NEWS and BLOG

Top Ten Voice Over Blogs – 2 More Makes 4/10 It’s the second instalment of my list of the Top Ten voice over blogs to follow. For insight and advice into the voice over industry there are a few bloggers who dominate. Yesterday we revealed the first (as in alphabetically first) two awesome bloggers. Today we have two more out […]

Top 10 Voice Over Blogs to Follow   Blogs can be the most insightful and rich source of free information in the Googlesphere. But there are a lot of them out there. In fact, Google told me today that there were 505 million blogs in the world in 2018. Within that daunting figure, voice over blogs are a narrow niche. […]

How to Approach Voice Over for Family Friendly Commercials Summer time and the living is full of family friendly get-togethers and outings and commercials offering advice on what to do to keep everyone happy and how to save money doing it. To be able to serve Mom, Dad, the kids, Grandma and the clients as well, we as the voice […]

Bridging the VO Gap – International Voice Work with Shelley Avellino I don’t know what percentage of VO work is done internationally in the current market, but it’s a lot. Personally, 80% of my voice work is for clients outside my home and native land, eh? Whether you’re an expat working for the US market back home, or live on […]

Voice Actors, Reasons You Need to Be at V.O. North   If you’re a voice actor, and live within driving distance of Toronto, you are in for a treat. The reasons you need to be at V.O. North are more than a chance to learn and grow at an industry specific conference in your own backyard; that you’ll get the […]

Best Voice Over: Spotlight on Health Care Ads Health care ads are a mainstay in advertising and the best voice over chosen to present medical messages is a critical part of creative choice. Healthcare commercials achieve their goals through a few specific avenues in terms of vocal tone and direction: sentimental – those that tug at heart strings, inspirational – […]

Voiceover Read Rate, and How Improving It Increases Your Bottom Line What the heck is a read rate? As a voiceover artist, your read rate is the difference between the length of your raw voiceover file and the length of your finished, edited one. And if you do any long form narration, it’s something to strive to ever improve. For […]

Being Award Announcer at the WTA Grand Slam of Voice Over One of the things I love about being a voice over announcer are the places and jobs it takes me vicariously or in person. This October, one of the biggest events in the female tennis world was held in Singapore. The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Finals Gala Evening. And though […]

Why Voice Over is the Key to a Successful PSA Your craft, profession or career, presents opportunities to be of service. To give back. For a voice over artist, performing the VO on public service announcements (better known as PSAs) hits that sweet spot for me. I’m currently sitting in a friend’s living room in LA,  here this week nominated […]

Unlock Social Media Super Powers with Voice Over in Animation Say “animation” and most people think of  series like The Simpsons or Family Guy. Both are definitely hilarious animated TV shows (and contain equally fun voice over characters). But the kind of animations that lengthen website visitor time and unlock your social media super powers are bite sized, often fun […]

Voice Over, An Insider Take on the Exploding iGaming Industry Aside from buying the odd lottery ticket (’cause a gal can dream!), I wouldn’t say I’m much of a gambler. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be part of the ever-growing iGaming industry. I work as a voice-over talent for many clients in the online gambling industry. This photo is […]

Determining Rates: A Formula for a Simple Voice Over Pricing Guide While eating cake in Uncle Roy Yokelson’s Jersey living room this past weekend at the 13th Annual VO Barbecue, I tossed out this blog idea to Dan Leonard, George Whitham, Brad Newman, and a few others and got a thumbs up. So here goes. I am about to stir […]

How to Shoot Your Voiceover Career in the Foot – Worst Practices If you ever get a chance to help out in any casting project, take it. Whether you sign up as a reader for a day, get an summer internship at a casting house or even volunteer to answer phones, being on the other side of the proverbial casting […]

My Voice Over Life: Notes from the Scene of a Shoot I choose not to do a lot of on camera work. At least that’s what I tell myself. (And my agent.) Being a woman of a certain age (and waist size) the opportunities are slim. (see what I did there?) But today I happen to be on set as […]

3 Ways Storytelling is King in Voiceover for Ads and Business So…what’s your story? Or rather what is your relationship with story? Chances are it’s tight. We humans love story. We swim in it, soak in it, eat it up daily. Hourly, even. But have you stopped to consider your relationship with story as a voiceover artist?     Levar […]

Is the Seth Rogan Controversy Good or Bad for Voiceover Industry? A reporter from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) called me yesterday to ask me (a female voice over artist) how I felt about Seth Rogan voicing prompts for the Vancouver Transit Authority. Matthew ____ (I don’t remember his last name) asked if I felt any animosity toward Seth for infringing […]

How Copywriters and VoiceOver People Triumph over Disruption Sipping nectar of the bean and browsing my groups this morning, I was inspired by copywriter chieftain Steve Roller and how many similar cliffs of insanity people in the copywriting and voiceover narration fields have to scale to triumph lately. All because of the (anti) buzzword of the decade “disruption.” That concept we all rallied […]

7 Hot Tips on How to Get Better as a Voice Actor Listening to Drake with my daughter Lisa as we drive on the 401 through north Toronto ticking off To Do and Don’t Forget Lists before I dive full on into family vacation mode…I’m struck by this thought: I get at least one call or email a day from […]

A Voice Actor’s Guide: How to Make your Voice Sound Better Amber speaks too quickly. Her words slam and stumble into each other and she comes across as alternately nervous or excited or uncomfortable in the situation or space she is in. Rose’s voice is thin, brittle and cracks. She sounds much older than she is. From her mid-twenties, strangers […]

