Episode 32

Can AI Replace the Human Voice?: Interview with Liz Solar

In this week's episode of Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking, Kirsten talks with voice over artist Liz Solar about the range of emotion in human voices and why kids complain the most about voices rendered with artificial intelligence.

 Key take-aways:

  • Performance is needed for human connection
  • Good voice over work aids accessibility
  • Playing an action is more effective than playing a personal quality, like eagerness

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Transcript
Kirsten:

Hello everyone and welcome to Ongoing Mastery:

Kirsten:

Presenting & Speaking the podcast, the video show and the conversation.

Kirsten:

So today we are doing an interview with Liz Solar.

Kirsten:

Who.

Kirsten:

Just she and I have no end of fun going back and forth on all things,

Kirsten:

and I asked her to come on today to talk about her work as a voiceover

Kirsten:

artist and all the ways in which ongoing mastery shows up in that genre.

Kirsten:

So tell us about what you do.

Kirsten:

What

Liz:

I do is, so voiceover is actually the voice that you hear over picture.

Liz:

That's basically what it is.

Liz:

But you can also hear voiceover on your radio, on your phone, in

Liz:

the train station at the airport.

Liz:

Well, you can probably hear other things at the airport right now,

Liz:

which we won't even discuss right now.

Liz:

But voiceover is everywhere.

Liz:

It's ubiquitous.

Liz:

You can't stumble across social media without hearing.

Liz:

Audio through voice accompanied by video.

Liz:

That's just the way we're doing things now.

Liz:

So basically I take a script, I interpret it, and I color it with some type of tone

Liz:

or attitude, some type of personality.

Liz:

Create a persona.

Liz:

So whether that's a commercial or a narration or a video game, or an audiobook

Liz:

or a telephone system, that's what I do.

Liz:

It's all about blah, blah, blah,

Liz:

. Kirsten: Fantastic.

Liz:

I like that all about blah, blah, blah.

Liz:

That would be a good t-shirt.

Liz:

Well, you and I had talked about the fact that now a lot of e-learning audio is.

Liz:

Becoming text to speech transcription, which is just AI, and that for low

Liz:

level basic things, maybe that's fine, but I have a big concern of

Liz:

what's being lost is the performance.

Liz:

And that's one thing I wanted to talk about with you is because I

Liz:

understand the cost saving issue, but no amount of programming in

Liz:

AI is gonna get the inflections.

Liz:

And the meaning across the way a human voice can.

Liz:

And how do you get that across to people that don't like, don't

Liz:

get that there's a performance

Liz:

involved For some people, cost is always going to be the determinator

Liz:

in terms of, this is what I want.

Liz:

It's the least expensive route to go.

Liz:

I'm going to do this.

Liz:

Perhaps if you did a side by side test.

Liz:

Apple now has several AI voices that I was listening to and I thought, you know what?

Liz:

They're actually okay for 20, 30 seconds.

Liz:

Do I want to hear hours of this?

Liz:

Do I wanna hear an audio book read like this?

Liz:

Because we have peaks and valleys.

Liz:

You know, our voice, our pitches up when we get excited, it gets

Liz:

lower, it gets more hushed.

Liz:

I'm not sure that AI can do that, and I feel that way about

Liz:

so many different types of AI.

Liz:

There's a storytelling app now that you put in three or four facts that

Liz:

you want to relay, and it comes out with the a story that's maybe two

Liz:

pages long, and it is a template.

Liz:

It's like the Hallmark cards version of story.

Kirsten:

I'm making a face so the audio people can't see.

Kirsten:

But I'm just picturing the look on Kellie's face when she produces

Kirsten:

this podcast, who is the writer and is a literature professor.

Kirsten:

The look on her face at that concept.

Kirsten:

So

Liz:

Kristen, this is an example.

Liz:

My son and the kids are all about the ai.

Liz:

They're excited by it.

Liz:

I think understand the limitations, but also there's an excitement around ai.

