Excuse me… do you speak British?

Voice casting websites are a something of a double-edged sword in the modern voiceover business. (Some might even say a “necessary evil”, or worse…) But among their better features, one of the really good things these sites enable a producer to do is to select the accent they want for their project.

The problem, of course, is that not all accents are the genuine article. Many of my American and Australian counterparts in the voiceover industry will list a “British accent” among their repertoire on such websites – just as a good number of my fellow Brits will list an American or Australian accent among theirs. But, as a producer, one of the things which will always show your production values as being lower than you would like in the media business is a bad accent –  i.e., one which is poorly performed – and the problem is that while a non-native speaker might not be able to tell the difference, anyone who grew up with that accent will immediately spot it as a ringer. Once that happens, your message is dead in the water. No one’s listening to the words in your spot anymore: they’re just marvelling at how it ever got on air in the first place.

Bad accents are nothing new, of course, and they vary in their degrees of cringeworthiness. Dick Van Dyke struck a blow for the cause with his famously bad Mockney in the film version of “Mary Poppins”, and it could be argued that we got our own back, to some degree, with Michael Crawford’s effort in “Helly Dolly” a few years later. (This would have probably been much more noticeable if the audience weren’t agasp at a young Barbra Streisand playing a role clearly thirty years her senior, but I digress). The accents performed by non-native speakers aren’t all that bad, admittedly, but I’m always intrigued when I see a British accent listed on a non-native’s demo list. And, truth be told, I’m almost always disappointed by the results, chucklesome though they often are.

In the interests of transparency, I do list an Australian accent as one of the things I can perform, but then I lived with an Aussie at very close quarters for six years and I feel I can capture the nuance without going over the top and turning into Crocodile Dundee or Rolf Harris. The Australian Tourism Board apparently agreed when they booked me for a series of Canadian TV spots last year, so “fair dos”…

All this notwithstanding, I always try to be honest about my abilities (or lack thereof) and as such I have turned down the invitation to “wow” the audience with my (frankly laughable) “English – North American” on more than one occasion. That said, in the interests of doing my bit for the “Special Relationship”, I’ve just married one, so it’s not out of the question as we go forward.

Anyway, back to the point…

Steven Lowell is the Community Development Manager at Voice123.com, one of the largest voice casting websites in the industry today, and he’s just written about exactly this in his blog. He cites American voice talent who claim “British English” as a native language, when in fact they can only perform a British accent, as one of the reasons that producers often feel insulted at the quality of the auditions they get back.

In his piece, entitled “‘Faking It’ Just Isn’t ‘Making It’”, Lowell says: “As a voice seeker posting a job, remember that details are key to the success of what you receive. Specifically choosing a native speaking language of a country will get you mostly what you want, but it helps to specify, ‘Native speakers only’ in the project description.”

…and he makes a very valid point. So, next time you’re looking for looking for an authentic accent, make sure you check out the credentials of the talent. Always get a sample read by way of a demo (this should always be free of charge), and make sure someone who knows that accent backwards thinks it’s on the money. Otherwise, truth be told, you’re probably wasting yours.

Accents for sale(s)

I grew up in Wolverhampton. There, I’ve said it.

If you’re reading this outside the UK, and you don’t know much about the wide variety of accents on offer on this Sceptic Isle, you may not immediately see my point. But anyone from Britain will know that the part of the country where I grew up is famous for its “peculiar” take on the Queen’s English. When it comes to taking liberties, Dick Van Dyke has nothing on the West Midlands. And if you don’t believe me, take a listen to these.

If you’ve heard any of my work, you’ll know that I don’t sound like this anymore. (Actually, my accent was never that strong and my mother, especially, frowned upon use of “dialect words” when I was growing up. Thanks, Mum!) In fact, being one of the lucky few who always knew from a young age that they wanted to be in the media – and realising that that meant using my voice – had an interesting effect on me. No one ever pointed out to me that people who sounded like my Aunty Di (love her to bits) weren’t fronting the local news or extolling the virtues of the local carpet emporia, but I just sort of knew. And over a number of years I just, sort of, trained myself away from the Black Country “twang” that surrounded me at school. I’m sure that if someone were evil enough to conjure up a batch of radio trails I made in Birmingham in 1989 when I started, that we’d all be somewhat amused, but it’s a process, right?

