Today’s 5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent are answered by Mercedes Rose, a professional voice-over talent based in Portland, Oregon.

1. The beginning: When did you know you wanted to be a voiceover talent; how did your career begin (please include what year it started) and then when did your passion for voiceover develop into something professional?

I knew I wanted to be a performer…but I had no idea voice acting even existed until I auditioned for my first role. (Don’t ask where I thought those voices on the radio came from…) It was a total fluke that voiceover came into my life. I was an on-camera actor when my agent sent me to an audition one day. A VOICE audition. I had never done one before (Remember, I didn’t even know VO existed!) but I jumped right in and had fun with it. Must have worked because I booked the gig. The rest is history. And I thank my lucky stars (and my agents) every day for the chance to have a career that I love.

2. What is the one thing you know now that you wish someone had told you when you first started out in voiceover?

Many years passed before I realized how much ACTING is in VOICE ACTING. That would have been helpful to know on day 1!

3. What do you see as the biggest professional or personal obstacle you face that impacts your voiceover business and how are you working to overcome it?

Balance. I face a daily struggle with remembering which hat I am wearing when. Am I a producer today? A mom? A voice actor? A spokesperson? Usually, it is all of the above and the hats change every 15 minutes. My constant reminder (and the sign on my desk) is: “Be present”.

4. What personal trait or professional tool has helped you succeed the most in your career so far?

Being a good person that people want to work with over and over again has been the best tool for my business! Over 75% of my work is repeat clients. Making sure I bring my A-game, am professional and timely for every single gig is my goal. I also think having a name like Mercedes Rose helps…people don’t tend to forget me!

5. In your development as a voice over performer, who has been the one particular individual or what has been the one piece of performance advice (maybe a key performance trick, etc.) that you felt has had the most impact on your actual voice over performance and why?

Voiceover people, in general, are the most giving performers in show business. From Ritah Parrish, the gal at that very first voice audition who told me what a mic was to Linda and Michael Bard that got me that first gig (and many more after) to Stacey Stahl, my first voice agent that made me realize voice could be a job to Amy Snively and every person that I have met at FaffCon! So many people have changed the course of my career and therefor, my life! Not to be dramatic or anything ….

Tags: 5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent, 5Q:VO, commentary, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Sometimes I google things relevant to my business to see how I am doing.

Tonight, I googled “voice-over blog” to see where Voxmarketising – the audio’connell blog and podcast (which hasn’t really produced a podcast in years but whose counting) ranks.

I’ve got about 13 subscribers and most of them are family members or really old people who didn’t understand what they subscribed to and couldn’t find the ‘erase’ key on their computers. If the computer industry ever invents an ‘erase’ key, I’m finished. Nonetheless I wanted to see how I faired.

The #1 voice-over blog is Bob Souer’s which is as it should be. Then there’s Ben Blankenship and Terry Daniel’s Voice Over Club. These are not suprising to me.

But here comes the confusing part…you know who is NOT on the first page? Courvo and Vox Daily.

You gotta understand, these are two of the very first voice-over blogs ever. Before there was an internet, there were these two voice-over blogs.

The 11th commandment was “and there shall be voice-over blogs” and BAM, Dave and Stef started posting….THAT’S how far back they go. They each have over one million subscribers. Bob has only 750,000 (he says it’s 800,000 but he fibs).

Courvo posts every freakin’ day! When he goes on vacation, he posts how he’s not posting cause he’s on vacation!!!!!

So Google, what bur do you have up your virtual butt that puts those two blogs off the first page of that search?

In any logical world, those two blogs are page one. That they are not defies logic, science and good old common sense.

That’s all…this just occurred to me and I thought I would point this out so that Google fixes its defective voice-over algorithm and we could all return to more comfortable summer temperatures.

What? You thought the heat was caused by global warming or some other nonsense? Sheesh, what are you smoking?!

It’s all about voice-over blog rankings, my friend. Mother Nature does not like it when there is not balance in the voice-over universe.

Tags: google, silliness, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Today’s 5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent are answered by Randye Kaye, a professional voice-over talent based in Trumbull, Connecticut.

1. The beginning: When did you know you wanted to be a voiceover talent; how did your career begin (please include what year it started) and then when did your passion for voiceover develop into something professional?

