Entries Tagged as '5Q:VO'

5 questions for a professional voice over talent – paul strikwerda

Today’s 5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent are answered by Paul Strikwerda, a professional voice-over talent based in Pennsylvania.

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?

When I was six years old, my parents gave me a Philips cassette recorder. It didn’t take long before I discovered how to capture the sound of my own voice. That’s when it all began. In 1969.

I can still see myself sitting on the front porch with a copy of “King Arthur and the Black Knight.” It would become my very first audio book. Actually, it was more of a radio drama. Around me were all sorts of self-made instruments I used for sound effects. Every character had a different voice. Every voice had a different character.

The tape I made that day was used over and over again, and eventually it broke. What didn’t break was my love for painting pictures with sound.

Eleven years later I auditioned for my first job in Hilversum, the heart of Dutch broadcasting. A public network was recruiting a group of promising teens to start producing radio and television programs. Veterans would coach them in all aspects of the business. I just knew I had to be part of that program.

In the years that followed, the program became part of me. I produced and presented documentaries, talk shows, music specials and radio plays. The microphone became my best friend. It was the beginning of a career in broadcasting that would take me to a number of national networks, the BBC and Radio Netherlands International.

In 1999 I made a bold decision: I would leave Holland and start a new life in the New World. In a matter of months I was represented by Mike Lemon Casting in Philadelphia. My European accent seemed to be a welcome addition to their talent pool. It took me a number of years to build a client base that would sustain a full-time voice-over career, but eventually I became the Chief Artistic Officer of a company I named Nethervoice.

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

If someone had warned me that this job could easily turn into an obsession, I still would have applied for it. It’s true though, but it might also have to do with my personality. When I’m passionate about something, I want to immerse myself in every aspect of it, and learn to do it well.

I realized early on that it takes more than a good voice to make a good living in this field. Success needs to be carefully planned. It’s like a flower bed that has to be protected, watered and fertilized regularly. Shit happens, and shit makes great manure.

Because I have a home studio, I’m always at work. It seems ideal (and it really is), but for someone with an obsession it can be dangerous. It’s tempting to become a boring recording recluse, who lives and breathes voice-overs. And you know me… When I don’t read and record, I write about it in my blog.

Life Coaches always advocate finding a balance between work and play. But what if your work is your play? At some point in the day, the headphones have to come off and we must leave our soundproof studio. Without sunlight, there’s no growth. Our job is just a meaningful means to an end.

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 wasn’t born to toot my own horn. The Calvinistic Dutch preach modesty and frown upon anything that may be perceived as vanity. Why? Because human talents are seen as a gift from God, so we shouldn’t take too much credit for our accomplishments. Many centuries have passed since the spirit of Calvin touched this tiny country bordering Belgium, yet, some of his principles are still present in our DNA, the Dutch National Attitude.

Looking back, I really believe that this mindset kept me from promoting myself properly. But there was something else. Coming from the relatively safe world of broadcasting, I never needed to market myself. I was hired by a network to do a number of jobs, and I left it to the PR people to sing my program’s praises.

After I’d left Holland, I had to learn that it was okay to be proud of what I had achieved and use those achievements to attract business. To this day, I try to do this in a veiled way, because I don’t want to be that narcissistic “Look at ME, ME, ME” person on Facebook. Instead, I offer advice and entertainment in my blog “Double Dutch.” That’s where clients and colleagues get to know me as someone with a certain level of experience and pizzazz. Well, that’s the idea…

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

One thing that has helped me tremendously is a toolbox called Neuro-Linguistic Psychology. It’s a mix of positive attitudes, belief and strategies to help people design and live the life they’ve always dreamt of. That almost sound like a commercial, doesn’t it?

At the basis of NLP is the process of modeling. I’m not talking about the catwalk in Milan, but about the study of exceptional people: business tycoons, sports icons, therapists, artists etcetera.

The idea is that these people -in order to achieve something extraordinary- have set themselves up for success. They have carefully (and often unconsciously) conditioned themselves to accomplish amazing things. The question is: How did they do that?

NLP tries to break it down into bits and pieces: the ingredients of a recipe. Once the recipe is uncovered, it can be taught to almost anyone. The finest and fastest way to mastering something is to start teaching it. That’s why I eventually became an internationally certified trainer of NLP, and that’s the reason I started coaching voice talent.

