Judy Rodman - All Things Vocal Blog

Training & insights for stage and studio singers, speakers, vocal coaches and producers from professional vocal coach and author of "Power, Path & Performance" vocal training method. Download All Things Vocal podcast on your fav app!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Voice-Over Career: How to get started

I get questions from time to time about a specialty vocal career: Voice-Over. If you work in this area, you are known as "voice-over talent". It entails speaking over multimedia platforms like radio, TV, movies, Internet. It includes such things as commercials, news casting, narrating documentaries, reading books-on-tape, and even voices over animated movies. To be successful in this business, you need vocal ability to do as many things as possible. You can also specialize in niches like foreign language copy, cartoon voices, tone of voice (Tony the Tiger low voice, car-salesman type fast talk, etc).

Getting work in voice-over requires three main things:
  • expert ability and training to expand your vocal tone and timing choices,
  • a working knowledge of the business practices in this field
  • a great voice-over demo (which is a specialized demo and needs to conform to what will instantly tell producers you are professional-grade talent),
  • smart networking and the energy to do it. This includes systematically researching and getting your professionally created demo out to potential clients/producers every week; the audition process never stops for this career.
And here's a beautiful thought... one of the things that makes this a great career is that neither age nor looks matter! Only ability and professional knowledge.

I do use Power, Path & Performance to train voice-over and public speakers' voices; here is what I can help with:
  • I can increase your tone color choices so you can choose and change the applicable tone quality that would best communicate specific copy
  • I can coach you to choose the right timing ... how fast you speak, where and how long you should pause, etc.
  • I can show you how to protect your voice... your most important career asset.
Here are a couple of other interesting links for expert advice and training... there are many others but these stand out:

http://www.greatvoice.com/
http://www.voiceacting.com/index.html

Labels: ,

posted by Unknown @ 6:02 AM  

2 Comments :

  • At September 24, 2009 at 1:37 PM , Anonymous Leigh Ann said...

    My acting agent in Colorado told me voice-over is even harder to break into than acting--and acting's almost impossible! I'm sure it's hard anywhere. Having a leg up on the stiff competition--with the professional training you're talking about--is a must, I think. It's not just about talking or having a cool voice; it's about knowing how to use your voice to the utmost.

    Leigh Ann

     

  • At September 24, 2009 at 7:02 PM , Blogger Unknown said...

    Yes, you are so right, Leigh Ann... you must have the vocal ability and THEN you have to have your business networking skills highly polished!

    Good luck to everyone!

     

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< RETURN