The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. The VO Meter is brought to you by voiceactorwebsites.com, VocalBoot2Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, and IPDTL. And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode 37 of the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about this episode. We just got back from VO Atlanta. We’ve got a lot to talk about that.
We’ve also got our British Invasion roundtable. So we’re really looking forward to that, and letting you guys listen to that oral candy that is our lovely, wonderful voiced guests. But before that, a word from one of our loyal sponsors, VocalBooth2Go.
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Yeah, and apropos, we actually just spent a lot of time with the folks at VocalBooth2Go. Steven Coghill, their marketing manager, was there at VO Atlanta, and it was great to see him again. And I know they did really well at the conference because he sold almost all of the equipment that he came with, and that’s always a good thing.
So thanks again to VocalBooth2Go for being a sponsor of the VO Meter. We also need to talk about our good friend Tim Page at podcastdemos.com. Tim’s team has produced over 1,000 podcast intros for some of the biggest podcasts on the planet.
Each demo includes custom written scripts and hand-selected music, and is guaranteed to showcase your voice and talent in the best light possible. With a finger on the pulse of what podcast producers want, you can be sure your podcast demo will sound professional, current, and competitive. Now, as you’ve probably heard by now, Tim actually produced demos for Sean and I, and all I can say is that he and his team were amazing.
His script writer created original scripts perfect for my voice and personality, as well as reflective of current popular podcast genres. I recorded in the comfort of my own home studio, and Tim worked his mastering magic. The whole process only took a couple of days, and I couldn’t be more pleased.
Tim is a consummate pro and so easy to work with. Thank you, Tim, and Podcast Demos. So before we get going with the interview portion of the podcast, we’ll start with some current events.
What’s going on in your VO world, Paul?
Okay, yeah, there’s actually quite a bit going on. As we talk about, the best way to get jobs is to book a trip, right? So that week going into VO Atlanta, I had a million things to do.
I’ve never had this much work to do in two days. Literally on Monday and Tuesday, I went down to VO Atlanta on Wednesday to get prepared. So on Monday and Tuesday, I just had this flood of work.
I got an e-learning job, a PSA for a really big airport, and also a local TV commercial. And for the local TV commercial, it was actually a situation where it was a friend of mine who was hiring me because he does video work. So I’m finally getting to that point where people are starting to realize what I do, even friends and family, because it takes a while, either they don’t trust you because they think you’re going to flame out pretty quickly, or they’re just not really sure what voiceover is.
But I’m getting to that point finally where relatives and friends that I’ve had for years will actually contact me for voiceover. So this is a friend of mine from college, undergrad, who contacted me, works at a local TV station, and he had a commercial to do, a couple tag lines for the end of a video. So they’re these PSAs for the transportation system where it’s kind of like, here’s an alternative to your crappy commute, get on the ride share.
So just three quick tag lines, and I was like, great, we’ll do it for this amount. I actually sort of quoted him a pretty good deal because like I say, he’s a really old friend. Then he comes back to me and says, just found out from my station manager we had to do this union, and we work with this agency in town.
Luckily, it’s an agency I’m with, so they already knew about me, but it turns out they wanted to make it a union job. So that means I had a Taft-Hartley situation, which is the Congress Act that says you can do a certain amount of union jobs before you’re forced into joining the union. That number is three.
So this is the first time this has ever happened to me. So it’s my first situation of being Taft-Hartley, as we say, which also means I will now get a SAG credit, a Screen Actors Guild or SAG-AFTRA credit to add to my resume, which is a really cool thing. And that was a pretty exciting job, but as I mentioned, the problem was it was on that Tuesday going into New York Atlanta.
So got it out, luckily, and there was no edits needed. So the station’s pretty happy with that, and it’s gonna be airing at the local TV market here in a couple of weeks. So those are a couple of really cool things, but again, always, Murphy’s Law, the worst situation will happen when you’re least expecting it, or in this case, a good one, because I’m getting jobs, but all those things just snowballed while I was at VO Atlanta, and it’s always funny how that works out.
So that’s pretty much all that’s going on with me. How about you, Sean?
Well, first off, can totally relate to booking out and then getting all these job opportunities coming in. I remember on Saturday at VO Atlanta, this car dealership in Oregon actually reached out to me saying they were looking for a friendly non-announcer announcer to do all of their spots for their web and radio. I was very excited about that.
So luckily, I told them I was at a conference and even though I had a travel rig with me, I would prefer to record for my home studio. So they were totally fine with that. So I knocked that out on Monday and then I was still waiting to hear back from them.
And I had a lot of great conversations with some audiobook narrators over the weekend like Scott Brick and Jeffrey Kafer, as well as some local talent. And I was like, you know, I think I finally built up enough vocal stamina to give it a shot. It’s funny when you kind of make those realizations because then I found this perfect audiobook audition on ACX.
It’s like this fantasy RPG style. If you’re a fan of RA. Salvatore or Brandon Sanderson or Dungeons and Dragons or whatever, it’s perfect.
I did that, was really confident about the audition, waiting to hear back from the rights holder. And then also a German client that I worked with through Bedolgo a year ago actually kind of came back to me and be like, hey, we loved what you did for us a year ago. Will you do this new script for us on Wednesday?
And so we had a directed session for that the other day and they were great. They gave me a music track, a sample track. We were in and out in like two takes in like 10 minutes.
It was great. So on top of that, after talking with a lot of people over the weekend and kind of reassessing my voice over goals, I actually dropped my on-camera agent out of Seattle. As grateful as I was, and I told this to the agent as well, as grateful as I was for the mentorship and the guidance into the world of on-camera and the opportunities that were coming my way, they didn’t really align with my ultimate VO goals.
And so I didn’t want to create a conflict with another regional agency. So she’s like, I understand that completely, our doors are always open. And she even gave me a referral to another agency that specializes or has a much larger VO department.
So just so you guys know, it is okay to drop an agent or a client if you do it with grace and professionalism. Because she’s straight up said, she’s like, you’re a real professional and I know you’re going to make it happen for yourself. So I was like, oh, thank you.
This is so great.
And you said, wait, you mean the guy behind me?
Just remember guys, it’s your business. So don’t ever feel like you have to take an opportunity just because it’s what’s presented to you, right? Think about it and then make an informed decision.
And who knows, it might even turn out in your favor. So one more thing I wanted to mention, and probably the coolest thing, is that I was in a cartoon. Woohoo!
So one of our animation coaches, MJ. Lalo with GVAA, was casting for this local studio. Me and a few of my friends got to audition for it.
And we created this awesome cartoon together. So it’s through Bim Bam Studios. It’s kind of a humorous retelling of the story of King David.
But the animation was great. The other actors were fantastic. And I felt kind of like Harry Shearer or Hank Azaria from The Simpsons, because everyone else was playing one or two characters, and I was playing six.
It was great.
It was a lot of fun. Every now and then, people will hear Donald Duck or Sean Connery during a workout just for funsies.
Or on here.
Very, very nice. So congratulations on that. I know you said that was a life achievement unlocked.
So really cool that you got to have that experience.
Thank you. Hopefully there are more to come.
So at least for me, and I guess it sounds like for you too, that week leading up into VO Atlanta was really cool. Let’s talk about VO Atlanta itself, because you and I both spent a lot of time there in different roles, but overall I had a really good time, and it’s typical this week right after where you’re sort of in that haze of great spirits and just sort of recapping what went on. Maybe a little sad because it’s over, but I think it went really well and I got a lot out of it.
How about you?
Yeah, the afterglow.
Exactly.
Definitely. But yeah, because I know you’ve worked at the conference multiple times, and I’ve occasionally done some hours at the GVA booth. This was the first year that I was there primarily as a representative for GVAA.
And so it was different. Because before it was all fun and rainbows and stuff, and this one, still plenty of that. But I didn’t even know what my schedule was going to be like until I got there.
So once I figured out that I would be primarily working, I was like, all right, you might go to a panel or two, like a breakout session or two. Don’t think you’re going to have time for any X sessions, so I didn’t schedule those, even though they had some amazing ones. Oh, my God.
Bob Bergen was there, like the voice of Porky Pig and Tweety Bird and Jennifer Hale from Mass Effect, for Powerpuff Girls from Johnny Quest, or like the real adventures of Johnny Quest. So many characters that I grew up watching. So hopefully I’ll get another chance to work with them in the future.
But still, it was great. Like even though it was just like working, a lot of people came up to us and thanked us for the rate guide or a great class or a workshop that they had done with us. People came up to me personally.
