Ok, here we go. I've been working for the last few months to get into the voice over industry. I've been telling myself I should also blog. Now I have finally gotten off my butt and started it. Why blog do you ask? Well, I've done a few blogs in the past and enjoyed it, and also I am trying to get myself of doing something related to my voice over work as often as possible and I see this as another outlet. I am unsure of just how many people will actually read this debut blog, but hey this is mostly for myself right now. If anyone reads this and comments, bonus. Back to the topic at hand, voice over. It's that job of being the narrator, the cartoon voice, the character in the video game, and so many many more things. What attracted me to this? I love to talk. I also enjoy entertaining people. If you ask my wife the combination of the two can be frustrating for her. Many times she's waited on me to finally shut my trap while we were trying to get out of a store where I've bumped into someone we know and my mouth just doesn't stop. So late last year I had some time off of work, and during this little hiatus I started going a little stir crazy. I was wanting something else to do. I was sitting at the computer punching in random searches to see if anything clicked. At the time I was also listening to one of my favorite radio shows, The Mark and Brian Show. On it the news girl Kelly talks every so often of doing voice over work. That clicked. I started doing searches, things still clicked. So, I set my mind that this is something that I need to look into.
First things first though I needed to let my wife now that I was planning on spending time and money on some new venture. At first she was a little worried that I may be going through a form of midlife crisis, but she was on board. Next was to look into a school. Sure I could have grabbed a mic and started blabbing, but this is a proffession for many people and they take it very seriously. From my experience in my other career as an electrician, I know I don't give much respect to someone that thinks they could just jump in and do my job with out any schooling like I went through. So, I started searching for a school that looked legit, and was in the price range I could afford at that time. I came across Aliso Creek in Burbank, taught by Mr. William Williams. One thing I liked was he preferred to talk to you before just signing you up. So with a Saturday trip down into the LA area my wife and I paid Mr Williams a visit. I felt we hit it off fairly well, and he struck me as someone that I would like to have as a teacher.
After a series of Saturday classes at Aliso Creek, I had a decent mic and a fairly good set up for a home booth, I was ready to dip my foot into the audition pool. Over the course of two weeks I tried a few auditions, but was not entirely comfortable yet. About a week later, I was able to schedule a demo recording at Aliso Creek with William. During those sessions I brought him some recordings that I did at home and he was very encouraging with what I was able to produce. After one more session and about a week for him to do the finishing touches, I then had a professional demo to tote around. I then went head on into doing auditions through the internet.
Up to this point I've done somewhere about 25 or 30 auditions, and nothing booked yet. I'm keeping my head up. A few things I've heard concerning this industry stick in my head. First off, "Don't give this industry five minutes if your not prepared to give it five years." Yeah, right now I have a good job, even though I look forward to the day of making the same or more money by just running my yap, I'm not about to beat myself up and get pessimistic. The other thing I've heard said is, "When you first start you're only going to book about 1 out of 100 jobs." Well hell, that's great. I've only done about 25 to 30 auditions, I only have about 70 to 75 more to go. If I get something booked before then, well that just means I'm ahead of the curve. Enough rambling for now, I'll save some for next time.
