This is a short advert/corporate video that I voiced for an iPhone app, based around the motoring industry, produced by Lambda Films.

Just a message to you all. Simple.

The fantastic team at Dice Productions recently asked me to voice a spoof advert for a fictitious cruelty to animals charity. I assure you no animals were harmed in the making of this production!

The end result certainly makes very entertaining viewing!

If you have a similar project which you require a voice for. Then get in touch for a quote…..

Richard Heathcote

Voice Over Artist

I’m fairly certain you can’t have escaped the news that Apple and Adobe are having a fairly big spat, over Apple’s refusal to incorporate Adobe’s Flash technology within their mobile devices, most notably the iPhone and new iPad, plus the iPod Touch. Currently, if you come across a Flash video on the iPhone or iPad, you’ll just get a little ‘can’t display this video’ icon where the video should be.

There’s lots of debate either side of this argument, a lot of it I barely understand. For the most part, I believe Apple refused it based on Flash’s processor needs, which are unrealistic in mobile devices, it’s just too hungry for processors and battery life etc. This is where things like HTML5 I imagine are improving things, making it a more even playing field when it comes to online video.

All that said, Adobe recently launched a campaign expressing how they feel. And here it is:

An Apple fan somewhere in the world has come back with their own rebuttal. Quite amusingly, this:

Nuff said!

Richard Heathcote, Voice Over Artist

Hopefully destined for a Sky TV channel, this is a TV promo that I recently voiced.

Richard Heathcote, Voice Over Artist

Richard Heathcote, Voice Over Artist

Is It Worth Paying For A Voice Over Artist?

This may be a question that you’ve asked yourself before, or for a lot of you, it probably wouldn’t have even crossed your mind. But there is certainly a proportion of society that own businesses, or are in charge of high profile brands that must at times ask themselves this question. Is it worth paying for a professional voice over artist to promote their brand/company?

The simplest answer is of course, you get what you pay for. If you have a guy in the office who ‘has a pretty good speaking voice’, who you think should be the voice of your podcasts, or online/media/TV related promotional material, then fair play to you. Have you ever heard that person’s recorded material before? Do you trust them to be ‘the voice’ of the company/brand? Are you ok with the fact that when people hear that voice they’ll associate it with your company? These aren’t all negative points, far from. This counts as for better or indeed for worse. If they are for better, then excellent, give it a chance!

However, if they sound like a totally different person, which is actually more often the case, then you really should think about bringing in a professional; someone that is used to performing in front of a microphone. The thing is, when you put a regular person in a studio environment, in front of a professional studio microphone, it’s like sticking a big lens of a camera in someone’s face; it can be extremely off-putting. Some people tend to freeze, not know what to do or say, change the pattern of their speech, their tone, timbre, level, pitch, or worse, be completely monotone.

If this happens, you could have wasted time in the studio and need to rebook when the person has composed themself, or wait for a professional to take over!

The good thing with hiring a voice artist, is that we’re completely used to all this; We know how to handle a microphone, and chances are, we know exactly how to lift your script by performing the words that are on the page, rather than just simply ‘reading’ them. (A quality you don’t often get when audio tracks are home-made).

So, the next time you have a requirement for a voice track, be it a TV advert, a podcast, corporate video, web audio of any sort, the question you need to ask yourself is, in the long term, is it worth paying for a professional voice over artist? The answer is up to you.

Want more information? Check out my main website: www.richardheathcote.co.uk

Richard Heathcote, Voice Over Artist

Advertiser Vs Consumer – The Reality

In this ever-changing world of buying and selling, the goalposts and conditions in which this is done are changing rapidly. The world can seem like one big call centre, every time the phone rings it could be someone trying to sell to us. What we really like, as a nation, are the conditions in which we want to buy, not be sold to. That is the reason I quite like this video; it shows the relationship between the advertiser and the consumer and how much times have and are changing!

Remember, when in business – create the conditions in which your audience wants to buy, cause they really don’t like to be sold to!

Richard Heathcote, Voice Over Artist

I’ve been pondering about things today. One thing that suddenly appeared in my consciousness was VOing movies….

Don LaFontaine, a God to many voice artists around the globe. A man you probably wouldn’t recognise in the street, but listen to him for a split second and you’d know instantly.

He was the man, who, on virtually every movie trailer ever made in the last 2 or 3 decades, was the gravelly voice behind them. The ultimate in narration jobs! He died early on in 2008, but to many people, his voice will always live on. If you’ve never seen him do his stuff, then you should take a look at this.

This last week has been a funny old week, really. Few jobs on the go, doing some ads for a radio station down south. And I have a new client (or about to, rather) who gave me a rather nice surprise on Friday!

I’m due to record a voiceover for a video they’re producing. It’s fairly low budget, but I agreed anyway as the project sounded interesting. I suppose that’s the nice thing about what I do, I could easily have said no, but what’s the point? It’s money (which is naturally very useful!), plus it won’t take me long to do as it’s a short project, so nothing to lose. He’d emailed me a week ago with the budget they have to play with, around £70 – job’s a good’un.

We’d exchanged another couple of emails since then talking about the project, and he sends me another email on Friday to say that he should be able to squeeze some more budget out of the kitty, making it £100+! Now THAT’S the kind of client I love!! Having random emails come in saying that someone’s going to be paying you more than you originally thought! Fantastic end to the week!