VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[whalewtchr]

Everyone except newbies have a story about that first VO job where you actually got paid. I searched the archives and did not find a thread, maybe I missed it. If you don't mind sharing; what was your first paid VO job, how did you get the job, was the pay at, below or above your expectations and how many years did it take since that first paid VO gig before you had enough steady VO work for a comfortable income?
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jonahcummings

[Bob Bergen]

Hey Jonah!

My first gig was a cartoon called Spiderman and His Amazing Friends. I was paid union scale, which was the minimum the producers had to pay as per SAG. Don't recall the exact amount. Also got me my SAG card. I got the gig by having met the talent coordinator at Marvel who auditioned me for the gig. It took me about 5 years of trial and error auditioning before I was able to quit the day job and work as a full time actor.

[Philip Banks]

A few months after making a VO demo and sending out a couple of dozen I got a call from a local radio commercial producer. 28th February 1990 - Travelled to Cardiff in Wales to do a radio commercial voice over session for Red Dragon FM. It was my first ever local radio commercial session. The fee was about $130 which was the Equity (union) rate for the job. About 2 years later I started my full-time voice over adventure. I'll give it another year and see if things take off.

[bobsouer]

My very first paid voiceover job was in 1974. It paid for my fiancee's wedding ring. I was hired by a publishing company to narrate a multimedia presentation for a trade show booth. (In those days, multimedia meant a slide carousel and a cassette tape running simultaneously.) 9 years later I got my second paid voiceover job. 26 years after that I finally quit my day job because my voiceover business had grown to the point I couldn't keep up with both it and my day job anymore.
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Be well,
Bob Souer (just think of lemons)
The second nicest guy in voiceover.
+1-724-613-2749
Source Connect, phone patch, pony express

[Rob Ellis]

My first paid free-lance gig was a telephony job in Houston in 1992. It paid a whopping $25 if I remember correctly.

[Bruce]

We actually covered this topic back in February:

http://www.vo-bb.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10559

Some good stories there.


B
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VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

I'm not a Zoo, but over the years I've played one on radio/TV. .

[Philip Banks]

Nearly two months later IT'S STILL DULL....I started it so sorry about that.

[jasbart]

My first v-o experience was at S.S. Kresge (that's Kresge...not K-Mart, which really dates me) where, when I wasn't stocking shelves, making keys, breaking down boxes, emptying the grease pit, and glazing hams, I also did announcements over their P.A. system. Promoting things like specials on keys, the clean lunch counter, and their particularly tasty newly-glazed hams.

Jim
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Jim Barton
Barton Voice & Sound
www.bartonvoice.com

[mcm]

February 7th, 2005, narration for a how-to-use-this thingy video for a medical device. The pay was $300. This was when I was still recording right next to my computer in a rather large, untreated space. Criminy - there was so much I didn't know back then. Even more than what I don't know now.

[asnively]

How embarrassing that I have no idea whatsoever what my first paying VO gig was. None. Couldn't even guess.
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Amy Snively
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[Eddie Eagle]

My first, if this qualifies, was MC announcing a concert for Blue Oyster Cult at a 10,000 seat coliseum in 1977. I got that job because I was the Technical Director (a paid position) for the entertainment events at University of Southern Mississippi and that nite the promoters just asked me to do the announcement and stand in front of 10,000 concert goers. Let me tell you, you can feel the energy when they scream after you announce the band!

1981-83 I did radio announcing for the college I was at for no pay but college credit. (getting my second degree in Communications) I was required to announce as part of the cirriculum. Then in 2004 I did 4-5 Foreign Film trailers for Magic Play Home Video from my first studio setup. I got that gig by simply calling home video labels and telling them what I was doing and asking to do their trailers. I should say here that I had been in home video since 1984 and had a good rolodex to work from. I supplemented the work in home entertainment consulting and distribution with voice over and continue to this day.

[Nelson Jewell]

I'll chime in. It was 1991, and I worked for a TV station (ABC affiliate), and a local lumber and hardware supply company (EBS Ellsworth Building Supply in Ellsworth, Maine) payed me $200 to act in a TV spot and voice a radio spot. I still have the 3/4 in tape somewhere. Wow, did I look cheesy.

[Rob Ellis]

I feel your pain, Nelson. (the part about looking cheesy)

But in 1991, I think most of us looked pretty cheesy, though not quite as much as in the 80s...

[TC]

Spring of 1979. I was a junior in high school, working on the school radio station. Our faculty adviser got a call from an alum who worked at the local phone company (we had local phone companies back then) and needed to make a sales training tape as quickly and as cheaply as possible, and she was looking for voice actors. My qualification for the job was that I happened to be nearby when the call came.

It took about two hours to record. At the ripe old age of 16 I played a character who was the president of a gas company and in the market for a new phone system. The job paid $100 in cash, which would have taken me approximately 50 hours to earn at my job at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Suddenly, I knew what I wanted to do for a living.

I took kind of a circuitous route to my second gig, which came 27 years later in July 2006, thanks to Bruce Miles.

[Bailey]

I'll share my moment of "cheese"... actually, my moment of having more hair than I do now.