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?

First of all: Find something that defines you but that does not limit you. In other words: you want to box yourself in, to emphasize what sets you apart, but you want that box to be big enough to attract a wide audience. If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to no one.

In my case, I describe myself as a European Voice. Not British. Not American. Not even Dutch, even though that’s my native language. I tell my clients that I specialize in intelligent international narration. For that reason I get to do multilingual projects and jobs that require someone with a more global, neutral English accent.

Secondly: Don’t even think of reinventing the wheel. Living is learning, and learning from the best is a shortcut to success. Isn’t that what this series is all about?

5 Questions for a Professional Voice-Over Talent – Donna Postel

Today’s 5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent are answered by Donna Postel, a professional voice-over talent based in St Louis, MO.

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 had just dropped out of college — actually, I told myself I was transferring to a school more in line with my goal of being an international star of stage and screen, but the truth was that I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I grew up. One day a friend asked me to go with him to check out the Broadcast Center, a trade school in St Louis that promised to make its students into the world’s best deejays and news talkers. Fearing a scam, and knowing my friend was incredibly gullible, I accompanied him to save him from ruin.

As we sat there and listened to the owner and some the teachers talk about the program, a lightbulb lit up for me — this is something I can do, and do very very well. I signed up for the course (my friend did not).

One night, the owner’s son, a hot-shot big-time voiceover talent in New York, did a mini master class for us. He spoke a bit, answered some questions, and — lightbulb #2. From that night on, I knew I wanted to be a voice talent too.

The first job offer I accepted in radio was a position as production manager — I was going to be the copywriter, producer, and commercial/promo voice for KFRU in Columbia MO. Another radio job brought me back to the St Louis area, and I spent the next few years as a drive time personality, news reporter, interviewer and whatever else the stations needed.

I still loved theatre, and found the time to do a couple of plays a year as well. A fellow actor in the St Louis company I played with was creative director of a local ad agency, and as soon as I left radio (within days actually) an agent called me with a booking for one of that dear man’s clients, a department store.

Since that day 30 years ago (where did the time go?) I have sometimes given more energy to being a mom than running a voiceover business. There were a couple of years when I was lured back into radio, but commercials and corporate narration and on-camera spokesperson work was always there for me, and I have been extremely fortunate to have been able to support my family while being home when my kids got home from school.

This year I’ve finally been able to launch my audiobook career, and I can’t get over how much I love it.

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

I wish I’d actually listened to all the wonderful advice I was getting from so many generous people, but was too busy trying to appear like I already had all the answers to accept.

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?

When your business is your voice, your factory will always have an inventory of exactly ONE. My deeply ingrained DIY mindset has kept me from seeking the assistance that would help me serve more clients. I really need to start using outside editors more (but at the same time I really enjoy editing)!

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

Curiosity. I LOVE learning new things, and every project has opened my eyes to something.
Commitment. In performance, I am totally committed to the moment – the emotion – in the text.
Availability. I’m always available to do whatever it takes to make my client’s life easier.
I show up! My tools are ready to go (i.e., my voice is warmed up and ready).
And apparently I have a really reliable internal timecode – I can adjust my read by the frame, if that’s what’s needed.

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?

Oscar Wilde said it. “Be yourself – everybody else is taken.”

5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent – Bobbin Beam

Today’s 5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent are answered by Bobbin Beam, a professional voice-over talent based in Escondido, CA.

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?

My VO career began in an evolutionary way. I can’t remember when I wasn’t a performer of some kind. My sisters and I used to put on “shows” for our parents, singing harmony of holiday songs or the latest pop hits. Later on I formed a drama troupe at age 8 with my friends and we’d put on plays in our barn for the neighbors. My father had a large reel to reel tape recorder. I would watch how he used it. I then took over possession and wore out reel upon reel of his Scotch Brand Magnetic tape. I got hooked on playback! In high school I was in all the plays and was planning to be a theater major in college. In the fall of senior year I narrated an excerpt from Richard Brautigan’s, “Trout Fishing in America” for a class project and my English teacher told me I should consider going into communications. Before graduation, I landed my first job in radio at a progressive rock station. It was a complete novelty to have a female voice on the air at the time. It was a 180-degree alternative to top 40 where music actually mattered. Radio became a passion for quite a few years as I learned how to literally run a radio station by wearing the many hats within and working up the ranks. Then one day I was collecting unemployment. It was 1982. That was when I became an entrepreneur and started working as a voiceover actor while operating my own ad agency. I sold, wrote, produced , voiced, hired talent and purchased air time for my clients. It was a good way into voiceover. I loved voice-over more and more and landed my agents and worked in Milwaukee & Chicago and then moved to Southern California late in 1984 to be physically closer to my big sister and LA. To this day I am thankful during the years I worked in radio I never had to deliver the now dreaded “announcer read”.

