Are You Teachable?

The key to finding voice over jobs lies in how well you market yourself!  The key to landing voice over jobs is your level of preparation and execution.  The key to preparation and execution lies in teachability.   Outstanding actors and actresses are outstanding because they listen to the director!  Even coaches get coaching.  I do!

Teachability determines success, especially in the voice over business. Successful voice over talents are directable.  They are active listeners who crave to learn and improve, willing to implement the direction given, and strong enough to put their personal opinions aside for the sake of learning something new and delivering what the client wants.

Some of the greatest rewards of being teachable include learning to see the script in a different light, correcting bad habits such as rushing the script and redundancy, and maintaining a humility that keeps one approachable and a pleasure with which to work.  I’ve learned that no one is ever too good to stop learning and those who think they are too good to learn are not that good!

Do you mimic the commercials you hear on the radio or TV?  What a great opportunity to practice and learn from others who have been cast! Additionally, practice reading all kinds of scripts, listen back to the audio, and record again.  It’s amazing what one can learn by simply doing that!  Also, take an improv class!  Aside from being a ton of fun, its great practice for thinking on your feet, releasing inner creativity, and really getting out of the comfort zone. Further, practice reading scripts that aren’t comfortable for you; it will make the easier ones better!

So how vital is having a quality coach and mentor in voice over work?   It’s a must!   Like learning an instrument, it takes patience, dedication and commitment.  The right coach and a teachable attitude is the difference between playing Jingle Bells and Beethoven’s 5th!

Are you teachable?

Popularity: 7%

If The Mic Isn’t Rockin’, Start Walkin’

When the mic is rockin’, don’t bother knockin’!  Okay, so what do you do if it’s just not rockin’ and you’re having a tough time getting it to come out right?  Instead of getting frustrated and stressed out, take a break and come back to it.

That’s right!  Go for a walk, turn up some music, make yourself a cup of green tea or take a power nap.  Fifteen minutes can do wonders!  While excessive napping doesn’t pay too well, either does excessive stress.  My personal favorite?  I go out and play football with my dog, Kaytee.

The point is to just break away from the studio – completely remove yourself and escape for a bit so that you can refresh!  If you force it to happen when it isn’t, your frustration will come across in the recording.  The voice is transparent and modulates to express our span of emotions.  Any frustration, anxiety, and stress will show through, stalling the flow, zapping the energy and enthusiasm from your voice.

It’s like a good major league pitcher who just doesn’t have his good stuff on a particular day.

So go ahead and break away!  You’ll come back to the studio refreshed, full of vibrance in your voice, and ready to deliver!

Popularity: 2%

Both Sides Of The Glass

Today’s guest blogger is Kara Edwards. Kara is a talented and successful voice actor who resides in Florida.

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘working from both sides of the glass’. For anyone not familiar with that phrase it describes (in relation to voice over) a person who works as a talent and an audio producer (the ‘glass’ being the wall that separates the talent and producer during a typical session).

I was so fortunate to have been trained many years ago as not just a voice actor, but also an audio producer. I spent several years producing radio shows- my job included producing liners, sweepers, features, commercials…you get the picture. I’ve always thought knowing both sides of the job helped me understand, as an actor, what the producer needed from me.

If you’ve ever read my blog before, you know I like to draw parallels between different parts of my life and voice acting. Recently, I had just such an occasion.

My photography instructor invited me to the studio this week to stand in as a live model for one of his other students who was learning about portraits. (I’m using the term ‘model’ lightly- I was really just a warm body) I jumped at the chance, because I always try and see the bigger picture. The way I figured it, I could listen to everything my instructor said to this other student and apply it to my own photography.

While I did learn a lot about the technical side of photography, what struck me was how important it was for the photographer and me, the talent, to be comfortable with one another. Here was a relationship in which we both wanted something from the other (both of us wanting the pictures to turn out well), and the best way to achieve this was to communicate clearly, and relax around one another. (The instructor pointed this fact out on more than one occasion!)

