It’s about finding a sound that suits the job. Like a well-tailored suit fits a particular physique, a well-cast voice fits the words and the images of the story it tells. It brings context to the content.
Case in point: Philip Bosco narrating The Crash of 1929 for The American Experience Series televised on PBS.
Give a listen and do get past the introduction. You will be rewarded with a compelling 50 minute recounting about an historic 20th century national financial crisis; perhaps, even a heads up for an early 21st century replay?
Been enjoying Ken Burns’ latest film airing on PBS, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. His choice of subject matter ensured an audience, and his production delivered a masterpiece by treating the history, the people, and the parks with the depth each deserves in a rich style that is signature Burns.
Wow!
Part of the success of the film derives from the wonderful narration. Accompanying dramatic natural landscapes and interesting historical photographs, Peter Coyote weaves a spellbinding story spiced by character voice overs provided by some well-known and not-so-well-known film and voice over actors. Here is a list of the credits:
Narrator
PETER COYOTE
With
ADAM ARKIN
TOM BODETT
PHILIP BOSCO
TRINA CARMODY
TIM CLARK
KEVIN CONWAY
ANDY GARCIA
MURPHY GUYER
TOM HANKS
DEREK JACOBI
GENE JONES
JAMES KYSON LEE
JOHN LITHGOW
JOSH LUCAS
CARL LUMBLY
AMY MADIGAN
CAROLYN McCORMICK
ALBERT McFADYEN
YUMI MIZUI
CAMPBELL SCOTT
LEE STETSON
MARCUS LOVELL SMITH
GEORGE TAKEI
JOHN TRUDELL
SHO WADA
ELI WALLACH
SAM WATERSTON
Someday, God-willing, let me move an audience with my voice over skills the way these pros move me.
You can visit the PBS link in the first paragraph and play the videos to hear Peter Coyote and the other voice actors.
You may recall Susan Boyle as the surprise wonderstar on Britain’s Got Talent earlier this year. An unknown singing talent who, when given the opportunity, stepped up and performed to international acclaim.
Talent. Opportunity. Performance. Success.
Did you happen to see her guest appearance on the finale of America’s Got Talent this week? She did a single from her debut album, an old Rolling Stones classic, Wild Horses.
Wow. What a performance!
Each of us has natural talents. Each of us is given opportunities in life. Each of us will discover and test our gifts to one extent or another, privately or publicly.
Talent and opportunity aside, it’s our desire, determination, courage, and resilience that mostly decide if we develop our innate gifts, for profit or even just the simple joy of sharing our special skills with others.
Anything to be learned from Ms. Boyle’s adventure, then? Here’s my learning: Keep working at it.
If you sing, keep singing. If you draw, keep drawing. If you do voice over, keep auditioning. You never know when Fate will present you with a special gift of her own: Your Big Moment.
Yikes!! Did you see Serena Williams meltdown on prime time television Saturday night?? In the heat and waning minutes of a tough US Open tennis semi-final, in which Serena was behind and about to lose her match to Kim Clijsters, she lost her composure and berated a line official after a call. If you believe the on-site accounts of her tirade, Ms. Williams dropped the F-Bomb and threatened the official with bodily harm. What is most disturbing is not her emotional outburst, though. It is her lack of remorse and feeling any need to apologize.
But allow me a moment to address prevention.
Since starting voiceover and editing my tracks with Audacity Recorder/Editor Software before submitting work to clients and auditions to prospective clients, I’m fully appreciative of the value of editing. Moreso, I’m acutely aware of the “real-time editor” in my everyday life: Mr. Brain. We know words are powerful. We know words affect both speaker and listener. We know you can’t take words back. All good reasons to “engage brain before operating mouth” as the saying goes. Mr. Brain can be a tough editor if consulted by Mr. Mouth prior to pronouncement.
Clearly, Serena failed to use her real-time editor before confronting the line judge. I fail. You fail. It happens; to my point:
Grace is often elusive in the pressure of the moment. We are human, after all. But Grace has no time limit. She can be found on reflection. We are empowered to say, “I’m sorry” for a reason. We are capable of amends well after any event in question.
It is only a matter of Mr. Ego consulting with Mr. Brain, in search of his always generous cousin, Miss Grace.
