Time for leaves to change colors, candy to be purchased in bulk, temperatures to drop (except in Texas, because fall is a myth here), and you to catch a fright from doing that very necessary but very scary voice-over task you keep putting off. You know the one.
While that task might be looming in the dark like a monster from your dreams, there’s no need to do OTHER things that will also chill your bones and make you wish you had taken up needlepoint instead. Let’s face it: other than being in front of your mic in your booth, most of the voice work we do tends to be fairly mundane, and can be downright boring at times. But sometimes, you can run into situations that make you want to pull your hair out and trade your Sennheiser 416 for a 2015 Nissan Pathfinder and drive off into the sunset singing Carly Rae Jepsen.
But here’s a secret: it doesn’t have to be so scary! I’ll share my frightening tales with you so that you can see that with a little confidence and preparation, the horrible can become humdrum.
The Peculiar Case of the Unpaid Dubbing Assignment
We all usually move with the best intentions, and we assume the best intentions in others. Most of us are nice people, and we engage with mostly nice people who are well-intentioned, but every so often, you find yourself in a murky swamp where you don’t get paid because you didn’t document the terms of your agreement.
I agreed to perform some dubbing work for an international dubbing company that shall remain nameless. Along with some fellow Such A Voice alumni, my role was to supply ADR services for a variety of foreign-language television shows. It was a great opportunity: I had never done any dubbing before, and this was a way to learn, get my foot in the door with a dubbing company, and get paid.
Eagerly, I dove into numerous assignments, working with some really talented voice actors and very nice producers who even asked for my input on translations and localization (like, “Would this person really say it like this in English?”). Over the course of several months, I took on several assignments and learned a lot about the process along the way. What I DIDN’T get, however, was payment. In my excitement to get started, I didn’t ask some important questions about when and how payment would come, how they were being funded, etc. In the end, I did not get paid for my work.
The Not-So-Scary Outcome: I learned to ask all the questions I need to ask about a project before I accept it, and I DID learn how to do ADR work.
The Pay-To-Play Obsessive-Compulsion Fever
It’s very common for new voice actors to gravitate toward the numerous online services that will send you auditions for a monthly, quarterly, or yearly fee. I’m sure you can name a few off the top of your head without straining a brain muscle. Colloquially referred to as “pay-to-plays” or P2Ps, these sites and services are great places to source auditions curated (mostly) to your unique voice and preferences. I have used them from the beginning of my voice acting career, I still use them, and I know of several big-name voice actors who make quite a good living off of P2Ps. They are a reasonable, reliable source of both auditions and jobs. We can debate which ones are better than others, but much of that comes down to personal preference and how much you’re willing to spend to get the best opportunities.
However, many new voice actors can get too caught up in “gamifying” the P2P experience, spending far too much time and mental energy on how many listens they get on their auditions, whether they’ve been shortlisted, and obsessively checking to see the status. In my case, I would stalk one particular site, hitting refresh over and over to see if any updates had occurred, feeling exhilaration if my audition was listened to and outright bliss if I was shortlisted, but also feeling disappointment, dejection, and doubt if I wasn’t selected. It was unhealthy. I began associating my worth as a voice actor with the statistics on the screen of whatever P2P site I was looking at, and I was so focused on the numbers that I wasn’t diversifying my outreach, I wasn’t doing nearly as much self-marketing. I was locked into a virtual death-spiral of audition, submit, refresh, rinse, and repeat. It was a toxic relationship.
The Not-So-Scary Outcome: Once I recognized the signs, I took a beat and thought about what I was doing and whether the juice was worth the squeeze, so to speak. What was I gaining from the constant monitoring? I made a choice for myself: I began dialing back my presence on the particular P2Ps that offered that level of scrutiny, and focused more on my networking and marketing. I still do some P2Ps today, but I have fully adopted the “fire and forget” philosophy: giving the best audition I can, submitting it, then moving on with my life. It’s made my relationship with auditioning so much nicer.
There are lots of things to be wary of in voice acting: artificial intelligence, unscrupulous clients, a buildup of static electricity on your mic. But you shouldn’t be afraid of too many things. Most frights are simply the combination of you + inexperience with the situation. Listen to your mentors, your coaches, your peers, and you will find that it really doesn’t have to be so scary to be a voice actor.
But go ahead and sing some Carly Rae Jepsen. I bet she’d appreciate that.
Shaun Scott is a voice-over artist working in Medical Narration, Commercials, e-Learning, and more. His clients include Exxon, Temple University, Spotify, Stryker, SignifyHealth, and Carvykti.
Visit his website at: www.shaunscottvo.com
P.S. If you haven’t yet taken our introductory voice-over class, where we go over everything one needs to know about getting started in the voice-over industry, sign up here!
P.P.S If you want to learn more from VO experts and grow the knowledge you already have, join our VO Pro group!
