The limit exists, and it took three more years
Our research told us that union actors struck for a cap on vocally stressful recording and the settlement contained nothing. That is true about the settlement and wrong about today.
The strike ran 340 days, from October 2016 to September 2017, against eleven companies — the longest in the union’s history at the time. Among the demands was cutting vocally stressful sessions from four hours to two without losing pay. The settlement gave only a commitment to keep discussing it.
The instruction we are withdrawing
One line on this page told a reader working alone to give full effort and not save their voice. We are taking it out, and we want to be plain about why rather than quietly editing it.
“Do not save your voice” is a direction a director gives. It is given in a supervised session, with a time limit, an engineer listening, somebody whose job includes noticing that you are struggling, and a contract behind all of it.
What actually happens, stated carefully
The evidence here is real and it is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to work in a particular way, which is a different thing, and the distinction matters more than the alarm.
The union survey behind all of this is Canadian, published in August 2022 from a poll taken the previous June. Two hundred and sixty-four actors responded out of six hundred and ten asked. Its opening line is that acting for video games is “easily the most vocally challenging and potentially vocally dangerous work an actor can take on.”
What professionals do, and what it becomes at home
There is a real protocol for this work and it is specific. Most of it translates directly to a practice session, which is the useful discovery.
The union survey’s own recommendations are concrete: at least a ten-minute break for every hour of vocal stunt work, no sessions booked less than forty-eight hours apart, and script breakdowns flagging extreme content in advance. The American contract requires producers to describe anticipated work as fully as possible before recording.
The union also publishes a free panel on exactly this, called A Whisper to a Scream, covering the demands of different kinds of voice work and the exercises that protect you. It is public and it costs nothing to watch. Its stated purpose is helping actors work with directors and producers to make a session safe — which is a skill, and the practice room is where you learn it.
What a British reader actually has
Everything above is American or Canadian. Our research flagged the British half as unexamined for the second chapter running. There is less protection here and there is one resource that is better than anything in the American material.
On protection, the honest answer is that there is not much. Equity has one games agreement, with one studio, and it does contain vocal-stress terms — a minimum five-minute rest break each hour, a best-practice ceiling of two hours of vocal stress a day, and disclosure before an audition if a role involves it. But it is one company, it is best practice rather than a guaranteed rate, and the agreement ran to April 2023 with no renewal we could confirm.
One honest note on sourcing. Equity’s own website is blocked from where we work and has been for every chapter in this section, so the games agreement above is described from trade reporting and the studio’s own announcement rather than from the union’s text. The clinic’s own site loaded fine. Go to Equity directly if a contract term matters to a decision you are making.
The method, which is the actual deliverable
The scripts are further down and they are free. This is the part that decides whether they do anything for you.
Reading a script aloud trains one thing, which is reading aloud. It is the single most common way to spend two years getting no better. The exercise is making a choice, and then changing it on demand, because that is what the job is.
Put the script face down and paraphrase it from memory, to a specific person. Not performing it — telling it. Then pick the text back up.
That exercise is not ours. It is the étude, from late Stanislavski, arriving independently in a recording booth about a century later.
Then do two more takes, changing one named variable each time. Faster. Warmer. Talking to one person instead of a room. That is what direction sounds like, and you are practising receiving it before anybody is there to give it.
On the scripts themselves, one claim we are narrowing. Ours are original and written for this page, so there is no copyright question and nobody to credit. They are also marked up for voice rather than for screen, which is a different convention from the way V.O. is written into a screenplay. We were going to imply that free script sites generally are scraped or a funnel to a paid course. We checked and that is not fair. The main ones are legitimate, with original or contributed copy, and one is a training company that also gives scripts away — which is a funnel, and is also six and a half thousand free scripts. The differentiator is real and it did not need the smear.
Ten voice over script examples, free to use
Five kinds of work, and two of each. The short one is an exercise with the variable to change written into it. The long one is what the job actually looks like when it arrives, casting brief and all.
“You have walked past this shop four hundred times. You have never once been inside. There is a man in there called Peter who has been mending shoes for thirty-one years and would very much like to meet you. He is open until six. The kettle is on.”
Take two: tell it to one person instead of a room. Take three: half a step slower.
Spec. Regional broadcast and digital, thirty seconds. Any gender, sounds thirty to forty-five. A real person rather than an announcer, talking to a friend across a table. Smile in the voice on the tag, then drop straight into a dry, fast legal read. No hard sell anywhere.
Nobody grows up dreaming about a savings account.
(beat)
You dream about the workshop out back. The spare room with the good light. The van with the bed in it and no fixed address.
At Harbour Row, we do not pretend to know what yours is. We just help you get there sooner.
No minimum balance. No monthly fee. No small print we would be embarrassed to read out loud.
(warm, settle, this is the tag)
Harbour Row Credit Union. Your money. Your plan.
(dry, fast, no colour — this is legal and it has to fit)
Federally insured by NCUA. Terms and conditions at harbour row dot com.
