VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Bruce]

I invite one and all to contribute to this thread with the story of your journey into voice acting, or voice over. I’ll also add the stories of others I find interesting…. like this one. Enjoy!

https://nofilmschool.com/voice-acting

Bruce
_________________
VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

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

[Bruce]

I started as a class clown, always cracking wise with teachers and fellow students. Then came a skit I was in in front of a student assembly in middle school. I improvised a line and I got a roar of laughter from 300 kids in the auditorium. I was hooked on a career of performing from then on.

I did lots of plays in grade and high school, then bailed on my first semester of college to go to a broadcast school, based in a major radio station, to learn my next craft. I started full time in radio at a station in Winslow, Arizona doing mornings and news. I then moved back to my home city of Phoenix and was a Top 40 deejay, a Country deejay, and newscaster at a few stations for a few years. I then spent three lovely years in San Diego performing in a couple of different formats and learning from some of the greats. I returned to Phoenix for a few more years of rock deejaying.

During these last several radio years I got paid to voice commercials that went to other stations (cool!) and got experience in on camera commercials, live and episodic TV programs, and more theater. When advancement meant moving out of my home city I decided to make a go of full time voice and acting work. I acted in episodes of the Young Riders, Unsolved Mysteries, America's Most Wanted, and a few big roles in small movies, and a few small roles in bigger movies. I did live action modeling for major characters in Fox Animation features Anastasia and Titan A.E. I also acted in many industrial films/videos.

All this time I was also writing and voicing a slew of radio and TV commercials, so many that ad agencies became reluctant to hire me because I was on the air so much. As work slowed down my father offered one last time to join his water treatment business and I became a middling expert in high tech water needs for industry for a few years. Not a lot of laughs there.

My Dad retired and sold the business, and for five years I co-owned and managed a live theater from which we produced 40 musicals and plays. I'm proud to say almost all of them were highly reviewed.

When I learned a lot of us voice Phoenix talents were losing work to actors in Cleveland for example, using this crazy "high speed Internet" thing, I decided to "find work" in other cities and eventually other countries. I built my own home studio around the time of 9/11 and have been 90% voiceover from home ever since.

I've found for me I keep gainfully employed by doing it all: commercials of all kinds in markets large and occasionally small, narrations from children's programming to medical to technical, video game and animation characters, audiobooks, and this time of year lots of political spots. Lately I've been voicing a few promoting the oldest of our very old presidential candidates.

Very few dull moments in this voiceover line of work, end even if a job is a little dull, the pay per hour is outstanding compared to most work out there.

Bruce
_________________
VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

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

[Lee Gordon]

I was a senior in high school and was walking down the hallway where one of the juniors was surveying passersby. He wanted to know if there was any interest among the students for a campus radio station. I answered in the affirmative and also volunteered. He built the station and the day he flipped the switch, I did my first radio show. Armed with that experience, I joined the college station the following year, which probably contributed to my flunking out.

Two years later, I was back at a university with a radio station and, once again, I signed up. By then I had enough radio experience that I was able to land my first paying job at a commercial station. And in my senior year, I got a weekend gig at a station in my hometown. That turned into a full time job starting the day after my college graduation.

In college and at my professional gigs, I gravitated toward the production departments and did lots of commercials, particularly the funny ones or the ones with character voices. I remember doing one as a chicken for a fast food place called Hawaiian Boneless Chicken in 1972 or 73. I have a vague recollection that the client like it so much, he wanted to use it on another station in the market. If so, that would have been the first time I got paid for a VO, but I honestly don't remember.

In 1974 I moved from New Hampshire to Hartford, CT and, again, spent a lot of off air hours in production. I did a spot for a sandwich shop called Full of Baloney that I know for sure I got paid for ($25). All the DJs hung out at a particular bar after our shifts. I met a lot of people there, including one guy who owned an ad agency. He hired me to voice some of his spots, which, at the time, were all done at local recording studios. That enabled me to make some valuable connections and led to more VO work. I was one of a handful of voiceoverists who were on a ton of spots produced in those studios -- until the technology came along that enabled the studios to record out of town voices remotely. But that was a double-edged sword. If out of town voices were going to take some local work away from me, I had to become an out of town voice in other markets to make up for the lost business. So that's what I did.
_________________
Lee Gordon, O.A.V.
Voice President of the United States
www.leegordonproductions.com
Twitter: @LeeGordonVoice

[tokyofan]

Growing up in Duluth, MN I enjoyed singing in school chorus and church choir from an early age. This led to being active in junior high school and high school chorus, a barbershop quartet, and community musicals and plays. Once I started university I had no time for performing arts.

