I recently took the second biggest financial leap of my VO career. The first was the first year or two of lessons and classes, before I’d submitted a single word for an audition. The current leap was buying a pre-made booth, for— let’s just say— four figures.

But I want to be sure you all know that you don’t need an expensive recording booth to have a successful career. In fact, before making the jump to a pre-made booth, I operated in my $100 booth starting in 2012. [Read more…] about Jacked Up: GEAR: The Final Frontier

Everybody has opinions. Social media lets you express them, but only YOU can control them. If you’re getting into business as a voice actor (or any other form of self-employment), you need to add a new filter: How would expressing myself on social media affect potential customers and my reputation?

Want to complain about (pick a topic)? Want to advocate for (pick a candidate)? Want to single out a bad client or lousy experience in VO?

THINK before posting. What benefit would you get for your VO business? What harm might there be? [Read more…] about Jacked Up: Posting on Social Media and Your VO Career

WHAT? I have to be an audio editor, too?

I recently listened to an online webinar where a well-accomplished audio editor gave a class on Twisted Wave, an audio recording app. It runs in the cloud as well as on Mac computers, iPhones, and iPads. It’s my go-to editing and processing app.

So, I wanted to listen in to see how the big-city pros use Twisted Wave. (Lifetime learning; always a good thing.) And I did learn some things about this app I’ve used for 6+ years. The app itself is simple, inexpensive, and easy to learn—and all the time, I discover features I didn’t know it had.

But I also heard something in the webinar that’s worth sharing here: being highly skilled in a craft means you know A LOT about the craft. It also means you could easily overwhelm a rookie audience.
It’s like signing up for a painting class. Rembrandt shows up to teach and starts showing you little brush-stroke tricks he does to make water look 3D on the canvas. Meanwhile, you’re just trying to figure out which brush to start with and how to get paint on the brush and not in your hair!

With VO, you spend months learning your performance skills, being creative, and following directions. Acting. Emoting. Now, all of a sudden, you and your computer have to get up-close and personal. You have to take some audio you just recorded, do “something or other” to it, and turn it into the “finished audio” that your client wants.

Gulp.

Suddenly, you’re back to Square One on the learning curve. EQ? Compression? Normalizing? Room tone? Special pasting? Effect stacks? Racks? “Sweeten the audio?” Huh?

There’s a whole world of audio editing knowledge and skills that take time and practice to learn—just like with VO performance! You can decide that you want to be a skilled practitioner in two fields: performance and audio editing.

Or, you can keep the focus on your performance skills but learn a simple, straightforward way to process audio that works for most situations and is good enough for the client*.

You can “call it good” forever or just for now, until your brain can handle taking on another learning curve.
Eventually, if your passion leads you to VO work that regularly requires full editing and production (like some e-learning jobs and audiobooks at ACX and a few other publishers), maybe by then you can hire out the editing and processing to competent engineers. Let them flick their “paint brushes” like Rembrandt to make your audio soar. And while they’re busy with your audio, you can be busy making more audio for another gig.

*Contact TVAS to set up a private lesson with me on using Twisted Wave to fully produce your next e-learning gig or ACX audiobook.

It happens every few months: a voice acting student I know is morphing before my eyes into a working voice actor, having been at it for six, nine, or twelve months. They come to me all excited. “I booked my first gig!” (Usually when I hear about that it also includes, “my first audiobook!”)

Oh, great, I say. Are you ready technically? Got your studio together, have your process in place?

I’m greeted then with either a blank look or a confident-sounding, “Oh, I’m setting up my studio this week.”

My reaction (that I keep to myself) is, “How did you do a decent audition without a place set up to record? And why would you accept a job without a place to record it?” [Read more…] about Jacked Up: Carts and Horses

When you make your living talking, you’re bound to run into words you’ve never seen before. And then there are those words you just learned how to say, not realizing that most people don’t even say it the way you do.

Of course, that second group of words will bring nothing but endless surprises when you see people react and you wonder what’s going on. [Read more…] about Jacked Up: When in doubt, ask or look it up!

N-D-who? Non Disclosure Agreements were in the news a year ago with the stories about the fall of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

NDA’s are common in VO. You may be asked to sign one before starting in on a project. The NDA can prohibit ANY conversation, emails or writings, photos, and other disclosures about a project. The NDA may apply only to social media—no posts, no selfies, no way, no how, and forever.

[Read more…] about Jacked Up: N D A

So there you are, struggling to figure out a place to record, a place to set up your first studio!

Try this: keep it simple. If you have a carpeted walk-in closet, golden! Is it full of clothes? PERFECT. Leave them there. Don’t empty the closet! [Read more…] about Jacked Up: Simple is best

Free tips.

The internet is awash in information. Some of it is great, some of it is, well, flushable.

But among all the noise there are some gems. And there’s a host of free information for voiceover that can augment your VO education. [Read more…] about Jacked Up: Free Stuff

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Wikipedia says this proverb came either from Joseph P. Kennedy (President Kennedy’s father) or the Notre Dame coach, Knute Rockne. It’s all about standing tough, manning up, and all that GI Joe kind of thinking. [Read more…] about Jacked Up: Breaths, clicks, and OCD: When NOT to DIY (Do It Yourself)

A voiceover career is primarily a creative enterprise. You get to walk into a small room, talk to a microphone like it’s your best friend, record that sound, maybe edit it (and other audio engineering tasks), become a master of your computer, the internet and social media, market yourself online and at conferences, have a “so what do you do?” elevator speech…all sorts of cool stuff, right?
[Read more…] about OK, It’s a Business. So Now What?