Liz:

Mm-hmm.

Liz:

. So my son created a story.

Liz:

and read it back.

Liz:

And it was the most vanilla, mundane fifth grade, no offense to fifth grade

Liz:

writers, but it was the most basic type of story that you could tell.

Liz:

And it was really silly.

Liz:

And even the tags that they put, the dialogue tags that

Liz:

they put were really silly.

Liz:

They were very earnest, like people were frowning and smiling and distressed . It

Liz:

was okay, just, I'm a writer as well, so.

Liz:

Mm.

Liz:

I was listening to it and I thought, even if you're writing

Liz:

a children's story, there's a lot more, there's more feeling behind it.

Liz:

So until, and there's probably that time when the AI will sound pretty compelling.

Liz:

I'm not sure that you can program emotion into any of it.

Kirsten:

Hmm.

Kirsten:

Yeah, it's interesting cause I, I mean, I do want to be moving forward with science

Kirsten:

and moving forward with technology.

Kirsten:

And I was at Dev learn the e-learning conference and was in the expo hall.

Kirsten:

And all the way in the corner was a vendor who was showing off their

Kirsten:

technology, which was, they take a photo of you and then they use transformation

Kirsten:

technology to make the mouth move and they, they just, Voiceover so that that

Kirsten:

way you don't have to, you know, do it.

Kirsten:

So it's an AI voice that's like your voice, but it's your face just talking.

Kirsten:

And I'm sitting there or standing there and the guy's pitching it to

Kirsten:

me, he's like, this is wonderful.

Kirsten:

And I couldn't.

Kirsten:

I could not bring up, like I just didn't feel like I could say, this is horrifying

Kirsten:

me to my core as a professional speaker, as someone who teaches for a living.

Kirsten:

This hurts my soul.

Kirsten:

So I was politely going, it's very interesting.

Kirsten:

And I walked away going, oh God.

Kirsten:

And I don't wanna not be open to things, but it's also like, I just, I guess my

Kirsten:

concern is that it seems like people don't understand the degree of performance

Kirsten:

that is needed for human Connect.

Kirsten:

. And whether it's education, whether it's entertainment, there needs to be, there

Kirsten:

needs to be performance, doesn't there?

Kirsten:

I mean, that's what it seems like to me.

Liz:

I agree.

Liz:

There are voice actors who love the idea of AI.

Liz:

They feel it's passive income, so bring it on.

Liz:

And other people who feel that AI, it's just not part of their brand.

Liz:

They won't.

Liz:

I'm not sure whether it's a, you know, a morality thing, whether

Liz:

it's a taste thing, whether it's a purest thing about, this is my voice.

Liz:

I'm going to use it in this way and I'm going to use it in the moment, and it

Liz:

will be a performance and it will not be somebody who's manipulating it, you know,

Liz:

behind a curtain through some machinery.

Liz:

So there's that.

Liz:

One thing I can tell you anecdotally is that I have done projects

Liz:

for kids that are like K-12.

Liz:

Mm-hmm.

Liz:

. So there's a lot of that educational textbook stuff, and it's such a service

Liz:

for kids who have learning disabilities.

Liz:

Dyslexia might have even some.

Liz:

Audio processing problems, but they can go back and listen to it and listen

Liz:

to it again until they can really embody some of those messages that

Liz:

they might not get the first time.

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

But what was coming back was the big complainers of AI are kids.

Liz:

It doesn't sound real or it wasn't engaging them on some level.

Liz:

I'm not even sure that they could pinpoint why.

Liz:

Interesting.

Liz:

They knew that it wasn't grabbing them and I, you know, out of the mouths of babes.

Liz:

Okay.

Kirsten:

Yeah, so I, yeah.

Kirsten:

Cause I'm thinking in terms of, there was an e-learning project that I was

Kirsten:

doing, which was cybersecurity, and what we did was we did a graphic novel.

