Here’s an unexpected exercise in making choices…
Last week, I woke up in the middle of the night and scribbled this down:
For the life of me I don’t know what possessed me to write that but it just happened. Call it stream-of-consciousness or whatever, but I can’t stop looking at it. This is how I interpret it…
The left column describes your narration when you lack basic performance & genre training, are out of practice, have the wrong frame of mind, etc.
The middle column describes the choices you must make to craft both an effective performance and a successful voiceover career
The right column describes your narration once you’ve had quality training, understand the script and its message, and have the right frame of mind
TIP OF THE WEEK
To get your performance out of the left column and into the right column, do the stuff in the middle column.
Listen: Most aspiring voice talents fail because they don’t know how to listen. More to the point, they’re so in love with the sound of their pretty, pretty voice that they don’t pay attention to the story and CAN’T TAKE DIRECTION. If you can’t or won’t listen to your coaches, your demo producers, your fellow voice talents, or your studio directors, you are ****ed. You have no shot of getting anywhere in this industry.
Study: Like any business, you need to understand the industry and your place in it. Specifically, understand the different genres (commercials, Explainer videos, etc.) and which ones you can & can’t do. Be realistic! Everybody wants to do cartoons. Everybody wants to do video games. Not everyone is good at it.
Practice/ Develop your Technique: practice your breath control, mic technique, script interpretation, etc.
Focus: Stay focused on the essentials. The fundamentals, as they say in sports. Practice your dribbling and your footwork, keep your eye on the ball, all that crap. They call it fundamentals for a reason!
Experiment/Improvise: Improvisation classes are a huge help. They will loosen your reads and give you license to make stronger choices. Yes, I know that scripts are set and you can’t make stuff up. HOWEVER, good storytellers makes strong choices in the moment. There are community colleges and local theater groups that offer classes, some of them for free.
Be Bold: make bold choices when you narrate and commit to them
NEWS AND NOTES
The Mid-Atlantic Voice Over (MAVO) conference Mastery Session signup is open! My session, ‘Manage Your Money Like a VO Pro’ will take place Friday, November 6, 2020. These sessions are optional and have a supplementary fee because they are not part of the main MAVO 2020 Conference. These sessions fill up quickly as there is a max of 12-15 so make sure you get your spot! Click here to sign up now!
Wednesday, November 20th @9PM EST: “Late Night Secrets for VO Success” with Rhonda Phillips. In this LIVE webinar, I will be discussing the basics of marketing and will answer your questions. Go to https://rhondasvoice.com/late-night-secrets to learn more…
Saturday, February 1st 2020 @2PM PST: I will be speaking LIVE at the Voiceover Studio in sunny Las Vegas! The topic is “THE VOICEOVER BUSINESS AND HOW TO ACT LIKE IT”. Here’s the description:
Congratulations! You’ve done your voiceover training and have your freshly produced demo in hand. Now what? In this three-hour workshop, veteran voice talent and “VO Strategist” Tom Dheere will help you rub the stars out of your eyes and learn how to think & execute like an effective voiceover business. We will discuss how to build your voiceover business from the ground up, craft a Mission Statement, set goals, craft an Action Plan, and learn how to stick to it.
Registration is now open! Click here to sign up.
March 26-29 2020: I am proud to announce that I am the VO Atlanta 2020 eLearning/narration Track leader! Very soon I will announce my teammates and the sessions we’re offering. Stay tuned…!
HAPPY HAPPYS
Happy Apple Cider Day and Absurdity Day!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Tom Dheere is a 20+year veteran of the voice over industry who has narrated thousands of projects for hundreds of clients in over a dozen countries. He is also a voiceover business & marketing consultant known as the VOStrategist and produces the comic book “Agent 1.22”.