Note: In a second statement today, Serena Williams apologized, gracefully.
“Yikes! You are going to produce your own Demo Tracks?”
This is the reaction most Voice Over professionals have to the idea of “do-it-yourself” demos. It is considered a blunder.
As a trained studio painter, I enjoy taking an idea from concept through to a finished product. Voice over is not so different. Truth is, part of the fun of doing voice over for me is experiencing this creative process. Deciding how to interpret the script is only part of it. Selecting the music to support the voice over, and engineering the mix to produce a high quality audio track is both interesting and challenging to me. Creating my own Demos fulfills this artistic need, and gives me control of the end result, much like producing a drawing or painting.
As practice, made a few “full script” demos earlier this year, including a couple with music and sound effects, for a commercial, promo and an audio book. Booked two jobs based on these demos, in part.
Just signed a license to gain access to an extensive music library, so I’m ready to experiment with “segmented demos” that highlight 4 or 5, ten to fifteen second, “partial scripts.” My goal is to produce a new 90 second Commercial Demo, a 60 second Commercial Demo version, and 90 second Narration, Audio Book and Promo Demos.
This will be a challenge, will involve learning new skills, and will take some time. Lots of failures and frustration; in the end, success and lots of satisfaction. All part of the creative process. All part of my personal voice over experience. All part of the fun.
Here it is July 29, and this is my first post of the month. Yikes!
The season distracts me. It calibrates my circadian cycle and fortifies me against darker days. Summer recharges my battery.
Something about the strength of the sun. Something about the fresh morning air. Something about the energy around me. People, all out and about, enjoying the summer weather, doing their favorite summer things at their favorite summer places. The beach. The lake. The mountains. For the less adventurous, the pool, the patio, the porch. Golf. Tennis. Hiking. Camping. Swimming. Fishing. Gardening. Picnics. Outdoor Chores. You name it. Lots to do; hardly enough time. Before we know it, the leaves turn, the winds blow, the trees get naked, and the snow falls. We hibernate in heated homes for much of the winter, venturing out to work, to buy groceries, to see friends in their heated homes, to eat meals in heated restaurants.
Hard to get your mind focused on a subject worth posting about in the midst of summer days.
Same goes for voice over. Auditions, but fewer of them. The summer beckoning with recreation. As the Good Book says, “To every thing there is a season…”
So, get distracted. Enjoy your summer. Recreate. Most of the rest… can wait.
First we dream, then we do. One without the other is lesser.
After several months, Coach seemed to tweak my training sessions. We still spent the bulk of our time on my practice recordings and her critiques, but each hour now included a discussion about what it would take for me to compete and succeed at my new dream to be a Voice Over Actor.
Coach talked about the changes in the business brought about by technology; how the internet opened up VO work to anyone with a microphone and a personal computer. It was no longer the exclusive domain of agents and their actor, broadcaster, and voice over clients. A new marketplace was growing, and voice seekers looking for VO talent were increasingly posting jobs on voice over internet sites, inviting auditions. You didn’t have to wait for the phone to ring. You could help yourself.
Coach used the experiences of others to make her points, and the consistent theme throughout was self-motivation. Those who failed depended solely on others for their voice over work, and those who succeeded made it happen largely by their own initiative. “The winners hustle” Coach said.
It was hard to miss her message. My voice over experience would be decided by my own actions or inertia, and my desire to succeed would drive my behavior. Reminded me of a famous baseball player.
Pete Rose was part of the Cincinnati RedsBig Red Machine. His dream was to be a great ball player. Rose ran out every ground ball. He dove for line drives. He attacked home plate shoulder first. Pete Rose was a self-motivated player. Whether his team was winning or losing, he played hard every game, and got his uniform dirty. They called him “Charlie Hustle.”
Desire, full of promise, looks you square in the eye and asks, “How bad do you want it? What are you willing to sacrifice to get it? How hard are you willing to work?” All questions we confront in our lives whenever there is some challenge between us and a significant goal.
We will get help along the way, of course. Most of us stand ready to help each other fulfill our dreams. It feels good to help others succeed. It is hard-wired into us.
But truth is, if our dreams are achieveable, it is mostly up to us to do the achieveing, assisted or not. Great success in life may be the result of a team effort, but we still have to play our position.