Well, I just wanted to be an actress/singer – on stage (big fan of musical theatre from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Sondheim) in film/ TV, in bands – and oh yeah pay my bills that way. Plus have a fulfilling off-stage life too (I eventually figured that one out). So – in 1982 I moved from LA to Connecticut (okay, it’s kind of a a suburb of NYC), got married, and eventually had a couple of lovely kids. While pregnant with my son (1982), I got into voiceovers as a way to keep the acting chops up, and the income coming in. And I never left! I love how it has either supplemented the other corners of show biz I have inhabited (full-time radio, teaching drama to kids, Equity stage work, etc.) or taken top spot. Now, as I also travel to promote my book (yep – wrote it and narrated the audiobook!) Ben Behind His Voices (published a few months ago), voiceover is the perfect accompanying job. Some of my clients have been with me since 1982!

2. What is the one thing you know now that you wish someone had told you when you first started out in voiceover?

Marketing is a big part of the job! Even though regular clients are the best (and 90% of what I do is for repeat customers), never be afraid to offer your talents to help a new client. As we used to sing in Girl Scouts, “Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver and the other’s gold…” Something like that!

3. What do you see as the biggest professional or personal obstacle you face that impacts your voiceover business and how are you working to overcome it?

Probably being tempted to rest on my laurels and not reach out to those new customers who just may need me to take the first step. I am learning that many clients don’t love the casting process; they’d rather find someone they love and not have to hunt again.

Still, making the move can be as scary as introducing yourself to a group of strangers at a party. But, also, exciting – and just as rewarding. Some steps that are helping: I am in a Mastermind Group with other Voiceover talents – we met at faffcon – and we encourage and inspire each other all the time. Also – I break the “cold contact” process into smaller, more reasonable steps. LinkedIn and Twitter heal break the ice as well. Some of my favorite clients are ones I contacted first.

4. What personal trait or professional tool has helped you succeed the most in your career so far?

Personal? Perseverance, belief in myself, insatiable curiosity about this business (well, about just about everything, actually) and a desire to keep learning, keep getting better, all the time. Professional? The friends and colleagues I have worked with along the way; and my experience in improv, musical theatre, radio, and coaching for Edge Studio. It all helps. Every bit!

5. In your development as a voice over performer, who has been the one particular individual or what has been the one piece of performance advice (maybe a key performance trick, etc.) that you felt has had the most impact on your actual voice over performance and why?

Okay, believe it or not, I think about neuroscience and how it affects our learning and performance– how we need the technique/intellect side of things (left-brain) to be well-practiced so we can be even more confident to “jump in and play” with our imagination and emotion (right-brain). Body and facial language can help us access that Right-Brain playground: they really short-cut us to acting places that more instinct than over-thinking. Let your body do the work, so the energy is out to the listener not inward to yourself – but the left brain still has to do some work confidently (like staying on mike, remembering the rhythms/pitch you just used, etc). Knowing this helps with the confidence to jump in and play, have fun – but prepared!

Tags: 5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent, 5Q:VO, commentary by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I got a Facebook message from my friend Andy Boyns today, giving me a heads up on some very sad news from the voice-over community that occurred last week.

Two young girls lost their mother. A husband lost his wife. Seven months after voice-over talent Andrew Swingler’s wife Sandra (surrounded in the above picture by her daughters) was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, she died last week.

Conceptually, that’s an awful thought; cognitively, it’s paralyzing…at least for me.

For Andrew and his girls, it’s got to be cataclysmic. And I don’t even know the Swinglers.

But for a neighborhood community or an online community, all we have to do is “know of” because in one way, shape or form, we’ve all been there.

We can’t undo their grim reality but maybe we can shape a part of the family’s better days to come…especially when it must be so hard for these three broken hearts to imagine ANY future.

So we help, because as people we refuse to be helpless when we have options. Andy and our mutual social media and in-person friends Natalie Cooper, Anne Ganguzza and Derek Chappell have shared their offerings, insights and ideas on how we CAN help the Swinglers in their time of need.

If you’d like to know more…I hope you’ll CLICK THIS LINK and do whatever you can, no matter how small. Even if it’s just offering a prayer, thank you for all of it.