It was like, oh, you were so helpful recommending that interface or thank you for your Japanese pronunciation help on that audiobook. It was really, really validating and invigorating. And then on top of that, it was just kind of during my off hours, I just chatted with people.
Like 400 people. It was crazy that I know 400 people at a personal level.
Well, yeah, it’s interesting you had that experience working. So welcome to my world. As you mentioned, I’ve been working on the audio visual services team for the last three years and with varying degrees of intensity.
So this year was a little bit different. I was thankful in that the people that were running the team, namely Steven George, who was the boss of me, even though I hate to admit it, did a great job of… He did a great job of allowing me to experience some things as well.
And I went into it with the mindset of, I know I’m not going to be able to attend a lot of sessions, and that’s going to be okay. I’m going to approach this sort of taking whatever comes at me and just enjoying the camaraderie. And that’s really what happened.
That’s my biggest takeaway, I would say, is that…
Exactly, yeah.
Even more than years previous, I feel like everybody there was really open and understanding. And it may have been Kay Bess’ fabulous opening keynote where she talked about trusting and being brave. That probably set the tone for the whole conference, but even, like you mentioned, some of the biggest names in our industry, Bob Bergen being there, Jennifer Hale, Dr. Kell, who I basically dragged in kicking and screaming this year, those are people that have helped me for years, Bob especially.
So I was really happy to finally talk to Bob in person and thank him for all the help he’s given me. Oh, well, you’re so great about taking everything and running with it. You shouldn’t be thanking me.
It’s all on you. And that was just amazing. He has the greatest spirit and never wants to take credit for all the help he gives to the voiceover community.
Same with Dr. Kell. I’ve been talking about how much he’s helped me over the years on this podcast. And same thing.
All he does is deflect and say, oh, it’s nothing. Oh, shucks. And I feel like that was the whole attitude for the entire conference, was everybody willing to just trust in themselves and embrace the community as a whole.
Absolutely. And I feel like so many… Because, I mean, we’ve spent these last two or three years or however many times you’ve gone to the conference building these connections.
And so you feel like you really know these people at this point. And so I feel like a lot of people who are in that position kind of just dedicated time to just chatting with people, seeing what’s going on in their VO and personal lives. And it was great.
It was relaxing. It was refreshing, dare I say. And it was just a wonderful time.
I forgot to mention Joe Cipriano as well. Obviously, huge talent. And you mentioned how you thought it was hilarious how he was actually making fun of me on Facebook going into the conference because of some picture.
I’m a little jealous of the rapport you have with him now. That’s incredible.
Well, I have to thank AJ for that. Because even though he is all about deflecting as well, AJ has been a huge help to me. And he’s a fabulous engineer and voice over talent in his own right.
And he’s been nothing but gracious with helping me out over the years as well. So thanks to AJ and Joe Cip for all the time they’ve given to me.
He’s a good bridge. I will say that. All of them are.
And I did want to touch on one thing, like that Bob and them were all just like trying to deflect the gratitude. But also I feel like they’re just happy to work with someone who gets it. Right?
I mean, like you’ve been really receptive to all of their guidance over the years and you’ve worked your butt off trying to get to where you are. So I’m sure they deal with people all the time. What?
That’s how much work is required? No, thank you. But I mean, you’re really, yeah, like I said, you’re open to feedback and you work to fix the things that they suggest.
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And same with you.
I mean, you’ve grown over the years tremendously as well. You just got your first cartoon, as we talked about. Woohoo!
Only took seven years.
It’s kind of like you said. Maybe you and I are at a place now where it’s a different experience because of the work we put in and not to pat ourselves on the back, but I think that’s part of it. And I was so thankful to talk to some of our fans who came up to us and said, Oh, your podcast.
I love your podcast. Somebody told me they were an ambassador. Somebody told me they signed up to be an ambassador because they heard about it on our podcast, and that was just really cool.
Yeah, we say this all the time, but we really never thought that it would have such a positive impact on so many people. And they say they love the format. They love that we’re just chatting about our experiences.
They love our dynamic. It’s really… I’m just so grateful that people are finding it helpful.
So now that we’ve said all this, it’s not all unicorns and rainbows at VO Atlanta. And mainly I just want to talk to people because sometimes you can’t invest in a conference like this. It can be expensive.
Honestly, I think you want to invest about $1,500 to $2,000 just to get there. And depending on what your goals are, you might be doing additional X sessions, which can add up very quickly.
Depending on how much you party afterwards.
Yeah, depending on how much you party afterwards and if you’re the generous type who likes to buy rounds for everyone. But I just want to emphasize that as useful as these are, I cannot emphasize how helpful this has been in my career because you build those face-to-face connections, and there’s no substitute for that. And there is a level of dedication that you showed just by investing in something like this.
That being said, these experiences are not for everyone, and they may not align with your goals. Namely, it may or may not be the best investment of your time and funds towards your ultimate voice-over goals. So do your research.
I mean, they’re a lot of fun, they’re wonderfully educational, and the networking… I think that is the biggest benefit for me is that I have become such a better networker and a confident interactor with people, I guess. Because I’m an introvert, honestly.
I need my time. After VO Atlanta, it takes me a good week of sleeping in a little bit and of quiet time to kind of recharge and get back to normal. And so, like I said, I think at some point in your career, you definitely should give one of these a try.
You don’t have to go to all of them, and you don’t have to go every year. But it’s something that if you think is worthwhile, you should try it because there are a few ways to learn more about the VO industry at once and to get this access to some of these industry greats, like both in an educational capacity and just a chatting capacity, right? So do your research, ask yourself if this is something that’s going to be beneficial to you, and then decide.
Don’t feel like you have to go just because everyone else is because it certainly feels that way on Facebook sometimes. Or around this time of year. Do your research and then make an informed decision on whether it’s right for you.
Those are fair points for sure. You have to take into account your own budget, your own level of comfortability. If you’re the kind of person who just will not go talk to people, then it may not be a good investment for you.
You may be better served sending out more emails, making more cold calls. But for me, I would say the one thing to keep in mind is try not to be such a number cruncher when you’re looking for a return on investment. Because I think the intangibles far outweigh the actual numbers you can crunch when you get back the week or maybe months later.
Because in my mind, because we spend so much time standing in a 4×4 or 4×6 box, you can’t duplicate that sort of experience of the camaraderie you have with 699 other people that do exactly what you do. Just having the opportunity to talk about shop. For instance, when I talk to my wife about recording levels, she has no earthly idea what I’m talking about.
There’s really nobody else to talk to other than you, Sean, when we do this podcast. So getting out of the booth and having that common experience to share with people is just invaluable and it will grow your soul, in my opinion.
Alright, so we’ll have our British Invasion Roundtable in just a minute, but before that, it’s our Questionable Gear Purchase.
I’ll start, and for a change, I don’t actually have anything stupid to report, so Sean, this is all you this time.
What?
I’m just kidding. But I’m happy for you. So I have one or two little things that I picked up recently.
One was a new phone. I went from an iPhone 6S to an XR, so that’s like four generations, so I was like, oh, the technology. It’s insane.
So I’m happy about that, and it’s a great little… In case you don’t know, I’m a big fan of mobile recording, so I love using my smartphone for that. And actually, I still have an old one that, at this point, it’s like a 5S.
It’d probably only get like $20, $25 for it. But I still have it as a backup, because Twisted Wave still works fine on it, and so does the Twisted Wave remote. So it’s a great little tool, like little extra tool to have as a backup recorder.
So don’t throw out those old iPhones if you don’t, like, if they’re not that, if you’re not going to get a good trade in on it. So as a father, I’m sure you just give them to the youngest. Give it to someone who will appreciate it.
Or just save them to throw at a drifter while you’re driving down the street.
Just don’t aim for the face. But…
But other than that, one other cool thing that I got recently is this little device that plugs into my mini display port on my MacBook Pro. And it’s got an accompanying app on my iPad. It’s called Luna Display.
And it turns my iPad into an actual second monitor for my computer. So now I can actually have my script and check levels and twisted wave and even adjust them if I want to and do a true punch and roll with my iPad. So right now my booth is a little small for a larger monitor, so I was really looking for something that would allow me to use my current gear in that capacity.
So Luna Display does it perfectly and I’m really happy with that. And it works with, depending on what model computer you have, it works with both the mini display port or they have a version that works with the new USB-C. So if you have an iPad lying around that you want to turn into a second monitor, might be an option for you.
