VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Christopher French]

Yes, you heard right. Starting near the end of April, I am going to start online with American Broadcasting School. I checked out their school's site and the program looks incredible. It's a 10 month, all inclusive program that includes broadcast theory, air shifts, digital production (using Adobe Audition!), copywriting, newscasting and programming. They even take finanical aid! I've finally decided to get myself really truly going in the world of VO. I believe this will help. I've been hemming and hawing for over a year now and there's no time left for that. It's either go or get off the pot.

Any thoughts? Let me know.

Your pal.

Chris
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Christopher G. French

"The only limitations we truly have are the ones we place on ourselves." -Attributed to Donald Trump

[Dave]

Chris,

I think you should be aware that a school of broadcasting is most likely teaching an entirely different skill set than that required for a voiceover career. There is overlap of course...but unless you are planning to go into radio I think you would get more bang/bank for your buck going with a good vo/acting class.

Dave
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. If at first you don't succeed, then bomb disposal probably isn't for you.

[tackerman]

I agree. If you want VO training a broadcasting school isn't going to do it. You should save your $ for something specifically tailored toward VO.

[todd ellis]

i hate to pile on ... but it took me years to un-learn what "learned" in radio. spend your money on acting seminars, vo workshops, etc. Adobe has a great Audition tutorial as well.
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"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

[Audiogal]

I'm with Dave on this one. Not that there's anything wrong with broadcasting (I came from radio & TV myself) but it sounds like this program will be preparing you for work at a station. Again, it can be a fun place to work & perhaps is more related to VO than your current day job. (If you're just completely wanting a different day job while you're working on starting the VO career.)

There are certainly lots of broadcasting jobs in every market out there, so one may get a job right out of school & go to work full time. Let me caution you, however, that radio & TV entry level jobs do not generally pay well, so one must often be prepared for a pay cut when changing careers. And consider that former broadcasters must ditch their "air voice" in favor of a "real person" delivery for success in VO.

But there is training in voice acting out there that would be more specific to a VO career. You may want to really think about which area you want to concentrate on. There are many facets to this media world...many of us dabble in more than one. Which is fine; just try to spend your training & marketing money smartly & in a manner to get you to your ultimate goals.
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Mary

[dagoldenknight86]

I too am in radio. I suggest like the others great acting and VO classes. And if you wanted to get in radio that would better equip you then the broadcasting school. Now-a-days great radio stations want great personalities/actors, not great announcers!

[Bruce]

I'd also dis-recommend radio unless it's been your life long dream. With all the conglomerates taking over, and with that, the trend towards putting d.j.'s on a network of stations, and jocks voicing-tracking multiple shows each day, the number of jobs in terrestrial radio is shrinking. And God love the folks on this board who are on Internet radio stations, but soon there will be tens of thousands of them thereby diluting the chance of being heard and paid a lot.

Theatre and voice classes will cost you much less, and performing in amateur theatre and reading for the children, seniors or the blind costs you nothing and will give you much more appropriate experience for VO.

Bruce

(Confession: I went through broadcast school many moons ago, but I did it when it was a 3-month course and reasonably priced. My observations over the years make me believe today's schools are purely financial vehicles for the owners and a place for folks on the G.I. bill and others with financial aid to hang out for a year. I'm sure there are serious students in these schools but they appear to be few.)
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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. .

[Diane Maggipinto]

See this thread, re: puking:

http://www.vo-bb.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3106

Okay, update:

I agree with what you all say about broadcasting school. I worked with a guy who always had the same delivery, all the time, on the classic rock station at which I worked. However, Chris, if you think this is a direction you'd like to pursue, and one that will help in areas of stand-up and extemporaneous speech, things I believe you're interested in honing based on your website, then by all means pursue it. If you're wanting to develop chops in voiceover, you will have PLENTY of chances to cut commercials at a radio station (and most copy will say "for all your insert what you need here needs...") and opportunity to mix it up and practice and experiment. But I didn't go to broadcasting school, and am thankful I didn't, which makes me no authority on whether you ought to go or not.
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sitting at #8, though not as present as I'd like to be. Hello!

www.d3voiceworks.com

[Jeffrey Kafer]

more dog pile!

I have 2 degrees in brodacasting and very little of it applies to my VO work. At the same time I was taking those classes, I was also doing drama and improv comedy. Those learned skills are far more applicable than what I learned in my Broadcasting degrees, except for some of the engineering technicals.
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Jeff
http://JeffreyKafer.com
Voice-overload Web comic: http://voice-overload.com

[Yoda117]

I'm jumping on the bandwagon, unless your more into the technical aspect of VO than the acting aspect of the VO (let's face it, there's not a lot of training for properly using the gear).

That said, in addition to the usual gauntlet of VO and Acting classes, I'm going to specifically toss in Improv classes.

It's a personal weak spot, and one I'll be addressing later this summer
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Voiceovers by Gregory Houser
Philadelphia based Voice Actor

Blog - A man, a martini, and a lot of microphones

[Deirdre]

In agreement with the above:

Acting classes.
Improv classes.

Yes, and yes.

Any other classtime might well be spent with hands-on learning your audio applications. Recording tutorials are wonderful, but having someone there to address questions to is quite grand.
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DBCooperVO.com
IMDB

[chriswagner]

I would agree with the rest of the posts. Broadcast School isn't a place to go if you want to be in VO. And Radio may be a great place to start for some, but it's a starting point.

Most of the people I worked with in radio came by their jobs through internships at the radio station. Very few if any had gone through a broadcasting school. And I remember that the Program directors didn't have warm fuzzies about hiring people who went to broadcast school; they would have to re-train them and get rid of bad habbits.

I had gotten my job in radio by delivering pizza's to the station and getting to know people who worked there. That's just one really random way of getting into a station. And for me, I was lucky because I got RIGHT into being a production guy and doing VO, instead of doing the FM Jock stuff.

If you decide to go through with going to broadcast school, take it for the skill sets you can pick up, like production skills. And you will get an insight into how a station works, which would be good. But most likely what they teach you in school isn't going to match up exactly to what is happening in the real world.

When I decided to just jump headfirst back into VO, I took what I thought was the easiest route, I got a gig on the weekends as a Classic Rock Jock. I did that a few times, one in Denver, and one time in Colorado Springs. I also was a traffic reporter.

My thought was that I would be able to make some contacts and start getting more VO.

WRONG

When you work at a Radio station, they EXPECT you to do commercials at your regular hourly rate, which ususally is not much more than you would get at Burger King or MacDonalds. And since the radio station expects you to do that, their clients don't see any added value to you doing their spots. I mean why do they want to pay $350 to talent for a :60 spot, when you work for the radio station and they get you for virtually free.

Radio stations use their talent as a way to save clients money, and don't usually pay the talent what they are worth, because they don't really see their worth outside of the job they were hired for... in their mind you are a DJ, or a traffic reporter, or a news writer.. whatever, and they expect you to be happy to do extra work at your hourly rate.

Jaded? Yes..

It's your choice, hopefully if you do it you can get something out of it, just don't think it's going to be a VO career right out of the box. Just isn't that easy.

[glittlefield]

Personally, I think the best path from radio to VO goes through the production director's office and NOT the on-air studio. I've met quite a few people here and around the 'net that are Prod Dirs for companies that own 5 or more stations, so they have to be versatile to handle whatever the clients of any or all of the stations want. Broadcasting school can give you a base to help you better do the job of a production director since that's the position that deals with sales, management AND air staff.

But that's just MY opinion...
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Greg Littlefield
VO-BB Member #59

[Bailey]

Excuse me... Mr. French.

[dagoldenknight86]