Leveling up your voiceover career

A wrap-up of the 2024 Euro VO Retreat in Barcelona, Spain

In this closing session, each panelist answered questions and gave some remarks about the event, their observations of us as attendees and pros, and advice. (Like the sections above, these are highlights, not exhaustive comments, so I didn’t capture notes from every speaker here.)

“Make sure lots of people are hearing your voice”

”For everyone in this room, I can say with confidence that if you put in the time and the effort to, I call it “at-bats,” that's how many people today are hearing you. So, there is no secret in this business, other than how many people are hearing you, whether that's auditions, marketing touches with your demos, whatever it may be, how many people are hearing what you can do. The more of those you're doing every day, the more you're gonna book, and eventually that snowball will get bigger.” - J. Michael Collins

“Don’t show desperation—just have fun”

“We all have impostor syndrome. So kind of go out there and act like you own the world, and you will. **If you're not getting a ton of auditions, try not to put so much weight and value on the auditions that you get when they feel desperate and life or death. ‘**If I don't book this, this is my one chance…’ because we can hear that in those auditions. You already don't have the job, so you can only go up. If you don't get it, you're still at the same point—you're not going down a bang. You didn't have it to begin with, you don't have it after, you only have the chance to go forward and go up.

“So celebrate that as opposed to clinging on to the desperation of, ‘I only get one animation audition a month. I really have to nail it or knock it out of the park.’ Like Mami [Osaki] was saying, every read that you guys ended on, I'm like, that was it. That was different. What was different about it? ‘Oh, I actually had fun.’ It's easier said than done, but find the joy in what you're doing.” - Sara Jane Sherman

“Whether you’re booking or not, you have work to do”

“Your career is not a straight line. It's not a sort of one-way trajectory, instead it's up, it's down, it’s up. it’s down. It's coming on the “at-bats,” but we have this expectation that we're supposed to book everything we read, and if we don't, there's something wrong.

“You don't have the job, and your chance to get that job is very infinitesimal. So why the hell not just have fun, right? But take advantage of the roller coaster. When you're not booking, what else in your career needs attention? Pay attention to those things.

“When you're booking, you don't have time to do your marketing, necessarily, or update your demos or your website, whatever. So you're not doing this thing. There's always something to do in your career. Sometimes you're earning the money, and sometimes you're doing the investment. So there's always something and you will fall off but you have the opportunity to come back on and just expect that it's part of the game and it provides all kinds of opportunity for growth.” - Kay Bess

“Pay attention to the industry and build relationships”

”All of the things that you guys are doing as far as the marketing and the skills and the techniques and the workouts and outreach, and all of that is so important. What I'm seeing of the modern day working actor is that now, it's sort of half of it. So I want to encourage you to pay attention to the business. Pay attention to what's happening in the industry around you. Yes, your preparedness is important so that when the opportunities come to you, you know how to deliver.

“There's a world in which there are things that are going to help inform your delivery. And it's you need to be paying attention because the landscape is changing so rapidly right now. Having been at the [SBV] agency, having been in voiceover for about 20 years. Now, if you think about this, it's not that long, but the ways in which the business has changed and shifted in 20 years is extraordinary. So pay attention, read the trades, and as I say, get obsessed. That's my thing. Get obsessed because I think it will help inform not only your delivery and your performance, but the decisions that you make directly related to the way you approach your career.

“The other thing is, this business is all about relationships. And I will extend that to life is all about relationships and a series of trust falls, whether you're the person catching someone or someone's catching you. So just remember that this entire business and life and everything we do is all about creating relationships. And not relationships like what can I get from it, but just genuine, authentic, real relationships where you just are yourself with all your imperfections, be messy and own all of it, suck it up and take like things that are catching from all you this week. Build solid relationships… it’s going to carry you so far.” - Jessica Bulavsky

“Know yourself and take chances”

”You have to know yourself. You have to know who you are, because a lot of folks don't know that yet. It doesn't matter. You might be middle age, it doesn't matter, but you gotta figure that out before you try to approach copy.

“I think there are three things happening: People think, ‘This is how I should sound.’ How do you sound? ‘But I don't know who I am.’ Well, then that's your first job. Not marketing, not demos, not who’s gonna be my agent. If you don't know who you are, then you don't have a perspective. That's the first thing.

“Second thing is, go live a life—all the things that you have outside of voiceover inform your voiceover. So don't forget when you crossed the threshold that oh, now I'm doing voice acting so now I've gotta be on autopilot, like no what happened to the person who likes to dance or like to go collect shells on the beach or climb trees? That person's experiences affect your reading.

“Third, you know more than you think you know. I'm thinking like, oh, yeah, now I'm not doing voice acting to get to a mole. I don't know promo so I don't know how to do it. Yes, you do. You made announcements to your family, like ‘Get down here and get these dishes’ like that [laughter]. Seriously—you know more than you think you do. So don't neglect your experience because it's a new genre or a new endeavor for you. You already know. You just have to employ it. You have to give yourself permission to enjoy it.” - Andia Winslow

Audition contest

After this closing session, the panelists held an audition contest for anyone who wanted to participate for a chance to win a bonus demo from JMC Demos. We were allowed to pick any copy from the week or our own.

Since no one else wanted to go first, I did. And the grand prize winner was Tom Antonelli. Congrats Tom!