So we are going to get to our British Invasion roundtable, I promise, in one second. But we have an extra special treat. This person was not able to join us for the roundtable, but was kind enough to pump out a VO Meter stick right after she took a trip to Hong Kong.
So we really appreciate having UK talent, Shelley Avellino, Shelley, we love you, doing a VO Meter stick for this episode.
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick.
What did he say?
It’s time for the VO… Oh, never mind.
The VO Meter shtick? Oh, got it.
So hi, guys. This is Shelley Avellino, full-time voice actor, director, and coach. And stories from Shelley’s booth.
There’s so many. I think being a British voice actor in America has its quirks for sure. It’s nice being a niche, though, I have to say.
It is very nice being a niche. And because of that, I get a lot of e-learning work. They say that us Brits sound way more intelligent.
They couldn’t be further from the truth, but you know, I’ll go with that. So I do get a lot of e-learning work. I do a lot of that.
But I’ve got so many stories, and a lot of my students tend to ask me, what is your favorite piece of work that you’ve done? Or what has been the most challenging? And I think there’s a couple of stories, actually, which I’ll try and fit into another minute and a half.
One was with the way e-learning is going these days. There’s lots of gamification and virtual reality. And more and more in this genre, you see characters come up more and more, which I love.
As voice actors, most of us like to do character voices. It gets our acting chops going. So, in this one particular scene, I had to be an office parrot, which doesn’t sound like it was that bad.
But I said, you know, do you want it to be a stereotypical parrot? Is he well spoken? They wanted the typical pirate on the shoulder parrot, with squawks and everything.
And that was pretty fun. But when they got to the point where they wanted this parrot to squawk the word no in seven different ways. No, I’m unhappy.
No, I don’t want that. Or no, stop. That was pretty funny doing different squawks for that.
And then the second story, which I love doing, I was doing an audio book, and I had to do probably about 30 characters. And it was a Scottish love romance. And this one particular scene where there were seven Highland Scottish brothers having a conversation.
And I had to come up with voices that was different for each one. So, you know, when it comes to the seventh one, I’m like, oh, jeez, you know, what am I going to kind of do for this? So I kind of stood in the booth, and they gave a little bit of a description of this guy, big, huge, burly, you know, ginger beard with stocky.
So I kind of stood in the booth, you know, trying to put this stance, and I made my neck really small. And I came up with this kind of a really gruff kind of voice like that, you know. And it kind of reminded me of the, you know, the fat bass bleep from Austin Powers.
Yeah, you know, that guy, the big fat guy. Which worked really well. I eventually got there, and the author was really happy with this book, and we kept going back and forth and throughout the chapters.
And I only, I double checked, it was only two chapters that this voice needed to be in. And she came back, she went, oh my gosh, Shelley, I love all the voices. They were all great.
You’re doing such a great job. However, you know that Seventh Highland brother? I forget what his name was now.
That voice didn’t actually work, because he’s actually the sexy love interest in the next book. Ha! So that one wasn’t quite right.
But those are my two favorites. Quite fun.
All right, thanks again to Shelley Avellino for donating your VO Meter shtick. We’re very sad that you weren’t able to join us for the roundtable, but we are so happy that you included yourself in this episode in that way. So, speaking of our British roundtable, we’re gonna hop over there in just a second, but before that, a word from one of our sponsors.
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Because you like to have fun.
Okay, welcome to the interview portion of this episode of The VO Meter. Our British Invasion, Part Deux, or Part Three, Part Rumour Numeral Four, whatever you want to call it. I’m joined locally in the iHeart Radio Studios, graciously hosted by Stanley Fisher, by Chris Sharpes and Lillian Warkentin.
And on the line we have Jamie Muffett. Sean is joining us as well, of course, from Washington. And we’re hoping to have Mike Cooper join us.
Hopefully he’ll join us momentarily, and we’ll talk to him as well. So first I want to give Stanley a chance to introduce himself. He’s our gracious host here at iHeartRadio.
Stanley, thanks so much.
Yeah, you’re welcome. It’s my pleasure. It’s good to see you again, too.
I haven’t seen you since Mabo 2018.
Yeah, oh, what? Two months, right? Three months?
So yeah, no, it’s my pleasure. What do you think of the studios here?
It’s really, really cool.
Yeah, they’re nice. I’ve been working here for about a year and four months, and they’re doing a full… There’s a total redo of all these studios, and they’ve done a really good job with a lot of these.
They look very nice.
Yeah, as we talked about, I live about five miles from here, and I haven’t been here since the whole shopping center and offices were redone, and it’s really impressive. Lillian reminds me of the area around Nationals Park where they’ve sort of…
Redone everything there….
gentrified that whole area, and now it’s like another mini city, so it’s really kind of cool.
Yeah, we’re about a block away from Johns Hopkins University, and this parking lot out here was just bare. And they built this five, six-story apartment high-rise living right here in the parking lot and added like 30 shops. Oh, wow.
Mainly food. I know I’ve been to all of them, so.
And there’s more coming as we talk about this. Pretty cool.
Yeah, so anyway, you guys are welcome. Let me know if you need anything else.
All right, thanks again for hosting us. And we’ll talk to you soon. So I want to give everybody a chance to introduce themselves and tell us a little bit about what they do.
So let’s start here in the room. Lillian, why don’t you start, please.
Hi, what do you want to know first? I have been in the States for off and on about 28 years. Half of that, maybe less than half of that has been in Europe.
My husband was military, so we moved backwards and forwards across the Atlantic every three to four years. But I’ve been in the Washington, DC area for about eight years.
Okay, great. And Chris?
Similar story. I’ve been here in the States since 2001, and I lived in Virginia for about eight years. Was back in the UK for about a year, and then here in Baltimore since 2009, so it’s almost 10 years.
Scary. Yeah, that’s about it, really. And I lived in Dubai for a year.
That’s the exciting factoid about me.
Really? Yes.
That’s cool. Before, it was nice. It was awful when we lived there, so.
What are my most exciting jobs was done in Dubai. It’s a video that’s currently playing at the top of the Burj Khalifa. Oh, wow.
That’s cool. It’s pretty cool. Nice connection there.
Okay, so, about 10, no, nine years ago, on a trip to the US for a vacation on holiday, I met an American and ended up bringing him to London to live with me, and we ended up getting married so that he could stay in London. And four and a half years later, much to our surprise, everything had changed in terms of the laws around gay marriage, and he was finally able to get me a green card, and we’d always said that we would jump on that if that were ever to become a possibility, so we had this short list of places, some were West Coast, some were East Coast. I had a notion in my mind that I would probably carry on working with clients in the UK and Europe for at least a time, and that it didn’t seem necessarily like the wisest idea to move.
What for me at that point was a seven year running voiceover business, my full-time job, moving it eight hours in terms of the UK or nine hours in terms of Central Europe to the West Coast didn’t really seem like a viable proposition. So we started looking at this list of places on the East Coast, which would mean it was GMT-5, CET-6. One of the places on that list was this little rinky-dink town or so I felt called Asheville, North Carolina, which people have been telling Mark, my partner, for years that he needed to go and check out.
So we ended up coming and checking it out, absolutely fell in love with it like a lot of people do. Just to give you some perspective, this is a town of 80 odd thousand people that gets something like 7 or 8 million visitors a year. So it’s a destination location.
It’s lots of fun. It’s very progressive. And I kind of always thought that my American dream would involve me living in a city, New York, LA or something like that.
And what we ended up with was 19 acres almost of national forest, 13 miles outside of Asheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Well, I’ve been in America for about 10 years, so I’m a relative newbie by comparison. And I currently live just outside of Philly, just north of Philly, but I was in New York up until a couple of years ago. And yeah, grew up in the London area and my wife’s American, hence why I could move over here.
And yeah, that’s where I am right now.
That’s awesome. Well, what are the things I’m most curious about? And the reason I wanted to do this episode is because each of you lives in what would not be considered the top media market in the US.
Chris lives just around the corner from me outside of Baltimore. Lillian is in Northern Virginia. Jamie, I know your town very well because my aunt lives almost across the street in Newtown.
Right, yeah.
Spend a lot of time in Newtown.
I’m sorry?
I spend a lot of time in Newtown.
Oh, okay, great.
Got a great coffee shop there.
So even though you’re just outside some major cities, how have you established your careers in the town in which you currently live? Is there a reason you pick the towns you currently live in?
