Tips & Advice for Aspiring/Newcomer Voice Actors
Dec 18, 2016 22:09:36 GMT -8
duffyweber, WolfyGV, and 4 more like this
Post by Adam on Dec 18, 2016 22:09:36 GMT -8
There has been a recurring theme growing this past year, namely in regards to Voice Over. “Classes”. A ton of people who are barely in the industry as professionals who are looking back and already offering classes to fresh faced actors trying to find their first step towards professionalism. Most see that there’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s the opposite, it’s really wrong and extremely misleading and borderline manipulative. Most industry veterans of ten plus years don’t offer classes and yet you see people with a few indie game roles, extra “walla” roles in anime suddenly offering classes to teach new people how to break into an industry that they themselves haven’t really broken into yet. In reality, it’s just a business to make money to them, and while voice acting indeed is a business to make money and live, teaching classes and charging people to learn from someone who is still so fresh faced, who is still learning, is a borderline scam. And you guys as newcomers trying to break in need to learn how to differentiate between finding connections that are actually beneficial and hold weight in the industry and those who are just lying and overselling their worth.
It’s important to know that just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you’re qualified to teach it to others. There are countless home name voice actor professionals who used to consult, keyword is “consult”, not even teach, that ended that service because they didn’t feel they were qualified enough as a teacher to take money just to consult newcomers. This alone begs the question, if these people who are so prominent in this industry don’t feel comfortable enough to make money off newcomers, then who are these new, basically unknown talents with self padded fluff resumes that think they’re qualified to take hundreds of your money to “teach” you.
Now, there are some that just don’t know any better, that don’t see this as an issue. They may even help others get off the ground with some small audition opportunities, but does that make it “right”. Truthfully it depends on who you ask, and anyone is free to offer their services for a price, but newcomers need to be equipped with the tools to figure snuff out a scam. I’m hoping that I can help out with that with this post.
What are the things most wide-eyed newcomers see that help them determine if a person is legitimate or not. These vary, but for the most part it’s the following
Social Media following: “Oh look at those numbers, this person has so many followers, they must be an honest, well known, well established professional. They have even more followers than “X well known industry actor!”
Resume Quantity: “Oh this person says they’ve voiced hundreds of roles in anime, look at all these credits, they’re totally the right person to teach me!”
Website: “They have a website!”
These tend to be the most common traits. Social media followers have always been used as an indication of popularity and relevance. Most people don’t really fact check resumes and as long as the resume section is stacked with information, people tend to take this at face value. Websites are straight forward, if they have a website with a domain name that doesn’t end in .wix.com, then that usually seals the deal.
But these are all extremely easy to manipulate. Any person with a good marketing and business sense is able to fluff up their value with how they speak and present themselves. Even garbage can look appealing when wrapped neatly in a gift bag and bow. So the question is, how do you determine if someone is worth your money and time?
Easy. I’m going to teach you how to break down the lie.
Social Media Following
People buy followers. GASP! It’s true, you can purchase followers to put on the facade that you’re important and relevant.
fakers.statuspeople.com/ : Is a more accurate site to determine if a person’s follower count on Twitter is real.
But there’s also common sense.
Do they have more followers than most well established, house hold named industry vets? If yes, then they’re most likely manufactured stats. If you didn’t know who this person was before you stumbled across their posting on some Facebook group then chances are they’re not a well known name and shouldn’t have a following bigger than the people you grew up with.
In connection with their resume: Is their resume filled mainly with web projects and indie video games with a sprinkled dash of a few unnamed anime roles? If yes and they have a following bigger than most industry vets, then those followers are manufactured/paid for.
Activity: If a person has over 60k followers but the activity on their tweets are in double digits like 17 or 30, then those followers are fake, fluffed up numbers.
If a person brags or uses the number of followers in their statement/proposal of why you should use their service, then they’re fake numbers. If a person’s shining trait are numbers on social media then they are not qualified to teach you any skill set.
Resume
This can be tricky, and it’s by no means about taking shots at the work a person has done. Everyone starts somewhere and that’s fine. But if a person is going to charge you $75 an hour for a class or $350 for a six week class over Skype, then this person had better done a consistent amount of professional, notable work. A resume is a timeline, it shows the journey this person has been on, where they started and where they’re currently at in the professional industry spectrum.