Tags: commentary, community, social media, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Today’s 5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent are answered by Elaine Singer, a professional voice-over talent based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

1. The beginning: When did you know you wanted to be a voiceover talent; how did your career begin (please include what year it started) and then when did your passion for voiceover develop into something professional?

Unlike so many others, I never was enthralled with the idea of being in radio as a kid. Sure I listened to the radio and had my favourite DJs. I wondered – how do they know anyone is listening to them? How do they figure out what to say over such a long period of time? I was, from a fairly young age, always involved in some aspect of theatre though. Fast forward many years – I was working with an English speaking theatre group in Jerusalem and the producer/director mentioned that the English radio needed people to do commercials. This was some time in the early 80s – I can’t pinpoint an exact year – who can remember that far back anyway? So I suddenly found myself behind a mic reading commercials. It was so cool to hear myself on the radio. From there I did a jingle for an in-flight commercial for El Al. I did some long form narration as well. I had so much fun and made a little money (very little). Somehow it just petered out and I went on with my life. But it was always there at the back of my mind that I’d love to do this again. Fast forward again to the early 2000s. Now back in Toronto for a number of years, I found myself without a job at a time when jobs were very hard to come by. That little voice at the back of my mind moved forward and I started doing research on how to become a voice actor. So I started my new career and I’m just loving it. There have been bumps along the road. I had to take a part time job to make ends meet. But it’s all worth it because I am doing something I love to do.

2. What is the one thing you know now that you wish someone had told you when you first started out in voiceover?

Well, it was made clear to me right from the beginning that I wouldn’t be making sacks of money right away. That sure was true. I was also told this is a business so I can’t claim ignorance there. I guess maybe someone should have told me not to try to do everything by myself. I have spent so much valuable time creating marketing materials and websites. It was fun but I’m not sure it has served me well and it was a convenient excuse not to do the marketing I should have been doing. I’m now relinquishing control (not easily) and allowing professionals to do this for me so I can concentrate on what I have to do to move my business forward.

3. What do you see as the biggest professional or personal obstacle you face that impacts your voiceover business and how are you working to overcome it?

I’ve had a lot of naysayers in my life. Sometimes it is difficult to tune them out and it can erode self-confidence. I am trying to learn ‘selective hearing’ so I only hear the supportive and positive. Although, my persistence (see below) has turned some of those naysayers around to supporters.

4. What personal trait or professional tool has helped you succeed the most in your career so far?

I guess I’d have to say persistence. I’m not one to give up easily.

5. In your development as a voice over performer, who has been the one particular individual or what has been the one piece of performance advice (maybe a key performance trick, etc.) that you felt has had the most impact on your actual voice over performance and why?

I was having some difficulty with this one. And then I realized it wasn’t difficult at all. There were a trio of women who a long time ago gave me my voice, or showed me how to release the creativity inside through my voice: Gabriella Lev, Joyce Miller and Madeleine Rodin. The first two were with the Jerusalem Drama Workshop with which I was associated for a number of years. We did a lot of alternative and street theatre. Gabi, who arrived in Israel from Australia, showed me how to tap into emotions through the body. Joyce, originally from South Africa, was the doyenne of English theatre in Jerusalem and she encouraged me to continue on my path as an actor. She also taught me how important physicality is to finding the character. I found my way to Madeleine, originally from the States, based on a suggestion from Joyce that I find a singing teacher to learn how to control my breath and project my voice (something I had to unlearn behind the mic). These three women gave me the foundation on which I draw every day. What I learned from them is so much a part of me now that I can’t really tell you ‘how’ I do things. Although based on their teachings, I think I use my body as much as my voice when voice acting.

Here’s an example. Once, after voicing a radio commercial, the producer asked me if I had used my ‘real’ voice. I didn’t have an answer. When I’m in the booth, I don’t consciously think about what I’m doing. I just let my troika draw out the performance. I was the woman in the commercial. It was her voice Was it mine? I guess – at least one of mine or at least a part of me.

As for a performance trick – Peter you reminded me of one when we were working together recently. We used to speed speak our lines in a play to solidify them in our minds and to free ourselves of preconceived patterns. That’s a great trick for VO as you showed me. Thanks for reminding me.

Tags: 5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent, 5Q:VO, commentary by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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