Vietnamese voice talents (or Vietnamese voice artists) are those read TVC advertisements, documentaries (dubbing), voice over for characters, comments in clips, audio books, narratives, etc.
“Welcome you to visit and do shopping at our supermarket, we are having a promotion program …” When hearing this Vietnamese voice, do you feel a bit familiar? It is the job of advertising Vietnamese voice actors on demand.
In Vietnam, doing Vietnamese voice over (being Vietnamese voice aritsts) may be a part-time or full-time job. It depends on how much you invest in it. If the partner’s requirements are high, you can record in the studio, if not, you can use your own phone to record, then use the software in the computer to edit and then send complete audio files for your partner. And you are paid salary. If you read transcript only, the salary shall be different from doing post-production by processing and combining sound, which will be paid higher commission.
The content is already available, if you are familiar with the job, it takes only between 30 and 45 minutes to record and complete the a Vietnamese voice over job. Besides, the good point of this job is that you are flexible in your time, you can do it after working hours, in the evening, on holidays but the salary is also not less at all.
Vietnamese voice artists is said to be a relatively new job, the demand for personnel is very great, but the searching for good Vietnamese voices is like “looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“Shortage of training schools, lack of professional playgrounds or voice talents … are big issues for an actual practice to exist” in Vietnam voice over, a Vietnamese voice talents appears so frequently in three of four consecutive ads on television.”
The market demand is huge but there has almost no training institutions for Vietnamese voice over available in Vietnam. Vocal training classes basing on experience, or “voice of theater” … are not the right place for voice over training. The playground to search and discover voice talents in this area is almost very limited.
This job can be seen to be very attractive for many young dynamic Vietnamese people, however, it requires reading voice aptitude, hard working and creativity. Not anyone having a good voice, used to be a radio editor, or do dubbing can read ads super and take money from investors.
However, Vietnamese voice over also has stories behind which is not known by everyone.
When making decision to “hide themselves” for movies passion, Vietnamese voice actors are always ready to take all difficulties and no one even thinks of fame. To them, only by returning home after a hard-working day and turning on the television to hear their crying and laughing voice on the film … is their happiness!
Vietnamese Voice Over – Only sound, without image
Hiding behind the film full of emotion is the silent tears and sweat that is not widely known of Vietnamese voice artists team. They agree to hide their faces to satisfy their passion through the characters. The voice artists make friends with studio, microphone, TV screen, script day by day. And within that space, it is full of a lot of emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, etc.
People have usually thought that Vietnamese voice actors are less hard-working than actors who go to film. They do not have to accompany with the crew in hard conditions. However, only the insider can understand the hardships of the work of “only sound without image”.
A Vietnamese Voice Talent -Nguyet Hang – one of the leading experienced voice actors in the Northern region who has worked as a Vietnamese voice actor for 26 years complained: “In fact, Vietnamese voice acting is very difficult and stiff, not simply standing behind to match with the character’s mouth. It is even much harder than the actors filming in film studio! They can well keep unchanged voice of the actors filming at the studio, both the emotion and the acting way. Therefore, it is indeed very difficult for the voice artist to show the true spirit of the roles upon reacting. On one hand, they must match the mouth shape, on the other hand, they must express exactly the mood and feelings of the character.”
The hardest thing encountered by the Vietnamese voice actors is probably controlling their emotions. When entering the studio, the artists must know how to put aside all private and personal emotions to live up to their characters. The artists must be immersed into the characters to express exactly emotions with different moods of happiness, sadness, anger, etc. They are sometimes even madly with the characters.
“In order to do well in voice over, the Vietnamese voice actors must understand whether the character is suitable with his voice and personality or not. The difficulty thing is that the voice artists only use their sound while have to ensure to match with the actor’s face, to be consistent with the character’s personality and to match the mouth shape. In many cases, the Vietnamese voice over is deviated and does not suitable with the role. However, if they are successful in finding the key, understanding the emotions of the character, matching the mouth shape, it is very smooth in expressing emotions. That is the feeling between the voice actor and the character,” expressed voice actress Nguyet Hang.
In addition, voice acting also different between foreign movies and Vietnamese movies. This requires the artist to catch up quickly and smartly to express the role appropriately, bringing a good movie to the audience.
“I used to do Vietnamese voice over for a lot of foreign movies … The easy thing is to count the mouth shapes and, then put into Vietnamese words, in the manner to match with the characters’. But it is difficult in that it depends on the feeling of the voice artist because of different languages will result different mouth shapes. Therefore, the sentence and words are not completely exact. Sometimes, we have to edit the words to match with the mouth shape,” said Nguyet Hang.
“For a lot of dramas, it is forced to choose experienced Vietnamese voice artists whose voice can express well all roles. Sometimes, Vietnamese voice talents like me must do too much … So, we often have to work very hard. The voice actors are no different from “having to please everyone”, they are unable to please everyone,” shared Nguyet Hang artist.
a Vietnamese voice over job done by VNVO Studio
Vietnamese Voice Talents – Being reputed as the work of “hiding face to earn money”
The singer sometimes forgets the lyrics, the actor sometimes forgets the dialogue and similarly, the Vietnamese voice talents sometimes falls into difficult situation. Voiceover director Dat Phi – the “Vietnamese voice talents” voice talent of Hong Kong movies shared: “Sometimes after completing the long paragraph, I found that the person was confused, contrary to the character, so I must do it again. The difficulty to the voice talent is that they can never watch the entire movie, together with the pressure on having to complete a definite number of episodes per day. Meanwhile, Vietnamese voice actors are not allowed to read the script carefully, especially about titles. So, in the studio, the actor must both modify the dialogue and carry out voice over, which is easy to commit errors.”