Kirsten:

And so I got one of my VO people to come in and Tim did two characters and

Kirsten:

one of them was the chief of the spy service and his name, it was Steel,

Kirsten:

and it was, he sent me the first take and in a note saying this might

Kirsten:

be too much, and I sent him back.

Kirsten:

I love it.

Kirsten:

Love it because he chewed scenery like nobody's business.

Kirsten:

And it was perfect.

Kirsten:

And it, the next one, you know, the other one was a very straight up read,

Kirsten:

but the chief was like this full William Shatner performance, and he was a

Kirsten:

little like, this is probably too much.

Kirsten:

I'm like, no, you nailed it.

Kirsten:

That's exactly right.

Kirsten:

And it's won awards.

Liz:

Well, especially when you're doing that sounds almost like

Liz:

a gaming version of mm-hmm.

Liz:

E-Learning as well.

Liz:

And we're always looking for those characters that are a little bit larger

Liz:

than life archetypal or stereotypical.

Liz:

And we'll hear it in commercial sometimes where it's that

Liz:

cheesy furniture sale copy.

Liz:

Yep.

Liz:

But it's about something else, like maybe it's about a pharmaceutical

Liz:

and they're trying to make a point.

Liz:

About how bad it is to sell to people that way, or convince people that way.

Liz:

You know, hurry up now.

Liz:

N nobody's listening to that.

Liz:

Or I, I'm not sure who is listening to that and being persuaded, but I think

Liz:

sometimes you have to go big to make those

Kirsten:

points.

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

And uh, what I'm hoping is with ai, and especially with with voiceover work in

Kirsten:

this kind of work, I'm hoping that yes.

Kirsten:

it has a foothold in some small, in some areas, but that people really

Kirsten:

start to understand the power of story and the power of performance

Kirsten:

so that people like you are brought in to do the specialist work.

Kirsten:

Because I just don't think, I mean, you can tag the hell out of a a file to have

Kirsten:

the AI read it differently, but I think there comes a point at which you're like,

Kirsten:

but I wanna get different takes on it.

Kirsten:

And that requires a.

Liz:

It does.

Liz:

Unless you have an entirely different library of a, a different mood.

Liz:

And I'm wondering, and I don't know the science behind it, how

Liz:

does the AI know when to bring up a voice where somebody's excited?

Liz:

Yeah.

Liz:

And really pitching their voice, hi, we have to hurry up.

Liz:

We have a burning building.

Liz:

Most of it is fairly flat.

Liz:

Yeah.

Liz:

And, and I say this as somebody who, years ago I booked my first one of those

Liz:

big, crazy phone systems, which was hundreds of thousands of phrases and

Liz:

numbers and libraries of dates and years and Wow, it's like 15 years worth of it.

Liz:

But I've done several of those project.

Liz:

and the reason why those became so popular was they supplanted

Liz:

actual customer service.

Liz:

Oh, departments.

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

Where people used to pick up the phone.

Liz:

And I can remember reading the New York Times, maybe 15, 16 years ago,

Liz:

where they were talking about these giant phone systems, and they said,

Liz:

whenever somebody calls customer service at a big company, it's $40 per call.

Liz:

To speak with a human, but it's 40 cents per call to speak with a recorded system.

Liz:

Ah, okay.

Liz:

So it's, for some people it's always going to be about the money, the the

Liz:

cost savings, about the economics.

Liz:

What's interesting is the very good phone systems actually have great

Liz:

live personal service as well.

Liz:

Personal customer service, so you can reach a human more

Liz:

easily on those better systems.

Liz:

Hmm.

Liz:

That would be

Kirsten:

Glia Coffee.

Kirsten:

Glia Coffee would be one of those.

Kirsten:

Yes.

Kirsten:

. Liz: So you know one of them.

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

I, uh, Sorry,

Liz:

go ahead.

Liz:

No, there are several like that.

Liz:

You know, my client is a huge banking insurance corporation and

Liz:

they almost every year are one of the top businesses in Business Week

Liz:

Magazine for their customer service.