In my VO Dream, the crowd is rooting for me, helping me along. Tommy Hustle is playing hard, and his uniform is dirty.
As a skilled singer can demonstrate, the voice is a musical instrument, capable of producing magnificent sounds, evoking rich moods and emotions.
The voice operates the same for voice over as it does for singing. Air passing the vocal folds in the throat is then shaped by the larynx, tongue, mouth, and lips, producing sound.
So, I was pleased when Coach told me there was a natural musicality to my voice over reading. Little did I realize she would soon grow weary of my song.
“You’re starting to sound the same on every read” Coach said after several training sessions.
Coach didn’t care for my pentameter either. “There’s not enough variety to your cadence or your beat” she said. “It’s sing-songy.”
It was time to change my tune.
“Come on, gimme some Jazz” Coach said.
Voice over as Jazz. Now, there was an interesting idea. Couldn’t play any Jazz on my voice instrument worth a damn yet, but I understood the concept.
Months later, I was relating the story to Coach’s Sound Engineer. “After awhile, when you look at the words, you see notes. You see music” the Sound Man told me.
It was one of my most valuable lessons.
In voice over, the words are given to us by the copy writer, and the Voice Talent needs to hit the right notes in the right chord to create the intended emotion or mood. The trick is for the Voice Actor to see the music in the copy.
The voice as an instrument, creating music, evoking emotions and moods, got me thinking about how I sound to other people in my everyday life, away from prepared copy. In real life, Mr. Mood is the copy writer. He writes the script of what words I say and how I say them.
We all have our own Mr. Mood, and write our own copy. We all play our own voice instrument. And, the music we play evokes emotions and impacts all the other Mr. Moods we encounter in our day. It’s the power of our unique voice.
Our own brand of Jazz. It’s what the people in our lives hear from us.
The term The Invisible Hand was referenced by Adam Smith, an 18th century Scottish philosopher, in a late book of his work, The Wealth of Nations.
It had to do with the consequences of risk aversion in some merchant traders who preferred to trade locally rather than in foreign markets, for their own security.
Nowadays, his metaphor is assigned to all manner of things, good or bad, economic or not.
Some say Mr. Smith was a deist who also believed a benevolent God steers the Universe to maximize our happiness; that the world is pretty much perfect, all of us happy, but our nature makes us think we will be happier if we are wealthier; leading us to work to become richer through “the mechanisms of exchange and the division of labor.”
Remember those security-conscious merchants? Presumably, an invisible hand pushes them unintentionally beyond their borders in pursuit of greater wealth, and consequent heightened feelings of happiness. For my purposes, let’s assume this is true.
What does this have to do with voice over?
As I was waiting for my lesson with Coach one day, it occurred to me only months earlier I was plenty happy, retired from the world of work, minding my own business, enjoying the good life.
Then, bam.
I’m back at the Morristown Train Station in the early morning, buying tickets, commuting a couple hours to and from Manhattan Island, and walking the Big Apple Canyons, again.
As Coach counseled at our first meeting, voice over is not a hobby. Not if you want to succeed at it. It is work, plain and simple. Voice over requires daily attention and honest effort.
And so, it appears some invisible hand is hard at work on me, nudging me beyond my borders and through the thickets of the Voiceover Forest. Simply doing its job, I suppose.
Can’t wait to experience those blessed, blissful, joyous sensations ascribed by some to Mr. Smith’s ideas. And, the abundance and prosperity in store. Just imagine.
Back in my working days, one of our most successful Sales Executives gave his new recruits what he called his ABC Speech.
The memory came to me as I was thinking about an early training session with Coach. I recounted for her a conversation with a friend who asked if he would ever hear my voice on national television.
“And?” Coach queried me without posing a question, demonstrating both the power of inflection and teaching by example.
“I told him, “Too soon to say.”
“Wrong answer” said Coach. “In this business, you have to think you are the schitz.” Let’s assume my spelling is incorrect and Coach was not schooling me with a Yiddish slang word.
“You have to walk into an audition like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t” she continued. “And when you’re finished, you have to look like you nailed it.”
“Confidence is everything. Let ‘em hear it in your voice. Be the schitz” she said.
