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Medical Narraton: Get Beyond Words
To Tell The Story (& Workshop June 6)
Note: The author presents the Medical Mumbo Advanced Narration workshop June 6 in Los Angeles. For details and registration, please visit http://voice-overs.com/MM.pdf.
By Julie Williams
Voice Actor & Coach
 Medical narration is its own animal. It’s a VO genre that presents unique challenges, but also offers great rewards. One of the greatest rewards in medical narration is repeat business. Once a client finds a talent who can confidently, and competently rise to the challenge, he usually comes back time and time again.
But it’s not easy for clients to find someone who can do medical narration well.
In fact, I’ve noticed that even many seasoned voice actors and actresses - not to mention some prominent coaches who have decades of experience - do not do a very good job with medical narration!
Why?
Perhaps because they focus too much on pronouncing difficult terminology correctly - as if that were the big challenge of medical narration. It’s not.
THE REAL CHALLENGE ...
Sure, pronunciation can literally be a mouthful, but that’s easy to remedy. Find out how to say the words and practice saying them until they roll off your tongue like a fluent language.
The real challenge in medical narration is telling the story. And for good reason.
In many medical narrations the terminology is so difficult, and the subject so foreign, that even the narrator can’t see the story! How can you tell a story you don’t know?
Yet if the words are spoken in such a manner that the story is not told, the narrator loses the credibility in the eyes of the most important listener - the audience for whom the script was written.
YOU'RE THE 'EXPERT'
Whether it be doctors learning about a disease, students exploring biological processes, or patients being instructed on how to use a medical device, presumably, the audience will understand what is being said - even if the narrator doesn’t.
And to that audience the narrator is supposed to be the expert. He or she is the one teaching the information!
MEDICAL MUMBO
So, how can you know the story?
There are a number of techniques we practice in my Medical Mumbo workshop (where we use the most difficult medical copy you’ve ever seen in your life!).
But for starters, don’t let the words get in the way. Don’t get so wrapped up in the medical mumbo that you can’t see past it to the underlying message- the story.
HOW TO APPROACH
When you get the medical script, go through it and note every word or term you don't know.
Do some legwork to learn how to pronounce the terms. For example:
Then, when in doubt, do two takes of that part of the script, pronouncing it two ways, so the client
But also read the script for the story. If you don’t know the story, break down the copy until you do.
And be sure to tell the story - don’t “announce” it!
ABOUT JULIE ...
Julie Williams is a voice-over actress and coach with thousands of credits. Publisher of The VoiceOver Insider, a free monthly online magazine for the voice-over industry, she is also author of How To Make Money in Voice-Overs Even if You Don’t Live in NY or LA, Proven Voice-Over Techniques, and Medical Mumbo Advanced Narration Workshop. Her demos and details about the above are at her web site (see below).
A limited number of students will be able to attend her Medical Mumbo Advanced Narration live workshop in Los Angeles, Sunday, June 6, at VoiceTrax West. There she’ll offer intense coaching and produce a limited number of medical narration demos for attendees. For details and registration, please visit http://voice-overs.com/MM.pdf.
Williams will also present an abbreviated version of Medical Mumbo at VOICE 2010, the huge voice-over conference in Los Angeles, June 2-5. And she's seeking persons interested in writing about individual conference sessions for her VoiceOver Insider. If interested, please contact ginger@voice-overs.com.
Email: julie@voice-overs.com
VoiceOverInsider: www.voice-overs.com
Medical Mumbo Workshop June 6: http://voice-overs.com/MM.pdf
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