New and aspiring voiceover artists often ask: How did you start out in the industry? If you want to see what it took for me to get to where I am now, read on….
My background
My background is in performing arts, but by the time I graduated in the 90’s I wasn’t keen on performing on stage. A surprising number of my group ended up in teaching. That was my path, deviating along the way to follow my interest in health and wellbeing, and gaining a second degree in Nutritional Medicine before obtaining my PGCE.
During my lecturing days I became increasingly interested in online learning, and how to keep students engaged when delivering material. I had also always wanted to be able to sing, and when I finally took the plunge and started singing lessons it led to a volunteer role at a singing and breathing group for people with chronic lung conditions.
I started to love working with voice – but never realised how much lecturing and singing would benefit my future as a voiceover artist.
How I ‘found’ Voiceover
Disillusioned with working in a non-creative job, in 2017 I was drawn to an advert for people to voice animated characters remotely from home. I was intrigued, and started researching how this was possible, and stumbled into a world of wonderful generous voiceover artists doing incredible creative work from home studios. No longer did you need to have an agent or live in London to work regularly in this industry. It was a revelation.
I spent eight months reading and learning everything I could about voiceover; joining both Gravy for the Brain and Voiceover Kickstart – participating in online forums, researching equipment, building a makeshift studio, watching youtube videos, learning how to record and edit vocals and attending workshops and webinars – before finally landing my first paid voiceover job: recording a series of rather dry eLearning modules for staff training at a large blue-chip company.
The money was great and I thought I had made it. I had practiced, tweaked and refined my technique and finally – I was “there”. To my shock, it took 4 months to land my second job. I had taken my foot off the pedal and had not fully understood what clients were looking for in auditions, or how to stand out.
How I grew my business
I had a website and some samples, but by the end of 2019 I was only booking a small handful of jobs. In order to get booked regularly I needed to up my game. I re-worked my website and invested in some one-to-one coaching with the wonderful Tanya Rich at Richcraft, and from the very first session I could hear a difference in my delivery. I learned to voice with my whole body, and to bring subtle nuance to the words by feeling the script rather than over-performing or artificially emphasising.
Listening back some of my early auditions lacked energy. My reels were nice examples of what I could do, but were simple and lacked sparkle. My delivery was “fine” and performance was “adequate” – but fine and adequate doesn’t help you stand out amongst thousands. I experimented with different vocal techniques and self-direction methods that I had learned during my training, and practised stretching my voice in different directions. Once I could deliver at a high standard consistently, I recorded new demos.
I also needed more confidence to refer to myself as “Voiceover Artist” and building a new, sound treated professional voice booth during the second lockdown helped this immensely. My new space was bigger, more flexible and allowed me to offer live directed sessions with much more confidence than my previous makeshift space.
I later took a marketing and branding course, and a LinkedIn course. I tried to connect with more relevant people. I joined Equity. I kept going back to my website to see where I could improve the content, layout and SEO. It is by no means perfect, but it is always in flux – improving gradually wherever I can.
Six years on and I have learned you can never take your foot off the pedal – it really is helpful to voice something to mic every day, and even a two-week holiday can leave you rusty. There is always more that can be done to improve voice and breath control, different techniques, diction, tongue twisters, learning to connect with the copy and tap into the emotion of a script. Each year I try to work with a new or different coach or director, even if just once or twice, as different people bring different techniques and observations.
The main mistakes of newcomers:
-Imitating the “voiceover voice”, rather than being natural
-Over emphasising words, or leaning on the wrong words
-Placing unnecessary emphasis on pronouns (although still popular in the US)
-Not connecting with the copy – sounding like you are reading rather than speaking
-Too much echo in the recording environment
-Plosives and mouth noise on the recording
-Poor audio editing skills – heavy handed processing which makes the audio sound unnatural
-Poor listening skills, not able to hear issues in audio
-Not enough professional demos
-Lack of investment in one to one coaching
-Not giving enough attention to breathwork and breathing practice
-Not understanding your casting and blindly auditioning for projects that don’t suit you
-Inability to respond to direction, giving three ‘different’ takes that sound pretty much the same
-Taking advice from unknown forum members – a lot of the advice given out on socials is poor
I have been guilty of ALL of these at some point and you will be too. But if you are motivated to succeed in this exciting and ever-changing industry, keep working hard and nurture every element of your business.
The world of Voiceover in 2024
If you are thinking of venturing into the world of Voiceover you should know it is a very different place here in 2024. With the advent of AI voices, some of the lower end work is being taken away, especially for small companies without much budget to hire an actor. Rising inflation and squeezed budgets mean less creative projects are being signed off, and while office staff enjoy annual payrises the expected hourly rate to hire a Voiceover has not really increased in years. In today’s economic climate you need to book much more work to survive than ever before. Agents’ books are full to bursting – but with less jobs coming through some agencies have had to close their doors, leaving more actors fighting for fewer spaces on rosters. The number of voiceover artists with home studios has exploded since lockdown, and the quality expectation of home recording has increased dramatically. Even the requirements for voicing have changed – no longer is the standard ‘announcer style’ very popular – more and more jobs are calling for people to sound more natural, more human…. and this can be surprisingly difficult when you are reading someone else’s words from a piece of paper. You need dedication, resilience, and business acumen to survive. It is not just about your acting skill anymore. But if you can put in the time and effort, it is still a wonderfully rewarding career amongst some of the truly nicest people you will ever meet.
Image: Equity magazine 2023
British Female Voiceover Artist 