In voice over, we don’t always get to see the people we are working with. We don’t get to make eye contact and shake their hand. So, we have to find ways to communicate and relax while over the phone, over ISDN, or over e-mail. As voice talent, if we aren’t relaxed- it will show in our voice, just like stress will show in our face during a photo shoot.

So, how to relax and get comfortable with a stranger you can’t see? It’s easy- It comes down to something as simple as having the confidence to be yourself. If you are confident in yourself, the producer will be confident as well. When you are both confident, you can then establish trust- trust that the other will do their job to the best of their ability. With trust and confidence, magic can happen!

Now back to that ‘glass’ I mentioned earlier. Knowing how the audio will ultimately be shaped, being able to respond to producer lingo in an educated manner, offering suggestions when the director is ‘stuck’- all of these are examples of how having experience on both sides of the glass will make you a better voice talent.

Does this mean you have to be trained as a producer? No. But, taking an afternoon to go to a local studio to see how things are done will certainly help you as an actor! The more we understand about each aspect of the business, the more equipped we are to be wildly successful!

Kara Edwards-Voice Talent

Popularity: 1%

Can You Deal With The Stress?

Starting a business is one of the most stressful things you can do. It will affect you mentally, physically and emotionally. You need to be strong to deal with this kind of stress, and you need to have someone to turn to for support.

Are You a Survivor?

There are some people who always seem to make it in the end, regardless of what life throws at them. You need to be the kind of person whose response to things going wrong is to work harder and get it fixed, not someone who cries and goes into hiding.
Many entrepreneurs say that this, more than anything, is the secret of success. You need to be a ‘never say die’ kind of person. You need to be always ready to try again, no matter what gets thrown at you. Remember that it’s not when things start to go wrong that you fail – you haven’t failed until you’ve given up.

Be Prepared to Work Hard

If you’ve been doing a standard nine-to-five job, you’re probably used to a world where it’s someone else’s responsibility if the work doesn’t get done – you work as fast as you can for the hours you’re told to, and if it’s not done on time then it’s the manager’s fault for not hiring enough people. When you work on your own, though, there’s no-one to blame – the buck stops where it starts, with you.

Do you have a Start-up Plan?

A Startup Plan is basically the list of everything that must happen to get the business up and running from the initial idea to scouting locations to securing vendors to getting licenses to stocking the shelves to opening the doors to marketing and advertising to managing growth and on and on.

A Startup Plan is not as detailed as a business plan. It is essentially the “to do” list for starting a business, though it is every bit as important as a business plan because the Startup Plan serves as the blueprint for getting the business up and running.

Trying to launch a business without a Startup Plan is like taking a trip along a curvy, mountain road without a map, driving at high speeds, while wearing a blindfold. You will eventually arrive at some destination, but it’s likely to not be the destination you had in mind and your trip will be anything but smooth.

Create you startup plan with a simple spreadsheet and build out from there. Start by simply listing everything that you can think of that must be done to launch the business. Once you have the list break down each task into individual action items, assign each item to a responsible party and set a target completion date. A task without a deadline will not get done.

You Need to Satisfy The Customer

When you run a home business, you can’t afford to lose any customers. You need to always be nice to them, trying to meet their needs. You have to remember that you’re the most senior person they can talk to in this organization, and you have to act like it – when there’s no-one other than you to handle complaints, you have to either give in to customers at every opportunity or watch them take their business elsewhere.

Do You Really Love Doing Voice Overs?

If you don’t love what you do, then sooner or later you’re going to want to stop doing it – and when you run a home business, that’s difficult. Besides, you can’t run a home business if you’re always sitting and thinking about how great it’ll be when it’s the weekend. The only way to succeed in home business is to be absolutely sure that you really love what you’re doing. If you can think of another job you’d rather have, then you’re in trouble.