If their resume is mainly X web animation that had only a teaser trailer, or various indie games that were never funded and produced on Kickstarter, then they’re in no place to teach you how to break into an industry they themselves have yet to break into consistently. You need to research a resume.
Search projects you never heard of, especially indie games. A lot of talent with minimal roles will list every single thing they’ve been cast for, regardless of it’s a tangible role one can watch or interact with. This is often referred to as “resume padding”. Resume padding is when you stretch the truth in order to make you seem far more established and viable than you actually are. Example, if four out of five projects that you were a lead role in are roles that never came to fruition or you were given by yourself or a friend, then what that really is saying is that the only one who believes in your ability is you or personal friends, not an unbiased casting director of a professional studio. Do you really want to take a class from someone who is only able to get work by giving it to themselves? How are they going to prepare you for the industry if they can’t make it on their own merit? You don’t.
You also don’t want to drop money on a talent whose notable anime works are “additional roles” after they say/list that they’re a “voice actor for Funimation” “voice actor for Bang Zoom”. They do additional roles, while a good place to start, that’s like the equivalent of an intern position at a major corporation. Yeah, you’re foot’s in the door, but you really have no grasp of the inner works of the company.
ALWAYS research the resume of a potential “Teacher”
Website
This doesn’t seem important in the long scheme of things, but it’s an extremely good indicator. If their website is a subdomain of “wix.com”, move on. If their website has sparkly designs, flashing lights, poor grammar, auto playing demos, move on. A website is a reflection of the person that runs it. Is it easy to find information or is it a chore? Does it look like it was well thought out or just thrown together in five minutes? These are all very good indicators.
But it’s not the sole determining factor. It’s more of a hint. There are tons of professionals who don’t have the time or resources to develop a good site, so it’s important to check the resume and the quality of work to be safe. Checking the quality of a website is really just the beginning of your detective work.
Newcomers are easy targets, hate to say it, but you are. Most are desperate to find a way into the industry you love so much, and that’s why it’s extremely important to make sure you’re going about it the right way. That you’re not being taken advantage of simply because you don’t know any better. This is why it’s important to be weary of everyone, why you need to equip yourself with the right tools to prevent manipulation. You most definitely want to take classes, but you want to take them from proper industry veterans, people who have been beaten up, got back up, beaten down, back up again, always striving to improve and succeed. You don’t want to learn from someone who is just scratching the surface of the industry, from someone who mainly gets their work from giving it to themselves.
I’m not saying you can’t learn from these people, you can learn from anyone that has done more than you have. But are they really worth hundreds of your dollars? No, no they’re not. If a fifteen year industry veteran doesn’t feel comfortable charging for classes or consultation, than a person who has been a professional for a year and a half with additional roles and indie games most certainly shouldn’t either.
Getting taken to the bank isn’t the only form of manipulation new voice actors have to look out for. Also, I hate the term “aspiring”, you’re either an actor or you’re not. “Aspiring” means you HOPE to be something, that’s for people who aren’t actively trying to do it. If you’re doing it, acting, regardless if it’s in a professional or indie medium, you’re an actor. End of story. Your abilities and talent varies, but you’re not aspiring, you are an actor.
Let’s talk about “Pro bono or FREE” work
There’s countless stories about voice actors doing work for free and getting walked all over. So how do you protect yourself in this case? The simple answer is don’t do free work. But that’s not always an option, sometimes you think it’s the only way to get experience or you want to help out a friend. Usually when you’re helping out a friend you’re not going to get abused in the process. It can happen, but most like it won’t. Free work is a good way to practice and get some experience, it’s true, not ideal but it’s true in all mediums. All of us have done it and we’ve learned a lot. One of the most integral lessons is learning how to protect yourself.
Going to be blunt, Voice Over is a risk. You’re not always going to get a job, you won’t always keep a job, recasting is common place. It’s usually not personal, it’s just the way of this business. That said, sometimes it’s unfair and you need to know how to protect and handle yourself.