Yeah, most of my work is done outside of the town I currently live in, although I have done some work with local companies, telephony work and such. I think because our work is all digital, pretty much most of my work is some in England and some in the rest of Europe and some publishing houses in the States. But yeah, it’s harder to connect with a lot of local companies for me because I don’t represent their local brand with a British accent.
So that can be, I don’t know if you’ve found that, that can be a sticking point. Sometimes. Big international companies love it, especially my natural more mid-Atlantic accent, which isn’t the straight British, it’s the Knicks.
So that represents an international company very well, but the British accent, they don’t necessarily want, you know, your all-American British company doesn’t want a British person representing them on the phone or on their webinars or on their e-learning. It’s a mixture, yeah.
Yeah, I would agree. I mean, I worked the New York market quite hard when I was there. I was there for about eight years.
So, you know, I’m a little bit out of the city, but it takes me like an hour and 20 minutes to get into New York. So I’m in there every week for various projects. So my market really is still New York and stuff I record from home.
So that’s anywhere else. I do sometimes work in Philly. I’ve done a few sessions in town, but like Lillian was saying, the local area really doesn’t supply any work for me because local businesses want, like you were saying a second ago, a sound that’s sort of local to them unless they’re going for some sort of quirky David Attenborough or something like that as a sort of comedy effect.
Yeah. But yeah, that’s pretty much how it works for me. You’re sort of in a, yeah.
In some ways you’re a little bit in limbo when you’re in America because you don’t have access to the huge pool of work, which is obviously in the UK. And then you’re also, you’re slightly more isolated from that, and then you’re also really niche in America. So, you know, it’s sort of an interesting…
The runway is very much smaller. Very much smaller for us.
Yeah, exactly.
And we all fight over the same pieces. I see the same names and the same short listings for a few things, and I go, them again, okay.
Damn, that Chris Sharpes.
But no, it is telling though, with some of the local stuff, I tried to sort of, even like Mini of Baltimore tried approaching them and they were like, nope, and their ads are all American. I’m like, that seems silly to me, but you know, they want what they want, so they want a regionalized commercial, so it isn’t too jarring for them. But to Lillian’s point, the international companies, they love it.
I’m weirdly popular in Amsterdam, I’m not sure why, but I have quite a few clients in Amsterdam, I just don’t know why they like my voice, but they do.
I’ve had a couple of jobs from Italy, which I thought was strange too, but I’ll take it.
My six year old booked a job in Italy.
Nice.
That’s cool, that’s very cool, what was it?
It was an e-learning piece for a company there. It was on Bedalgo actually.
Yeah.
So, take that Darren Altman.
And that was a hard edit, hard edit. I’m going to drop the music real quick.
I’m so glad that some of you guys touched on it a little bit in your introductions, but I’d love to hear a little bit more about some of the challenges you face being a non-native VO in the US and some of the benefits.
Well, for me, challenges is simply just collating enough opportunities to be able to put yourself out there, because it’s not like if you’re a native person in that land where you’re getting 20, 30 auditions every day, and if you book 10%, you’re going to make a really good amount of money. Our booking ratio probably has to be higher because we have fewer opportunities, but of course the talent pool is so much smaller, because a lot of people will want… In America, if they want a Brit over here, they’re looking for someone on the ground or in a similar time zone.
So, yeah, we’ll see each other… Rarely do we see who else is going for it, but you can pretty much be damn sure that we’re all going for similar jobs. So the talent pool is smaller, so you stand a higher chance, but I think you do have to have a much better booking ratio if you’re so niche.
I don’t know what you guys think.
I think it’s also… It depends on what you do, as far as what genre you’re in. I do quite a bit of video game work, and so for me, they get reeled in by the British thing because any fantasy medieval game ever, they go, oh yeah, get Chris.
But then I did one game where I did the auditioning British accent following shortlist audition, same thing, and we get the session, he goes, how’s your American accent? And I literally had a panic attack. But I got through it.
I mean, it was probably, all of our colleagues were probably cringe at it at the moment, but it was passable. I mean, but it’s still just, it’s amazing what they want, or they want it, the best way I’ve heard it is, they want it, an American who’s trying to sound British, that’s how they want you to sound sometimes.
The kind of that mid-Atlantic thing again.
Yeah, kind of like…
That mixture that when I’m talking to an American and their eyes start to glaze over because they’re not actually listening to what I’m saying, they’re just listening to my accent, and then I adjust it and I naturally fall into more of an American accent so that they actually are listening to what I’m saying.
Or if you’re ordering water at a restaurant.
Oh, Jamie, Jamie, that is the cursed drink.
I always get someone else to order because otherwise you end up saying it six times.
You want a wawa? Yes, a wawa. That’s exactly what I want.
He has all that wawa. That drink is a curse. I actually do fake an American accent when I’m ordering food.
I do.
Water and tomato.
No, someway I don’t do it. I don’t order that at all. I skip that topping completely.
I don’t want the conversation. I just don’t want it.
My head whips up and they look at you like you said something different.
Are you Australian? Yes, I am. That’s exactly right.
Or South African.
But I do think it’s dependent on what genre you’re in and what your clients prefer really. That’s kind of the big thing to do with it as far as your approachability, I suppose.
Some of the challenges are, as some of the others have said, finding work here for A British Voice can be more challenging. I fell into a trap early on. I think the people who were telling me this were doing it with the best of intentions, but when I first started signing up with agents and production companies here, particularly people who like to gather auditions, a lot of people were saying, oh, we should put you in.
You should be the wild card. We’ll give them the American options that they want, but having a Brit in there would be a really good thing. So I spent most of my first year auditioning solidly for everything that came in, whether they’d asked for British or not.
And 99 times out of 100, if they weren’t wanting British, they didn’t want British. So I learned that lesson, and in the end, I started saying to people, just send me the British jobs, which immediately slashed the number of auditions I got probably by nine-tenths or something like that. But what it did do was it meant that I was paying attention to the things that were more likely to happen, and my booking ratio from those went up.
The difference between the UK and the US markets is that the UK market is far less, or certainly used to be far less audition-based. People would book you from your demos, whereas here people, even if they’ve heard your demos and love your demos, they still want to hear what you sound like on their script and whether they have difficulty making that jump or whether it’s just cultural here. It’s like you walk into a supermarket and somebody’s giving you things to try.
The culture of let’s sample first is much greater here than it is in the UK. So those are some of the challenges. In terms of the benefits though, in terms of when somebody does want a British voice, there are far fewer of us here providing those services.
Culturally, I think in the UK it’s a little different because we’re used to dealing with people across Europe and so on and being a country within a bunch of other countries, although politically that’s slightly iffy at this point. But here in the US, I think people do want to deal with people who are at least in an adjacent time zone, who they can pay in dollars, can you give them a W9 form, that kind of thing. I think those are bigger things for the US market to get over than clients in the UK find.
I think you have to be quite adaptable, right, as well. You have to be able to work in a lot of genres because there’s that reduction in the amount of opportunities that you have, so you have to be quite good at a lot of areas of the industry because you can’t really specialise within your niche. Otherwise, there just isn’t the volume of work there to support that, you know.
I think that’s spot on and that’s definitely something I’ve found coming into the industry and trying to find my niche. And I’m finding most of my work comes through audio books, and so that is my niche, but then I need shorter projects to go in between these long, big, long projects that I have. Sprints and marathons as well, yeah, exactly.
So I’m like, I’ve got to work on, you know, the other genres and put myself out there to other genres to get that, because like you said, it’s a niche.
It’s hard, though. It’s hard to switch gears. I think getting good at one, like audio books is definitely a huge skill.
I mean, it’s a marathon thing, and it’s just like, I’ve done a couple and I’m like, whoa, that’s a loss. And we have to edit them and stuff, but with like narration, quick explainer or video game, you’re like, that session, two hours and you’re done. There might be some pickups later, but that’s it.
And when I do that, I’m like, sweet, I’m done already?
But I don’t really have any experience to the commercial side of things. Auditioned plenty, but haven’t really landed anything on that. And that might just be experience as it comes up.
But Jamie, I mean, your commercial style is very specialized. I did chuckle a bit when I recognized you from the Barocca commercial. I was like, oh, that is you.
OK, I thought that sounded familiar. But that’s a very niche example of it. Like, I want a British guy yelling this thing.
And it had the perfect intended effect. But when they want an American, they will push you to Jamie’s point, push you out the side, and you’re in a very small lane, unless they want that stereotype sound or the posh sound.