I still have remnants of my Black Country vocal heritage, and these remnants are usually there for all to hear in times of stress or agitation. (By the way, “Black Country” isn’t a racist term, in case you’re wondering. It refers to the thick, black, industrial smog that hung in the air of the region from about the time of the industrial revolution until, well, about half an hour ago, now I come to mention it…) But what that vocal legacy has given me and lent to my delivery is something that makes me sound a bit different: “North of Watford but south of The North”, as one producer described it. I find myself in demand now by those who want a “non-London”, “non-RP” voice which still carries authority but has a bit of warmth. Perhaps the fact that my vowels can’t quite decide which part of the country they prefer, sometimes change mid-sentence and sometimes surprise even me when they come out differently to what I’m expecting, is part of that strange appeal.

The reason I mention all this is that there’s a new bit of research out from the UK’s Central Office of Information. They sound a bit Orwellian, don’t they? But they’re the government’s marketing and communication agency, and they’re the people who made all those nice Public Information Films we used to love to watch before BBC1 closed down. Halcyon days…

This bit of research, which I picked up today from Media Guardian, reveals that “Not all regions like to hear their own accents in ads”. Who’d have thought! Here’s an excerpt from the Media Guardian piece (the full article is here):

“Many people claim to hate the sound of their own voice, but a new government survey suggests the sensation is more unpleasant for some of us than it is for others.

The study… reveals that, while Geordies and Mancunians enjoy listening to their own regional accents in government advertisements, Brummies and Bristolians would rather not be subjected to their own distinctive burr.

The COI, which controls the government’s annual £400m advertising budget, found responses to radio and TV commercials vary widely in different parts of the UK according to the accent they are recorded in.

Residents of some regions, including Tyneside and Manchester, prefer to listen to government warnings about the dangers of drink driving or smoking cigarettes when they feature actors speaking in the local vernacular. Others, including those who live in the West Midlands and Bristol, are more likely to sit up and take notice when they are made using “received pronunciation”, the COI study claims.”

When they mention “Brummies”, they mean people from Birmingham, just down the road from Wolverhampton. To the outsider we’re close enough bedfellows to be confused, though to natives that’s tantamount to confusing a Lancastrian and a Yorkshireman. Brummies actually call people from Wolverhampton “Yam-yams”. This is because the Black Country bastardisation of “You are” becomes “Yow (as in ‘cow’) am”, and thus “yowm” and, conversationally, “yam”. (Yes, it’s that strong a dialect. Can you see why it’s not good for voiceover?)

Then again, in today’s climate it looks like you can go too far. A couple of my voiceover friends, who speak with the kind of beautiful English tones that I can only aspire to, are sometimes finding themselves “too posh” for today’s market. And interestingly, having recently been making calls to commercial producers, I had one producer from the North East say to me that “it’s a good job you don’t sound like you’re from London, even if you live there. Our listeners don’t tend to trust them…” Last year I blogged about a report in the Daily Telegraph that claimed “cockney voices are the UK’s most hated regional accents”. Balance is the key, it seems.

Last year I auditioned for a radio ad which asked for a West Midlands accent. I wrestled with whether to pitch, having wrestled for so long with breaking away from it. I wasn’t sure if I could still carry it off (the last thing I wanted to do was sound like an insulting “fake” – these are troubled waters enough) and in fact, before I submitted the take, I played it down the phone to my parents for a second opinion. To my surprise (and somewhat to my relief) my mother told me it sounded like a “high end” West Midlands accent and both she and my father thought it was close enough to pass muster. To my astonishment, the producer agreed with them, and for a short while I was on the radio in my old stomping ground, reminding the West Midlands that it might be drinking itself to death and that it probably ought to do something about it.

But that’s the only time I’ve been asked to do it, aside from for comic effect, which says a lot. Looks like my eight-year old self was wiser than I’d imagined…