Voiceover for the Actor

Acting is a business of deprivation.  It puts everyone involved in it at some point in a state where they just don’t know where the next dollar is coming from.  Those highs and lows are the nature of the beast and you need to learn to manage it.  

Lately I’ve stopped taking my own advice.  There was a Times article about the value of self-talk that Nicole Blackman sent me.  (Yes THAT Nicole Blackman - as if there WERE any other...)  Maybe I should start directing myself out loud, I don’t know.   

In my first podcast interview (for anything actually) the inestimable Matty Blake asked me - “If you had to write a logline for your classes - what would it be?”

I didn’t even know what a logline was…  

“What in your life is calling you?

When all the noise is silenced..."

What can you research for a commercial read?   

Current headlines about a corporation.  Volkswagen and diesel?  Or Apple’s seeming “lack of innovation”?  How will the audition you have today burnish their image?

I’m going to go out on a limb here…

If someone teaches you that saying the words “pick up” when you make a mistake in an audition is “the thing to do”; they are just wrong. 

Some of the best things about voiceover...

Your audition scripts are often small.

You don't have to memorize them.

I've got 300 blog posts, 11 years of casting and 7 years of teaching and I won't give you an absolute.   

An educated guess is still just that; a guess.  

Take off any outerwear before you get in the booth.  

Also, lose your jangly bracelets.  And your loud mechanical watches.  While you’re at it, drop your phone outside the door. Make sure your iPad is silenced.   

“Pathé News was a producer of news reels and documentaries from 1910 until 1970 in the United Kingdom. Its founder, Charles Pathé, was a pioneer of moving pictures in the silent era. The Pathé News archive is known today as British Pathé. Its collection of news film and movies is fully digitised and available online.”