I think that culture really does exist here. People want to hear what you sound like reading their bit of copy, even if your demo has a much nicer produced bit of copy that has all the effects and the music or whatever. They want to hear you read their bit of script, and they’re not going to be happy until they get that.
For me, culturally, that was a difficult thing. I felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall to start with, but now I just get that it’s part, culturally, of how business is done here and how the voiceover business works here. So you can bang your head against a brick wall as much as you like, but you’re not going to change the way people want to do business, right?
Sometimes you can get British work with American production companies, which is quite good. I just did something for Flonase in the UK, and it was through Hogarth. So there are obviously big offices here in New York, or well, in New York, but they’re producing it for the British TV.
So sometimes that’s an avenue for the commercial world as well, if the production’s here.
I’m taking Flonase right now. I actually forgot to take it this morning, so thanks for the reminder.
Can you list the benefits of said Flonase, or would you mind plugging them in real quick?
Do you still have your sense of smell?
Right, yeah.
Interestingly, it’s called Pyrenees in the UK, and I didn’t realize that, but that’s the brand. I don’t know why they changed it.
Some legal debacle, I’m sure. Yes, yes.
Well, Lillian made me think of something when she was talking about adjusting her accent. I’m going to go off script for a second here, Sean, because Sean mentioned code switching earlier in the conversation. Maybe even before we were live.
But I’m wondering if you find yourself doing that in normal conversation. I’m sure you do, living in America full time. Do you find you have to brush up on your British accent at times to make sure it’s more authentic?
Because we had an episode with Latin talent, Spanish-speaking talent, a couple of months ago, and they said the same thing, that they have to practice it or they lose it. Is it the same with a British accent?
So far, so good and not. There’s a couple of things in play there. I think I do an OK American accent that will work for short things, like if it was promo or if it was imaging, that kind of thing.
I can get away with a US accent on that where it’s more stylized, more character and less natural. I can’t hold an American accent convincingly for an American market in conversation. My partner cringes every time I try to do one, so I’ve worked very hard on developing that niche where I’m the British guy.
And when people come to me and they say, Oh yeah, but can you do an American accent? I say, No, I try not to. I know lots of really good American voice overs.
I am happy to refer you to any of them. I’ll give you five. Don’t ask me to do American, but I’ll happily refer you to somebody who can do it much better than me.
And then hopefully those people remember who I am when somebody comes to them asking if they need British. I do do Australian, and the only reason I’ll do Australian is because I find it an easier reach from my natural accent. And you know, I lived with an Australian for six years and was around Australians, and I feel more comfortable with that, but I won’t do American so much.
But I do stand out like a sore thumb. You’re absolutely right. And part of the reason for that is I started doing some work to help out our local NPR station, Blue Ridge Public Radio, here in Asheville a couple of years ago.
The net result of which is that I probably now have one of the most recognizable voices in western North Carolina. So I will go… We have a small holding here, you know, with goats and chickens, and the first time I realized that people were hearing me was when I walked into the feed-and-grain store and ordered a bag of food for the chickens, and the guy behind the counter said, Are you that guy off the radio?
And I was like, yeah, I am. And now it happens all the time. So it’s weird because my clients are overwhelmingly not in the Asheville area.
I do have a couple of local clients who call on me occasionally, but really my clients aren’t here. But I do get recognized from my work on the radio.
It is, yeah. Well, for me it is, for sure. When I first moved to the States, I definitely…
I wanted to blend in, and I didn’t want to stand out, and I lost my British accent completely. My parents were like, who are you? And then I was really embarrassed.
And even now, my natural… If I’m recording, it’s different. I pay attention to my accent.
But when I’m just talking, if the British people listen to this podcast, they might listen to me and go, oh, she sounds kind of American. But American people will listen and go, oh, she sounds very British.
And that’s very true.
If I need to record a British, British accent, I need to pay attention to it. And there’s certain words where it’s different. It could be pronounced the same, but the emphasis will be on a different syllable.
The inflection is huge. The inflection.
Like weekend and weekend.
Yes.
Just little things.
So basically, because I look like James Corden’s stunt double, I actually… I have that sort of voice where it’s sort of like, it’s the Americanized British, you know. It’s sort of…
The lot of softening the T’s, the D’s, all the cons is a lot softer. But then when I talk to my dad, it switches right back to being super British and everything is super punchy, you know, it’s punchy, punchy, punchy.
Everybody can tell who you’re on the phone with.
Exactly.
Because if you’re on the phone with your parents, they’re like, oh, you’re talking to your mum? Yeah, I can tell.
But Jamie, I think we’ve talked about this privately. I mean, they’ve told you to scale it back, correct, when they say, no, not so British.
Sometimes you’ll get the direction, can you just be a bit less British? Which is interesting, because you’re like, what does that mean? Do you want me to go more like Iranian?
Or like, what does that mean?
Which I know what they mean.
Russian twings, please.
Yeah, exactly. I know what they mean. It is like what you were just saying, softening the t’s a bit and pronouncing words that are with American emphasis and stuff like that.
Not quite so Downton Abbey.
Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, when they say British, they mean, you know, little Lord Fauntleroy, that’s what they want. And then they go, oh, that’s not what I want.
And then you’ve got the bit that we haven’t touched on yet, and the bit that kind of infuriates me is the American actors faking it and getting away with it.
Yeah, we won’t. Really, we really want to go there.
We’ve got lower standards. We have no idea what we’re listening for. But I wanted to touch on, because you all kind of implied it a little bit.
You were talking about the mid-Atlantic accent or like also referred to as the neutral accent if there is such a thing. But do you guys find it interesting that you’re almost asked to create this artificial hybrid accent for like any number of different jobs? Like do you find that you actually use your own voice for a lot of the work you do?
Are you often being directed away to, like I said, this artificial accent?
I mean, I tend to get audition, get jobs from custom auditions, so they either like it or they don’t, I suppose, but you do inspects here and see Mid-Atlantic or whatever that is. I often think of that as sort of the Frasier accent, like very well articulated American, you know? Yeah, exactly, that’s right.
Or maybe just taking my accent and just using some American sort of inflection and phraseology, because sometimes the phraseology is just different, you know? But yeah, it’s a difficult one. I mean, I saw J.
Michael Collins posted a video the other day about his sort of nondescript Mid-Atlantic accent, which was quite interesting. That was an interesting take on it. If anyone saw that.
It’s an interesting sort of lane to be in. I will admit to one audition secret. When people say, can you tweak it a bit?
I just change the file name sometimes. That sounds great. Pro tip.
Please still hire me. Please still hire me. But that’s honestly…
Sometimes you just say, yeah, tweak it for you, no problem. And it’s in their head. Sometimes it’s just in their head of what they want, and then you go, here’s the same thing twice.
But sometimes, I mean, for me personally, with character work, I have to… I mean, some sessions it was 14 different characters to be unique, and that’s challenging. It’s very challenging.
It’s fun. But after a while, I go, this sounds the same as number two, but okay, here it is. But the whole Mid-Atlantic thing…
There are some VOs out in LA that do the Mid-Atlantic. They specialize in that. But to that point, I actually got with an American accent coach to test out if I could do it.
And I know I’m not doing it now. It’s gun-shy. But for character stuff, I can do it, and it’s possible, because the coach actually said, are you messing with me?
And I said, no. And she goes, well, you’ve got it down almost 90 percent, so I don’t think we need any more lessons just yet. But again, doing it in a conversational manner, I know I can’t do.
I actually have to put it into the lane of a character to actually speak like that, otherwise my brain just does not compute. And that can be advantageous to do it that way, to sort of get clients in that think, oh, you don’t only do British, you do some other stuff too, or stuff we can pass up as American.
I don’t know how you guys feel, but I mean, you mentioned it a little while ago, Chris, that if you’re ever asked to do straight American, I’m okay with accents, I’m pretty good, but if there’s something about straight American, then maybe it’s just being here and you’re super fussy about it, but I find it so difficult, like to be authentic and comfortable. Just this is why I never offer it.
Yeah, it’s very challenging. I started doing it, it was very sort of Bob Barker, come on down, sort of voice, and it was like, no, no, no, but once you… But in conversations, sometimes at my day job and stuff, people will say, I don’t hear an accent, and everyone kind of turns and goes, you don’t hear his accent.
