Kate McClanaghan - How to Become a Valuable Voice Over: What Every Talent Needs to Know

www.voiceoverinfo.com

Copyright 2013 by Kate McClanaghan

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 9781483512877

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson

At Sound Advice were often asked, Whats it take to go the distance in this business?

Theres no single answer. There are four: pursue, persist, prepare, and promote. These four components are absolutely vital to succeed at ANYTHING, let alone an acting or voice-over career. Its your responsibility to ensure these elements are continually in play as they are required of you no matter how far along you may beregardless of whether you are just beginning, or if you have been established and are aiming to raise your game to the next level. They are a constant.

Whatever you accomplish in this business, youll succeed only if you pursue it. Nothing will come to you, no matter how much talent you may have. Even with the benefit of nepotism, its ultimately up to you to run your career. This is your business and no one elses. Own it. Opportunities are what you make of them.

You have to set your sights on your immediate goals, and then persist at them, and often beyond what you might first consider a comfortable margin. Additionally, developing and then maintaining your skills requires persistent dedication. This element only increases with success, not the other way aroundcontrary to what many novices may think.

So, if you find youre easily frustrated or simply give up after a few months of training or even after only a year or two of promotion, then you may never honestly know for yourself what you could have created without real, long-term persistence.

Preparation means continually developing your abilities, and along with ongoing promotion, this requires patience. Allow yourself to continue to develop your skills. Agility is not naturally intuitive and talent can atrophy with lack of use. It takes attention. Otherwise your skills wont be sharp when called upon at a moments notice, and they will be tested. Without persistence you will serve only to undermine your own confidence. Your confidence is directly related to your integrity as an artist. Regardless of your position, no matter how affluent you may be, no one can afford to lose his or her integrity. Even natural talent will degrade and weaken if not continually honed.

To add to this, your success is contingent on continual and repeated promotion far more than anyone in this business has previously ever lead you to believe. Consider it your staple from this point forward. Its up to you to drive attention to yourself through your very best promotional efforts. And with that thought in mind, as a rule: never set your sights on securing just one audition, or one big break, or wait until the time is just right. If so, you will secure only ONE audition, ONE break, and the time will never arrive because you never took the time to properly promote yourself. The time is right when you decide it is, so make that NOW. Make a decision as to what you want in your life and work toward those goals. In doing so youll accomplish far more than you ever imagined possible.

Every audition is a form of promotion, yet so many artists repel the idea of promotion that this could easily account for the scores of talented souls who have fallen into oblivion. If you leave your career alone I promise nothing will happen. It will slip through your fingers.

No one who has ever scored an Oscar accepted it saying, This was so easy. I dont know why you guys dont all have one. It was a piece of cake!

Nope. Anything worthwhile is accomplished from hard work and lots of it. And a good deal of that work comes from consistent and constant promotion. Consider it as much of your job as the performance itself. This is how we make ourselves known and familiar. Promotion comes with the territory and cant be ignored if you intend to succeed as a working talent.

The fact remains that talent who persist at promotion, while honing their performance skills, will make themselves known and valuable. What they may lack performance-wise at the onset of their careers will strengthen and develop from experience, but not from a single coaching once every eight to ten months, or a half-hearted promotional blitz once or twice a year.

Those who become consummate professionals make it their business to run their own careers rather than leave it to chance.

However, keep in mind from the moment you decide to commit completely to establish (or further) your career it will seem as if all the forces in the universe will set out to thwart you. Not because you shouldnt be pursuing this field, but rather the complete and utter opposite. Its an occupational hazard that will test your mettle at every turn. And while you may be a strong sprinter at the onset of your career, aim to go the distance. Its far more rewarding if you do.

And even with a thorough road map to follow, as weve laid out for you here at Sound Advice, youre the one who has to dedicate yourself to the task of getting it done. Certainly your odds are far greater with us than without us, but its still work and youre the one who has to do it. No one will give it to you, or create it for you. You cant purchase it, but you can invest in yourself effectively and prepare to deliver whats needed and wanted of you so youre ready at a moments notice. And that is extremely rewarding on many, many levels.

So, when you find yourself losing patience, and no doubt everyone does in every small business from time to time, rather than dwell on being frustrated, put your attention into your pursuits, in your preparation, and in your promotion. Theres always something you could be doing RIGHT NOW to forward your goals.

In other words, just do it! And procrastinate tomorrow.

You may have found in your search to learn more about the voice over industry that an awful lot of people hold their cards rather tight to their chestas if they might reveal too much if they tell you anything useful.

At SOUND ADVICE, we believe knowledge is power. Its our on-going mission to offer you the most-current, most-honest, most-useful information available. The primary reason we wrote, How to Become a Valuable Voice Over: What Every Talent Needs To Know is to offer you the greatest opportunity to succeed.

The fact is you cant rely solely on auditions to secure work, and the only real difference between your audition and your performance on a booking is the number of takes.

Certainly making yourself valuable requires a variety components, not the least of which is knowing and conducting your small business as a working talent well. We will attempt to outline whats required of you before, during, and after landing a job within these pages in order for you to continue to land work.

Acting is a card game: The objective is to lead with trump; lead with POWER. In other words, establish yourself with what it is you do best.

Sounds easy. However, you may be too close to it to determine for yourself how youre perceived. This speaks to type. Its not uncommon, even if youve been pursuing a career in this business for a number of years, you may only stumble upon the work youre best suited to land as a type.