In addition to the difficulties on technical, skills, time, the Vietnamese voice talents are also “overworked” because there are not too many good artists. In fact, the number of artists with good voice, experienced in the Northern region is not too much, there has only a few people, to name a few, Nguyet Hang, Huong Bong People’s Artist, Huong Dung, …
So, the audience feels uncomfortable, boring because they have to listen to similar voices. For a long time, movies dubbing is still reputed as “hiding face to earn money.” But it is not so, there are still concerns when it comes to salaries.
Dat Phi actor lamented: “There has a common sadness of the movie Vietnamese voice artists that I cannot change. Their value and working intensity is very high, but the salary received is very low. Salary is calculated based on episode, for example, sometimes the Vietnamese voice artists have to spend for more than an hour to complete a 45-minute episode, not to mention that they have to work overnight to meet the deadline, but they are paid only more than 100 thousand dong. In the Southern region, the opportunities of the voice talents are quite much with quite a large number. Many Vietnamese young people are very good at voicing over, but “a hungry belly has no ears.” If the salary is low, they will not try their best to do it. If only the quality is assessed, but ignoring the remuneration, it is unfair for artists. ”
Dat Phi – a Vieetnamese voiceover director shared: “The biggest pressure of Vietnamese voice actors when entering the studio is that they must be able to convey the emotions of the character they undertake. The voice artists cannot impose themselves on characters, but they must bring the soul to the character. With foreign films, the Vietnamese voice artists must attach to the characters that they are in charge of making Vietnamese voice over. They must make the audience feel that the characters in the film are Vietnamese, not foreigners. Even with one simple sentence, it must be transformed to be very Vietnamese, of everyday language for not falling into writing style”.
If the Vietnamese voice over talents are considered as the soul of the advertisement, the copywriter is seen as the persons creating that soul. If the advertising content is attractive and effective – it is your gold carrier ship. We hereby reveal 9 tips that you must know when writing ads:
- Attractive title:
The words in the advertisement title decide more than 70% of the ad’s success. It also means that you have to spend a lot of effort on this.
The main purpose of the title is to attract the reader’s attention. Therefore, the title must achieve this target and focus on potential customers.
a Vietnamese voice over job done by VNVO Studio
- The title of the advertisement must emphasize the advertising topic:
If you have promised a new effective method to earn money in the title, the first sentence of the ad must focus on this topic, urging customers to pay more attention to the ways to make money.
- Immediately after the first commercial, it is a must that the readers understand the nature of the advertisement:
In other words, the first paragraph must contain the core content of the entire commercial. It is not unreasonable why it is said that it is more and more difficult to make the readers pay attention throughout the advertisement, while sales still depends on he times your advertising is read.
Therefore, you only learn how to shorten the “story” about goods or services into a paragraph just a few lines in length. So what should be written in the following paragraphs?! It is nothing except for the advertised product itself, but it will come into details.
- Let be detailed, do not just give general information:
Detailed information makes your commercial look like real. When you provide too general information, your potential customer may think “Oh, it’s just a fabrication” and the exact information in your ad will make customers think that: “Perhaps, they have made accurate calculation. So why don’t I try it?
Remember not to ignore the following details: detailing is always more convincing than general words. Please read your ad carefully and make it be detailed!
- Use your own personal information:
Nowadays, many ads apply the principle of “So am I”, because consumers have a tendency to imitate characters in the ads. But you should remember that this principle is a double-edged sword.
Misuse of it sometimes does not bring the result as expected. Consumers were too tired and offended. So you must make a unique approach.
Are you the old? Are you the young? Are you the deaf? Did you always quit classes when in school? You have only finished Grade 8? Don’t hesitate to use your own personal information in your ads.
A bad man may write an advertisement like this: “The dollar earned by a bald 57-year-old man grows faster than a young man’s hair!” It is very impressive, isn’t it?
- Let focus on the benefits not the different characteristics of the product:
Features of your product are materials that make up the product and the payment method … Benefits -are what the product bring up to consumers. Features focus on products while benefits concentrate on consumers.
The benefit is that “How much money will customers make?”, “How much weight will customers lose?”, “How long will the hair grow?”. You must write consumer-oriented ads, not products, because your choice will determine the success or failure of the advertising campaign.
- To use introductions or positive comments:
No matter how convincing words in your ad are, the majority still don’t immediately believe in its content. So let them have some time to trust you. But in order not to lose your time, use comments about goods or services in advertising.
People tend to believe in the introductions of strange people than the ad writers.
Getting these ideas from customers is much easier than we think. Get well prepared with a “Customer Opinion” form (must have the signature of the customers) and distribute to all of your customers. Make them know that you care about how they think about your products and services. After the customers’ provision of comments, please use them to the maximum when advertising.
- Let focus on the consumer’s attention on warranty:
Warranty will contribute to the increase of sales. If you provide warranty for your product, let emphasize this so that it will catch the attention of the customer rightly. This is a huge stimulus for consumers, enabling them to overcome all fears, doubts, and even objections to buy goods. Sales from selling goods is often much more to offset the cost for warranty or other costs related to this.
- Let simplify the order process.
Please simplify the order process. This is too simple, but there still have a lot of ads violate this principle. Please provide specific instructions so customers can order easily.
For example: “Just pick up the phone and call 1-800-000-0000. Call now! ”Or “Please fill all information in the order form and fax it at 1-000-000-000” or “Please send your order to address: 27, FT Washington Avenue, New York!” Your customers must understand clearly what to do to be able to order quickly.
As mentioned above, Voice over in Vietnam is quite a new job and the Vietnamese Voice Talents also have not many opportunities to enhance their profession. Moreover, it also a difficult job with a lot of stories that are unknown to many people. And this job is promised to be strongly developed in Vietnam in the coming time due to increasing demands in this field.