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Catherine Campion Makes Her Living Doing Voice Overs

Popularity: 12%

The Different Types Of Voice Over Work

Here are some of the different types of opportunities available to voice talent today.

Commercial: Contrary to popular belief this form of voice over is mostly for voice actors as it generally requires playing a role of a character. Playing a character does not always mean a funny voice it more often than not means playing a role of what may seem as an everyday person, more importantly a believable character. As much as we still hear many commercials with one announcer reading a script in an in your face “buy now” style, the more affective form and most widely used form of commercial is through creative writing and role playing by the voice actor.

Television Promo: This is one form of voice over that many people believe is easy, my theory is that it only looks easy because the people doing it are so good at their job they make it look easy. Reading a TV Promo script can be one of the most challenging forms of voice over as it requires the voice talent to become part of the pre produced promo. What many seem to forget is that TV Promo voice over’s are also selling a product. Whether it is the Prime Time News, a Drama Series or the Late Night Movie the aim of the VO is to make it a “must see”. There is an art to it and out of the select few who have gone on to be the familiar voices we trust on our television sets there is still only a handful who have mastered the art.

Narration: There are so many possibilities that can fall under the banner of Narration. It could be a documentary, corporate or training video, an audio tour guide at a museum or even interactive training with a new software package. One of the wonderful plusses of this type of voice work is that more often than not the clients are looking for someone who can sound pleasant and real while being engaging and understandable. This is not necessarily an easy feat and I will go into more detail about sounding real a little later. Nonetheless there are so many different possibilities and opportunities for this type of work it can sometimes be a great starting point for people.

Audio Book: This is probably the fastest growing industry in the voice over world and there are many voice professionals making a lucrative career out of reading audio books. There is an art to it of course and it can also be dissected into numerous categories. There are people who specialize in reading character driven fiction and there are those who read information driven non fiction and each is an art in itself.

Podcast: Believe it or not many of the podcasts you tune into are presented by hired voices. Quite often the person who has a message to get across and especially those who have a product to promote and sell will hire a voice that will present better than themselves. Like narration this voice will need to be pleasant and real and more importantly they will need to sound like the information is coming directly from them, this is in fact a huge part of voice over and voice acting as a whole and we will go into more detail shortly.

Radio Imaging: We all have favorite radio stations and more often than not we become very familiar with the voices that come on between the music reminding us what station we are listening to… and why. Like TV promo this quite often seems easier than it actually is. Remembering that a large selection of the voices who do these sweepers and station id’s are also the producers of all the fancy effects that go along with them. Radio or voice imaging as it is widely known requires a voice that generally pierces through the music on our radios, sending a clear message without sounding offensive. One of the bonuses of this form of voice over is that there are a multitude of radio stations worldwide and quite often a collection of them are looking for a fresh new sound at one time. If you can become that sound then you can make a nice little income, well at least until the stations decide to reformat again.

Obviously this is not the whole voice over industry but rather it’s an overview of a large chunk of the available work for voice professionals.

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Having the Right Business Mindset

When building the right business infrastructure, you must think strategically or have the right business mindset. Every business decision you make today affects your voice over business today, tomorrow, and in the future – so become a good strategist. A good strategist looks at all facets of their voice over business today in context of where they are trying to go. A good strategist reacts to problems positively instead of negatively. A good strategist also welcomes change and turns it into an opportunity. A good strategist can react quickly with the unexpected.

Here are four examples of having the right business mindset:

1. Having the right business mindset is knowing that the purpose of business is to make money. Sometimes your passion or hobby is just that, but when you grasp onto that passion and acquire a higher level of development, as you will as a member of the Voice Over Club, you will position yourself to acquire a higher level of income.

2. Having the right business mindset means developing your own style. As a member of the Voice Over Club, we will equip you with all of the tools in which to achieve your destiny or your dreams. However, this is YOUR voice over business, so you need to take time to think, document, research your own style to make you truly unique.

