A VO's JOURNEY

Editing breaths in my voice overs used to plague me all the time. I literally would spend hours taking out breaths because I thought they sounded horrible and made the voice over seem amateurish. 

But I quickly realized that it wasn't the breaths I needed to be paying attention to, but the type of voice over I was doing.

Let me explain ... Was I narrating an audiobook or doing a car commercial? 

Both are voice overs but have a defined style of narration. There are always exceptions to the rule, but one (audiobook) should have breaths and one (car commercial) should not. 

As I grew as a practitioner of audio, I learned how to differentiate between the two. 

So ... there are times, especially during long form narration, elearning, conversational reads in longer form, etc. that should have breaths. It is natural to breath while talking and will actually sound quite odd if excluded. 

But, shorter spots, quick reads, commercials, etc. should...

I am excited to talk to you about the people sleeping right now. And you might be like, Anthony, what the heck are you talking about ... everyone sleeps?

I'm talking about all the people who are not working hard enough to get what they want. There are people making excuses. There are people failing to simply start. 

"Courage is crossing the starting line" Amby Burfoot

All of those people choosing to "not start", choosing to not take chances, choosing to sleep when there is plenty time to do more, are going to lose. 

And that is a huge opportunity for you and me. 

You see, when I started out in voice over years ago, I didn't have the fancy equipment I have right now. I didn't have a studio or Whisper Room or super expensive mics. All I had was a crazy desire to work and prove myself. 

There is not a day that goes by I don't thank my lucky stars that I worked so hard in the beginning. 

I remember people asking me about my successes...

I am so thrilled what is coming up in A VO's JOURNEY. As you might have seen, there have been some major changes to the community.

I made an announcement that I have been waiting to make for 3 years ...

I AM GOING FULL TIME AS A VOICE OVER ACTOR!!!

It is so incredible to think of the journey that has taken me to this point and the journey we have been on together.

Because of the monumental decision, it hit me that I should really stop and think about what was the main factor that got me to this point ... what was the one thing that I would tell someone if they asked?

HOW DID YOU DO IT? HOW DID YOU GO FULL TIME?

The only answer I could honestly say is ... ACTING! 100%

Acting has been the cornerstone of what I have put all my eggs into. It wasn't the gear when I started out, in fact, all the gear I have now was purchased in the last 6 months based on my voice acting success.

It wasn't the marketing or fancy copy, or this and that.

Plain and simple, it was my skill in acting that led...

It's every voice actors dream ... get consistent voice over work. 

If you are like me, that is the single most voice over question on my mind (after mastering the technical stuff). It's painful not knowing where the next business will come from.

And even more, it sucks when you feel hopeless to not be able to control any of it. 

Look, it's not your fault. The industry is split right now, technology and the internet have changed the landscape. The industry is having severe growing pains because of it. 

So, for us, it is downright frustrating

What can we do? 

It is no secret that 2 things make you money in voice over ...

1. Narrating
2. Marketing

Everything else for the voice actor is a business expense. 

In order to make sure that we are constantly doing those things that will get us business, we need to find places that we can audition (Marketing) as much as possible so we can get the voice over work (Narrating). 

There are many places online to do this but...

Having coached many voice actors getting started on Fiverr, and even veterans, the greatest issue they have is with the setup of their gig.

In this post, I talk about 3 Pro Tips for setting up your Fiverr Gig right.

Pro Fiverr Tip #1: Title

Setting up your title correctly is imperative. Think of your title as what someone would type in the search box.

If you try to shove too many words (keywords) into your title, it will sound unnatural and won't cast you in a professional light.

Your title should include a possible searched phrase like ... "I Will Record An American Female Voice Over".  

Straight to the point and a possible customer might type in "American Female Voice Over".

Pro Fiverr Tip #2: Description

The next part of your Fiverr gig setup is your description.

Using your title, you want to answer the following questions in your description box:

1. Who
2. What
3. When
4. Where
5. How

These questions will give you a direction to go. If you answer...

How To Set Up Your Recording Booth For Voice Over

Check out the podcast here - A VO's JOURNEY PODCAST Ep. 2

Become a Patron by Donating Here -  Support A VO's JOURNEY Here

Become a part of our Facebook Group Join the Facebook Group Here

Welcome to A VO's JOURNEY.

My name is Anthony Pica and this is episode two. I am so excited to be back. I want to start off just thanking everybody for all of the amazing words and all of the praise and just I don't pouring of uh, love and, and I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. It means the world to me. Um, I've have to be honest with you guys. I literally have been thinking about doing this podcast all day while I was at work and everything.

So I'm, like I said yesterday, I'm a teacher and I had a good day at work, but I just literally been thinking about this all day, so I'm so excited to finally be here tonight doing the podcast and um, today we're going to dive right in to setting up a booth and how I set up my booth.

...

 A Guide for the Beginning Voice Over Artist

Check out the podcast here - A VO's JOURNEY PODCAST Ep. 1

Become a Patron by Donating Here -  Support A VO's JOURNEY Here

Become a part of our Facebook Group Join the Facebook Group Here

Hello and welcome to episode one of a VOs Journey.

My name is Anthony Pica and I am your host, and we're going to get this thing kicked off for the first episode.

I'm going to be talking about what I plan on doing with the show and hopefully I can offer a lot of help to a lot of voice over artists.

The point of this show is to give all of the advice that I have to help VO's make it from beginning to end, to a place where they can become full time artists.

The hope is that by this time next year, two years, five years down the road, you'll be able to go full time at this. So that is the goal and that is the point of this podcast.

So I want to start off telling you a little bit about myself.

I've been acting, teaching and doing voice...