Short voiceover is one of the few task types where the deliverable is genuinely simple and the contract around it is not.
What to put in the public brief
- Language, and the accent or market if it matters
- Approximate script length in seconds
- The audio floor: quiet room, no background music, phone is acceptable
- Where the audio will be used, in plain terms
- Explicitly whether synthetic voice training is or is not included
Keep the script private. It is usually the campaign.
What to put in the private instructions
Give the script and one line of context
Who is being spoken to, and what they should feel. Direction like "warm but not salesy" means little; "you are telling a friend something useful you just found out" is actionable.
State the audio conditions plainly
"A carpeted room with the window shut, phone about a hand's width away." Non-professionals do not know what a good room sounds like, and this is cheaper than rejecting takes.
Ask for two takes, not ten
Different pacing on the second. Ten takes produces fatigue, and the tenth is reliably worse than the second.
Repeat the rights terms where they will read them
Consent given in the brief is worth more than consent inferred from a payment.
Proof worth requiring
Ask for
The raw audio file, unprocessed, at the highest quality their phone records, plus both takes.
Do not ask for
Noise reduction or EQ applied by the worker. Amateur processing is destructive and irreversible; you can always clean a clean file, but you cannot recover an over-gated one.
When this task type is the wrong tool
If you need broadcast quality, a consistent voice across a long campaign, or an on-camera performance, this is not it — hire a professional with a treated room.
If the voice must match footage you already have, a UGC product demo recorded with sound is usually better than a voiceover laid over silent video, because the room tone will not match and audiences hear it without knowing why.