3. Having the right business mindset is understanding strategy and implementing it into your business practices. These days we tend to focus on the day-to-day mundane tasks and deadlines, solving short-term problems, and implementing marketing tactics that aren’t a good fit for our businesses. Strategy concerns itself with what’s ahead, looking at where you’re going and how to get there. Thereby, making you ask the question–”is this task in line with where the company is going and/or where I want it to go?”

4. Having the right business mindset is understanding your emotional ties to your business. Understanding the emotional ties to your business will allow you to break through your personal barriers that prevent you from doing what you say you’re going to do and also doing what you want to do. The next time you get emotional in your business jot down what you’re feeling and what triggered it, this is how you begin to recognize which emotions are keeping you from doing good business.

A good strategist has the right business mindset.

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Practicing To Become Excellent

Whether you’re a professional voice actor, or someone who is just breaking in to this wacky business, it’s important to develop and maintain your performing skills. You’ve no doubt heard stories about concert pianists who practice 8 hours a day – every day – in order to stay in top form. As voice-over artists, we need to do the same thing.

Ours is a performing craft, and we must be diligent about learning new skills and staying on top of the skills we have mastered. We need to constantly improve our talents for creating character voices, script interpretation, listening, responding believably, and expanding our marketing skills. Most voice coaches will recommend at least one to two hours of reading out loud each day to maintain your skills.

This means setting aside a specific period of time each day during which you will focus exclusively on developing your voice-over skills. This is in addition to your regular study of what other voice-artists are doing by listening to commercials, watching TV or animation, and taking classes. Most professionals constantly practice their technique by experimenting with new interpretation ideas and attitudes, and with every script they will explore different angles for interpreting the copy.

Practice is the process of learning and refining the skills you use as a performer – and it’s a process that never ends. For voice-over, practice requires working with a script to understand its message and develop an interpretation. The goal is to build an arsenal of performing tools and techniques that become automatic to the point where you don’t have to think about what you are doing.

To reach that goal, you must deliver the copy out loud – not silently in your head. Practicing out loud is the only way you can really find an interpretation that works. If you develop an interpretation by reading a script silently, it’s almost guaranteed that when you deliver the lines out loud for the first time – it will sound completely different from what you thought it would sound like.

You’ll save a lot of time and effort by working the copy out loud from the very start. Constant practice develops the habit of exploring new ways of interpreting a script, finding the techniques that work for you, and building on that experience to become a more excellent voice-actor. Be excellent! Keep practicing!

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So, What’s Your Job?

Here’s a great perspective on what we do by guest blogger, Kara Edwards!

Last week, following my photography class, I was invited to join my instructor and a few fellow photographers for lunch. At one point during the meal, conversation turned to business, and the different aspects of marketing, networking, etc.

We all agreed that one of the most difficult parts of owning a business is prospecting for new clients. We admitted that we had all lacked a time or two in our follow up with potential business.

I remarked that as creative professionals, 90% of our time seems to be spent trying to get work, while 10% of our time is spent actually doing the work (something I’ve said many times before!).

That’s when Chris (yes, that’s his real name) explained a different way of looking at things. He said that prospecting for clients IS the job. All of the calling, e-mailing, researching, networking, marketing, advertising, accounting, paperwork, etc- that’s what our job is. Now, getting the work? That’s one of the perks of doing business!

Since I had never really looked at my business from that angle, I thought it was important to share. Perhaps you’ve been looking at it all wrong as well? I often say, “I love my job!” What I mean is, I enjoy the perks. From now on, I plan to change my attitude and embrace the job as a whole.

So- starting first thing this Monday morning, I am excited to get to work! And, I’ll make a point to relish the ‘perks’ that come my way!

Kara Edwards-Voice Actor

Popularity: 1%

Volunteering Your Voice

Volunteering your voice is a great way to give back to the community!

Popularity: 4%

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