Carl Bishop’s Characters and Accent Voice Over
A character is more than placing an accent on top of an emotion.
The best and most believable character voice over starts with a truthful point of view. The accent, if appropriate, can enhance it. When creating characters, sometimes all that’s needed is a shift of perspective. The act of projecting yourself onto someone else’s situation and motivation. But sometimes it’s a dramatic turn.
It’s at those times that character voice over is acting at its most challenging, because it needs to be larger than life but still be believable. Think of your favorite cartoon character. One of mine is Krusty The Clown from The Simpsons. He’s crude, inappropriate, and his jokes are terrible. But down deep he has a good heart. (If you don’t count his treatment of Sideshow Bob.) Strip away the accent, ridiculous red hair and squeaky shoes and you get a complex character that would work in a serious drama.
Character Videos
Character Voice Over for Rainbow Six
Authentically accented Voice Over
An accent is more that sounding British, or German or Irish or Jamaican. (Be careful, it’s easy to mix up those last two if not a native speaker). It’s trying to embody a cultural attitude. You can make a Jamaican sound with your voice. But no one will believe it unless you are at the same time pretending to be living in a post-colonial culture that is fiercely proud, values hard work, and is very religious, but also has a great sense of humor.
When developing my accent for Bandit, the German mercenary soldier in the video game Rainbow 6 Siege, I used a particular German friend as partial inspiration. I was lucky to have a direct reference. You can create a darn good character using cultural generalities. But it becomes alive when you can give it a detail, or a hook.