Didn’t need to look up the word to get her meaning, but did today out of curiousity. The Oxford Dictionary Online produced no results, so consulted a more likely source.
There it is, definition #7 in the Urban Dictionary. Synonymous with shidizles, so the book says. Gotta love a lady who stays current with the kids.
Coach’s word for swagger seems a natural outcome of my former colleague’s ABC Speech.
Attitude. Belief. Commitment.
That success starts in your head. That success flows from your heart. That success derives from your determination.
And after you succeed at what is important to you, an abiding confidence accompanies you into any room of your choosing. You can just swagger on in like you own the place.
Sometimes, we make hard things harder than they need to be. Often times, succeeding at hard things can be as simple as Attitude, Belief, and Commitment.
Whether or not you decide to swagger after you succeed is purely a personal choice.
Voice Over Actor, Aspiring was never much of a dancer. Imagine me either too inhibited to fully let go, or too free a spirit to follow a routine when my better judgment fails to keep me firmly planted in my seat, sitting still.
Come to discover, voice over is a lot like dance. As a voice actor, you follow a script, much like a dancer follows prescribed steps. You infuse your reading with energy and emotion, like a skilled dancer pours into a performance. And, most importantly, both voice over and dance require freedom and discipline practiced simultaneously. Oxymoronic at least, a worthy challenge at best.
Though never much of a dancer, chances are I’d be adept at the Latin ballroom classic, Cha Cha.
You know the one. One step forward, two sliding steps sideways, one step back. Rinse and recycle, in reverse.
As with most complex skills, voice over improvement is incremental. After a gain in technique, performance increases but then plateaus like dancing the Cha Cha, one step forward, two steps sideways, one step back, until more practice and new learning take the voice actor to a higher level.
One of these days, Voice Over Actor, Aspiring is going to give up ballroom dance steps altogether. Gonna get me a Big Hat and some Stripes and “busta move” instead, and learn the voice over equivalent of “da advanced hip hopFunk Move.”
The late John Denver wrote a metaphor for life. It applies readily to my voice over training as well. This particular day, Coach was unimpressed with my performance. She was taking the chisel to me.
“You’re just saying the words” she said. “You sound unfamiliar with what you’ve already read. Build on the copy. You have to speak with experience and read with knowledge. Let the listener hear it in your voice.”
Coach explained when you mention anything a second time or more in voice over copy, the new reference must build on the previous mention. It must sound familiar.
She suggested the trick was to “read ahead” and “grab the next several words or a phrase” so when you come to say it, there is no surprise. There is knowledge, instead. You are able to frame it with an inflection of familiarity.
Likewise, this is true when you read something in the copy that requires an unspoken reference to something mentioned earlier in order to make sense or give it the proper import or context.
Building blocks.
On my good days, Coach is cutting new facets and polishing up my ability. On my bad days, Coach is chipping away at my rocky efforts trying to help me reveal my talent.
Gem or rock, “on” day or “off” day, the potential for learning something valuable always exists. Some days just require a different approach and little more effort, perhaps.
That day, Coach was a sculptor patiently shaping a stone, and doing her best to bring out the builder in me.
If you’re living, you’re breathing. If you’re breathing and you’re lucky, you’re able to speak. And, if you’re able to speak, some of it will be in public.
My public speaking started as a kid in The Great Books Program,discussing some assigned text at a local library with a handful of other grade school hostages, purely for parental entertainment, progressed to platform training for several years as an occupation, and ended with requisite remarks to gathered coworkers in my management jobs. You’d think I might have mastered how to speak and breathe at the same time, wouldn’t you?
You would be wrong.
Didn’t take long in my voice over training to discover I was reading copy without any thought to my breathing. The first several attempts at reading long narrative passages left my voice sounding weaker as the script went on, and me wanting more air in mid sentence.
Not only was I breathing into my upper chest instead of engaging my diaphragm through my belly, I was not regulating my breathing in conjunction with the script.
Fact is, voice over takes my breath away. It requires planning and rehearsal. Marking the script with the “breaks” for breathing avoids my tendency to keep talking until there is no more air. Gotta have air to make noise. Gotta make noise to do voice over.
Living. Breathing. Speaking. Easy to practice without much forethought as to what we are doing and why we are doing it, what we are breathing and why we are breathing it, what we are speaking and why we are speaking it.