Kirsten:

I, so the reason I've mentioned Gali is just because I remember when I

Kirsten:

was regularly buying it, I would call in every once in a while and they would

Kirsten:

get the automated, this was a while ago.

Kirsten:

The automated service wasn't great, but it was fine.

Kirsten:

But I would always, I'm one of those people that skips, I want to go

Kirsten:

talk to the human and every single time their customer service people

Kirsten:

were the best trained customer service people I've ever encount.

Kirsten:

They were flawless and I know how hard that job is and I was just always like,

Kirsten:

wow, somebody really knows what's going on on the back end because they, they

Kirsten:

handled like, they handled everything, including not knowing what to do.

Kirsten:

Like they handled it beautifully.

Kirsten:

There was never a moment where they were snowing you, they were putting

Kirsten:

you on hold to just go figure it out.

Kirsten:

They're like, I don't know, and I need to find out.

Kirsten:

So gimme your.

Kirsten:

And then I'm gonna call you back like it was totally upfront, all of it,

Kirsten:

100%, completely clear communication.

Kirsten:

And it was like, wow.

Kirsten:

And I did business with them, partly because I was so impressed

Kirsten:

by the fact that clearly somebody in the company had the commitment.

Liz:

And you want to support a company like that.

Liz:

And in some of the work that I've done in some of the voiceover scripts,

Liz:

including this one, they had a very clear idea of who their customer

Liz:

was, why they were coming to them, what the values were of that person.

Liz:

There have been clients who have given me one or two pages

Liz:

of what a persona is like.

Liz:

This is our.

Liz:

One or two pages.

Liz:

Yes.

Liz:

Wow.

Liz:

This is, it was a biography of this person, their age, where they

Liz:

lived, what their interests were.

Liz:

Holy cow.

Liz:

Related to, yes.

Kirsten:

That's wonderful.

Liz:

Quite effective.

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

Mm.

Liz:

It was work done at the beginning.

Liz:

Mm-hmm.

Liz:

so that they could have this ongoing persona.

Liz:

I've been engaged with this company for 15 years.

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

And remained with them because they were so clear about their intention.

Liz:

Oh,

Kirsten:

that's lovely.

Kirsten:

That's wonderful.

Kirsten:

But

Liz:

isn't that.

Liz:

I'm sorry, Kirsten, isn't that part of what you do?

Liz:

You have an intention when you're going in mm-hmm.

Liz:

and you're presenting a training, an idea to people, you know

Liz:

where you're going with it.

Liz:

I mean, people might ask you a question and it might change the direction a

Liz:

little bit, or you're making, you know, someone's making an observation mm-hmm.

Liz:

, and you're stopping down to take that in, and sometimes that might change.

Liz:

It doesn't change the talk, but it might change a direction for a few

Liz:

moments because you're, you're receptive to that as well, but you're going

Liz:

in with the intention to present a certain bunch of ideas, values, mm-hmm.

Liz:

education.

Liz:

Yep.

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

No, I, I love, I just love the fact that it was multiple pages,

Kirsten:

cuz normally I think wouldn't, normally you'd get maybe a paragraph

Liz:

if.

Liz:

Yeah.

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

Yeah.

Liz:

If sometimes, you know, the specs will say, and the specs are the

Liz:

directions that they wanna take this copy in, a lot of times it will

Liz:

just say, sound like Morgan Freeman,

Liz:

You know, like, how are you supposed to do that?

Liz:

Well, they don't, you know, Everybody.

Liz:

Morgan Freeman used to be a big one, or Scarlet and Hanson and you know,

Liz:

essentially, or Meryl Streep, you know?

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

In really they're archetypes, you know.

Liz:

What do you think of when you think of Morgan Freeman?

Liz:

Like what does he, what feeling does he instill in people?

Liz:

What they're trying to do is get to the essence of who Morgan Freeman is.

Liz:

I mean, I'm certainly not going to do it.