Spec. National brand film, sixty seconds. Sounds thirty-five to fifty-five. Low, close and unhurried, because you are remembering something rather than announcing it. Almost no energy at the top. The lift comes at the date and it is small. Do not sell the last line; let it land and get out.
The first thing you fix is never the thing that is broken.
It is a hinge. A tap that drips. A stair that has been complaining about you for eleven years.
(beat)
You fix it on a Saturday. Badly.
Then you fix it again on the Sunday, properly, because you went and looked it up.
And somewhere in that second attempt, something happens. The house stops being a place you live inside. It becomes a thing you are making.
(small lift — small)
Marchmont Hardware has been open since 1946. Four generations. Same corner.
We will not sell you the biggest one. We will sell you the right one, and then we will show you how to use it.
So bring us a photo. Bring us the broken part in a sandwich bag. Bring us the tap, and the eleven years.
(warm, settled, no push)
Marchmont Hardware. We will show you where it goes.
“Before we begin, one thing worth saying plainly. Nothing in this module is a test. You can go back, you can pause, and you can do it in whatever order suits you. What we are trying to get to by the end is that you can do this without checking the handbook. Let us start with the part everybody finds fiddly.”
Take two: warmer, as if you like them. Take three: brisker, as if they are busy.
Spec. Internal training module, warehouse operations. Neutral and authoritative but not cold: you are the person who has actually done this job, not the compliance department. Even pace, clean consonants, no sell whatsoever. Each marked slide is a separate audio file, so land the final word of each one and leave air. Around a hundred and forty words a minute, which is convention rather than a published standard — see the note further down this page.
Module Four. Working at height.
Falls remain one of the most common causes of serious injury in warehouse environments. Most of them do not happen at height. They happen on the second or third rung of a ladder, in the ninety seconds when somebody decided they did not need to go and fetch the right equipment.
(slide)
Before any work at height begins, ask three questions. Can this task be done from the ground? If it cannot, is the access equipment right for the job, and has it been inspected within the last twelve months? And finally — does anybody know that you are up there?
(slide)
Ladders are for short-duration, low-risk tasks only. If the job will take longer than fifteen minutes, or if it needs both of your hands, a ladder is the wrong tool. Use a podium step or a mobile tower.
(slide)
Never stand on the top two rungs. Never lean out beyond the stiles. If you cannot reach it, come down and move the ladder. Moving the ladder takes eleven seconds. A shoulder injury takes eleven weeks.
(slide — button prompt, lighter, invitational)
Select Continue to begin the knowledge check.
“Right. So. Technically the bridge is still there. Structurally it is still there. It is simply also, at present, in the river. Which I would argue is a different question entirely, and one we can discuss at length once we are on the other side of it.”
Take two: change nothing except how frightened he is. Take three: play him as somebody who has done this before.
Spec. Half-hour animated series, pilot. Character: BARNABY QUILL, a field mouse who has read the manual for everything and trusts none of it. Over-prepared, permanently one bad minute from panic, and underneath it genuinely brave. Bright and forward. Use your own voice pushed up, not a squeaky voice. Play the fear absolutely straight; the comedy is in the honesty of it, not in the pitch. The last two lines are the audition.
BARNABY: Right. Right! Everybody stay calm, because I am calm, and I am the benchmark.
(reading from a very small notebook)
Step one of the emergency protocol: identify the emergency. (beat) The emergency is that we are currently inside the emergency. Fine. Good. Excellent. Step one complete, we are ahead of schedule.
(the ceiling groans)
— Step two is optional.
(to himself, faster, unravelling)
I told them. I told them about the load-bearing acorn. I made a diagram. Nobody looks at the diagrams, Barnaby, they said. Oh, they will look at the diagrams now, won’t they, when we are all — (catching himself) — calm. Calm.
(one small brave breath. Suddenly quiet and completely steady.)
Okay. Hazel. Take the little ones and go left. I will hold the door.
(beat. Terrified. Entirely committed.)
I have read about doors.
Two lines of raised voice and one short cry, in that order: “Get down. GET DOWN. Move, move — go, I am right behind you!” then one wordless cry of effort.
Record it last. Three takes. Stop at the first change in your ordinary speaking voice. Warm down through a straw afterwards. Not thirty takes. This is the section we rewrote.
Spec. Action role-playing game. Character: THE WARDEN. Human, sounds fifty to sixty-five. Never raises his voice, never rushes, entirely certain he is the reasonable one in the room. Do not perform villainy. Perform reason. The monologue is a single quiet take and carries no vocal load at all.
THE WARDEN: You keep using the word free, as though you have checked what it costs.
(a step closer)
I have. Every night for thirty-one years, I have counted it out in bodies. Would you like the figure? No. You would not. You want the feeling.
(quiet, almost kind)
I was you, once. I stood in this exact room and I told a tired old man that he had built a cage and called it a city. He did not argue with me. He simply handed me the keys, and asked me to do better.