If you’re going to do any sort of free work, first don’t get emotionally attached. You’re not getting paid for your service and while moral compasses are nice, you can’t expect everyone to have one. Rule of the world, there’s some really unkind people. If you’ve put in all the work and time for a project but at the last second you’ve been recast, there’s nothing you can do but learn from the experience and move on. To avoid that, you have a written and signed contract between you and the client. This way to assure you will not be abused. In free work this isn’t usually proper practice since there’s no exchange of money for services rendered. It’s really rough but you can’t rely on free work to be loyal to you. The only way to protect yourself in this case is to not care and move on. Even if you experience a situation where you’ve put in hours of work for no return, it was still a learning an experience and you’re most likely a better actor because of it.
If a project is going to make any sort of profit, you should not do free work. You’re helping a project make money and as a result, you should be paid for that contribution. If anyone asks you to do work for free ask them if it’s a for profit project, if there’s a budget and are others being paid. If there is any money involved, then you should be paid. If there is not, then it’s up to your discretion if you want to participate and offer your services for free.
My Worth!
Means nothing. Sorry, but it doesn’t. Unless you’re a big name draw that will expose a project to a mass audience it couldn’t have reached on its own, then your worth is minimal. I see this thrown around a lot, this misconception that simply because you exist and have some experience, you’re suddenly brimming with priceless worth that entitles you to union standard pay. Yeah, doesn’t work that way.
Yes, you are worth something and you should NEVER be taken advantage of. But your worth is relative to the situation, not the other way around. If a budget for a project is super small, as long as you’re being paid fairly in relation to that budget, then you’re not being taken advantage of and your worth is not being infringed upon. This may come as a shock, but just because you record lines, doesn’t mean you’re entitled to the rates given to most union or industry standard projects that have full budgets. This is pretty much common sense, but there’s a lot of newcomers who think that just because the union or standard professional rates say Voice Over should be paid X per hour, word, minute whatever, that it applies universally EVERYWHERE. It doesn’t. It would be nice if every project out there had the funding and budget that could allow VO pay to reach those standard rates, but they don’t. Most work newcomers are exposed to are indie and small projects that have to split their finances between writers, director, actors, programmers, animators, illustrators, etc etc. So if you, a newcomer VO show up demanding industry rates and spewing off rhetoric like “you’re hurting the industry by not paying us what we’re worth” then guess what, you’ll be recast. You need to learn how to read situations and know which scenario calls for which response.
This isn’t to say don’t get what you’re worth, it’s to say understand what your worth is in relation to the situation that you’re presented with. It is perfectly okay to turn down a role that is unable to pay you a certain amount. It’s not okay to try and vilify a production for not being able to afford industry standard rates when their budget is almost non-existent.
So how do you tell? It’s pretty much common sense. Look at their budget if they’re a crowdfunding project. Are the writers/directors/programmers/illustrators getting the vast majority of money while you’re being offered $50 for 150 lines? If so then there’s a problem. It’s all about fairness and not being abused, if a project is treating VO as unimportant, then there’s an issue. And that’s when you can discuss your “worth”, but if a project is making every effort to respect the VO talent and just doesn’t have the budget, then that’s not a situation where you discuss your “worth”, because that’s when you come off entitled.
Professionalism!
That’s actually a good segue into professionalism. A lot of people don’t understand what it means to be a professional. They often confuse “professional” with “professionalism”.
To be a professional, you really just need to be getting paid for your work. That is what makes a professional.
Professionalism is all about the way you act. Are you respectful, do you listen to directions well, are you timely, or are you a constant fan who loves to gush about fandoms when it’s not appropriate, are you constantly talking about how good you are at something, or how you do a certain thing? This is what defines your professionalism.
You can be a Professional but be horrendous when it comes to professionalism.
You can be really great with professionalism but not be paid for your work and not be a professional.
The ideal “Professional” is a person who has a great attitude and gets paid for their work.
So what am I talking about with professionalism and newcomers? I’m talking about your online presence. How are you portraying yourself online, are you complaining and acting entitled, are you calling people out and bitching about things, are you constantly living in fandom work where you’re more focused on being a fan than on being an actor?
It sounds harsh, but we’re living in an age where everything we do and say is being recorded. You could be really talented, but the way you act online and even in person can hinder professionals wanting to work with you.