Liz:

I don't have his talent.

Liz:

I don't have his voice.

Liz:

But what?

Liz:

But what is it that he has mm-hmm.

Liz:

that they're looking for that you can distill and say, okay,

Liz:

that's the feeling that I get when I listen to Morgan Freeman.

Liz:

I feel safe.

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

I feel respected.

Liz:

You know, all of those things.

Liz:

Okay,

Kirsten:

so then let me ask you to give some advice to the viewers

Kirsten:

and the listeners if they are gonna be, you know, well said is a is an

Kirsten:

app that is, is doing pretty well, but, oops, hold on one second.

Kirsten:

I'm gonna mute and I'm gonna explain to my son that we're still on the air.

Kirsten:

Hold on one second.

Kirsten:

. Okay.

Kirsten:

And normally I would re rerecord this, but No, that's okay.

Kirsten:

We're just gonna roll with it because this is what live recording is.

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

, my teenagers in the other room.

Kirsten:

Oops.

Kirsten:

So if someone is bringing in a voiceover artist, what are the things

Kirsten:

that you really, really love for people to give you, for information?

Kirsten:

Like, if you could have a, a just short dream list of the

Kirsten:

things that people often forget.

Kirsten:

What sort of information do you want?

Liz:

People often forget what's the action?

Liz:

They'll use words like lush or energetic.

Liz:

A lot of times they'll say, no announcers.

Liz:

They don't want you to sound like the announcer.

Liz:

And then what you see right underneath it is announcer colon.

Liz:

and what they say.

Liz:

It's like, well you just put an announcer there.

Liz:

. It's much more, I think, serviceable to ask somebody to play an action.

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

Play resent.

Liz:

Play resentment.

Liz:

You mean?

Liz:

You know the political odds.

Liz:

They're all about resentment and anger and all that.

Liz:

You know, be angry, you know.

Liz:

Show anger, show seduction.

Liz:

You know, we eat cha wheat, chocolate, what's gonna get me to eat chocolate?

Liz:

Nothing like, you know, you're talking about love language now.

Liz:

. Excellent.

Liz:

A lot of times it is getting the, what's the, what's the action behind that?

Liz:

Not just the action that I'm taking.

Liz:

How do you want me to make you feel?

Liz:

Ah, make you feel safe?

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

You know, look, I'm thinking right now, Southwest Airlines.

Liz:

I wanna get in on that action.

Liz:

Oh, because, I'm taking a huge leap, getting on your plane, make me feel safe.

Liz:

Make me not regret this.

Liz:

Assure me that my experience is going to be fine and I won't be spending

Liz:

the, you know, next three or four days lying on a bench in a, an airport.

Liz:

Yeah, they,

Kirsten:

they need you

Liz:

right now.

Liz:

You know, first of all, , they do, you know, know, know who you are and

Liz:

what you know, who you're selling to.

Liz:

There's, there's some, you know, what I've seen sometimes is we're

Liz:

looking for a middle-aged female.

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

Here I am, 25 to 35 years old.

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

. That's interesting.

Liz:

Middle-aged.

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

Yeah, definitions have changed about middle-aged or you know, like the kid

Liz:

who's giving these directions is 18 and 25 probably feels middle-aged to them.

Liz:

I have no idea, but that, that is not very helpful.

Liz:

Or people will say earnest.

Liz:

Earnest, but lighthearted.

Liz:

Fun but serious.

Liz:

Uh, could you pick part of this list,

Kirsten:

Which ones?

Liz:

Yeah.

Liz:

Because in a, in a conversation, I mean, you, and you don't wanna go

Liz:

in with one, you know, be serious.

Liz:

It's like, okay, we can be serious.

Liz:

But even when we're having a serious conversation, the tone changes.

Liz:

We color things.

Liz:

There are mm-hmm.

Liz:

, fla, you know, think of food a lot.

Liz:

Yeah.

Liz:

There was flavors.

