0862 – Don’t Forget Your Eyes

2023.05.12 – 0862 – Don’t Forget Your Eyes

Your eyes and ears

Most voice trainers overlook these critical body parts and the role they play in helping you get a better voice, but let’s spend a few moments doing just that here and now with a few considerations.

Eyes

Without stating the obvious, and with acknowledgement to the awesome voice actors who are blind and read their scripts with braille[1], eyes help you do your job. Not just clearly reading the words that you have to say, but also the notes you have made alongside the text with added instructions, and following what others are saying so you know when to start. Sharp visual focus will reduce verbal slips and so increase your confidence, and so your voice.

It’s not purely ‘seeing’. Your eyes need to track and dart across the page and glance ahead to see your next cue too.

I won’t go into details about eye-health apart from mentioning:

·        Good diet

·        Good glasses

·        Rest from screens

·        Blinking to keep them moist (blinking stimulates the lubricating secretion of your tear ducts and spread them across your eyes) and the possible use of eye heat masks to relieve eye fatigue and soreness.

·        Refocusing at different distances

Sleep - Six-and-a-half to eight-and-a-half hours is the healthy range for most adults and it not only benefits your eyes but also your whole body. A tired body, perhaps caused by a broadcaster’s shift work, is a tired voice! Weariness can drag down the muscles of the face, put a sigh in the voice and extinguish any sparkle.

[1] Ryan Kelly is an actor in the BBC radio serial “The Archers” – and happens to be blind: https://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/interviews/13_questions_ryan_kelly.shtml#:~:text=Blind%20actor%20Ryan%20Kelly%20is,Radio%204%20soap%2C%20The%20Archers. “A lot of the other actors read their lines, lucky things! I have to get the script emailed to me so I can edit it down to my part and learn it by listening. It ends up being in computer speak though, like a robot, which can be quite funny. In the old days I had to have someone read it out to me, and once I learned completely the wrong part, which was very embarrassing.”

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