Before you know it, just like voice over, you’re all balled up and out of air.
Great word, precious. What is precious, is highly valued. What is highly valued, is not to be wasted.
Traveling to and from NYC for voice over lessons created two hours of serious down time. Accustomed to reading on the train during my commuter days, I slipped back into this old habit easily. Bought the 2008 edition of the anthology, The Best American Short Stories, and enjoyed reading several. Then it dawned on me. There was a better use of this precious time.
Paying for voice over lessons with a top VO Coach who was generous in her observations, comments and suggestions about how to improve my skills, why not tape the sessions? Review each lesson on the ride home; review it again on the way into the next session to get mentally “prepared to learn.” This may seem elemental to you, but Voiceover Actor, Aspiring can be a little slow on the uptick.
Found a SONY digital recorder the size of a butane lighter for less than $40 at Best Buy. Couple AAA batteries and I was in business. Coach had no objection to me taping our sessions. The payoff was immediate on the first ride home. Reviewed my lessons many times since as a refresher on the basics and to rehear Coach’s comments. Invaluable.
In one session, Coach said I was treating the entire copy as too precious. There’s that word again.
“If everything sounds precious, then nothing is precious. You fail the copy writer.” If Coach were a Southern Girl, she might have made a pun and told me I was making a “precious mess” of the copy.
As a Voice Actor, she explained, my job is to find the high value words and messages, and to give them the currency they deserve in my reading.
Got me thinking about all the parts of my life that are precious to me. People and things to be given the currency they deserve. People and things not to be wasted. People and things to be protected against a precious mess. Probably a short story in there. If only there was more time.
Early in my voice over training, Coach helped me understand that a personal attribute I always believed to be a strength was really a liability and a hurdle to learning voice over or any other endeavor.
“Why are you making that face?” she asked.
Coach was referring to my I Can’t Believe I Did That face. It is a head-shaking look of disapproval that often follows my failures. The same puss I make after missing a short birdie putt. Call it my signature expression whenever I screw up something important.
“You are too hard on yourself” Coach said. She was right. My desire to be perfect had given Mr. Subconscious the role as my harshest critic instead of my biggest fan.
Lots of ways to interpret and read a piece of copy. There is no one right or perfect way. And all VO professionals make mistakes reading copy on occasion. Laugh out loud bloopers aside, most pros correct an error quickly and move on without missing a beat or making a comment about their performance at all, error-free or not.
It was time to change the script and give Mr. Subconscious a supporting role to the lead actor, me.
The answer had to do with focusing on the copy instead of the voice inside my head as I read. Took a few sessions to build a better habit, and Mr. S still has role confusion from time to time, but I’m on the road to recovery.
When I was listening to myself read a promo copy for Coach, it sounded okay. Until she played it back to me. Deja vu.
No lift offs. No landings. No energy. Just one slow taxi down the runway. Never got off the ground. Coach offered little in the way of critique.
“Do it again.”
And so it goes for a solid hour. I record a promo or commercial. We listen. Coach makes observations and suggestions. Then, Coach speaks the same command at least once for each piece of new copy. Her tone is always encouraging.
“Do it again.”
A long ago graduate school lesson comes to mind. Adults learn best by doing. So, it only stands to reason if we “Do it again” we learn better. Coach must have read the same textbook.
Call it repetition. Call it practice. Doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s how we learn any complex skill.
It’s how we learned to memorize our multiplication tables. It’s how we learned to read and write, and how we learned to ride a bike. It’s how I will learn to do voice over and sound like I’m talking to someone instead of reading words off a piece of paper.
Aren’t these familiar questions we ask at times in life?
When Coach told me early in my training we needed to find my voice over “archetype”, it seemed like another opportunity for self-discovery and re-invention. Turns out I was right about the former, not so much about the latter.
“Agents” she said, “do not want versatility. “
Coach explained voice over agents group talent by category. Traditional Announcer, Character Actor, Young Edgy Smart Alec, are examples. This allows the agent to readily match a voice talent to a client job.
“Knowing your voice identity and understanding how it fits in the mix of types is what enables you to work on developing a personal style within your category” she continued.
And personal styles are what distinguish the talent, one from the other. It all made sense.
