Getting into Voiceover

I have a lot of people ask me if they can have their friend contact me to find out how to get into voiceover work.  


Here is one reply I gave to a friend:

If you have this young man send me a bunch of questions, I can read them over and then give him a call.  He can also learn sooo very much by going to Voices.com and checking out all of their resources.  I am on there as talent and pay $300 per year to be able to audition on there right from  my home.  I joined for 9.95 for a month, booked a job that paid for the yearly membership and kept booking jobs after that.    The expensive part is the home studio and microphone, preamp and computer, sound proofing, etc.    He will probably need some training or coaching at the very least.  He will need to be tech savvy and get good at doing his own editing, which takes practice.  All of the demos you hear on  my site  are self-produced.

 

Here is my page http://www.voices.com/people/HeidiEklund

So, The thing is that really, in order to begin this process, you have to invest, either in training, having a demo produced,  or in equipment and just practice or all of the above. Honestly,  you have to really know what you are doing with the computer and the sound to book jobs.  You can be the best voice for the job but if your sound isn't good, they won't want to use you.  

You can get an agent, sure, but to even be heard by them you must have a good demo and be really trained and up to date with the styles of vo acting today. You really need to know someone to get in to an agency.

I would say, the best thing to start would be to do a little reading on voices.com or voice123.com and then find a class you can take.  It would be good to listen to other artists too.  From there you can see if you want to have a demo made and pursue the work.  Then you might want to look into a home studio.

Here is how I busted in:

My partner went to see his agency, where he was already a talent for theater.  He met with the VO agent there, got sent out on one job, and he booked it right away.

He got coaching and a demo from Peter Raufe  (which cost a small fortune)

He got into the sound production side of things on his own and signed up for a website.  He booked jobs and got better and better and kept upgrading our equipment.

Then I started auditioning and I did a trial membership to voices.com.  I started booking stuff.  Before you know it I had a demo, then a character demo, etc.  Then I booked a long term gig with L'Oreal (doing their eLearning) and then another doing medical podcasts  and on and on...etc.