was film acting. And then there was being a pitchman, trying to sell packaged goods and life insurance. That didn’t seem like acting to them. But it IS acting. Acting for advertising is just kind of acting.

So I tell everybody, “Yes, DJs, people who come from radio backgrounds.  People from advertising backgrounds.it’s all acting~it’s all acting}. And you need to learn the kind of acting that advertising requires. That applies every time you present scripted dialogue as though it were spontaneous. That, at its core, is acting.

So back to the original question. Often actors ask me, “If I already know how to act, why in the world would I need to learn how to act for advertising? If I can act for Shakespeare, why would I need to learn to act for television or radio advertising?”

That’s because there are some specific patterns that are really important to recognize in the way that ad copy is written. Once you know them, you can perform them better. It’s all about pattern recognition. You can apply to this territory of acting what you’ve learned in other acting classes.

In this case, we’re referring primarily to television commercials or radio commercials. Online commercials, by the way, are essentially the same as TV commercials. Why is an Internet commercial virtually the same thing as a TV advertisement? Your role is the same in either type of commercial. You’re lending a context to the visual images being presented to the viewer.