So apparently I’m doing something at some vocal level where I’m using enough to pass by and my wife says, you sound like an American faking to be British, and I said, well, you know, that’s not true either. But that is the trap you fall into. But conversationally, it is challenging.
It’s very challenging to blend in and not sort of have someone tweak when they look at you. They hear that one word or two where it sounds like you weren’t born here.
Yeah, for the straight, general American, very hard. I took some accent coaching for the general American accent, and there were just a couple of vowels. There’s the O’s and A’s, that flat A, and I was saying it again and again and again, and I’m like, I’m just not sure.
The transatlantic or the midatlantic, I’m fine with that, but that general American, maybe if I went full on southern… I mean, I lived in Mississippi for three years. I could do the full on southern, but that straight general American is very difficult.
Just got to put clothes pins on the side of your lips, right? So wide and flat.
If I had a couple of whiskeys first, I’d just like chill and relax a bit.
Slur everything up a bit, it’s right.
I will say this, you reminded me, British people, especially on-screen actors, Benedict Cumberbatch is a prime example of this. Every R sounds like a pirate. He’s like Thor Odinson.
It’s just like, oh dear, we know that’s not American.
But he’s Benedict Cumberbatch, so he can do anything.
He’s Sherlock and Doctor Strange, he’s so talented and dreamy.
He can do documentaries about penguins, we’re happy with that.
We can’t say penguins.
Who directed that one? Forgot 6.
So back to my initial question, it must be especially hard for those of you who live in a town on the East Coast where it’s very colloquial. People, especially in Baltimore, Chris, you know, don’t move from the block they grew up on.
They do not.
So when they hear someone speak with a British accent, it must be especially jarring, and it must be like, oh, you’re not from around here, are you? Same thing just outside of Philadelphia.
They call lice usually first.
Again, so far, not so much. I mean, we watch quite a lot of British TV, which I think helps and helps keep me on point. We listen to a lot of British radio in the house.
We’ll quite often have the BBC on in the kitchen. So, yeah, I think I keep myself in check pretty well. And I think because I’m not pushing myself, I don’t feel pressure, because everybody here knows me as the British guy.
I don’t feel that peer pressure, perhaps, to lapse into a Southern drawl or even that kind of transatlantic, midatlantic thing that the others were talking about. I don’t really… It doesn’t really happen for me so much.
It is. I mean, you do stand out, and it’s actually reversed for me, Lillian. I actually didn’t want to assimilate.
I guess my ego wouldn’t let me, because someone’s like, look at me, look at me. I’m not from here. Come talk to me.
And then after a while, you don’t want anyone to talk to you, because it initiates a conversation of where you’re from. So, you know, I go to Starbucks with a series of monosyllabic grunts now to order my coffee, because I don’t want to initiate any sort of background check. But no, it is difficult.
But, Lillian, from that, it is jarring for people, and they don’t know how to deal with it. And I think that does, like, trickle up to casting directors, too. They put you in a box very quickly.
I was talking to a couple of coaches, and they said, you need to pick a lane. You either do American or you do British, because they won’t know what to do with you doing the same thing at the same time. And I was like, that’s interesting, but I don’t know if that’s 100% true.
But as far as being marketable, if you’re British, you’ll be with the luxury brand, the smart person, the little owl from Travelocity, or the Gecko Geico. But you’re a character. And that’s, I think, where we shine is the little character voice.
And that does work, but those jobs are so narrowed down and probably the biggest agencies are gating those, I’d imagine.
It’s funny, because we are the exact opposite, but again, going back to our Latin episode where Christian Land said he’s most marketable by being able to do both, because he’ll get into the studio and someone will say, wait, you don’t have an accent. We had the English version all booked. Why don’t you just do it now?
And he says, okay. And he gets booked for two jobs at once.
But I think there’s a whole industry for the Latin voice in this country because there’s obviously such a huge population of Spanish-speaking people over here.
I agree, yeah.
The jobs for Brits are sporadic, to say the least. So there isn’t that sort of infrastructure probably there. I found that when I first came over, and I initially tried to blend in a bit by putting on a bit of an American, it just confused people even more.
It was more trouble than it was worth. So then I was like, oh, sod it, I’m just going to be Brit.
We’ve talked about that a lot in just the importance of specificity and finding your niche. I mean, there’s no harm in experimenting with different genres you’re interested in, but once you figure that out, stick with it if it’s profitable for you. So you guys kind of touched on this as you were talking about the scarcity of jobs in the US.
So I was curious if you get hired more by US clients or clients abroad.
Okay, so I was looking at this before we got online, and I’m not a stats nerd, but I do keep a spreadsheet of everything that I do, and one of the columns in that spreadsheet is a column that tells me which country the work came from. So overwhelmingly, my work comes from a combination of the UK and the US, and then outside of that, you know, there’s the Netherlands, there’s Germany, there’s the occasional things that comes from Australia or Singapore or whatever, but overwhelmingly my jobs come from the UK and the US. What I looked at in terms of value of jobs is that in 2018, my UK work was almost half, in dollar terms, what my US work was worth, and that’s something that really has changed for me in the last couple of years.
So before I left London, I was certainly doing work for clients in the US, but it was maybe 15, possibly 20% of my overall turnover. Now the US work is almost twice what my UK turnover is, and that even takes into account that some of my UK work is a little higher value, because I have a TV campaign running over there at the moment. But yeah, that US work has almost doubled, and that really has been as a result of doing a lot of outreach and a lot of follow-up.
The thing that I have as my biggest challenge, my biggest pain point, if you like, is I write to a producer in Baltimore, or write to a producer in Dallas or whatever, and say, hey, I’m a British voice over, and I’m in the US, and you can pay me in dollars, and I have Source Connect and IPD and all that stuff. The thing is, if they’re not looking for a British voice at that point in time, it could be three months, it could be six months, it could be a year, or it could be next week. I have to keep blipping on the radar and saying, hey, remember me, I’m the British voice, when you want me, I’m here.
Trying to do that and find a point where it’s keeping in regular contact enough and semi-automating that process so it’s not just me sitting here banging out email after email after email was something that I took a while to get on top of. But it seems to be working pretty well now. And because this is, I think I’m right in saying, this is my 12th year full time as a VO, my website and my SEO are pretty well set at this point.
So I’m fortunate that I’m one of those people that when people Google, I’m one of the people that comes up. So I’ll get usually a few inquiries a week where people say, oh, I found you by Googling. And those inquiries are as likely to come from the US as they are from the UK or anywhere else, to be honest.
Me, mainly US, but really it’s all around. I do a fair amount of work in the UK too. They find me in the usual places.
I don’t have an agent in the UK because it’s just virtually impossible if you’re outside of the country to get an agent in the UK. Yeah, really, really challenging. But they find me online or they work with me before.
It’s through American company, like I say. And yeah, there are all the kind of e-learning, explainer videos and stuff that, you know, they just find you that way. But the vast majority of my work is probably American based.
I don’t know about you guys.
Yes, I think probably most of my work is American based or working directly with British authors, not companies. And then Europe.
Explainer videos redubbing from the original German or Italian into… with the British voiceover.
Yeah, for me, 50-50, I think. Since I’ve started talking to more of these US-based game devs and stuff, for me, personally, that’s sort of increased my US clientele. But I also had, I think, Portugal, I had one game dev in Poland, UK, and one guy in Australia, it was his own private business, but it was a random one.
But it’s definitely right down the middle for me. I mean, I would like to get more New York stuff, and really my eyes on sort of the New York market progressing from here because I just don’t know if LA is for me. It gives me anxiety thinking about it.
In two years, I’ll move there. Mark this day. Chris is a hypocrite.
But New York seems like it would be more of a hub for the people that want the British stuff. Jamie has the right idea, I think, with that sort of approach.
Well, Chris and I actually work on the same game. We’re both cast members of a game called Winds of Change. Winds of Change is out now on Steam.
Where are they based out of? Do you know?
I have no idea. I have no idea.
Which character are you? I didn’t have a chance to ask.
I think it’s like Haley and Darmek. They’re two of the characters. It’s a visual novel one.
I’ve been playing through it, trying to pick out your voice. Now I got it. On a related note, do you ever travel back to the UK?
When you do, do you find you’re able to gain more work there? Have you ever recorded jobs either in studios in the UK or from a home studio you have either at a hotel or with a relative?
