What makes a person sit up and take notice of a vocal talent? Does the voice performer touch your senses in a way that makes you want to pay attention? Tune in further? Makes you laugh? Calm down? Get excited?
What do you need for your project or product? “You’ll know it when you hear it.” they say.
What makes a voice stand out for you? Is it a smooth sound? A fabulous creature sound for animation? What’s needed for “character voices “ can be very different from a “commercial choice” for example.
These are some of the questions program directors, producers and executives are asking in the final stage of development when it’s time to record!
Auditions can be time consuming in searching for that talent to match your imagined sound. What can we do as voice performers to help you make your life smoother and simplify the process?
Training and experience is an essential part of any person’s profession. Being the ultimate expert in our fields carries weight. Maybe you can you trust a newcomer. Sometimes you have to take a leap. If you hear what you want, it isn’t always lifetime of experience that serves your project. We all started somewhere.
I was given a boost as a young performer learning dubbing animation from a one of a kind director, Mr Tim Reid. He allowed me to sit in on a session for a cartoon that was being dubbed from Spanish to English and only after two sessions of practice gifted me a role. I have no idea what inspired him to help me besides the fact he had a heart of gold, but it changed my life. From then on, I kept learning and growing building my confidence and then ecorded demos to launch into commercial work, animation (my true childhood passion) and narration and more recently in in the last 10 years, video games.
Somehow somewhere along the line I managed to have many people step up for me and take a chance and slowly but surely that has helped me continue to blossom into a multi-union card carrying voice performer. A life long dream that started when I was 3.
Listening is an incredible feature of our fine tuned bodies. My ears and my voice work together in tandem for projects to create characters, accents and affectations. I have always had a focused sense of listening. It was and is a big part of discovery of being human.
So being a keen listener is a talent high on my list of priorities to becoming a voice performer as well as hiring a voice performer. If you’re casting a talent, what do your ears tell you? Do you hear confidence in the voice? Sensitively you require for a sweet little children’s show or a robust sound for an add for Dodge Ram? You know what you want and if you are looking for something specific, it’s key listening senses and go with your gut, the second brain.
You have a wonderful gift to give, casting a voice talent as much as the voice talent has a gift for you with their voice. What wonderful exchange we can all be together in this community of the of sound voice world.
I’m listening, what would you like to add in the comments? How can we help each other?