Unless you’ve come to voiceover from an online learning background, understanding how an eLearning project is put together is a mystery to most voice over narrators. I sat down with a good friend of mine who’s risen through the ranks in the industry and is now a department manager at an international e-learning content creation company, and asked him to […]

Laura sounds like she’s 17, but has teenage twins and a paid mortgage.  James is a millennial that sounds like he could be a retiree. One of the reasons I love voice acting is how it shatters the barriers of age. You can be an actress over 40 and still have a profitable career or a 19-year-old male neophyte with […]

To the average Jane or Joe, voice overs are ubiquitous. We hear them on the radio, on TV and in movies. We hear them in ads on YouTube or Spotify. Yet, how many of us stop to think about whether the voice artist is a man or a woman and whether it matters to us as consumers. A lot that […]

What’s the first question I’m asked along with how fast can you get this back to me? “What are the prices?” I, like most voiceover artists will answer with a clear as mud, “It depends.” So, let’s demystify this.  Professional voice over actors base their rates on three major parameters: use, population and time. Geography also sometimes enters the picture. But  other factors […]

Virtual Reality Voiceover: where it’s going, how to do it Sound whether music, soundscape or voiceover narration, is critical to making virtual reality realistic. We are more forgiving of visual elements, be it animation, CGI, even imperfect video. But sound orients us to place and space and directs and manipulates emotional input. Sound becomes the anchor to the real. Looking […]

  Once in a while, hopefully once in a long while, you’re going to encounter someone who hates your work. It could be a critic, a competitor, a troll…hopefully it’s not your client, but occasionally that happens too. What do you do when that happens?   First off, acknowledge your pain. To yourself anyway. Let yourself feel the wtf, the […]

Happily, most of my voiceover acting life has been supported by a steady stream of commercial work. In discussions with a student, I realized there were reasons for that beyond being able to deliver a great read. Yes, you have to know what the market wants, give your director what s/he wants and “bring it” (whatever it may be) on […]

The eLearning Industry is expanding rapidly and needs good (read: great) voiceover actors to help make their training projects achieve end goals and win results. Here are three things you can do to stake your claim in this booming industry.   Educate Yourself about the eLearning Industry By and large, the people who would hire voiceover talent in the e-Learning […]

In the voiceover world, your demo is your calling card. More important than your business card, or website, it’s a reflection of work you have done or are capable of doing. A demo becomes your audition to audition. It needs to be good. A poorly written, badly directed, over or under produced demo can kill opportunities and sabotage your efforts.   […]

My love of my craft of voice over arts (and my family) are my motivating factors to be and stay organized. Thank Heavens for my people and VOICEOVERVIEW. ‘Cause left to my own devices, I would forget to invoice clients, wallow in stacks of empty coffee mugs, trip over piles of discarded clothes and keep missing the garbage truck.   […]

Business. The word alone used to send icy shivers down my spine. But, to be a professional artist, as in be able to write “artist” or “musician” or “dancer” or “actor” on your annual tax forms (aka more money coming in than going out) you must understand your talent or product IS your business. Perhaps it was my childhood, growing […]

Breaking into the entertainment industry whether voiceover and acting or music and producing is not a clear-cut path. It’s not like medical school or studying for the bar. The road is circuitous and different for everyone. Like the traditional professions, it does take an investment of time and money and a coach or mentor that offers good advice. Good counsel. […]

After sorting out how to find the right voice with top notch audio quality and a quick turnaround time, the big question for producers hiring voiceover professional is rates. How much does it cost to hire a voice actor to narrate your material? The simple answer:   Union   First let’s sneak a peek at the Union vs non-Union rates. […]

Applications for voice work are many and multiplying and every few months I’m delighted to discover another avenue within my field. A couple of months ago, I worked on a pitch for a large Audio Description project.   You might have accidentally come across Described Audio, Described Video or Audio Description in your TV travels. It’s that separate narration track […]

Got VR? You will.   Virtual, Augmented or Mixed Reality, 360…it’s known by several names and may morph into more before it takes over the world. Statista’s conservative prediction is that the market will grow from $3B now to $40B by 2020. Others in the industry think it’ll be much higher. Orders of magnitude higher. SO, have you been part […]

Hey, voice actors. Is your website limp, lifeless or barely there? Does it suffer from lengthy load times, apparent invisibility to Google or other seo struggles that could steer precious potential clients away from your online storefront? Well then, I’d like to direct your attention to a team I have come to consider partners in my success: Joe Davis, Karin […]

In Canada yesterday (aka the Great White North, aka Hollywood North) Netflix announced they’d be investing $500 million in original production here. Immediate thoughts: Woo-hoo! Happy days are here again! But then the cynic steps in. $500 million? That’s just 2 (count ‘em, two) Hollywood blockbusters. So…Chump change, you say? You’d be right. While the announcement may pacify our government, […]

There are few things I love more in life than story. Nature, maybe. Water, but that’s a subset of nature. People aren’t things…well, not generally anyway. But the point of this big reveal into story at the head of my behind the scenes insights on audiobook narration is that the tales we tell and how we tell them, whether through aural […]

Audio Dialogue Replacement, (ADR) or looping, has come Poor quality of ADR dubbing in old School kung fu movies a long way since the old-school Kung Fu movies where the mouth movements and dialogue didn’t match.  Dubbing is the unglamorous low man on the totem pole in the voice world. Not as prestigious as cartoons or videogames, not as lucrative […]