You know, I didn’t travel back to the UK for the first three and a half years that we were here, and I wasn’t really in any rush to go back to the UK. After I left, the whole thing with Brexit started, and I just kind of felt comfortable being where I was, and then circumstances meant that I needed to go back to the UK. We have a friend who turned 90 last year, and so I took my first trip back to the UK since leaving, and found it actually wasn’t so bad after all, and now I’m going back to the UK a couple of times a year.
I always take travel kit with me wherever I’m traveling. I have a 416 that I keep in a grab bag ready to leave town whenever I need to, and sometimes I have the Harlan Hogan Porter booth. Do you know that one?
It works really well for me. It travels as your musical instrument bag on most airlines, so I think I’ve only… On one budget airline I had to take it on, but everywhere else it’s traveled with me for nothing.
And sometimes I’ll travel and it doesn’t even come out of the bag. Other times, I think on my last trip back to the UK, I booked a job for a client in the US that was worth several thousand dollars, so it pays to take it. Whether I do any actual work in the UK, if what you mean by that is have you been booked to come into a studio in London while you’ve been in London?
Not yet, but it could happen.
I don’t get to travel back there very often. I went back last summer. I took my travel rig with me.
I did a couple of auditions while I was there, but I connected with someone who had a studio I could use in case any work came in while I was there so I could record it properly, not just on the travel rig in my parents’ bedroom. But no, I haven’t had that opportunity yet.
I go back about twice a year if I can, usually at Christmas time. I’ve actually just bought a desktop because the whole travel thing has never really worked for me. I’ve tried to bring stuff to hotels and stuff, but there’s never any reason to record when I’m on holiday, so for me it doesn’t really seem worth it.
But for me, no UK work really. I’m usually just there to see family and then not really networking at that point. I probably should, but I don’t.
Yeah, similar for me. I don’t go back very often. I haven’t been back in a couple of years now.
But when I do, I take something with me. I’ve got the little Apogee mic and I take the top of a pop shield just so I can hold it in front of my mouth when I do it. Really lo-fi.
But it does the job. I don’t know, I’m trying to think if I’ve… Last time I was there, if I did any jobs, I usually just send notices around saying I’m on holiday.
But I’ve definitely done certain… I remember sort of building a pillow fort.
The hotel fort, yes.
Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I haven’t really done the whole networking thing around London or anything like that, because the industry is very centralised, I believe, in sort of Soho. And I haven’t really bothered to do that.
I think probably in any major centre, London, LA, New York, trying to network in like a week is not really going to get you too far.
It’s hard, yeah, very hard to do, yes.
Yeah, that’s where I am.
Very cool. Yeah, well, and I love that we got some different perspectives on how much you should market or do you bring the travel rig or not when you travel, especially when you have a good excuse to go, or to travel between continents. So thank you guys for that.
So I was curious, what would you guys recommend to someone who is a non-U.S. native starting out in the States, who wants to start out their VO business?
I think you’ve got to make sure that you’re good at what you’re doing before you start these days. It’s more important than it ever has been. I’ve said this many times, but there’s no bar to entry in this business.
Anybody can set up a website, buy a microphone, and start telling people that they’re a voice over artist. I think the bars to entry or the bars to success are the same here as if you were working anywhere else. There are lots of things in play here.
You can be a US voice over artist in the UK. You can be a UK voice over artist in the US. I know UK voice overs who work out of places like Thailand and Singapore.
I think if you’re good, and if your marketing is good, and if you reach the right people and do good work, then you can be a success anywhere. But you’ve got to make sure that this is, well, A, in your wheelhouse to start with. So when people write to me, I get inquiries from people who say, how do I get into voice over?
And I have about a page of stuff that I send them that has links to things I’ve written, things people like Peter O’Connell have written, and Doug Turkell and whatever. So they get a whole range of what do you need to be successful at this? Make sure you know the technical stuff.
It’s not just sitting down and talking. You’ve got to know how to edit it. You’ve got to know how to put it right when it goes wrong.
You’ve got to know how to market yourself and make sure that you’re comfortable with running a business. I think those things are pretty universal at this point. And it’s not so much about, oh, I’m a Brit in America, what will I do?
It’s more about being savvy about who you market, finding who your clients are and finding the best ways to reach them. And it’s been said many times, you know, don’t suck.
I mean, I would probably echo what I was saying earlier in terms of you need to be quite flexible. So I would really work on a lot of areas of the industry to try and get good at. So promo, commercial, video games, audio books, all those things.
Because if you have got this smaller pool of work, you’re going to have to put yourself forward for pretty much everything that comes in the door. So the better you are at all of those things, the more chance you’ve got of making a good living from it. So I’d say these days, education and voice over education is really good and easily accessible.
I would say that’s something you should really invest time and effort in.
I would follow up with that about the thing you mentioned earlier or Lillian mentioned about time zones. It does play a factor. Clients don’t want to wait for you to wake up.
It’s a thing. They’re like, Australia, I’ve got a guy here. I don’t need you.
And that’s the honest truth of the matter. If you’ve got clients that are repeat business for you and they bring you money and they’re happy with your work and they pick you out of all the ones they could pick, because that’s always a nice email to get when you say, we thought of you first, Chris. That’s a good feeling.
It’s also helpful because you’re trusted. You’re a trusted source. And that’s really the book of business you want to bring across.
You want to build that trust relationship with your clients first, and then you can branch out. What’s your base core business? You can start branching out the genres, test the waters, and some things may not work.
Admitting failure on this is important, like to say, I can’t do this. And it’s okay not to do this, because there’s some genres I can’t do. I just can’t get into, like, audio books.
I want to. I just don’t have the stamina for it. I can admit that.
I can do five minutes a day.
For the next two years. There you are. But it is just people get very…
I think the old adage of the, oh, video games animation, that’s it. That’s all people see. And video games are fun, but they don’t pay a lot.
That is an absolute fact. And even the non-union indie stuff I’ve done, it pays above scale, but it’s so infrequent, you can’t really rely on that as a steady source of income. That’s why people like the audio books, because it’s quite a nice chunk of change for the time spent recording.
Not as much as you would get, say, in commercial. Oh, no. Again, it’s not one of those cha-ching things that you’re, I’m going to get rich from audio books.
People do make a living from it, but that’s really…
Yeah, but depending on commercial, because that’s the whole can of worm with the commercial rates and everything else. You read that all the time on various groups and things not being where they should be or where they once were with the prices.
Nothing is.
But we know people out in LA at certain echelons are making those prices, so it can be done, but you’re talking at 5% of everyone that’s doing this. I would just say that it’s really focusing on what you sell, your niche, whatever that may be. That’s kind of the cliched part of it, is that you don’t know what that might be.
Focus on your niche, but diversify.
Diversify your niche, exactly. That’s the way.
I think you’ve nailed it.
When people ask me my niche, I’m just like, I’m British guy.
Yeah, that works.
That sort of leads us to our final question for the group. Where do you see your individual businesses going in the future?
Where do I see my business in the future? I mean, I really hope to continue to carve out this niche of being the British guy. And of course, I get that Chris is the British guy and Jamie is the British guy.
We’re all British guys in America. The thing, I guess, that puts us in competition with each other is who’s the first one you think of. And I may not be right for something that Chris is right for or Jamie is right for.
I get all of that. But I think being visible and being available and finding ways for people to reach you is what’s going to make your business a success or my business a success in the future. I think in some ways those of us that work in a niche may even have an advantage at this point.
We’re seeing such a lot of homogenization of the voiceover industry. I’m hearing really impressive things come out of Amazon, like their new Alexa voice. I don’t know if you’ve heard that one, the one that can read the news.
It’s getting to the point now where some of this text to speak stuff is almost indistinguishable from an average voiceover. And it’s certainly going to be the case, I think, in years to come that it gets better and that for a lot of applications, text to speech will be good enough. So I think those of us finding your niche, me finding my niche and me being able to deliver something that the machines can’t, is probably what’s going to keep me going as a business, hopefully, for longer.
And I think the more people who start to adopt that attitude, rather than chasing the same work everybody else is chasing, rather than chasing the TV commercials where we’re fighting to keep the rates up or whatever, look for the things that are going to be harder to do for the machines. Look for the niche work. And I think that’s probably…
You may not have such a broad business in future. I may not have such a broad business in future. I’m fortunate.
I do a bunch of different stuff, and there’s a load of stuff that I don’t do. Fortunately, a lot of the stuff that I don’t do isn’t the work that I would see necessarily being there in 15, 20 years. So I’m hopeful, but I think it’s always trying to stay a little ahead of the curve.
Whatever I can get.
