Episode Details

The Voiceover Actor Road Map

About Emma:

Emma O'Neill is a multi-award-winning voice actor specializing in radio and TV commercials, TV narration, TV promo, and corporate training videos. Outside the booth, she's a fitness and wellness enthusiast, and has been a certified yoga instructor for more than 25 years.

About Mike:

Mike Tobin is an accomplished, Montreal-born, award-nominated voice actor, MC, and event announcer who has made his ultra-fluent bilingualism the cornerstone of his brand for more than 20 years. He also loves technology and is an avid Mac enthusiast.

What it's like to be a voiceover actor in Canada.

And it can be very isolating and very lonely.

So when you have people that understand the business, they understand the hustle. They understand the self-doubt that can come with things during slow times, or, you know, I was talking to somebody yesterday, and it was, you know, why them and not me that you can get into these spins in your head.

And when you have someone who understands all of the levels of that, it's just; it makes you feel less crazy, it makes you feel less alone, it makes you feel like, you know what, I can reach out to Mike today, I have a little bit, and with Mike and I, it's great because we work so closely together, we've kind of gotten to this place where if I'm losing my mind, he's calm, and if he's losing his mind, I'm calm, so it's like, oh, this works, this is great, thank you.

The universe's wind blows at different times.

Part of this comes from our leaning on using accountability groups, which is a big part of our experience.

So we do have our accountability groups that we lean on, but sometimes you just need one person.

Weekly accountability group: At the beginning of every session, I say, okay, what did you do from this last week to this week? And in the end, what are you going to do? And we get into that and how important that is. So, I love that you guys are talking about weekly accountability.

There are the things that are there regularly.

There are, of course, auditions. Audition has to play a big part in every voice actor's life. There's only a few things you're going to get. Unless you're getting direct clients, which is another part of it, which is marketing and following up and keeping on top of all the business aspects of it, it's so huge.

Many people who are creative, artistic, and talented get into this industry and this business—all the things that put a voice to a microphone, but then everything else.

It can be very scary and intimidating for them because, after all, it's the voiceover business.

You can have clients around the world. It doesn't matter, especially now with the connectivity that we have with Source Connect and other technologies.

So it comes from all over the place.

I love that you said that voiceover is a global industry.

I love that. It's just because there's so much possibility.

What do you think is the most important thing starting in Voiceover?

Coaching. I always say coaching is the most important thing.

There's voiceover, and there's voice acting.

And there are people who don't do commercials. They don't do video games. They don't do audiobooks. They don't do character-based work. They do e-learning and corporate and stuff like that, which is still character-based, but it's much more accessible to the average person.

You're not necessarily fully fleshing out a character.

There's a commercial promo TV narration, things like that; you are fully fleshing out a character, but you still need to understand the nuance.

Acting is acting. Period. End of sentence. It's got nothing to do with the sound of your voice but everything to do with the connection to the story.<