One of the new business models that the internet has made possible is what is known as the “Pay to Play” voice over casting website. Traditionally, a voice actor would pursue representation with an agent who would submit that actor for projects. If the actor was cast, the agent would take a 10% commission of the actor’s salary as compensation. Agents are not paid ahead of time, they only make money when the actor makes money.

Pay to Play sites work differently. You pay the website a fee to get access to auditions. They give you space on their site to create a profile where you can post your demo and contact information. Then, you get access to auditions from producers who post their projects on the website. I have yet to try any Pay to Play sites so I don’t know what it’s like working with them first hand. My agent keeps me pretty busy so I haven’t explored that avenue yet. I’ve heard from other voice actors who have tried these sites that they can sometimes be a bit of a meat market with hundreds if not thousand of voice actors all competing for the same projects. However, this blog post caught my eye.

It’s a promotional blog post from Voice123, one of the larger Pay to Play sites. The post is called, Voice Overs Never Cease to Amaze Me. The post is designed to promote the ease of hiring their talent to those producers who are interested in using their service.

However, the most interesting part of the post to me is not the video of the final project with voice over, but rather the fact that they posted all the auditions for the project on a separate page for everyone to listen to. Rarely do you get the chance to hear other actor’s auditions for a part. In fact, it’s considered very bad form to allow other actors to hear their competition’s auditions. Since this blog post is aimed at the producer, however, Voices123 thought it would be good to showcase the type of talent that would audition for a project posted on their site.

So take advantage of an opportunity that almost never happens in voice over, listen to the auditions of your competition. Imagine if you were the producer, which talent would you chose? Do you agree with their choice? Why do you think the producer chose the actor he did? How could you audition differently to stick out from your competition? It’s a wonderful window into the voice casting process.

Here’s an amazing interview with one of the greatest voice directors in America, Andrea Romano. Andrea’s resume is littered with some of the most popular cartoon series of all time including the original Batman, The Animated Series from the mid 90’s, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Teen Titans and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Andrea talks about some very important ideas to remember when approaching voice acting:

1. Her first question is always, “Is this person I’m thinking of casting a good actor?”
2. Her second question is, “Do they have voice over experience?”

Microphone technique and animation acting, you can teach in a very short time. I can’t teach acting in a four-hour recording session. Acting is something that they’ve got to bring to the table themselves.

That is why I stress so much that you must be a capable actor before you can be truly successful as a voice actor. No matter how much time you spend in the booth, recording on a microphone or polishing your voice, if you do not have the acting ability to support all of your wonderful technique, you won’t be able to bring a good performance to the project.

So do whatever you can to get more acting experience. Take acting classes. Join your local or school theater group. Get online and join a voice acting group. Whatever it takes to give you more opportunities to practice playing pretend as characters.

Enjoy!

Here’s a great blog post from a good friend of mine, Juan Carlos Bagnell. Juan works as a casting director at one of the most prestigious casting offices in LA, the Voicecaster. He uses the online moniker of “SomeAudioGuy” but trust me, he is THE Audio guy. Not only is Juan a fantastic director, but he can articulate how he does what he does which is invaluable!

I highly suggest you check out his blog post on “The Art of the Pick Up” or how to recover once you’ve flubbed a line in the booth. Juan shares some great insight as someone who works with top talent voice actors every day. He sees what works and what doesn’t and his eye for subtlety and nuance never ceases to amaze me. Whenever he’s directing me in the booth, I know I’m in the best hands.

You can also check out his online web series called, Movies You May Have Missed or MYMHM for short. He does wonderful reviews of seldom seen but valuable movies with his show partner, Lee. He’s even done an interview with me about zombies, vampires and other mythological subjects in film and horror.