If you cause drama, go posting rants on Facebook about a client, potential clients will avoid working with you. No one is going to want to work with someone who is so flimsy with private, behind door information. Even if you’re in the right to be upset, you don’t air that sort of thing for the public to see, that’s something you keep between yourself and personal friends. Ranting and complaining online suggests that you’re taking things personally and too focused on the drama than the work. It sounds harsh, but that’s how it is. Especially in an industry that’s so fickle. Ask any industry veteran, they’ll say the same thing. It’s part of the risk of the industry, things happen, you move on and find work elsewhere. If you’re too focused on one issue with one company, then you’re not the type of person many will want to work with. Keep it to your close friends and off the social media.
Being a professional means putting the job above your emotional state.
If a company is being harsh or shady, it is okay to put out a warning to your fellow actors, but do it on the side, not where your posting can come back to bite you in the ass.
Being professional also means being honest. Don’t try and make yourself sound better than you are, don’t make promises you can’t follow up on to clients. Be timely, always have open communication.
Communication is the most important aspect of professionalism. Reaching out to clients when unforeseen events come up that may get in the way of fulfilling your obligation. As long as there’s openness between yourself and client, any situation is negotiable.
Approaching Casting Directors!
You’re trying to expand your network and find opportunities when you come across someone who casts and directs indie games. What do you do?
You act professional.
Most casting directors have closed networks, but it’s okay to approach them to inquire of their availability. But when you do so you need to do it the right way. First impressions are not so easy to change, so make it a good one. NEVER send someone a link to your demo going- ” here’s my updated demo if you have any auditions”. That right there is going to get you soft blacklisted. If you are going to approach someone, do it like this:
“Hi so and so,
I would like to submit my demo reel to you for potential consideration into your casting network. If that is okay, I will attach my full demo reel and resume in the following message. Thank you for your time”
Basically anything along the lines of that. You’re asking if it is okay to send your information. It seems small, but it goes a long way. You’re being respectful, something casting directors appreciate. It also will separate you from the rest of the newcomers who just send unsolicited demo reels expected a return from it. Most directors will reply to this sort of message, they’ll either tell you that you can, or they’ll direct you to a submission form.
In the end, it’s all about courtesy and not expecting favors.
These are just some basic tips for newcomers on avoiding pitfalls and being taken advantage of. A lot of these have come from my years of working with professionals in the industry, hearing their complaints and struggles while also learning what it takes to survive in any professional climate.
Hopefully this extremely long post will be of some use to you and maybe even prevent you from being taken advantage of.
Good luck!
It’s important to know that just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you’re qualified to teach it to others. There are countless home name voice actor professionals who used to consult, keyword is “consult”, not even teach, that ended that service because they didn’t feel they were qualified enough as a teacher to take money just to consult newcomers. This alone begs the question, if these people who are so prominent in this industry don’t feel comfortable enough to make money off newcomers, then who are these new, basically unknown talents with self padded fluff resumes that think they’re qualified to take hundreds of your money to “teach” you.
Now, there are some that just don’t know any better, that don’t see this as an issue. They may even help others get off the ground with some small audition opportunities, but does that make it “right”. Truthfully it depends on who you ask, and anyone is free to offer their services for a price, but newcomers need to be equipped with the tools to figure snuff out a scam. I’m hoping that I can help out with that with this post.
What are the things most wide-eyed newcomers see that help them determine if a person is legitimate or not. These vary, but for the most part it’s the following
Social Media following: “Oh look at those numbers, this person has so many followers, they must be an honest, well known, well established professional. They have even more followers than “X well known industry actor!”
Resume Quantity: “Oh this person says they’ve voiced hundreds of roles in anime, look at all these credits, they’re totally the right person to teach me!”
Website: “They have a website!”
These tend to be the most common traits. Social media followers have always been used as an indication of popularity and relevance. Most people don’t really fact check resumes and as long as the resume section is stacked with information, people tend to take this at face value. Websites are straight forward, if they have a website with a domain name that doesn’t end in .wix.com, then that usually seals the deal.
But these are all extremely easy to manipulate. Any person with a good marketing and business sense is able to fluff up their value with how they speak and present themselves. Even garbage can look appealing when wrapped neatly in a gift bag and bow. So the question is, how do you determine if someone is worth your money and time?
