I had a client who needed Spanish voiceover for a local TV commercial. They had :45 of script for a :30 spot. On my best day, in heated conversations, in any language, I’m not a speed-talker by nature. I know there’s this voice artist out there who won the Guinness World Record for speed talking: she recited The Three Little Pigs in :13 (I think that’s like 12 words per second). Of course, no one can fully understand her. They need a machine to replay her recital in slow motion to make sure she pronounced each word accurately and she did! Super. But there’s a speed threshold between what the human ear can hear and the mind can decipher at that speed. It’s literally too much information. (Of course, she’s a talented voice artist by the name of Fran Capo and knows when to slow it down; just because she’s a speed demon doesn’t mean she rushes through every copy.)
Well, I gave that :45 copy for a :30 spot a try. My voiceover friends and I had a good laugh at my attempt and the client actually appreciated it (they wanted to see what it would sound like). Ultimately, they cut the script and paid me an additional voiceover fee. It was still a fast-paced spot, but manageable and more importantly understandable.
I had done few broadcast voiceover jobs at the time. Most of my early experience was story narrations and cold readings of legal documents for court proceedings. Broadcast voiceover is an entirely different animal. So, I asked my peers at VoiceOverSavvy.com with more broadcast voiceover experience how they handle ECS (excess copy syndrome). All agreed that you need to let the client know right off the bat, which I did. Always let the client decide whether to cut the script at the outset, or move forward with the long script and retain you for revisions later.
Additionally, my friends were able to provide a few rules of thumb both for voice talent and talent seekers to help evaluate whether the copy will fit the designated time slot. Although few things beat a cold read through with a stopwatch, generally speaking (no pun intended), a normal paced read will yield these numbers —
:15 spot: no more than 45 words of copy
:30 spot: 85-95 words
:60 spot: 160-180 words
Hi Nikki,
Had the same time issue .30 spot 99 word count. Others suggestions to resolve this were..
Submit 2 reads, one with time constraint, one with correct pacing and ignore the time.
Break the script down for the client, i.e., 100=one hundred=2 words, www=3 words.
Wish I had found your post earlier, I thought it was my lack of speed at not being able to achieve the clients request.
Lynne
Hi Nikki,
Had the same time issue .30 spot 99 word count. Others suggestions to resolve this were..
Submit 2 reads, one with time constraint, one with correct pacing and ignore the time.
Break the script down for the client, i.e., 100=one hundred=2 words, www=3 words.
Wish I had found your post earlier, I thought it was my lack of speed at not being able to achieve the clients request.
Lynne
Lynne, how’s it going? I just saw your thread at VoiceOverSavvy.
Grant and Scott are right: a lot of copy can be shortened if clients drop the superfluous “www” from web site names. They also get better responses with directions rather than addresses, for example: “just 1 mile east of interstate X” is way more memorable than “1234 East Main Street in Merrytown.” We can definitely help our clients along with copy ideas; but I’m not sure I’d arbitrarily drop copy like one voice actor suggested. I would always talk to the client.