“So, let’s find your niche.”
After several readings of different kinds of copy, Coach suggested I was a Regular Guy Next Door, with attributes of a 30 Something Storyteller and Lite Announcer Type, peppered by Dark/Edgy Bad Boy potential.
Apparently, in voice over you need a primary identity, but it is okay to be a little bit crazy.
Hearing voices, archetypes, multiple identities. The fog is lifting. The truth is bared. This voice over gig is sick.
Which makes it possible that maybe over time and with some work, Young Edgy SmartAlec will show up one day out of the blue and want to join my team, too! Who knows?
Not the hallucination of voices that torment the psychotic, or the voices of people you chat with on your cell, and not the voice you hear inside your head when you are having a one-sided conversation.
I’m talking about voice overs.
After Coach judged I could make a go of voice over, my hearing grew acutely tuned to the voices that accompany commercials, promos, and public service announcements. They are everywhere on radio, television, and the internet.
But what does a voice sound like? And what does a voice look like?
A couple of years ago, NPR Commentator Brian McConnachie asked listeners to describe their impressions of famous voices in a series, Vocal Impressions. Talk about an “aha” moment for a voice over rookie. A quick read of the descriptions of Mick Jagger, Eleanor Roosevelt and Elvis Presley makes clear that voices – and voice overs – touch the experiences of listeners.
It is easy to recognize this skill in the professionals who book the bulk of local ads, national campaigns and narration. Their voices evoke our imagination and call out old memories.
So when you are hitting the fridge during the ads between shows, transfixed in front of the plasma screen I sit, hearing voices and listening carefully for the magic, anxious to cast my own spell soon, and wondering how others might describe my sound, someday.
[If you are coming into this real-life adventure late and didn't start from the beginning, let me set the stage for you. I'm in the office of a famous NYC voice over coach who will evaluate my potential for the work. Just finished my first read, and I'm upbeat].
“Hey! Not bad!” Coach said with a grin. “Let’s listen.” She played the recording of my reading. Faster than it took to record the copy, and a millisecond into hearing it played back, Mr. UpBeat gave way to his cousin, Mr. UpChuck. Yikes!! Was that monotone really me? My voice sounded flat and slow. Way flat and way slow.
“Not too good” I said.
“Why do you say that?” Coach asked? “No one is a natural at voice over. You need training to do it.”
She came up beside me and took a pen to the copy sitting on the lectern next to the mic. “Before you audition or record copy, identify the purpose and the audience” she said. “What point of view will you bring to the copy? What opinion about the message will the listener hear in your voice?”
Point of view? Opinion? There was more to this voice over stuff than I imagined.
Coach scribbled notes on the page and explained a lift-off and landing, the turn and the tag, marking examples in the text. She talked about the importance of saying the client’s name or product in the recap “with love in your voice. Let them hear you smile.”
“It’s never about you” Coach continued. “It’s always about the copy. It’s about doing service to the copy writer.”
After a couple more readings and more conversation, I saw body language cues our Evaluation Session, timed at one hour, was about to end. I screwed up my courage and asked the inevitable question. “So, what do you think?”
With no discernible hesitation, Coach rendered her verdict. “You can do this” she said. “It will take some work, but you can book jobs.”
“Tell me, how did you end up here?” asked Coach. I explained about Lucy and her reference to Coach’s reputation “as one of the top VO instructors in the business,” and someone who could evaluate my voice over potential.
“And, what do you want to accomplish in voice over?” Coach asked?
“Don’t need to work. Don’t want to work full-time” I said. “Just want to work at it to supplement my income.”
Oh, the naivete…
Coach explained voice over is highly competitive. “Everyone thinks they can do voice over, and it’s not true.” She talked about learning the craft, cutting a demo, and shopping it around to get an agent. “There’s plenty of work available, but most of the VO talent who make money “at it” hustle and work hard.”
“Let’s hear your voice.” She handed me a page of copy. “Read this for me. Into the mic.”
So, I stood and moved to the microphone. Coach pushed a button at her desk, and cued me to begin. Real copy, only a couple lines. An Orange Juice commercial.
FLORIDA OJ
Sometimes Mom’s need a little help getting their families going… That’s why Floriday Orange Juice should be part of every morning…. Florida Orange Juice….The best start under the sun.