Easy. I’m going to teach you how to break down the lie.
Social Media Following
People buy followers. GASP! It’s true, you can purchase followers to put on the facade that you’re important and relevant.
fakers.statuspeople.com/ : Is a more accurate site to determine if a person’s follower count on Twitter is real.
But there’s also common sense.
Do they have more followers than most well established, house hold named industry vets? If yes, then they’re most likely manufactured stats. If you didn’t know who this person was before you stumbled across their posting on some Facebook group then chances are they’re not a well known name and shouldn’t have a following bigger than the people you grew up with.
In connection with their resume: Is their resume filled mainly with web projects and indie video games with a sprinkled dash of a few unnamed anime roles? If yes and they have a following bigger than most industry vets, then those followers are manufactured/paid for.
Activity: If a person has over 60k followers but the activity on their tweets are in double digits like 17 or 30, then those followers are fake, fluffed up numbers.
If a person brags or uses the number of followers in their statement/proposal of why you should use their service, then they’re fake numbers. If a person’s shining trait are numbers on social media then they are not qualified to teach you any skill set.
Resume
This can be tricky, and it’s by no means about taking shots at the work a person has done. Everyone starts somewhere and that’s fine. But if a person is going to charge you $75 an hour for a class or $350 for a six week class over Skype, then this person had better done a consistent amount of professional, notable work. A resume is a timeline, it shows the journey this person has been on, where they started and where they’re currently at in the professional industry spectrum.
If their resume is mainly X web animation that had only a teaser trailer, or various indie games that were never funded and produced on Kickstarter, then they’re in no place to teach you how to break into an industry they themselves have yet to break into consistently. You need to research a resume.
Search projects you never heard of, especially indie games. A lot of talent with minimal roles will list every single thing they’ve been cast for, regardless of it’s a tangible role one can watch or interact with. This is often referred to as “resume padding”. Resume padding is when you stretch the truth in order to make you seem far more established and viable than you actually are. Example, if four out of five projects that you were a lead role in are roles that never came to fruition or you were given by yourself or a friend, then what that really is saying is that the only one who believes in your ability is you or personal friends, not an unbiased casting director of a professional studio. Do you really want to take a class from someone who is only able to get work by giving it to themselves? How are they going to prepare you for the industry if they can’t make it on their own merit? You don’t.
You also don’t want to drop money on a talent whose notable anime works are “additional roles” after they say/list that they’re a “voice actor for Funimation” “voice actor for Bang Zoom”. They do additional roles, while a good place to start, that’s like the equivalent of an intern position at a major corporation. Yeah, you’re foot’s in the door, but you really have no grasp of the inner works of the company.
ALWAYS research the resume of a potential “Teacher”
Website
This doesn’t seem important in the long scheme of things, but it’s an extremely good indicator. If their website is a subdomain of “wix.com”, move on. If their website has sparkly designs, flashing lights, poor grammar, auto playing demos, move on. A website is a reflection of the person that runs it. Is it easy to find information or is it a chore? Does it look like it was well thought out or just thrown together in five minutes? These are all very good indicators.
But it’s not the sole determining factor. It’s more of a hint. There are tons of professionals who don’t have the time or resources to develop a good site, so it’s important to check the resume and the quality of work to be safe. Checking the quality of a website is really just the beginning of your detective work.
Newcomers are easy targets, hate to say it, but you are. Most are desperate to find a way into the industry you love so much, and that’s why it’s extremely important to make sure you’re going about it the right way. That you’re not being taken advantage of simply because you don’t know any better. This is why it’s important to be weary of everyone, why you need to equip yourself with the right tools to prevent manipulation. You most definitely want to take classes, but you want to take them from proper industry veterans, people who have been beaten up, got back up, beaten down, back up again, always striving to improve and succeed. You don’t want to learn from someone who is just scratching the surface of the industry, from someone who mainly gets their work from giving it to themselves.
I’m not saying you can’t learn from these people, you can learn from anyone that has done more than you have. But are they really worth hundreds of your dollars? No, no they’re not. If a fifteen year industry veteran doesn’t feel comfortable charging for classes or consultation, than a person who has been a professional for a year and a half with additional roles and indie games most certainly shouldn’t either.