Liz:

Flavors to things.

Liz:

There's a color to thing.

Liz:

Am am I making it dark?

Liz:

Am I making it too dark?

Liz:

Am I scaring people?

Liz:

That's why you hear so many pharmaceuticals now that seem lighter.

Liz:

Oh.

Liz:

Cause before it used to be, you know, now it's, you know, take

Liz:

this and you'll feel better.

Liz:

And those side effects include all these things that can kill you.

Liz:

You . So it's , it's

Kirsten:

Yes.

Liz:

Insane.

Liz:

That's, but it's a little bit more lighthearted.

Liz:

You know, people experience, you know, if you experience this, you know, call your

Liz:

doctor . Whoa, you know, I'm not taking.

Liz:

I don't,

Kirsten:

I don't care how much, if you experience a burning

Kirsten:

rash, please call your doctor.

Kirsten:

Yes.

Kirsten:

. Liz: Right?

Kirsten:

I mean, I, I used to have a, a friend who, when biographers came out and

Kirsten:

they said, you know, if you have an erection for more than four hours, you

Kirsten:

know, he said, if you have an erection for more than four hours, call me

Kirsten:

I like it.

Kirsten:

I like it.

Kirsten:

Yes.

Kirsten:

Here's my number.

Kirsten:

Yes.

Kirsten:

And give me some of those pills.

Kirsten:

Right.

Liz:

So, you know, part of it is we certain things that have be

Liz:

been very, uh, serious in the past.

Liz:

Like you never see an insurance ad now that's not funny

Liz:

or not trying to be funny.

Liz:

Ah, true.

Liz:

True.

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

You know, Liberty Mutual has all these, like, you know, birds descending,

Liz:

the seagulls descending as people are having pie eating contests.

Liz:

Or you have the guy iu, was it limu, iu, you know, the, his

Liz:

Doug, or whatever his name is.

Liz:

See how well I'm remembering these commercials, but there's a lot

Liz:

more humor being infused in it.

Liz:

And the, that's the other piece is knowing what's expected in the market

Liz:

because ah, styles, styles change.

Liz:

Styles do change.

Liz:

Yeah.

Liz:

. Even the way people talk, people of my generation speak differently than a Gen Z.

Liz:

Mm.

Liz:

Okay.

Liz:

Their patterns, their slang changes.

Liz:

So when I see something, even if I can get there vocally and make

Liz:

myself sound younger, because we can do that, I can't make myself

Liz:

be that because it feels weird.

Liz:

Mm-hmm.

Liz:

It feels e emotionally, I can't get there unless I'm kind of making fun.

Liz:

Yeah, it, it's kind of like then, then I'm the, then I'm the mom making fear.

Liz:

You're the mom.

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

It's like when NPR tries to use modern slang and it always is

Kirsten:

one of those moments where I'm listening, going, please stop.

Kirsten:

Please, please stop.

Kirsten:

It's like, it sounds like you're saying I'm so hip, you know, or something.

Liz:

and it's, I love npr.

Liz:

It's my chosen, you know, news.

Liz:

But I've always felt you need a sense of humor and you need a good sense of humor.

Liz:

They're, they're not.

Liz:

They try, they try, they

Kirsten:

try, but it's, it's usually like, please don't, please stop.

Kirsten:

I know , and here's the, oh, sorry.

Kirsten:

Go ahead.

Kirsten:

No, go ahead.

Kirsten:

No, go ahead.

Kirsten:

Well, I was gonna say that unfortunately, I'm trying to keep

Kirsten:

these within a time window, but I do wanna talk to you more about this.

Kirsten:

So I'm actually gonna ask if you can come back and do

Kirsten:

another one, because, oh, sure.

Kirsten:

I wanna get some more, more details about voice work for people, because you've

Kirsten:

been, well, for one, you've been in the.

Kirsten:

I mean, you started when you were two.

Liz:

I did.

