5 Ways to Tell if Your Voice Acting Has Hit a Glass Ceiling
- Written by Stephanie
- 12:52 PM
- Add Your Comments (2)
From time to time, we all get into a routine of doing things in our comfort zone, and for many, this comfort zone may also become a limitation for your creativity as well as narrow the kind of work you are hired for.
Have you thought about the kind of voice acting work or style of voicing you provide to your customers?
Discover 5 points that may suggest you are in a voice acting rut.
Always recording the same stuff?
If you are hired a lot to record for certain applications, you may come to conclusion that those areas are your specialties and stay within that niche happy as a clam.
While it's great to know where your strengths lie and what your signature voice is, staying in that comfort zone of homogeneous (which means "of the same kind") voice over work can stunt your growth where other aspects or styles of voicing are concerned.
You may have hit a glass ceiling for your voice over work if:
1. You are always hired to voice for the same kind of project (i.e. telephone voice overs, commercials, etc.)
2. You find that any voice over you do starts to sound the same (style wise, intonation, timing, etc.)
3. The only demos you promote are for one kind of voice over
4. Many good opportunities are declined because you don't feel you're the "right voice" for the job
5. You're hesitant to try new things but know you could do more if required
If you can relate to any of the points above it might be time to start brainstorming and figure out what you can do to break free of any doldrums you are facing.
Have you discovered a "new" kind of voice over or service offering that you now provide to your clients? How's it working out for you?
I'd love to hear your stories, so please leave a comment on this article and join the discussion.
Best wishes,
Stephanie
©iStockphoto.com / Aimin Tang
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Comments
Good morning!
It's absolutely vital to know where your strengths lie so that you DON'T go after jobs that are not right for you, wasting the client's AND your time. Some days my voice just stays in the lower register, so I skip all "young adult" auditions. Some days I find it is harder to stay in my lower register, and am more likely to try a younger sound. BUT! I've gotten as far as recording an entire audition, then deciding it is too much of a stretch and deleting it. And, amazingly enough, I'm hired fairly often for a British accent, so I continue to work on making that sound as authentic as possible.
My "narrator" voice is hired for e-training, travel pieces, and as the "Voice of God" for large conventions and awards ceremonies. That's my comfort area, but I keep looking for ways to break out of it. I was recently hired by Highlights magazine to read stories for an online edition, by a film production company to be a British warrior from the 25th century for an animated film, by an indie film company to play the role of a buxom babe in a sci-fi flick whose mate is turning into an alien.
So absolutely, go ahead and try something outside your comfort zone. But listen with a much more critical ear, and try to imagine your audition against folks who do that type of v.o. all the time. It will make you a better voice talent!
I love Robin's comments. I have gotten stuck doing On Line Game Training Scripts. They want a young hip kid, telling the other Gamers how to kill more Wart Hogs than anyone else. I am grateful for the work but long to expand my Vocal Range and capabilities.
I would love to see some "For Pay" online or teleconference training. Anything would help that gets us better trained. Get 100 people on a call at $25 a piece for an hour... that would entice most trainers.