Getting taken to the bank isn’t the only form of manipulation new voice actors have to look out for. Also, I hate the term “aspiring”, you’re either an actor or you’re not. “Aspiring” means you HOPE to be something, that’s for people who aren’t actively trying to do it. If you’re doing it, acting, regardless if it’s in a professional or indie medium, you’re an actor. End of story. Your abilities and talent varies, but you’re not aspiring, you are an actor.
Let’s talk about “Pro bono or FREE” work
There’s countless stories about voice actors doing work for free and getting walked all over. So how do you protect yourself in this case? The simple answer is don’t do free work. But that’s not always an option, sometimes you think it’s the only way to get experience or you want to help out a friend. Usually when you’re helping out a friend you’re not going to get abused in the process. It can happen, but most like it won’t. Free work is a good way to practice and get some experience, it’s true, not ideal but it’s true in all mediums. All of us have done it and we’ve learned a lot. One of the most integral lessons is learning how to protect yourself.
Going to be blunt, Voice Over is a risk. You’re not always going to get a job, you won’t always keep a job, recasting is common place. It’s usually not personal, it’s just the way of this business. That said, sometimes it’s unfair and you need to know how to protect and handle yourself.
If you’re going to do any sort of free work, first don’t get emotionally attached. You’re not getting paid for your service and while moral compasses are nice, you can’t expect everyone to have one. Rule of the world, there’s some really unkind people. If you’ve put in all the work and time for a project but at the last second you’ve been recast, there’s nothing you can do but learn from the experience and move on. To avoid that, you have a written and signed contract between you and the client. This way to assure you will not be abused. In free work this isn’t usually proper practice since there’s no exchange of money for services rendered. It’s really rough but you can’t rely on free work to be loyal to you. The only way to protect yourself in this case is to not care and move on. Even if you experience a situation where you’ve put in hours of work for no return, it was still a learning an experience and you’re most likely a better actor because of it.
If a project is going to make any sort of profit, you should not do free work. You’re helping a project make money and as a result, you should be paid for that contribution. If anyone asks you to do work for free ask them if it’s a for profit project, if there’s a budget and are others being paid. If there is any money involved, then you should be paid. If there is not, then it’s up to your discretion if you want to participate and offer your services for free.
My Worth!
Means nothing. Sorry, but it doesn’t. Unless you’re a big name draw that will expose a project to a mass audience it couldn’t have reached on its own, then your worth is minimal. I see this thrown around a lot, this misconception that simply because you exist and have some experience, you’re suddenly brimming with priceless worth that entitles you to union standard pay. Yeah, doesn’t work that way.
Yes, you are worth something and you should NEVER be taken advantage of. But your worth is relative to the situation, not the other way around. If a budget for a project is super small, as long as you’re being paid fairly in relation to that budget, then you’re not being taken advantage of and your worth is not being infringed upon. This may come as a shock, but just because you record lines, doesn’t mean you’re entitled to the rates given to most union or industry standard projects that have full budgets. This is pretty much common sense, but there’s a lot of newcomers who think that just because the union or standard professional rates say Voice Over should be paid X per hour, word, minute whatever, that it applies universally EVERYWHERE. It doesn’t. It would be nice if every project out there had the funding and budget that could allow VO pay to reach those standard rates, but they don’t. Most work newcomers are exposed to are indie and small projects that have to split their finances between writers, director, actors, programmers, animators, illustrators, etc etc. So if you, a newcomer VO show up demanding industry rates and spewing off rhetoric like “you’re hurting the industry by not paying us what we’re worth” then guess what, you’ll be recast. You need to learn how to read situations and know which scenario calls for which response.
This isn’t to say don’t get what you’re worth, it’s to say understand what your worth is in relation to the situation that you’re presented with. It is perfectly okay to turn down a role that is unable to pay you a certain amount. It’s not okay to try and vilify a production for not being able to afford industry standard rates when their budget is almost non-existent.
