A television audience although a captive audience when the show is on, as soon as the advert break cuts in, people make tea or coffee, do some other rush jobs in between trying to get back before the end of the adverts and before their program starts again. So how does an advertising agency work around this problem? If the supposedly captive viewer does walk away from the TV when the adverts are shown, then the well paid advertising dollars go to waste. The viewer's would possibly only be using the only sense available to them if they have their back turned to the TV or they have just popped into another room for a moment. That sense would be the sense of hearing. Many artistic people prefer subtitles or the use of silence to get across their message, some prefer a famous music track and expect the music along with the stunning use of video artistry to do the job of selling the product. This could and does work if you have the viewers complete attention but as proved by many different research instances, the adverts are the least viewed out of the all the eyes to screen television time. That may seem extraordinarily strange since adverts in some countries seem to be more ever present than the programs themselves.
As an advertising agent or a client who is looking for a perfect video to advertise a product and obviously get as many eyes watching the video to sell their product then a voice over artist should be considered to lay down the backing vocals to a head turning advert. Maybe your advert would be better without a voice over, it would be perhaps more dramatic, more mysterious but if the viewers aren't looking and some viewers never hardly watch adverts (just busy themselves until their show starts again) then you need your advertising prowess to go to the next level. You need to use the sound of a voice to turn their heads to the screen at the relevant time via seductive tones, calm warming tones, friendly guy/girl next door voices, comical tones or whatever other voice brings that work of art advert to their attention.
In games over the past few years there has been a tendency with some game developers to go the route of subtitles rather than voice overs perhaps because of difficult times to cut down on costs. Especially with games, a voice adds volume to the game and is worth it's weight in gold to promote games, take you through the journey of the game itself and add to the effectiveness of the game throughout. This part of the game where they add voices to the game is not always handled by the production house itself and sometimes it's dealt with by special game localisation experts because of the many languages that need to be translated.
Whatever you do with your advert, game or any other project never under-estimate the power of voice over subtitles or silence.
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