Thoughts & Advice!

 

 

Hey there!

 

In this post, I wanted to talk about the several thoughts and advice that I have gathered from my short time in Voice Over. You are able to get so much from so many people if you’re just willing to take the chance and listen to what they have to say.

 

To begin, I wanted to reference Buford Taylor’s quote on his about tab on the website Casting Call Club: “Casting Call Club is where you practice. It is a safe place to hone your skills and level yourself up. I've always dreamed that CCC becomes the place that people point to when they are asked how they got started. Some of the success stories coming out of CCC are amazing. We've had people go from 0 to 100,000 YouTube subscribers in a year. We've had people land roles in games like Mass Effect and Nier. But the best feeling isn't the big successes, it's the first.” This website is used by a plethora of voice actors daily as a starting casting website. I wanted to focus on the concept of Casting Call Club’s strength: practice. You can always practice your craft, even when you feel that you’ve reached your peak. There’s a variety of websites and people dedicating their time to teach you from different points in your voice over career. Practice makes comfortability, and comfortability directly translates to how you sound in the booth. The more comfortable you are with the text, the more you have the ability to experiment with tones and emotions to properly get your portrayal across. So, comfortability in the booth can, in turn, book you jobs and/or auditions!

 

The next piece of advice I wanted to cover is that you never know where your next opportunity arrives. It’s always best to put your best foot forward around your peers and work because you never know when opportunity can come up. For me personally, during my time at University, I’ve been able to book several voice over jobs just because I was at the right place at the right time. I’ve also been able to book a gig as a radio host for roughly 2-3 years because of the voice over background I initially started with. Taking the job as a radio host led to doing radio promo and doing radio promo led me to do an e-learning gig as well as a live announcing job for the University. I’ve learned that it’s best to be on your feet and be ready to jump at what opportunities may come!

 

The final bit of advice or thought that I’ve learned is just to have fun. If you’re not having fun with your work, it’ll show in your performance. If you’re not having fun, then your listeners won’t have fun, and if your listeners aren’t having fun, why bother? Enjoy every step of the process: every hurdle, every success, every cast, and every missed opportunity. What matters is that you’re putting yourself out there and you’re working on yourself and your craft.

 

Thanks for reading, and always, Happy Voicing!