JUST DO IT … (swoosh or no swoosh)

My sound booth!

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing”

- Walt Disney

Thanks, Walt. Sound advice. Or in my case, the way to get started wasn’t to quit talking and begin doing, but begin doing and start talking - into a microphone. After hitting ‘record’. Simples.

……Right?

I’ve wanted to be a voice actor since I was a kid. I watched so many cartoons and spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to imitate the character’s voices, or just inventing my own. At school, my friends would constantly ask me to “do that voice” or get me to perform the library of animal noises I could make.

I knew I wanted to do voiceovers. I knew I’d be good at it. I just…….didn’t start!

Instead, I did a whole host of other random jobs to pass the time - some were great fun - some not so much. I spent so many years working my butt off in random jobs when I should have been pursuing my voice acting career!

But actually - working in different industries means you get to experience dealing with and communicating with a really diverse range of people. I’ve worked in nightclubs, pharmacy, retail, animal care…I’m a trained florist and I even spent a few years installing CAT 5 cables & phone systems for a telecommunications company! I didn’t realise it at the time, but dealing with so many different kinds of people comes in particularly handy when I’m gauging how to ‘pitch’ scripts, who the audience is and how to strike the right chord in performances - the chord that really dunks their doughnut.

So…Where did I begin?

The first thing I did was book myself onto the VO Masterclass course with Gary Terzza. Gary used to work as a continuity announcer for Channel 4 and has a tonne of experience and knowledge on all things related to voiceover and broadcasting. The course was held over in St Albans and we did loads of script reading and recording and I came back with 3 ready-to-go voice recordings to get me started in applying for jobs. Gary then mentored me over the next year and we still keep in touch regularly today.

I set up a proper sound booth to record in, complete with lambs wool insulation in the walls, multi-coloured LED strips for a bit of mood lighting - and of course the acoustic foam. Then all I needed to do was set up my microphone, interface and plug in my laptop. Voila! One soundproof, reflection proof, ambient audio chamber.

The next round of mental gymnastics I needed to limber up for was learning how to use audio editing software. The first time I laid eyes on the screen, I felt pretty overwhelmed. The waveform just looked so…..'techy’ to me. At that time, just starting out, I was using Audacity - which is free and - as it turns out, pretty easy to use. I have YouTube to thank for the countless video tutorials I was able to learn from. I watched a lot of tutorials on post-production audio and still do. Every day is a school day! I now use Adobe Audition for my editing, which was a great next-step after using Audacity. The basic skills, tricks and tips I’d learnt initially from using Audacity were essential in my learning and stood me in good stead for the Adobe creative cloud.

You can’t beat ‘time spent’ on something. Where you put the most of your time will be the area where you see the biggest improvements - you’ll never get worse at something. Only better! That’s why I have spent hundreds of hours recording, editing, listening, tweaking, re-tweaking and perfecting voice recordings. A client recently described my audio quality as ‘pristine’! I was riding that high for about 2 weeks afterwards!

Practice makes perfect in both performance and editing.

I’m very fortunate to have bagged plenty of voiceover jobs, including TV adverts, radio & online adverts, E-learning, internal corporate video narration and more! I also get such a buzz when I get repeat clients - it’s nice to know I’m producing quality audio and that my performance is hitting the right spot.

I absolutely love doing this job! I really couldn’t imagine doing anything else now.