![]() Those are fertile ground for making connections too. There’s no shortage of people, casting houses and recording studios offering voice instruction online for an extensive directory of services in Los Angeles aimed at voice artists, consult the Voice Over Resource Guide.Ī good first step, though, would be to check out the numerous Facebook groups that support voice actors. Intrigued, she later took a five-day workshop with a veteran narrator to prepare her for the process of auditioning on Amazon’s ACX. McCormick studied theater in college and was aiming for a career in TV and film when she went to a seminar on audiobook narration hosted by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). A few days later, he said, he was hired for his first gig: recording an announcement for Disney Hall about what to do in case of an emergency. Having a background in music and dance helps.Ĭopeland said he took a six-week course at a Burbank studio in voice acting for commercials that broke down how to understand a script, how to recognize what a client is looking for and other fundamental skills. It’s a very tough field to succeed in, and connections are vital to getting started. Most of the professionals The Times interviewed said it’s wise to invest in some classes on voice acting before leaping into the scrum of applicants.Ĭompany Town Explaining Hollywood: How to get a job as a foley artist But you can’t expect to land a job just because you have a voice like James Earl Jones. Understanding the script and “emotionally connecting with the words,” Copeland said, is vital “because that’s the key to marketing.” How do you get started?įor voice actors, a common entry point is freelance gigs they find online through websites such as, Voice123, Backstage or, for audiobooks, Amazon’s Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX). “It helped me understand scripts better, it gave me more of an edge,” he said. Still, he said his own experience as an actor has been a plus. “They don’t care abut your acting resume unless you’re a celebrity,” he said. “How else would you know how to approach a book that has 60 characters in it if you’re not used to analyzing scripts?”Ĭopeland, who pursued careers as a rapper and an actor before finding a niche as a voice actor in commercials, said an acting background isn’t as important to the people hiring talent for advertisements. “The person who has an acting background, that is going to give you a huge leg up” in the audiobook world, McCormick said. Perkins, for example, says she did summer stock theater and a few national touring productions before moving to Los Angeles and taking up voice work. Having some experience on stage or in front of a camera helps. ![]() “If you’re not the type of actor who likes to play around and have fun, it’s going to be torture for you. “You’ve got to have an imagination to do that,” Rudin said. And the actors have a lot of blanks to fill in, performing not just the lines on the page but also the grunts, groans and all the other sounds coming out of their characters’ mouths as they move around the screen. Typically, she said, each voice actor in a cast works individually, like a soloist before a conductor with no other members of the orchestra on stage. ![]() What to consider as you pivot to HollywoodĪctors who have chosen to pursue Hollywood later in life as a second career share their experiences and advice. ![]() That sort of mental world-conjuring is a key part of her work in front of a mic now when she’s doing voices for animation - notably, she’ll be the lead in Disney’s Thanksgiving offering, the musical fantasy “Encanto.”Ĭompany Town It’s never too late to pursue acting. That world felt a little more accessible to me, somehow.”Įquipped with a portable Fisher-Price tape recorder, she and her sister would entertain themselves for hours by recording shows for fictional radio stations - doing mock interviews, commercials and songs in a variety of voices. “Animation was the one place where the heroes in the story sometimes didn’t look like anybody I knew because they were out of somebody else’s imagination. ![]() “It wasn’t lost on me as a kid that the heroes of the stories often didn’t look like me,” she said. Beatriz said her interest in voice acting dates back to her days as a child of two working parents in suburban Houston, when she and her younger sister spent a lot of time watching cartoons and animated movies. Take Beatriz, a theater actress who came to Los Angeles about a decade ago eager to do voice work alongside films and TV shows. ![]()
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