I’ve got to get into that one.
Okay. Where do you see it going in the future? Oh, big time, baby.
That’s it, she’s out.
I mean, how far in the future are we going? This year? Focusing on actually learning to market myself better, I think that’s what my focus is this year.
I’ve built a base for my business. I need to, like Jamie was saying, I need to diversify more. Now I’ve got my niche, now I need to diversify.
And market myself to a wider range. Sub-niches. Yeah, to a wider range of people.
But, yeah, definitely expand from the audio books into more e-learning and explainer videos. But the thing is, you know, if someone’s going to offer you, someone’s going to offer you, if an opportunity comes to audition for a game or something, you know, you’re just going to throw yourself into it 110%. Nothing to lose by doing it.
Exactly. So I don’t really know where my business is going to go in the near future, but it’s going somewhere because… Because I’m not going to take anything less.
Positivity, yeah.
It’s going somewhere. I just don’t know where.
Hey, persistence and positivity go a long way.
I think that’s a very honest…
At least I’ve got that.
Yeah, I think that’s a very honest answer because I don’t know anyone that could be, could tell you with any certainty where their business, their voiceover business is going to be in five years because who knows where the industry is going to be in five years. In general. You know, I’m the same.
I do my best to throw myself into every opportunity and there are times when I’m just phoning it in. I know I am with auditions and I’ll catch myself and I’m like, no, Jamie, go back in there, do it again, do it properly, spend the time. You know, even if it is a relatively low profile gig, it matters, you know, just doing everything 100% doing it to your fullest ability.
Personally…
It never forgets, right? It’s all out there in the ether at some point.
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, I mean, even if you’re just submitting things through your agent, then your agents are going to be like, oh, he’s kind of, you know, he’s maybe not top of mind for me from now on. I want to be top of mind all the time.
I’d like to do a bit more documentary narration work because I really enjoy that. But I mean, really, I said glibly, but it’s true. Anything I can get, you know, you take everything and you throw yourself into everything and then it all sort of works out somehow.
Yeah, I’d echo what you both said. It just, it’s, the uncertainty is a bit scary, but I mean, for me personally, I’ve seen repeat clients come back and that’s a first, which is, you know, kind of a big thing to say, hey, they say, we don’t want to audition you, which is, that’s wonderful.
I get that a lot, but not for the same reason.
But I’ve got my own plans as far as what I want to do, you know, attracting sort of eight other agents and stuff and getting myself in a position where, you know, you get some of these bigger gigs. And it isn’t for the sake of the money, it’s the sake of just, you know, elevating your work because a sort of better perspective is not where I am in five years, but wherever comes since I started. And for me, it’s been kind of quite a quick acceleration, but it’s not like every single job rolls in and it’s like a win every time.
There are hundreds and hundreds of un-listened, rejected auditions that I have and it’s just, you know, it’s one of those things. You kind of get used to it, but it’s a weird thing to get past mentally. But once you’re there, you can start looking at what you can build up.
And I think that’s kind of where I’m at. It’s probably still a building phase, honestly.
But you’ve got to have a focus of where you want to go. Otherwise, you’re not going to get anywhere, are you, if you don’t have a goal in mind?
Oh, no plan is the worst plan, absolutely.
You’ve got to have a goal of where you want your business to go so that you can actually take steps to get there.
And to know where your weak points are.
Exactly, the chinks in your armour and everything else, but also knowing your limitations, too. Of knowing, you know, again, you’re good at ABC, but I’m not going to invest in DEF because it’s going to be a waste of energy and time and things I could be putting towards where I know I’m going to be successful. I think that’s a big thing, because people do get mixed up, because someone will say, oh, we should try this and this and this.
And that’s where people get distracted from their goal and their business plan. And I think that’s one of the pitfalls, I think, when it comes to trying new stuff, it’s fun, but you want to stay focused on what you book and what gets you clients to come back and pay you money.
Your niche again.
Your niche, diversifying the niche, one more time, yeah.
I think you’ve nailed the slogan, somebody should write that down on a T-shirt.
Well, speaking of growing your business, we’re just about done, but I’d like to give each of you a chance to promote yourselves and tell people where they can hire you if they want to have you for their job. I’ll start with Lillian.
Okay, well, my website is lillianrachel.com, and my demos are there. I’m mostly plain British. I’m straight up British VO, but also mid-Atlantic.
What do you call it, mid-Atlantic or trans-Atlantic? I think it depends which part of the states you’re in, but anyway, that mid-Atlantic.
I always think of trans-Atlantic as the flight more than the voice.
But mid-Atlantic is like, we live in the mid-Atlantic region, so if you say mid-Atlantic here…
Yeah, that confuses me as well.
That confuses the issue. Sorry, that wasn’t your question, was it? lillianrachel.com, thank you very much.
I’m over at chrissharpes.com, and I’ll spell it because no one ever spells my last name right. It’s sharpes.com. And I’m pretty much a video game, narration, explainer.
And I do accents, so I’m not just a one-trick pony with a British thing. So that seems to be the way I get hired. So it’s come see me, come give me some jobs, please.
That would be nice.
That’s right.
I’m not above begging Jamie, it’s fine.
Yeah, we all do it. My voiceover work is found at yourbritvoice.com, and my general website, which covers a few things that I do, is jamiemuffett.com. Everyone spells muffett.com.
Muffett wrong, it’s M-U-F-F-E-T-T. And that’s that.
Well, my website is mikecoopervoiceover.com. You can also find me at MikeCooperVoiceOver on Instagram. I think I’m MikeCooperVoiceOver on LinkedIn, and MikeCooperVoiceOver on Facebook.
I’m pretty much MikeCooperVoiceOver wherever you go.
All right, well, thanks everyone for being here. As I said before, we went live. I don’t know what’s going on in my brain, but lately we’ve had the UK on the mind.
Our last episode had Peter Dixon and Hugh Edwards from Graveyard for the Brain, and now we have you lovely people. Maybe it’s the current political climate. Maybe I’m wishing to have a trip to England.
Jamie, the Eagles had a trip there this season that was pretty successful, so maybe that’s what I’m thinking about it. We’re so happy to have you here and talk about your various VO businesses and how your career is going. Thanks so much.
I just wanted to thank you guys again. This was incredibly informative. I know as VO is becoming…
Everyone knows it’s a global industry, and they might think being that unique commodity in another country can be a unique selling point, but it’s not without its considerations, as you guys have kindly reminded us. Thank you so much for that incredible insight, and thank you for being on the podcast.
Thank you.
It was a pleasure. Thank you, guys.
Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Sean.
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So thanks again to our participants for the British Invasion Roundtable. That was so fun to have in person. I want to thank Stanley Fisher again at iHeart Radio for having us in the studio and allowing me to bring Lillian and Chris in person because you just can’t duplicate that kind of in-person fun.
It was really cool to have them in person to be able to talk to. And thanks again, of course, to Jamie and Mike for joining us remotely. So what was your biggest takeaway from the conversation?
We talked a lot about the episode we had with the Spanish-speaking talent, and there was a lot of parallels, but what would you say is the biggest takeaway from the discussion?
Know your strengths, but be versatile.
Yeah, I would agree. And don’t be afraid to take chances. The thing that struck with me was when Chris mentioned that he had a few producers telling him to try your American, and I’m just going ahead and hiring him for it.
So don’t look a gift horse in the mouth is the expression that really makes sense in that case. Don’t tell somebody you’re not willing to try, but also know your strengths and weaknesses.
Mm-hmm, that’s right. Come from, like, I’m trying to help you. And he’s actually had a similar conversation with a video game actor named Brian Summer.
He’s like, I worked with this one woman who’s like, oh, I don’t do British accents. He’s like, well, have you ever tried? And so she did.
He’s like, it was beautiful. I would book that. So yeah, don’t tell yourself what you can’t do.
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All right, so thanks again to our wonderful guest. It was such a joy to have you on. Stay tuned for our next episode.
We have a voice actor with almost 40 years of experience in the industry, four decades, Mr. Pat Fraley. So if you’ve grown up watching cartoons in the 70s and 80s, all the way till today, you’ve probably heard his voice a lot. And he’s also one of the premier voiceover voice acting educators that is available today.
So you’re going to have a lot of great conversations with him. So stay tuned because we’ll have even more great guests coming in the months ahead.
So once again, that’s it for this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. Thanks for listening to this episode of The VO Meter. To follow along, visit us at www.vometer.com.
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