2 Voiceover Career Paths + Why 1 Is Better Than the Other

If you’re new to voiceover or returning to the field after an absence, you may discover there are essentially two dominant approaches: the actors’ track or radio and broadcast culture (as I refer to it).

While each approach has its own set of assets, pitfalls, assumptions, and obstacles, whichever approach a new talent chooses from the start ultimately determines his or her conditioning and success in this field. That said, there are a few sweeping commonalities they both share. For instance, clients who hire you as a voice talent consistently expect you to...

...be well-trained. As the saying goes, “Whatever the job, you’re going to have to train for it!”

...have a quality demo(s), produced by professionals for professionals, regardless if you’re just beginning or beginning again. Demos that define your greatest assets for the specific work you intend to land.

...have some basic, reliable home recording options.

...be available to work.

...know what your job involves, stay in your lane, and be responsible for your end.

...sound natural. No one wants an announce-y, robotic, or forced voiceover.

Beyond that, the differences between these two approaches can be quite vast, with one of the greatest differences being training. Generally, professional actors don’t rely solely on the body of their experience, regardless of how involved it may be. Conversely, those from radio and broadcast culture typically do.

READ: Why ‘Close Enough’ Doesn’t Cut It for Auditions + How to Be Better

Successful actors, much like professional athletes, understand that they must continue to train in order to remain current, agile, and prepared at a moment’s notice to deliver their very best. Those from radio and broadcast culture generally regard their years of experience on-air as sufficient to make up for their lack of performance and technique training. While it’s easy to understand this train of thought, I can’t endorse it, especially after working with scores of talent from the latter background who struggle with stiff, announce-y deliveries.

What’s more, radio and broadcast individuals often speak to voiceover newcomers with great authority, advising them to run their VO businesses as if they were in radio. Cold calling local vendors to voice their radio and website videos might have worked ten years ago for smaller radio stations and affiliates, but it tends to infringe on your potential clients workday if you don’t already have a connection—and even sometimes if you do. Another obstacle I’ve noticed former radio and broadcast personnel pass on to budding voice talent is an unhealthy aversion to joining the union and to securing representation from agent season. Perhaps they don’t know how and therefore they don’t realize how beneficial these elements are to your voiceover career.

As for the ever-elusive voiceover demo, a demo is not an air-check tape as those from radio are apt to produce. Instead, the standards that make up a competitive voiceover demo are defined by the producers we create them for. In other words: the production varies from spot to spot yet there’s a seamless flow between the collection of national caliber spots that fully illustrate who you are and what you do best within the specific genre (i.e. commercial, industrial narration, animation, etc.). Your demo is supposed to define how amazing you’d be under the very best possible conditions, not under the sorta-best-you-can-do-for-now conditions.

Regardless of the approach, most new VO talents assume you only get one shot to deliver one perfect take. But the reality is that you’re expected to offer a variety of dynamic options, take after take, within the context of the piece. Nearly everyone struggles with this, which is why technique training is imperative to success. Conditioning, by its very nature, isn’t immediately intuitive—it takes practice.

Voiceover is often more of a sport than many give it credit and each approach, whether actor or radio/broadcast, opens you up to a variety of remarkably rewarding opportunities, provided the genre suits your specific skill set. Sometimes your success might hinge on your approach. Sometimes you might need an adjustment to that approach by challenging your comfort zone.

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The views expressed in this article are solely that of the individual(s) providing them,

and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Backstage or its staff.