Liz:

It was back in 1874

Liz:

. Kirsten: But you've been

Liz:

So while I actually do wanna keep talking to you for the next 20

Liz:

minutes, I'm mindful that Kelly is, is gonna go, you know, we're

Liz:

trying to keep these in a window.

Liz:

So where can people find you?

Liz:

People can find me, people can find me@lizsolr.com.

Liz:

L I Z S O L A R.

Liz:

I have a podcast as well, on which you will be appearing or yes,

Liz:

heard, and it's called Embark.

Liz:

And um, that's kind of it.

Liz:

Every once in a while you'll hear me, uh, on a commercial or.

Liz:

on an e-learning app.

Kirsten:

Oh, fantastic.

Kirsten:

So when, when you come back, I would really, I would really love for us

Kirsten:

to get into what different voices you can do, like different ways

Kirsten:

of communicating the same message.

Kirsten:

Cuz I really wanna get across the performance aspect that I don't,

Kirsten:

I don't know if people realize.

Kirsten:

The depth that voiceover artists go to.

Kirsten:

So,

Liz:

yes.

Liz:

Can I leave that?

Liz:

Can I give something to like, hang on to Yeah.

Liz:

So one of, one of my favorite actors is the late Phillips Seymour Hoffman.

Liz:

Mm.

Liz:

Yeah.

Liz:

And love him was just a chameleon in terms of performing.

Liz:

He was in this movie from the early two thousands called almost famous.

Liz:

it's the coming of age, uh, film about a young boy who was writing for Rolling

Liz:

Stone Magazine, following a, a rock band, and he plays this character called

Liz:

Luster Banks, who is a real person who wrote for Rolling Stone Magazine, right?

Liz:

So he gives this speech at the end, and the director was expecting

Liz:

it to be all loud and yelling and angry, and he made it this incredib.

Liz:

Intimate conversation, late night phone call with this young kid and

Liz:

totally blew the directors away.

Liz:

Sometimes we just wanna be surprised because everybody will go for that

Liz:

angry thing and the person who goes left with something, even if it's not

Liz:

the right thing in the moment, people will remember, oh, they did something

Liz:

different and that was interest.

Liz:

that was distinctive.

Kirsten:

And that's where the performance comes in and that's

Kirsten:

where the art of it comes in.

Kirsten:

So, so thank you.

Kirsten:

Cuz I, I definitely want, when anybody's listening and when

Kirsten:

anybody's coming to the, the work, the ongoing mastery is performance

Kirsten:

and the art that people like you do.

Kirsten:

I just really want people to start seeing the depths of it and the

Kirsten:

layers and the flavors of it, because it's not just reading a script.

Kirsten:

not even close, not even.

Kirsten:

As someone who has tried to do VO for E-learning and then hired people

Kirsten:

because I realized that I could read the words, but I couldn't perform them

Kirsten:

the way they needed to be performed.

Kirsten:

. And that's why I was always like, could we hire somebody?

Kirsten:

And they're like, well, we could do text to speech.

Kirsten:

I'm like, we could, if you want people to be miserable and be

Kirsten:

sitting in the e-learning going, ugh.

Kirsten:

It's like human connection.

Kirsten:

Hello.

Kirsten:

That's just my thing.

Kirsten:

Okay, so I'm gonna have to wrap this because again, , I'm

Kirsten:

picturing Kelly's face and she's gonna be listening to this going.

Kirsten:

Why did you bring me up four times?

Kirsten:

So everybody thank you for watching.

Kirsten:

Thank you for listening.

Kirsten:

Come to the Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking LinkedIn group.

Kirsten:

Please go to Liz's website and check out her work and we will come back and

Kirsten:

do some voices and I will, you know, listen to all the different characters

Kirsten:

and that'll be a hell of a lot of fun.

Kirsten:

And other than that, we will see you all next time.

Kirsten:

Have a great one and see you next.

Kirsten:

Bye.

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Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking
Presentation and Speaking Skills for Business Leaders

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Kirsten Rourke