The Holidays are a great time to meet new people and catch up with folks you only see once or twice a year.
This season I noticed a new trend. I’d be quietly munching on a Christmas cookie, and a relative of a friend of a friend would come up to me with a glass of eggnog in his hand.
“I hear you do voices, right?”
“Well,” I said, “I’m a voice-over, if that’s what you mean.”
“You do books for the blind?” he wanted to know.
“No, not really. I….”
And before I could finish he continued:
“Because everyone’s been telling me that I have a great voice and I should be doing what you’re doing if you know what I mean. No offense, but it can’t be that hard. I bet you make some pretty good money. I said to the wife: “I talk all day long. I might as well get paid for it.”
“I wish someone would pay him to shut up for a moment,” said the wife, who had been listening to the conversation.
No matter where I went in these past few weeks, I’d always run into guys with eggnog, ready to show off their Sean Connery impersonation or some version of a “movie trailer man voice”.
All of them had three things in common:
- They knew as much about a voice-over career as a rodent would know about the art collection at the MoMA.
- What they did know was based on misinformation and unrealistic expectations.
- They all wanted me to tell them how to “break into the business,” preferably in two minutes or less.
In order to make my Holiday experience a bit more enjoyable and less repetitive, I thought I’d prepare a short slide show debunking some common misconceptions about what I do for a living.
Instead of having to listen to grown-ups single-handedly reenacting entire SpongeBob episodes, I now hand them a link to my YouTube-presentation:
Have an inspirational New Year!
Paul Strikwerda © 2010
PS Be sweet: please retweet!
PPS Next up: Ted Williams: The Revelation behind the Internet Sensation
About the author
Dale,
I actually did a little xtranormal video on v.o. about 3 months before you did. Surprised you missed it. It was up on most of the v.o. sites.
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6861019/
Thanks for bringing up some interesting phenomena, J.S. As they say in psychology: “Perception is projection”. All of us see the world through our own filters and that’s why I mentioned in my intro that people don’t have to agree with me. There’s a huge difference between facts and opinions, and my readers have a right to disagree with my selection of both for the purpose of this presentation. To me it’s just feedback for which I’m grateful.
Whenever we’re presented with facts and opinions, it’s always wise to look at the source and determine whether or not we wish to trust that source. One of the reasons why people seem to trust this blog has to do with the fact that I am not trying to sell them anything. Most readers can tell the difference between useful information and hyped-up advertising.
Secondly, my regular crowd (or “tribe” to quote Seth Godin), has had a chance to “try on” and test my suggestions to see if my ideas have practical value. In other words: they have taken the time to compare what’s on the box with what’s in the box. The proof of the microwave meal is in the eating!
Third, I do my very best to walk the talk (some days I’m better at it than other days). Readers are allergic to insincerity and they should be. Preaching one thing and doing something else is a sure way to lose readers, clients and friends. Most of my observations are taken out of the freelance life I live every day. My readers recognize the situations I write about, and they respond to what they can relate to.
Your last comment deals with realism and reality. In a recent study on the effects of a placebo, researchers discovered that even those who knew that they were given a sugar pill, experienced symptom relief. In other words: people aren’t blind. They just believe what they want to believe.
Paul,
It pained me to watch your video…only because I was guilty of speaking most of your eggnog statements. I came into VO and radio as a creative outlet to a stressful day job. I worked weekends and early mornings on radio for very little money and delighted in it. Most of my voice work now is for podcast (read: free) and I do it to be part of the larger community of listeners and creators of art. Would I like to make money doing this..sure! Will I be able to quit my stressful day job…not a chance.
I take your message to heart and agree with the points you made in the video…I’m still going to talk into a mic, if only for fun.
Hopefully your message will dissuade EVERYONE else so I’ll float to the top.
Enjoy your blog, carry on.
Mike
p.s. Confession time…Yes, I belong to Voices.com … and yes I join the cattle calls and truth be told, I haven’t landed a single gig through them yet.
Thanks for your response, Mike.
Some people believe that the truth hurts. However, it was not my intention to hurt anyone. My intention was to inform people about the realities of the business and NOT to encourage or discourage anyone. Mankind was born with free will and it is not within my powers to make anyone do anything anyway.
Please regard my video as a prescription for shortsightedness. When admiring a beautiful sculpture, it’s only human to overlook how much training, hard work and long hours it must have taken, to liberate that shape out of hard rock. All we see (and care about) is the end result.
As voice-over professionals are chipping away at a script, it is their job to make people forget what it takes to make it sound seamless and effortless. Exactly because many narrators are so good at it, they create the impression that it is as easy as it sounds.
Here’s a secret that is true in almost any context: once a person has become unconsciously competent at what they do, it actually is easy!
For more on levels of learning, you might be interested in reading:
http://www.nethervoice.com/nethervoice/2010/07/15/yin-yang-freelancing/
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Hi Paul,
I loved the video!
I think that it reads very much to the generation-”I want it now!”
So many people don’t realize that like anything, be it learning an instrument, how to play Golf, or in this case, becoming proficient in Voice over enough that one is able to make a living at it, requires one to travel that “learning curve,” which involves a lot of study, practice, training, more study, more practice and training, to go from not really knowing anything, to knowing some, to becoming OK, to good, and so on, certainly not overnight! As you have stated elsewhere on your site, great talent makes what they do appear easy, but what we don’t see, is the many hours, and years of training, sweat, and study that came before. No one comes out of the womb and drives a car.
Paul, I love your blogs, and your great sincerity!
Cheers,
Mark
Hi Mark, I’m glad you enjoyed my video. Thank you so much for your very kind words!
I’ve always liked the expression “It takes many years to become an overnight success”. That’s certainly true in voice-overs. Having one of the most resonant voices in the universe is no guarantee that you’ll do well in this business. It doesn’t hurt to have nice pipes, but there’s so much more to that.
Bob Souer, a wonderfully wise, talented and in-demand voice, spent over twenty years working as a media director for Billy Graham, before he finally decided to become his own boss. I’ve been a freelancer all my life, working for various networks in different countries. Only a few years ago, I took the plunge and started doing voice-over full-time.
These days, people put food in the microwave and expect results within minutes. A career as a voice-over is much more like a crock pot recipe. It takes time to produce a decent meal, but in the end, it’s much more nutritious and it will hopefully sustain you a lot longer. Bon apetit!