sAs a voice actor you're often asked to promote a product or service you're lukewarm about. So, when you get the chance to voice for a cause you love, you light up.

Such has been the case for me working with the brilliantly creative team at Pzizz over the last 9 months, using my voice to promote wellbeing.

In case you haven't discovered Pzizz, it's a sleep app whose guided journeys are based on clinical science. The app features a customisable interface that allows you to select your own background music, narrator, script, timing, etc.  

​JK Rowling says: "I love Pzizz... best I've used by a mile."

Working with Pzizz I've voiced numerous sleep scripts, as well as several hypnosis ones. I've also written and voiced meditations for Pzizz's sister apps - Soundly and Mesmerize - on subjects like anti-anxiety, gratitude, forgiveness, healing and pain relief.

Here's to enjoying wonderfully restorative sleep and meditations that light us up.

You can check out the app with a free trial here:

https://pzizz.com/

​I'm "Anna" on the app.

​Today I had a wonderful workout with my voice coach, Marla Kirban, via Skype from New Zealand to New York. Although I’ve been voicing projects for more than 20 years and earning my living primarily as a voice artist for nearly 10, I’m always humbled by how much I still have to learn!
 
Marla reminds me that it’s not enough to have a beautiful voice or to just “read the script word by word.” The art of voice over, she teaches, lies in absorbing copy through your eyes, processing it through your brain, dropping it into your heart and then sharing it through your voice. You have to have a clear point of view, you have to care about what you’re saying, you have to conjure mental images that relate to the content, you have to take appropriate pauses and fill them with meaning, you have to keep the main thing the main thing – all this while sounding spontaneous and not trying too hard!
 
When we hear good voice acting we know it immediately. We are onboard, we feel connected with the person speaking; their words make sense, touch us - move us.  Good voice actors make it seem effortless. Diane Keaton does a great job in Finding Dory. Keaton plays Dory’s mother and from the first moments her lines carry a rich sense of that fish’s world and backstory – her protective love for her memory-challenged daughter, her affection for her husband, her place in the community.
 
I’m so very grateful to study the art of voice acting with a master coach and to always, always be learning.

​I’m not a fan of marketing products that shame women’s bodies. And hard sell/hype-y voiceovers aren’t my strong suit. Which is why I probably wasn’t a good match for the shapewear infomercial I was asked to voice a while back.
 
I agreed to a buyout with two rounds of changes.
​Here you can hear how I was struggling at round 4…

After round 6, I humbly admitted defeat and surrendered my work at no charge.
 
What did I learn from the experience?
 
1. Phrases like “It will lift and shape your bum…” tend not to roll easily off my tongue.
 
2. No matter how many times I re-do the phrase “for a perkier, youthful look ” it’s not going to sound that aspirational.
 
3. While I can put my heart and soul behind most products – heavy lifting gear, chemical assay testing equipment, GoPros for dogs, I’m just not a shapewear infomercial kinda girl.
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