By Will Therrien May 1, 2022
Back in 2017, I was about halfway my 5th year of teaching 3rd grade when I started no longer enjoying what I was doing. I would later find out that this had more to do with me then the actual job of teaching, but more on that another day.
I started thinking of other things that I would like to be doing, if I wasn’t a teacher. One of the things that I kept coming back to was being a guy that voiced characters on animated shows. Creating characters is something that I had always enjoyed doing, however I was not really interested in being on camera myself. So I started looking into becoming a voice-actor. I began my search on the internet.
If you type in “How to start a career in voice over” in your search engine, you will be met with over 2 billion related results. Many of these claiming how easy it is to begin your career. One result told me that all I needed was:
-a microphone, a computer, and some form of recording software
-an online platform where you could audition
-a quiet place to record
That was it! That was all I needed to become a successful voice over artist. I had most of those things. I had a computer, a microphone, and recording software. I turned the closet that my wife and I share into my quiet place, and I found a couple of websites where I could audition. At the time, I won’t use any names, one particular audition site was “free” to join. So I thought that was a good place to start. I was then hit with some things that I did not know.
-I did not understand a lot of the terminology being used with how audio files should be set up.
-Many auditions wanted a professional demo
-I really didn’t know what I was doing.
I immediately became over-whelmed and stopped pursuing voice acting.
A couple of years later, I started thinking about how I just gave-up and that I at least needed to know where I messed up. Some serious searches led to my first mistake: I needed a coach. I needed a professional to tell me: 1. If I could actually do this 2.What I need in order to be able to do this professionally.
I decided to start locally within my state and only found one coach. He did lessons with voice actors, both in person and online (which was great because he was a six hour drive away). But, it was going to cost money. Over $1,000 it would cost for me to work with this coach. That is a big decision for someone that works on a teacher’s salary, but I decided that if I wanted to pursue this seriously then it would need to be done. This was the first big eye-opener for me. I will discuss this in more detail in part 2.