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

That it takes guts and a thick skin, that the work ebbs and it flows. And you need to save your money when you’re making it, for those “famine days” that WILL occur. Another thing is to never play small, and listen to your own voice amidst the noise out there. I’m quite the contrarian sometimes. But I’ve become comfortable with the uncomfortable. It elevates my “Vision” and my art to not follow the crowd.

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?

Clearly the biggest professional and personal obstacle can be what I call, “Stinkin’ thinkin'” I’m an optimist at heart, and I cannot take the selection process personally. It CAN get to me sometimes. And I’ll cry about it, doubting myself. That always seems to occur before a new creative breakthrough that lifts me and the work to a whole new level. When I go through dry periods , I remember my focus, and read, learn, take more coaching, and stop trying to compare myself to others who appear more successful. And when the mic is off, the marketing hat must go on. I really try to avoid time-wasters. I must do the most productive thing possible at any one time.

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

Love. I always choose coming from a place of love and hope. I choose to be impressed rather than to impress. That’s why I love to learn. There is so much that I don’t know.

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’ve had so many fantastic friends, coaches and mentors to help me work through the nuts and bolts of the work, and my success so far is in large part a culmination of all the things I’ve learned from them. But the one person in my life who impacted my career was my mother. She was always my biggest fan, and she had the most beautiful voice. But she loved listening to me, and would correct me if I didn’t enunciate clearly or when I said something grammatically incorrect. She believed in me and taught me how to believe in myself.

5 Questions for a Professional Voice-Over Talent – Gabrielle Nistico

Today’s 5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent are answered by Gabrielle Nistico, a professional voice-over talent based in Charlotte NC.

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?

It started in 1994. I was a kid working as an intern in a radio station on Long Island. Of all things I wanted to be in sales! We did something called “Call-Out Research” and all the interns did shifts calling local household at random and playing them song hooks in order to gather music research for the station. The PD like my voice and asked me to start doing some commercials. A few months later he asked me for an air-check and before I knew it I was hooked on the performance aspects of the industry. In 2000 there was a short commercial strike with SAG / AFTRA. Being a stone’s throw from NYC I started to get auditions for some pretty big names while that was going on. I didn’t really know or understand (at the time) what it all meant but I started to see rates of pay that were FAR beyond anything I was earning in radio. After that I became aggressive about leaving radio and making VO my full-time effort.

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

I guess I wish I’d had a VO business advisor. Someone to help me better understand marketing, sales and negotiations. That’s why I’m so passionate about those efforts today. I took a lot of things for granted early-on because I didn’t know. I see many talent make those same mistakes now and they have loads of help available. I got screwed big time on a few jobs where I agreed to a buy-out. Coming from radio I thought “hey it’s just a tag, how long could they use it for?” Up until a few years ago I’d go back to the NY metro area and hear myself on spots for a bedding company. The tag they used was recording over 10 years before!

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?

Time. There’s never enough of it. There’s lots that I want to accomplish each week / month and not enough hours in each day. I’m learning to trust others more, hire help and delegate responsibilities where I can even to friends and family if they are willing to assist.

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

Whenever possible I subscribe to the “speak little, listen much” philosophy. I watch, glean, lurk, and soak up as much as I can from those I respect in the industry and I immediately apply their knowledge to whatever I’m doing. Ego will kill a voiceover career so I’m always trying to keep that nasty wench away. We stop learning and stop growing if we fail to listen and think we know everything and believe we have nothing to learn. I like to kick my own butt. So instead of a daily devotional – I will occasionally look myself in the mirror and say “you suck, now what are you doing to do to get better?”

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?

