How do I get into voiceover work?
Question:
I have heard voice-over work is very highly paid and I've been told I have a distinctive sound. How difficult is this market to break into?
Answer:
One of the particular challenges of this business of ours is that there is indeed a very highly paid and highly visible tip of the iceberg in almost every branch of the profession. This can either be very frustrating for everyone else, who is not experiencing such fame and fortune, or worse, can be the kind of carrot which encourages beginners (and sometimes people with more experience who should know a lot better) to hold out for the glamour jobs at the expense of getting busy with the day to day gigs. These jobs may be little regarded and not very lucrative but they provide the grounding that can make you a realistic candidate for the better work when those opportunities do come your way. Certainly, there are people who luck into attractive voice-over work because they happen to have a profile in some other area, but anyone making a career or a substantial part of their career from voice-overs is likely to have put a lot of hard work in honing their craft so they can earn their current money. Appropriately in a piece on voice-overs, it is now time for me to shut up and hand over to two very authoritative voices, speaking from both the artist and agent side of the microphone.
Pete Gold
Pete Gold has been a full-time professional voice-over artist for ten years. He works on the Independent Local Radio circuit from his home ISDN studio, as well as agency work through the Excellent Voice Company. He was the voice of Five Live for several years, and is a regular on the National Geographic channel, the Biography and History channels, plus radio and TV commercials.
"Voice-over work can be highly paid and is very creatively rewarding as well, but it's anything but easy to carve out a successful career as a voice-over. I consider myself very lucky indeed. A good voice is essential of course - although, increasingly, clients are looking for natural or normal-sounding voices as opposed to deep, mellifluous, 'chocolatey' voices. But you also need to know how to use your voice. Can you sound soft and aspirational? Can you sound wry and knowing? Can you sound authoritative? Can you sound like a daft goldfish with a Geordie accent? Can you switch deliveries halfway through a sentence? Can you get behind the script and work out which words the client would want you to bring out, but without landing on them too heavily, and fit a 36-second script into a 30-second read, without making it sound rushed? Can you do all of this while making it sound like the words are coming from your own head, rather than being read from a page? Can you take direction from three different people at once, without taking it personally or getting ruffled? And are you easy-going and fun to work with? Voice-over work isn't rocket science, but there's definitely more to it than most people might think. However, after ten years of doing it, I still think its one of the best jobs in the world."
Viv White
Viv White has worked within the voice-over industry for six years and has been at the Excellent Voice Company for the last two. She has seen the industry from many different angles and first started in audiobooks - handling budgets and booking voice talent, so she knows better than most how important it is for a voice-over agent to sound as pleasant to deal with on the phone as one of her clients.
"There's a great deal more to voice work than reading out loud and, while £200 might sound like a lot for an hour in the studio, anyone reading this and multiplying 200 by 40 to get their weekly salary is going to be very disappointed.
Of course, as an agent, I'm conscious that we have more than 100 artists depending on us and we'd like nothing better than to get all of them enough work to buy that second home in Tuscany. The reality is that, with hundreds of artists around the country competing for a limited amount of work, it's only a select few who are good enough and lucky enough to get it regularly. Even then, there's no job security. Most voice-over artists are actors or broadcasters as their main profession and the voice-over side is very much auxiliary to their careers.
It's not enough simply to record a demo at one of the many recording studios who will offer you such a service, and then put 'Voice-over Artist' at the top of your letterhead. There are real skills involved in maintaining a career in voice-overs and they're skills that not everyone is born with, however nice their speaking voice. That's why our clients like using us - we only represent artists who are skilled at what they do. You have to be the complete package to justify your £200.
Ultimately, for those few who do succeed, this is one of the most exciting and rewarding professions out there, but that's why it's anything but easy to break into."
John sums up
Actually, my sum up this week is a recap of some further questions Pete was asking of potential voice-over artists. Pete suggests that aspiring voice-overs ask themselves how they are going to create a brand that stands out from those hundreds of other equally keen contenders Viv referred to. Just like a musician, there is also the challenge of editing a showreel which will grab the attention of the listener who often has to wade through many other similar reels every day. The only way to have a chance of doing that is to put in the necessary and unpaid work required to really research the market. Listen to as much voice-over work as you can and before you invest money in showreels, know exactly what effect you are looking for. Remember, the best recording engineer in the world can only help you with a showreel that may get you gigs - doing the gig well and getting rebooked will be down to you and your talent.
