Mood Affects Voiceover Performance

BOSSes, Anne Ganguzza and Lau Lapides explore a core challenge for every voice actor: managing personal emotions and moods to deliver a consistent, authentic performance. The Bosses delve into how easily actors can slip into autopilot or let personal frustration compromise a read. This episode provides practical acting methodologies to help you discipline your thoughts, shift your emotional state on demand, and utilize your entire emotional range to serve the story.

 

00:00 - Anne (Host)
Hey Boss, listeners, Anne Ganguzza here. Leveraging years of expertise in the voiceover industry, I offer coaching and award-winning demo production that embodies excellence. I am dedicated to your success. Let's work together to get your career to where you've always wanted it to be. Visit anneganguzza.com to find out more. 

00:24 - Speaker 2 (Announcement)
It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 

00:43 - Anne (Host)
Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am here with Superpower co-host Laura Lapidus. Yay, thank you, annie. I love being called a superpower. Well, I'll tell you what your shirt is so colorful today. I love it. 

01:06 - Lau (Guest)
Yeah, I'm feeling like this blue is putting me in a certain mood. You know, getting me very moody, but not in a blue mood, more in a hot mood. 

01:15 - Anne (Host)
Yeah, it's blue and flowers, so there's kind of like a cult, like a culmination of moods, maybe I thought you were going to say a cult. 

01:22 - Lau (Guest)
No, not a cult, but more of a comedy, more of likes, maybe I thought you were going to say a cult. 

01:33 - Anne (Host)
No, not a cult, but more of a comedy, More of like artistic meets, comedy meets, I don't know, meets like hot diva thing, oh my gosh. Well, you know that's funny. I'm always so thankful to talk to you, Law, because you're always so positive and upbeat and happy. 

01:41
And you know it's interesting because I, as you know, I mean I work with a lot of students and a lot of them that are working full time and then doing voiceover part time, and so they've got, or they've got life happening you know life you know, life, life can happen, life happens and I'll tell you what your mood and how you are dealing with the day can so affect your reads, because I'll have some people that'll be like, yeah, I did it last night, after you know, I came home from work and I'm like, well, yeah, I can tell, because you were exhausted or did you have a bad day, because it actually reflects in your read and I thought it'd be great to talk about how your mood affects your performance. 

02:30
I mean, it seems so obvious and we just say, yeah, your mood affects your performance, but maybe it affects it more than you even know, because a lot of times I feel like we go on autopilot. When we're in a certain mood, or we don't want to deal with certain things, or you know, we're not going to acknowledge certain feelings, we then compartmentalize, and we don't always compartmentalize in a way that's helpful for our performance. 

02:53 - Lau (Guest)
So true. And you know, I first thought about mood as a young, young kid, really, when I was being trained in the theater. I would have directors that would say for rehearsal, leave your trash at the door. Don't worry about it, it'll be there to pick up on your way out. 

03:11 - Anne (Host)
Leave your trash. 

03:12 - Lau (Guest)
What does that mean? And meaning that to discipline yourself in the workspace, you cannot bring in every feeling, every thought and every mood that you're walking in with. You have to leave it behind and come into that neutral discipline space. 

03:28 - Anne (Host)
Unless. 

03:28 - Lau (Guest)
maybe you're using it to create a character Unless you're channeling it, but even so it's like can you move in and out of it? 

03:37 - Anne (Host)
That's tough to do. Yeah, that's tough to do. 

03:40 - Lau (Guest)
Yeah, or is it so adopted in you, so inside of you, that you can't see it? You no longer have the self-awareness to see the mood that you're in. 

04:03 - Anne (Host)
They're like no, I thought it thought it was great. And then, in reality, I'm like you were tired, weren't you? You know, or you were exhausted, or you were frustrated, or and sometimes it'll become it'll come out right in the first few words I'm like you hate this script, don't you? It's like, well, I had a bad day and so, yeah,