Medical Narration is its own animal. It's a VO genre that presents unique challenges, but also offers great rewards.
One of the greatest rewards in Medical Narration is repeat business. Once a client finds a talent who can confidently and competently rise to the challenge, he usually comes back time and time again. It's not easy for clients to find someone who can do medical narration well. In fact, I've noticed that even many seasoned voice actors and actresses--not to mention some prominent voice coaches who have decades of experience--do not do a very good job with medical narration!
Why? Perhaps because they focus too much on pronouncing difficult terminology correctly-- as if that were the only challenge of medical narration. It's not. Sure, pronunciation can literally be a mouthful, but that's easy to remedy. Find out how to say the words and practice saying them until they roll off your tongue like a fluent language.
The real challenge in medical narration is telling the story. And for good reason. In many medical narrations the terminology is so difficult, and the subject matter so foreign, that even the narrator can't see the story! How can a voice actor tell a story you don't know? Yet if the words are spoken in such a manner that the story is not told, the voice actor loses the credibility in the eyes of the most important listener, the audience for whom the script was written. Whether it be doctors learning about a disease, students exploring biological processes, or patients being instructed on how to use a medical device, presumably, the audience will understand what is being said--even if the voice actor doesn't! And to that audience the voice actor is supposed to be the expert! He or she is the one teaching the information!
So, how can you know the story? There are a number of techniques you can practice. But for starters, don't let the words get in the way. Don't get so wrapped up in the medical mumbo that you can't see past it to the underlying message--the story.
Written by Julie2
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