The Sound Advice Dictionary for Acting & Voice Over: What You Need To Know To Have a Career in Voice Acting

By Kate McClanaghan

Let’s say, hypothetically, your agent just called. She has you on hold for Payless and check avail for a number of customizations for Glade. She needs to know your union status and whether you’ve gone exclusive with that other local talent agency you’ve been getting auditions through lately.

Confused? Well then, what you don’t know can hurt you… professionally. Fear not, that’s why we wrote the book, The SOUND ADVICE Dictionary for Acting & Voice Over: What You Need to Know to Have a Career in Voice Acting from the founder of the most prolific and successful voice actor coaching and demo production company in the business, Kate McClanaghan. Discover what no voice acting classes will teach you from the author of The SOUND ADVICE Encyclopedia of Voice-over & the Business of Being a Working Talent and one of the most astute experts in the voice acting and entertainment field to allow you the best chance to secure voice acting jobs as well as on-camera work alike.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the definition of the word dictionary is:
A reference book containing an alphabetical list of words, with information given for each word, usually including meaning, pronunciation, and etymology.

And an encyclopedia as:
A comprehensive reference work containing articles on a wide range of subjects or on numerous aspects of a particular field, usually arranged alphabetically.

After all, if the shoe fits, it must be a duck!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483512860

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Going the Distance

At Sound Advice we’re often asked, What’s it take to go the distance in this business?

There’s no single answer. There are four: pursue, persist, prepare, and promote. These four components are absolutely vital to succeed at ANYTHING, let alone an acting or voice-over career. It’s your responsibility to ensure these elements are continually in play as they are required of you no matter how far along you may be—regardless of whether you are just beginning, or if you have been established and are aiming to raise your game to the next level. They are a constant.

Whatever you accomplish in this business, you’ll succeed only if you pursue it. Nothing will come to you, no matter how much talent you may have. Even with the benefit of nepotism, it’s ultimately up to you to run your career. This is your business and no one else’s. Own it. Opportunities are what you make of them.

You have to set your sights on your immediate goals, and then persist at them, and often beyond what you might first consider a comfortable margin. Additionally, developing and then maintaining your skills requires persistent dedication. This element only increases with success, not the other way around—contrary to what many novices may think.

So, if you find you’re easily frustrated or simply give up after a few months of training or even after only a year or two of promotion, then you may never honestly know for yourself what you could have created without real, long-term persistence.

Preparation means continually developing your abilities, and along with ongoing promotion, this requires patience. Allow yourself to continue to develop your skills. Agility is not naturally intuitive and talent can atrophy with lack of use. It takes attention. Otherwise your skills won’t be sharp when called upon at a moment’s notice, and they will be tested. Without persistence you will serve only to undermine your own confidence. Your confidence is directly related to your integrity as an artist. Regardless of your position, no matter how affluent you may be, no one can afford to lose his or her integrity. Even natural talent will degrade and weaken if not continually honed.

To add to this, your success is contingent on continual and repeated promotion far more than anyone in this business has previously ever lead you to believe. Consider it your staple from this point forward. It’s up to you to drive attention to yourself through your very best promotional efforts. And with that thought in mind, as a rule: never set your sights on securing just one audition, or one big break, or "wait until the time is just right." If so, you will secure only ONE audition, ONE break, and the time will never arrive because you never took the time to properly promote yourself. The time is right when you decide it is, so make that NOW. Make a decision as to what you want in your life and work toward those goals. In doing so you’ll accomplish far more than you ever imagined possible.

Every audition is a form of promotion, yet so many artists repel the idea of promotion that this could easily account for the scores of talented souls who have fallen into oblivion. If you leave your career alone I promise nothing will happen. It will slip through your fingers.

No one who has ever scored an Oscar accepted it saying, This was so easy. I don’t know why you guys don’t all have one. It was a piece of cake!

Nope. Anything worthwhile is accomplished from hard work and lots of it. And a good deal of that work comes from consistent and constant promotion. Consider it as much of your job as the performance itself. This is how we make ourselves known and familiar. Promotion comes with the territory and can’t be ignored if you intend to succeed as a working talent.

The fact remains that talent who persist at promotion, while honing their performance skills, will make themselves known and valuable. What they may lack performance-wise at the onset of their careers will strengthen and develop from experience, but not from a single coaching once every eight to ten months, or a half-hearted promotional blitz once or twice a year. The SOUND ADVICE Dictionary for Acting & Voice Over: What You Need to Know to Have a Career in Voice Acting was created to assist you in deciphering the entertainment industry’s nomenclature and offer you the greatest opportunity to navigate without a compass.

Those who become consummate professionals make it their business to run their own careers rather than leave it to chance.

However, keep in mind from the moment you decide to commit completely to establish (or further) your career it will seem as if all the forces in the universe will set out to thwart you. Not because you shouldn’t be pursuing this field, but rather the complete and utter opposite. It’s an occupational hazard that will test your mettle at every turn. And while you may be a strong sprinter at the onset of your career, aim to go the distance. It’s far more rewarding if you do.

And even with a thorough road map to follow, as we’ve laid out for you here at Sound Advice, you’re the one who has to dedicate yourself to the task of getting it done. Certainly your odds are far greater with us than without us, but it’s still work and you’re the one who has to do it. No one will give it to you, or create it for you. You can’t purchase it, but you can invest in yourself effectively and prepare to deliver what’s needed and wanted of you so you’re ready at a moment’s notice. And that is extremely rewarding on many, many levels.

So, when you find yourself losing patience, and no doubt everyone does in every small business from time to time, rather than dwell on being frustrated, put your attention into your pursuits, in your preparation, and in your promotion. There’s always something you could be doing RIGHT NOW to forward your goals.

The SOUND ADVICE Dictionary for Acting & Voice Overs

Let’s say your agent just called. She has you on hold for Payless and check avail for a number of customizations for Glade. She needs to know your union status and whether you’ve gone exclusive with that other local talent agency you’ve been getting auditions through lately.

Confused? Well then, read on!