The Sound Advice Voice-Over Podcast

Regardless of whether you’re on-camera or off-, engaging your imagination is required of you as a talent. Discover a key element that will assist you with every take, regardless of your skill level, and allow you greater spontaneity, expression and subtle, yet discernable, variety.

Discover in this podcast:

This is our final podcast offering in our month long homage to creepy storytelling and to Halloween. This is the remarkable result of gathering a few of my most talented friends a few years back after divvying up roles between the apple cider and donuts.

We hope you enjoyed these stories we’ve presented all month as much as we enjoyed doing them!

Enjoy the season and… Have a Happy Halloween!! ›

This is our third recorded offering in our month long homage to great storytelling and to Halloween. This podcast is the remarkable result of gathering a few of my most talented friends in our LA studio one crisp night a few years back after divvying up roles between the apple cider and donuts, which I adapted from Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles”.

I hope you enjoy these stories as much as we enjoyed doing them!

Listen every Thursday throughout the month of October leading up to Halloween for another creepy-cool story such as this.

As a kid I fell in love with short stories in large part from hearing old radio theatre-style recordings that often played on the radio throughout October leading up to Halloween.  I especially loved Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles”.  So much so, I adapted my own version of a few of his wonderful “Twilight Zone-ish” tales, of which he gave me his very gracious blessings on.  I gathered a few of my most talented friends in our studio one crisp night a few years back, supplied the apple cider and donuts and this is the result.

I hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed doing them! Listen for more throughout the month!  They are meant to be the ‘treat’ portion of the season.

Acting is very much like playing poker. If you intend to play, if you hope towin, you need to play your hand well, and, frankly, you need to risk.Yet, far too many talent kill a perfectly wonderful opportunities to createby second-guessing what little direction they are given. Perfectly capable,creative talent completely shutting down at the very moment when theyneed toact!So, what gives?

Listen to Actors’ SOUND ADVICE co-founders, coaches, and seasoned voiceover demo producers, Kate McClanaghan and Jeff Finney discuss one of the most elusive and sought-after performance styles in the voiceover business.

As actors we’re generally expected to be versatile enough to play everything. Or at least that’s the general consensus regarding acting as a profession, and not simply from actors and their coaches. Of course, precious few rise to the occasion for the simple reason none of this work is all that easy. Mastering the skills to effortlessly perform in every medium and genre appears be the generally accepted definition of what it means to be versatile. This is, at least in part, the degree of difficulty involved in being versatile.This is the case with every professional creative endeavor if you hope to accomplish anything, not just acting.

If you’ve been pursuing voiceover work on your own in America for the past decade or more, chances are you’ve been following a business model that concentrates almost strictly on securing work all by yourself, or DIY, by procuring jobs primarily through excessively low-paying sites like Fiverr, Upwork and a few Pay-to-Play (P2P) platforms. Nevertheless, voiceover as a career has chiefly been in the hands of actors since the onset of recorded audio, and anyone who hires you as a voiceover assumes you’re an actor, even if you don’t. Traditionally, professional actors enlist the services and expertise of seasoned, accomplished talent agents to secure work.

The question is: Is there a better way to land work as a voiceover?

Summer is calling. We’re moments away from family reunions, vacations, and long weekends for the first time in a really long time for most of us! So, here’s a bit of advice that will keep you in good graces with your talent agents and potential clients: if you know the dates you won’t be available for auditions or jobs, be sure to book out!

Passion and instincts account for a great deal, but neither will get you anywhere unless you dedicate yourself to keeping your skills sharp, while relentlessly pursuing the work. It’s there to be had.

Let’s assume you have a work ethic that won’t quit, and everyone says you have a remarkable voice. Terrific. Question is: do you have talent? And how would you know?