So how do you tell? It’s pretty much common sense. Look at their budget if they’re a crowdfunding project. Are the writers/directors/programmers/illustrators getting the vast majority of money while you’re being offered $50 for 150 lines? If so then there’s a problem. It’s all about fairness and not being abused, if a project is treating VO as unimportant, then there’s an issue. And that’s when you can discuss your “worth”, but if a project is making every effort to respect the VO talent and just doesn’t have the budget, then that’s not a situation where you discuss your “worth”, because that’s when you come off entitled.
Professionalism!
That’s actually a good segue into professionalism. A lot of people don’t understand what it means to be a professional. They often confuse “professional” with “professionalism”.
To be a professional, you really just need to be getting paid for your work. That is what makes a professional.
Professionalism is all about the way you act. Are you respectful, do you listen to directions well, are you timely, or are you a constant fan who loves to gush about fandoms when it’s not appropriate, are you constantly talking about how good you are at something, or how you do a certain thing? This is what defines your professionalism.
You can be a Professional but be horrendous when it comes to professionalism.
You can be really great with professionalism but not be paid for your work and not be a professional.
The ideal “Professional” is a person who has a great attitude and gets paid for their work.
So what am I talking about with professionalism and newcomers? I’m talking about your online presence. How are you portraying yourself online, are you complaining and acting entitled, are you calling people out and bitching about things, are you constantly living in fandom work where you’re more focused on being a fan than on being an actor?
It sounds harsh, but we’re living in an age where everything we do and say is being recorded. You could be really talented, but the way you act online and even in person can hinder professionals wanting to work with you.
If you cause drama, go posting rants on Facebook about a client, potential clients will avoid working with you. No one is going to want to work with someone who is so flimsy with private, behind door information. Even if you’re in the right to be upset, you don’t air that sort of thing for the public to see, that’s something you keep between yourself and personal friends. Ranting and complaining online suggests that you’re taking things personally and too focused on the drama than the work. It sounds harsh, but that’s how it is. Especially in an industry that’s so fickle. Ask any industry veteran, they’ll say the same thing. It’s part of the risk of the industry, things happen, you move on and find work elsewhere. If you’re too focused on one issue with one company, then you’re not the type of person many will want to work with. Keep it to your close friends and off the social media.
Being a professional means putting the job above your emotional state.
If a company is being harsh or shady, it is okay to put out a warning to your fellow actors, but do it on the side, not where your posting can come back to bite you in the ass.
Being professional also means being honest. Don’t try and make yourself sound better than you are, don’t make promises you can’t follow up on to clients. Be timely, always have open communication.
Communication is the most important aspect of professionalism. Reaching out to clients when unforeseen events come up that may get in the way of fulfilling your obligation. As long as there’s openness between yourself and client, any situation is negotiable.
Approaching Casting Directors!
You’re trying to expand your network and find opportunities when you come across someone who casts and directs indie games. What do you do?
You act professional.
Most casting directors have closed networks, but it’s okay to approach them to inquire of their availability. But when you do so you need to do it the right way. First impressions are not so easy to change, so make it a good one. NEVER send someone a link to your demo going- ” here’s my updated demo if you have any auditions”. That right there is going to get you soft blacklisted. If you are going to approach someone, do it like this:
“Hi so and so,
I would like to submit my demo reel to you for potential consideration into your casting network. If that is okay, I will attach my full demo reel and resume in the following message. Thank you for your time”
Basically anything along the lines of that. You’re asking if it is okay to send your information. It seems small, but it goes a long way. You’re being respectful, something casting directors appreciate. It also will separate you from the rest of the newcomers who just send unsolicited demo reels expected a return from it. Most directors will reply to this sort of message, they’ll either tell you that you can, or they’ll direct you to a submission form.
In the end, it’s all about courtesy and not expecting favors.
These are just some basic tips for newcomers on avoiding pitfalls and being taken advantage of. A lot of these have come from my years of working with professionals in the industry, hearing their complaints and struggles while also learning what it takes to survive in any professional climate.
Hopefully this extremely long post will be of some use to you and maybe even prevent you from being taken advantage of.
Good luck!
I’m a female voice actor with a High pitched, normal and robotic voice and I can also do British accents! I do murder drones and I could try any other and I can follow scripts! Send me an email if you need me! (Mahatareq09@yahoo.com)