Physically play the role and your voice will follow. I’ve heard countless people say it but I think Bob Bergen explains it the best. In most cases the performances is not about how you sound but about how well you are playing the part. Make VO a whole body experience and everything about your career will change.

5 Questions for a Professional Voice-Over Talent – Rosi Amador

Today’s 5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent are answered by Rosi Amador, a professional voice-over talent based in Cambridge, MA.

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)

I had the good fortune that voiceovers came to me in a very organic way. My husband, guitarist/voice actor Brian Amador and I have been professional touring Latin musicians performing cultural and educational concerts for adults and children since 1984. As a result, many educators, arts presenters and fans were aware of us, particularly since in the beginning we performed at many benefit concerts for social justice and peace in Latin America. Starting in the late 1980’s we were called on occasionally by music colleagues involved with educational publishers, to narrate children’s Spanish eLearning projects for Scholastic and other publishers. That continued sporadically, but then in 1996, the hospital where I gave birth to my twin baby girls asked if I’d do a promotional campaign for them including radio ads telling my story and how great the hospital had been to our family. They realized that we had a following for our Latin band in the same target area as their patients. That was a no-brainer! Once I did that, I was hooked for good.

Over the next eighteen years I continued touring nationally with Sol y Canto, but when I was home both Brian and I continued to do children’s eLearning, in both English and Spanish, working at various studios. It was such a refreshing change from our life on the road as musicians, and it gave me the opportunity to do something I’d done in high school and college, and loved – to act. My parents passed on their love of music and acting to me since they were professional actors, musicians and dancers. In fact, my Puerto Rican/”Nuyorican” mom was on Broadway, joined the U.S.O during WWII and performed alongside Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin – all this before going to Mexico to do live theater and make movies. And my Argentine dad was a radio host who and radio drama actor as well as a stage actor. Needless to say, it would have been difficult for me to not be a musician or voice actor!

Finally, in 2009 Brian and I decided that we wanted to spend less time on the road and spend more time with our growing girls, now . They were now teenagers and needed us to be present more and more, so what came to my mind very clearly was to do more research and start getting educated about my “other passion” – voiceovers. I took classes, found mentors, and off I went to tell Brian we needed to enhance the modest music recording studio we already had at home and turn it into a topnotch professional voiceover studio. As we began decreasing our touring little by little, we started building our bilingual voiceover clientele locally until we turned the paradigm around in the last year; voiceovers became our full-time career, and music is something we do on the side. We love it – life is much more sane now and we love our voiceover work!

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

For years I had the unsubstantiated notion that one could only have a voiceover career if you lived in NYC or L.A. It kept me from starting to move in this direction much earlier. Once I connected with a VO mentor and started actually researching what being a voiceover actor truly meant, I quickly realized that this was not so, and that living in the Boston area would not be an issue.

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?

My biggest personal/professional obstacle that affects my voiceover business is one that I know is common to many entrepreneurs: organizing my time in such a way that even when I’m very busy doing my voiceover work I can still do a good job marketing continually. My desire is to keep growing my regular clientele and I know too well that much of it depends on how well I market and how happy I make my customers with our services, which takes time when your goal is you provide excellent service. I am working with a business coach to remedy this. Also, after having a functional VO website for years, it took me two more years to finally get a website up that I feel is both beautiful and highly functional! This was the single biggest obstacle that was preventing me from approaching more agents or larger clients. I now do it readily and with confidence.

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

There are several things I can point to, starting with my bilingualism and biculturalism, my naturally extroverted personality (it’s kind of hard to keep me quiet!) my entrepreneurial spirit, and my commitment to make a difference on this planet by creating or pursuing work that is meaningful every day. I am so happy that my parents insisted that I speak perfect English and Spanish! It is undoubtedly the single most important factor in driving sales in our voiceover business. Also, I have been an entrepreneur since the age of 25, once Brian and I co-founded our first Latin band. I am the company manager and lead singer. I never looked back.