(beat)
And I have done better. Nobody starves. Nobody screams in the night. The price is that nobody chooses.
(final. Gentle. Absolutely final.)
Take the keys. Use them, even. But you will never put them down again — and that is the only promise I can make you, and the only true thing anyone in this city has ever said to your face.
The barks, and the rules from this page apply to them. This is the vocally stressful part, and it is the part the withdrawal above is about. Record them last, separately, three takes each, and stop at the first change in your ordinary speaking voice. Warm down through a straw afterwards. In a paid session this work is booked and supervised by the hour, and you have none of that here.
(alert, sharp) Behind you!
(shouted, across distance) Hold the line — hold it!
(light impact, short) Nnh —
(heavy impact, going down) Agh — no —
(exertion, a swing) Hah!
(death, very small, surprised) …oh.
Spec. Literary fiction, adult, first person. One listener, close, in a quiet room. Do not act it. Tell it. There are two voices in the passage; separate them with pace and placement rather than with accents. Working pace is about a hundred and fifty-five words a minute, which is the one figure on this subject a platform actually publishes. Record the whole thing in one pass and resist the urge to punch in.
My mother kept the good scissors in a drawer that did not open.
Not locked. Warped. You had to lift the handle and pull left and say something to it, and she was the only one who ever knew what to say, and I have thought about that more in the last four years than I have thought about almost anything else.
The scissors were for fabric. Cutting paper with them was, in the private taxonomy of our house, a moral failure — ranked somewhere between lying and leaving the immersion heater on.
On the last afternoon I ever spent in that kitchen, she was standing at the drawer with her back to me, and she said, without turning round:
(hers — flatter, drier, older)
Take them, then. You will only come back for them.
And I said: I do not want them.
And she said: No. But you will.
(beat — then back to the narrator, and let the pace settle)
They are in a tin on the shelf above my sink. They do not cut anything any more. I keep them the way you keep a phone number you cannot call.
Six full scripts with casting briefs attached had been written for this chapter and never rendered, because of a routing fault. They have been brought in here, and two lines in them had to be changed first.
The bark list carried the instruction this page withdraws — full effort, do not save your voice. It is gone, and the rules from the section above are printed in its place. And the audiobook brief quoted a pace of up to a hundred and sixty-five words a minute, a figure this page marks as a ceiling rather than a standard. It now says a hundred and fifty-five, which is the sourced one.
We are saying so rather than quietly correcting it, for the same reason the withdrawal above is on the page at all.
Can you use these for a demo
This will be the most-asked question on the page and the answer is no, for two reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the writing.
The first reason is timing
The principleA demo is earned rather than scheduled.
WhyA demo made before you can act is not a credential. It is a receipt, and it spends an introduction you only get once.
The second is that these are public
The problemAnybody can record them, and some of them will.
The consequenceA demo built from a page’s free scripts is copy a listener may have heard several times this month. Professional guidance on demo mistakes says the same thing about overused library copy.
What they are for instead
Use themFor practice, and for taking into a coaching session where somebody can hear you.
When you are readyThe copy for a demo should be chosen for you, by somebody who has actually heard you read.
Recording, and which numbers are actually sourced
There are four figures on this page that people quote constantly. Three are published by a platform and one is convention, and it is worth knowing which is which.
Grading the sources
This page needed a safety rewrite, and the correction that mattered most made the advice better rather than more frightening.
One thing we could not confirm at all. Whether Equity publishes its own vocal health guidance is unknown to us, because their site will not load from here. That is an absence in our checking rather than a finding about them, and we would rather draw the distinction than let it read as a criticism.
Where we differ from the standard account
Is there a limit on screaming sessions?
Commonly saidActors asked for one and never got it.
What we foundTwo hours, paid at the four-hour rate, in the American agreement since 2020. It does not cover you at home.
Should you give full effort on barks?
Commonly saidYes, including by us until today.
What we foundThat is a direction for a supervised room with a clock. Three committed takes teach what thirty do.
How dangerous is it really?
Commonly saidEither dismissed or catastrophised.
What we foundA dose problem. One episode usually settles with rest; repeated strain without recovery is what does lasting harm.
What does a British actor have?
Commonly saidNobody asks.
What we foundThin contractual protection, and a free clinical assessment service for performers that nobody in voice-over mentions.
Can you use free scripts for a demo?
Commonly saidThey are free, so why not.
What we foundBecause they are public, and because a demo is earned rather than scheduled.
Is reading scripts aloud practice?
Commonly saidIt is what everybody does.
What we foundIt trains reading aloud. The exercise is changing a choice on demand, which is what direction is.
Do you need a reflection filter?
Commonly saidEither essential or useless.
What we foundNobody has measured it properly. Absorption near the mic is the fix everybody agrees on.
Do one thing tonight. If you are going to record the shouting script, put it at the end of the session, do three takes, and stop at the first sign your ordinary speaking voice has changed. The professionals settled on two hours with a break every hour. Nobody is going to hold you to that at home, which is exactly why it is worth knowing.