Of aspiring voices

A special voice-over talent hunt, especially for journalists, was held on July 11 and 12, in the City. The contest was conducted in seven different languages — English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Marathi and participating journalists were given a script to be read out.

They were judged in the following categories: command over the language, tone of voice, correct amount of enunciation, acting abilities, voice modulation, ability to mimic, and range of accents.

However, anyone interested in making a full or part time career in voice-over assignments can get in touch with Guruji.com and register on their database. Voice-over artistes need to sound authoritative, friendly, funny, warm, enthusiastic, cool and detached.

They should be able to hardsell or softsell, depending on the clients’ needs and versatile enough to change from a distinguished corporate spokesperson one minute to a talking bug the next or even become the simple ordinary guy next door.

“The winner will be given an opportunity to make his own CD and also work with me on ads and jingles. A voice-over artiste can earn between Rs 1,000 to Rs 3,000 per session depending on the amount of work. Each session does not usually exceed two hours and experienced professionals can make between Rs 3,000 to Rs 12,000 per session,” says Ricky Kej, a music director, who has teamed up with Guruji.com to conduct the voice-over talent search.

“Most voice-over artists are based in Mumbai and even when we need voices in Kannada, we have to outsource them from there. We hope to build up a large database with different accents and tones to cater to different clients’ requirements. Clients want voice-artists to sound very different from their competitors. The options do not end here, there are a number of opportunities for voice-over artistes on video and radio programmes, documentaries, presentations, radio and TV jingles, spots, phone software and multimedia,” he added.

Ricky Kej is a music director who has been associated with movies like Accident, Ek Tha Bachpan and Venkata in Sankata. He also does work for radio jingles, TV commercials and other genres of music and advertising. Log onto guruji.com for details.