Because I am a people person and love to communicate and connect with others, singing, voice acting, and marketing comes easily to me. That being said I’ve had to be tenacious and maintain my pledge to myself to never give up – even when there are the inevitable ups and downs. Choosing a creative life is never easy in our society, but I was always clear that it’s what I wanted; to run my own life and to express what I believe in. Having a career that inspired social change in some way was always one of my biggest life goals. When you do what you love you find boundless energy to get through most things in life. Through my music I managed to do that for the past 28 years, but I am thrilled to report that both Brian and I seem to attract clients for our voiceover work whose messages we can really get behind. For example, we still do a great deal of children’s eLearning for clients like Houghton Mifflin, Scholastic, National Geographic School Publishing which we really enjoy, along with documentaries for public television. I also voice health tips for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that are broadcast to 1,000 radio stations and are included in an online podcast, as well as in supermarkets nationwide, in both Spanish and English. We feel grateful that our voices can be heard advocating creating better health and awareness. It is an honor to do so.

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?

There really hasn’t been one particular person, but I have to say that the one event that has changed my voiceover career and helped me learn and grow immensely as a voice actor and a VO business woman was attending Faffcon 2, created by the fabulous VO actor Amy Snively, its creator. This voiceover gathering known as an “unconference” is a forum for voice actors far and wide to come together to learn resources about our trade, but most importantly to share these resources and tips and help one another. There I attended a great performance workshop by the fabulous VO actor and coach Randye Kaye which influenced me a great deal. More recently I attended a fantastic performance workshop by Elaine Clark in NYC and I am applying her many tricks for improving my reads quite a bit. Most importantly, she taught me that using my whole body much more is very effective in delivering better reads.

5 Questions for a Professional Voice-Over Talent – Roger Tremaine

Today’s 5 Questions for a Professional Voice Over Talent are answered by Roger Tremaine, a professional voice-over talent based in Central Kentucky.

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?

“And now for something completely different” as was said on Monty Python’s Flying Circus. After hearing previously from all these superstars of VO and those I consider my heroes, now you’ll hear my story, a relative newcomer and a work in progress.
The first spark that ignited my interest was my dad’s Wollensak R/R recorder. I amused myself by recording newspaper and magazine ads and clumsily adding music. This was in the early 1960’s. I involved myself in school shows and plays and loved the response of the crowd. In between then and when I got my first paying VO gig in 2010, a lot has transpired. I graduated high school in 1964 and compressed four years of college education into six years and three institutions. I changed majors and schools too often. Although my final degree was in Speech Pathology & Audiology ( a special ed. degree) I hung around the college radio station and a local commercial station. I came to love the work, the equipment, the people and even the smell of these places; stale cigarette smoke mixed with the smell that warm electronic gear gives off. I was now a DJ. Wow! I got to interview “Cousin Brucey” (Bruce Morrow – WABC radio). When I graduated college in 1969, I signed up with the US Air Force to participate in that little police action in Southeast Asia (SEA). I was able to by-pass the job they had in mind for me (medivac specialist in Guam) by passing a test in military broadcasting and was then made a Radio/TV Specialist and served in Thailand for two years as a DJ (“good morning Thailand”) and TV tech and on-camera host. Then “back in the world” as we SEA returnees phrased it, I got a job with Kentucky Educational TV (KET), the world’s largest educational network, first as a camera operator ,then film soundman and finally network audio supervisor. Along with “other duties as assigned” came on-air announcing and VOs for specials and docs. After doing this for a 30 years, I came to the realization I was giving my voice away free when I saw others profiting from it. That’s when it started for me, albeit a little late in life, I was in my sixties.

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

How competitive it is and how many talented people there are to compete with and how I wish now I had participated in more theatrical activities.

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?

Having to unlearn my old DJ approach to announcing, not being a very astute business person and being painfully shy and reluctant to “sell myself” and my services. And, of course, starting a new career so late in life (I’m 66). Mostly the lack of financial resources to avail myself of solid training, workshops and conferences. I do participate in free and low cost opportunities for career enrichment.

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

Patience, persistence and my undying love and passion for audio and performing. Also my audio abilities garnered after 30+ years of experience in broadcasting and what other skills God has gifted me with.

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 must confess there really hasn’t been an influential artist or mentor, although I would covet such a relationship. I’ve been reluctant to “bother” some busy talent to barrage them with questions and advice and where I live (central Kentucky) there isn’t a plethora experienced folks in the field to hang with. I come up with zero in the performance “tricks” category as well. I must give credit to my association with the VO-BB family from whence I’ve received much info and support. Thanks Deebs and crew. Finally, I believe success is result of hard work, practice and persistence. And some luck.