After graduating with a double major in philosophy and psychology (and a black belt in aikido), I traveled to Tokyo, Japan in 1993 and landed a job as a full-time English teacher. After a three year grind, I changed workplaces and the next school had a recording studio where they produced English language learning materials, narrated by their foreign teachers. They asked me to do a 'test recording' after which they began hiring me on a regular basis. They seemed to like my 'standard' Midwest accent and after several years of teaching, could enunciate English quite clearly by then. I also had a dramatic flare, when needed.

I soon started working with other foreign narrators who introduced me to local studios and talent agencies. I made a rough voice demo and whenever I returned to the U.S. I would enroll in voice-over classes or seek private instruction. After several years I was able to quit teaching English altogether and pursue voice work full-time. And was able to expand into commercials, corporate videos, video games, animation, etc. All in English, of course. There wasn't a lot of competition at the time and there's still a huge barrier to entry.

After having built a DIY vocal booth 20 years ago, I also tried my luck with P2P sites and audiobooks, enjoying some relative, pre-pandemic success. Home recordings in Japan are not as common but have picked up since the pandemic.
_________________
www.chriskoprowski.com/en

[Mike Paul]

Ever since I was a kid, I've been doing impressions.

(Fast Forward...)

I got fired from a technology consulting career for performance reasons; tinnitus meant I was searching for sounds to mask the noise all day, and chronic muscle pain meant I couldn't find comfort for long, so I didn't get a lot of work done. Plus, my memory recall was beginning to degrade.

When I got fired, I wrote a list of things that I enjoyed or came naturally to me. First item was 'helping people'. Second item was 'impressions'. I put the pencil down right away.

That's when it hit me: the opening scene from Mrs. Doubtfire, where Robin Williams voices a tweety-looking-bird and then goes off script when the bird starts smoking a cigarette--something Robin's character didn't care for.

So, I then realized that everything needed a voice -- from cartoons to overhead messaging at the airport -- and knowing I had a natural skill I could leverage, I began the journey down the path of voiceover.

While I'm a natural mimic, I quickly realized this industry required more, and I've been learning and growing ever since.
_________________
Mike Paul
speakingofmike.com

[verbcrunch]

In high school was a cashier at a Big Y supermarket. They had me record the weekly specials that blared over the PA system, interrupting the Musak. I figure that was my first VO gig, except I didn't get paid anything extra.
_________________
Jeff Berlin
Humble Voice Guy
http://www.jeffberlin.com

[Philip Banks]

This is what started the ball rolling

I had a proper job with an investment management company, was married to Anne, had a home in Somerset and we had two dogs. Sadly, our newly acquired Jack Russell Terrier, Smike died as a result of an accident. The Scottish Terrier simply couldn't cope. We needed another dog. I called our local commercial radio station and asked the afternoon presenter if she would be kind enough to spread the word. She did.

"If you're ever in the area, please pop in and say hello" she said. I did. We chatted as she presented the Afternoon Drive show. When she hit a button to play a commercial break I asked about the ads and the voices.

The ball has kept rolling and rolling. I'll give it another year and see if it works out.

[Bob Bergen]

This is something I'd wanted to do since I was a kid. I had no idea there was a term for doing this or that it was even a business. I just knew I wanted to do voices for cartoons. I grew up in the Midwest, where pursuing this as a career just was not feasible.

I got lucky in that my Dad took a job in LA when I was 14. He commuted for about 6 months as my parents wanted me and my sister to finish out the school year before we moved. I asked him to look through The Yellow Pages and rip out any page that listed anything pertaining to cartoons and bring them when he'd come home for visits. For some time, there were Yellow Page phone books throughout the LA area missing pages that included Hanna-Barbera, Warner Bros., Filmation, Disney, etc.

