Career Advice

Pat Fraley is holding a special day of training with Ed Asner and several other top voiceover pros on Saturday, September 20, 2008 at World Famous Buzzy’s Recording in Los Angeles.

Here’s an audio recording of Pat with a quick preview.

[audio:https://bobsouer.com/pix/PlayAmongTheStars.mp3]

Details on price and registration are on Pat’s web site. I wish I could be there, but I’m all ready booked that weekend.

While you’re on Pat’s site, you can check out the rest of his schedule this fall. I see that he’s holding events not only in Los Angeles, but also Chicago, New York City, Vancouver, and Atlanta.

While digging around the Voiceover Universe site, I ran across this gem of a post by Rick Party the founder of the site. Take a moment to read the solid gold advice Rick offers from his perspective as a real working pro voice talent. Some advice isn’t worth any more than you pay for it (nothing), but what Rick has to say is worth more than one reading. And then look in your mirror and ask yourself if you are willing to pay the price of success, keeping in mind that price is denominated in effort and time far more than it is in money.

And while I have your attention, I’ll mention Banksey’s axiom, first documented (to the best of my knowlege) in this post on the VO-BB from June 2005 by my friend and mentor, Philip Banks. To wit: “95% of people launching themselves onto the voice over market will not make any money at all.” If you’re sure you want to pursue voiceover work as your new career, you have to make up your mind you’re going to be one of the 5 percenters.

Nancy Wolfson and Anna Vocino are holding the next in their series of teleseminars on Acting for Advertising one week from today, Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 9:00 PM Eastern/6:00 PM Pacific. Registration details are at the Break Into Voice Over site. Price is $39.00 for the teleseminar (or $49.00 if you want also get an MP3 copy of the teleseminar afterward).

From time to time I post some of the thoughts of Bob Fraser, a man who has worn about every hat that can be worn in show business from actor to producer and back again. An email I received today was so full of good information that I promptly wrote and asked for permission to publish the contents here. And with that permission granted, I encourage you to read what follows and think about how it applies to your own career.

First a bit of background. Bob had received two similar letters asking him for advice on whether it made sense to do some on-camera projects for no pay in order to get some useful experience and maybe some material for a demo reel. Here is his response …

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The sooner you begin your ‘career’ the better.

It almost always takes a long time to get anywhere in our business – and the time you wait to take forward steps is time wasted.

When I urge actors to look for work that pays, I really don’t care how old the actor is, or what experience they’ve had up to that point. It’s more about encouraging the ‘pro’s mindset’ … a frame of reference that every actor must start building as early as possible – if they hope to act for a living.

The amount of work an actor can easily get – which does not pay – is huge. I’d guess that there are enough ‘work for free’ opportunities to keep any decent actor busy for decades.

However, it’s the transition you make when you decide that you are really only interested in doing this as a profession (and the definition of profession is pretty much totally related to a paycheck), that marks the point when you start to take your career seriously.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing student films, low-budget films, community theatre, off-off-off Broadway, summer stock, or putting together your own film, with your friends, on the weekends. But don’t make the mistake of believing that you will get any more out of those activities than the experience.

For instance, as far as working for free in the hope of getting material for a reel – think that idea through. If the material you get does not look like a totally professional production (in every way – music, editing, lighting, camera work, writing, acting, costumes, props, etc.) then it will not be footage that will be particularly helpful to you as an actor.

That’s because an actor’s reel is mostly used as a sales tool to convince an agent to sign you – and agents are generally not impressed with talent, passion, your desire to act, or cutting edge content — as much as they are impressed with actors who’ve managed to make money as actors.

That’s the best indication to an agent that an actor will be a good client. Period.

Showing an agent a lot of ‘free work’ pretty much defeats the purpose of a reel. So, a useful reel almost always contains clips from real productions – where actors are paid. That’s pretty much the only kind of reel that works with agents.

And – despite what you may have heard – casting directors are almost never excited about seeing your reel – until they’ve met you (and very few casting directors have time to look at reels when they are casting something). In fact, the only time a casting director will really want to see your reel, is in order to show it to higher ups – to convince them that it’s worthwhile to consider you.

Now, picture a casting director showing your reel (filled with free work) to Spielberg or other A-List director …

Got the picture? Are you really interested in risking what may be your big ‘shot’ – relying on work that was done on weekends by volunteers?

This is a huge subject – and to be honest I’ve written about it extensively in my courses. But, for now, please take my word for it – look for work that pays.

Don’t look for reasons to do what’s easy – in the hope that it will help you skip doing the hard stuff. Looking for work (that pays) is hard – but that IS the job. Getting to do the work is your reward for doing the job well.

Go ahead and do free work … because you love the material, or want to work with someone, or to build a network, or for the experience in front of the camera or audience – just be clear that free work rarely helps you skip the job of finding paid work … and is never a short-cut to achieving your long term goals.

Hope this brief overview is helpful.

Have a splendid week and, as always …

Much Success,

Bob

P.S. One week left to save 30% on The Agent Code by pre-ordering.

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What Bob has written is obviously aimed at on-camera and on-stage actors, but the connection for those of us primarily doing voice acting is there. The single most important point being that looking for paying work is hard, but it is the job. If you don’t want to do that hard work, you probably want to plan on a career in something else and do a bit of voiceover work on the side now and then.

Yes, that’s pretty blunt. I always want to be nice and kind and likable, but I also want to tell you the truth. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be much of a friend.

There’s a study weekend coming up in September (Saturday and Sunday, the 6th and 7th) in Dallas with Bettye Zoller of VoiceVoices.com. The weekend will cover four areas of focus …

• Character cartoon voice techniques
• Voice acting for commercials today
• Audiobook narration techniques
• The business of voice-overs worldwide

Tuition for the weekend is $495.00, which includes breakfast buffets, catered working group luncheons, a festive cocktail reception, and take-home packets. The Two-pay plan lets you enroll with $295 deposit–balance of $200 due on or before August 25 non-refundable.
For more information, visit Bettye’s home page.

With thanks to my friend Steve Stone for passing along this link in an email today, you’ll find at least a few solid, actionable suggestions in this list of ten things a voice actor should do on the Back Stage site.

I’ve added Wendy’s Actor Inspiration site to my blog roll, after reading this article.

You have a couple of study opportunities coming up later this year with Rodney Saulsberry. On Saturday, September 20, 2008 Rodney will lead a one day Voiceover Workshop at Tree Falls Studio in Los Angeles, CA.

Or if you don’t live in Southern California, Rodney will conduct a Commercial Intensive Teleclass for three Thursday evenings in October, starting October 16, 2008.

Registration details are available on Rodney’s web site.