So I read the words, creeping deeper into the Voiceover Forest, oblivious.
Months later it occurs to me, OJ was instructive copy for my first read; both a simile for voice over and a reminder of what brings life to words. Just as an orange may look good, a voice may sound good, but it’s what comes from the inside that gives rise to the value of each. In voice over, as with oranges, it’s all about The Juice.
As if the competition isn’t tough enough for a newcomer, the first thing you discover in The Voiceover Forest is the Voice Talent is grounded in acting and broadcasting. This is especially true of the major markets on either Coast. We are called Voice Actors for a reason (more about this when we get deeper into the woods).
The Theatre District, around Broadway and Times Square, is the heart of the performing arts in NYC. Around this hub, starting with the 20’s in Chelsea, up through the 30’s past Madison Square Garden and the Garment District, and into the 40’s of lower Hell’s Kitchen , many of the top studios, talent agents, and acting coaches conduct business.
My Voiceover Coach, a venerated icon in the trade, has an office and studio located in the Film Center Building, a short distance from Penn Station.
A brisk walk, sign in with the guard, up the elevator, and open the door. Greet the assistant, fill out some paperwork, turn over a credit card, and compose myself for the evaluation.
In a few minutes, meet Coach, a delightful woman, who exudes a NYC sensibility full of energy and intelligence that puts me at ease immediately. Into her office, to the couch across from her desk, and the conversation begins, “Tell me, how did you end up here?” In the corner, a microphone stands, waiting…
Worked in lower Manhattan for over a decade, and commuted by train into NYC daily until 2001 when The Fates provided me with an unplanned retirement. I was 51 and blessed.
But you can only spend so many hours learning to relax before you get bored and find yourself ready for something new to do. So, seven years later when Lucy (the name has been changed to protect the innocent) recommended I try voice over and provided the name of a VO Coach in the city, it was back to the Morristown Train Station for me.
The same guy who sold me monthly commuter tickets for 12 years was still there to sell me an off peak round-trip ticket that first day into the Voiceover Forest. And, the woman who used to sell me a NYT, a WSJ and a cup of coffee each morning was so surprised to see me she kindly offered a free cup of joe and some conversation.
You gotta admire NJ Transit. A brand new double decker commuter train arrived exactly on schedule, and I was off to the Big Apple again. My train was about to leave the station on the way to a new career.This time reinvented as Mr. Voice Over, aspiring.
Life has a way of guiding us to paths we might otherwise pass by, at least that’s my take on The Fates. And so it was with this…
“You have a great voice.” Sure, heard this many times over the years. My voice resonates with some people; must be the pitch or register. So, it was no surprise to hear the daughter of my new girlfriend make the same remark last fall. What was different this time was what she said next. “You should do voice over. ” Wow. No goof. She was serious.
As only The Fates might conspire, the young woman, (a flame-haired beauty and aspiring actress in her mid 20’s) worked for the top talent agency in NYC. Come to find out, she was the assistant to one of the top Voice Over Agents at the firm! “If you like, I can ask my boss to recommend a Voice Over Coach and you can get an evaluation.”
“Why not,” I thought. “Can’t hurt to try. How hard can it be, anyway?” And so, at the edge of the Voiceover Forest, the journey was about to begin.
You ready to hike the hills and valleys of the Voiceover Wilderness as experienced by a newcomer to the highly competitive VO Biz?? It’s a journey, not a day trip, so let’s get started.
Lots to tell about getting this venture up and running. Lay the foundation and invest in the business. Practice the craft and audition for gigs. And, don’t forget marketing.
Like any other enterprise, I’m discovering it’s mostly about working hard, working smart, and wanting to succeed.
Will begin at the beginning: how I stumbled into the Voiceover Forest without a compass. Next time.
When Coach told me early in my training we needed to find my voice over “archetype”, it seemed like another opportunity for self-discovery and re-invention. Turns out I was right about the former, not so much about the latter.
reading. Faster than it took to record the copy, and a millisecond into hearing it played back, Mr. UpBeat gave way to his cousin, Mr. UpChuck. Yikes!! Was that monotone really me? My voice sounded flat and slow. Way flat and way slow.