After we moved to LA started calling the numbers in the Yellow Pages just asking for advice on what to do. I was told I needed to study. I found a trade magazine at our local newsstand called Drama-logue, which is now called Backstage. It advertised headshot photographers, theater auditions, acting classes and VoiceOver classes. There were only about 3-4 vo classes being taught at that time, and I just called the first one I saw. I had no idea if this teacher was any good, but I had to start somewhere. I was 14 and my parents supported this as long as I kept my grades up. I lucked into a really great class/teacher. Classes were $12 a week. My parents paid for them until I was 14 1/2 when I got my first part time job and from then on paid for everything myself. I wanted to prove to my parents I was serious.

When I took my first class my voice had not yet changed......and I was dreadful. I had zero acting training and zero ability to take direction or make the copy sound like I wasn't reading. I spent 2 years studying with this coach, just spinning my wheels. I was referred to an acting teacher who taught me technique. It was eye opening and gave me the tools I needed to better understand and apply my acting technique to vo copy. The next 2 years I studied vo with every vo coach in LA. I was also invited to attend an all day Saturday workout group with some of the top vo talent in the business. Don LaFontaine, Danny Dark, Jack Angel, and occasionally Ernie Anderson. Just working out with them at the mic took my skills up notches I never knew I had in me. During our lunch breaks they shared marketing strategies, how to carry yourself as a professional actor, etc.

When I was 18 a friend of the family who knew Casey Kasem asked him to send me an autographed picture as a high school graduation present. I wrote him a thank you note and mentioned I wanted to get into vo. I included my phone number and he called me, asked me all kinds of business questions (do you have a demo/agent, etc.) All I had at that time was 4 years of training. He asked me to put together a cassette tape of as many voices as I could do. He liked it and played it for his agent, who in turn called me and offered me representation. The agent was a guy named Don Pitts, who represented everyone from Mel Blanc, to June Foray, Paul Winchell, Orson Wells, etc. He was basically the CAA (Google CAA if you don't know that talent agency) of vo agents. I hit the jackpot right out of the gate. I had a few weeks left in high school, so I couldn't dive into auditioning or working yet. But Don would have me come to his office a few times a week and had me practice auditioning.

I chose not to go to college. For the next 5 years I worked 5 days/7 nights a week in survival jobs, auditioning and booking on occasion. I actually got my first cartoon and SAG card a week out of high school. But it took those 5 years of hit or miss auditioning before I could quit the survival jobs to work as a full-time actor. Competing at the level I was competing meant I had a lot of expenses. The largest expense was marketing. We were expected to market our demos to buyers. Back then agents would give us a list of their 5000 or so buyer contacts. We would take that list and have mailing labels made up to snail mail our demos. I would spend a good $10,000 a year marketing my demos. (thank God for emailing as marketing today is virtually free!) Thus the need for all of the survival jobs. It was really expensive back then to pursue professional vo. Even my monthly pager bills was a lot for me, but we all needed a pager.

During those 5 years of survival jobs, I banked everything I made in vo and lived off of the day/night jobs. I ended up getting fired from my main day job as a tour guide at Universal Studios, as I had 32 sick days my last year due to vo auditions and bookings. This was before home studios, so I had to go to my agent's office for auditions, and studios for sessions. Universal just could not keep me with so many "sick" days.

When they let me go I was terrified not having the security of a guaranteed paycheck. When I took a deep dive into my finances I realized I had a good two years worth of living expenses saved up from my vo gigs. I earned enough annually since my first year competing to qualify for health benefits, so that was covered. And I was 5 years into earning a pension, and only needed another 5 years to guarantee that pension when I turned 65. Universal letting me go was the best thing that could have happened to me as that allowed me to dive in full-time.

I continued training, spending 2 years at an acting conservatory and 3 years studying improv. It has not always been easy. But one of the lessons I learned in that all day Saturday workout group with those amazing vo pros was no matter where one is their career, it will never be easy. They advised me to live below my means, save as much as possible, etc. That was great advice, which along with regular residuals got me through union strikes, cancelled shows, contracts expiring, etc.

