Until recently, I never watched soap operas. Like many people, I have a need for immediate gratification, and so the thought of having to wait days or weeks for a story to progress is plainly annoying. In fact, my family refused to watch Lord of the Rings until the trilogy was completed and available on DVD. But, my mother does watch soap operas. And frankly, finding quality time with an aging parent gets a little harder given her limitations. (My mother turned 85 this past spring. She’s sharp as a tack, but physically limited.) Because traveling can be quite a chore with a wheelchair, she stays in — and loves to watch television, mostly in English. But, every weeknight she watches Dame Chocolate (”Give Me Chocolate”), a Spanish soap opera (”telenovela”) on Telemundo — and it is very good.

Although Spanish was my first language (I’m fluent in it and speak it every day), I don’t write it often and simply don’t think in Spanish. It’s also not easy to expand your vocabulary in any language if you only speak to the same few people about the same few things. But watching more Spanish television has really changed that — whether it’s a telenovela, a Spanish dub of Harry Potter or even Cliffhanger, or Spanish language films by Pedro Almodóvar or Guillermo del Toro. We recently watched Pan’s Labyrinth (”El Laberinto del Fauno”). Pan speaks in a strange dialect they still use in the village in Spain where my father was born. (It’s an unsettling movie, to say the least, but engrossing.)

What started as a way to spend time with my mother, however, has improved my voice-over skills. I provide English and Spanish voice-over services. The copy I get for Spanish voiceovers isn’t difficult and doesn’t tend to include Old World dialects. But a particular mindset expands my ability to better interpret the Spanish copy I get. Plus I verbalize a lot of what I hear. I’ll latch onto particular phrases, play with unfamiliar words until they come easily, and basically learn to make new sounds. Some phrasing in Spanish or English simply gives any mouth a workout; there really are muscles that need to stay conditioned for voice work.

So kicking back after dinner with a little Cuban coffee watching Dame Chocolate every day has actually expanded my vocabulary and improved my voice skills — not a bad bonus for something that was just a way to spend a little more time with my mother. Also, Carlos Ponce es candela!

Last month, Scott Pollak, a voice actor I met online, started a public service thread on the voice over forums for persons afflicted with the need to work in the voice industry. We had some fun with our public service announcements. Her is my clip: Confessions of a Voiceover Junkie. Sometimes we do seem to have too much time on our hands.

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