Practice, practice, practice…and how to do it without spending a motza!

Okay, this is you!  You’ve wanted to get into voiceover for ages.  You’ve had some training, some studio experience and you’ve even put together a demo.

It’s all good!

You get the demo out there and…not much seems to be happening!

‘Quel Horror!’ you cry….’does this mean I’m crap?’

Well probably not, unless you just made a demo:

• Without knowing what you’d be good at,
• What kind of work your voice would get cast for,
• Knowing how to analyse a script and work out to approach it, or
• Submitted a demo that was…well, let’s just say…not showing you in your best light!

Or you might have said, ‘Okay goodo. Now that the demo’s done, I’ll just wait for those jobs to come rolling in’.

Truth is, they might not…come rolling in that is!

I’ve said it before…and here I go again.

It can take some time to attract attention, make an impact, or even a splash in voiceover.

When I first started, it was almost 4 years of staying focused on the prize – a voiceover career – before I could support myself from my earnings as a voice actor.

I did all kinds of strange little jobs to augment my income, but always made sure I was available when that call came in an I kept the passion going for what I wanted to do.

So here’s the question.  What are you doing while you’re waiting?

To keep learning how to become a voice actor you need to be doing something to stay connected and stay focused. 

You need to be constantly making a study of voiceover.  All it takes is a few hours a week, doing a few simple things…and making a habit of doing them.

Here’s some stuff to do:

• Listen to radio stations

It’s amazing how many people who want to work in voice over don’t listen to commercial radio, let alone the ad breaks.

It’s essential that you listen for who’s doing what.

Listen out for you.  As in, ‘I could be doing that ad’.

You also need to listen to radio stations you wouldn’t normally listen to, to see if there are opportunities for a voice such as yours at that station.

•  Watch TV Ads

But listen to what’s going on with the voice performance.

Remember voicing TV ads is different from radio. For more details on why and how go to this blog.

Don’t ‘mute’ the ad breaks, focus on the ads.  Ask yourself, why is this ad being played at this time?

Listen to who’s reading it, what kind voice, what kind of style.

How are they converting, what is sometimes very stylised language, into a meaningful message?

• Listen to other voice demos

You can go onto the voice agent websites to listen to what other voice artists are doing, that managed to get them representation.

You want to listen to what works with their performances and how they’re working to convey the right meaning in the script.

• Get more training

All of the above is really important, but you do need to understand what you’re listening for and how to incorporate that into your own work, when doing your analysis.

Voice over is not just about the voice. 

Of course that’s important but there are so many other elements that are more important in voiceover.

So, to keep engaged and learn more about the skills and techniques of voice acting, either before you’ve made a demo, while you’re waiting to get work, or even when you get work, you must stay connected and focused on it.

Honour that little voice in your head that keeps telling you this – ‘Resist the Usual’