[todd ellis]

As with most things in my life I fell ass-backward into talking out loud for money. I started in radio just as I started college because it looked easier than going to work in a prison (which is what a lot of my high school friends did). I worked in the local station doing everything; DJ, news, sports, weather, remote gigs, etc ... it was a great education, which is probably why I stopped going to college. Smaller station to bigger station to bigger market, you know how it goes. Every now and again I'd pick up some business or another who wanted me to record their commercials or phone tree and pay me extra money ... how cool is that! I eventually left radio and entered the publishing business and for whatever reason, people still wanted me to talk out loud for them, so I did, and they paid me. After a short time in the publishing business and at the dawn of the internet, I realized that I was losing money working for the man and quit the corporate gig to hang out my own shingle. I haven't had any "training" per se. I have been to a total of one VO conference and for many years, I thought I was all alone in the field. Conversely, I have learned SO much from my peers - of what to do and what NOT to do - I cannot begin to explain.
_________________
"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

[MBVOXX]

In high school I was a big fan of "Chicken Man" and everything Dick Orkin. So I was constantly 'performing' the Chicken Man announcer parts for my friends. Within a month of graduation I was offered a radio job by the father of a friend who ran a small top 40 station in West Tx. Word had gotten out that I had the knack for it.

So I took the job and it all started from there. I considered the radio station my best audition vehicle and concentrated on creative production of commercials and promos. Within 4 years I was on the air in a major market and soon after I signed with my first talent agent. A few VO workshops, some entry level gigs, and a slow climb up the VO ladder lead to a life behind the mic. 10 years after I took that radio job at the small market top 40 station I was out of radio and working full time, making a living doing VO work in the big city.

The rest is history. 2024 marks 42 years of working behind the mic!

[Bob Bergen]

[todd ellis]

One of the best things about going to school in the 70s was when the school bus driver turned on KXOK and turned Chicken Man up all the way!

Bock, Bock Bock, Bock, Bock, Booooooooock, Chiiiiiicken Maaaaaaaaannnnnn!
_________________
"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

[Lee Gordon]

When I was a radio station Production Director/Copywriter, the sales guys would come in an request spots "like Dick Orkin." And I would tell them, "If I could write spots like Dick Orkin, I wouldn't be working here."
_________________
Lee Gordon, O.A.V.
Voice President of the United States
www.leegordonproductions.com
Twitter: @LeeGordonVoice

[Tom Test]

I was painfully shy as a boy, and nobody in my family had ever acted or sang or anything like that. I come from a blue collar family originally from Punxsutawney, PA (I grew up in suburban Detroit).

While I was a junior in the Business School at the U of Michigan, people started commenting on my voice, saying "you should be in radio." And as I started coming out of my shy shell, I found that I had a real knack for public speaking. Also, my reading comprehension scores were way off the charts in standardized testing.

I graduated with a BBA in Marketing, but quickly found that slaving away 80 hours a week in a corporate job was making me miserable. And I'd sworn that I'd never be a workaholic like my dad was, who pretty much never made it to my Little League baseball games. So I quit that job, and around that time I came across a newspaper article about the voiceover profession.

I was intrigued! I saved some money up and moved to Chicago in 1988, and took a class called "How to Make Money Doing Voiceovers." After that I started taking VO lessons (from the WRONG GUY!) and also Improv and Acting lessons. Side note: I have performed live improv on the main stage at Second City in front of a sold out audience, and got big laughs!

My first demo SUCKED ASS. Maybe we should have a thread "Are you brave enough to post your first demo here?" Not a single agent was interested, but I persisted.

The BEST thing I've ever done was to create weekly VO workouts at a local studio, and invited copywriters and creative directors to be guests (most were happy to do it, pro bono!). I'd invite talent who were way better than me. After doing that for several years, I came out with a new demo that finally got me several agents. A few more years of the workouts, and 5 years in I came out with my third demo which one major Chicago agent said was "one of the top 3 demos I've heard all year."

It took me 6 1/2 years before I could burn my waiter's apron and do VO full time, in 1994. And by the way, after I made it, I have since taught that same "How to Make $$ Doing VO" class numerous times!
_________________
Best regards,
Tom Test
"The Voice You Trust"
www.tomtest.com

[Bob Bergen]