Post by Jack on Jan 29, 2021 17:53:55 GMT -8
I know what you’re thinking, “How to receive coaching? Don’t I just show up and work with the coach?” That’s a very fair response! After all that’s exactly what happens in a coaching session. But understanding the relationship between you and your coaches and your attitude towards the knowledge they provide can be the difference between making frustratingly slow progress in your voice over journey and effectively applying their unique perspectives to help advance your career.
You and your coach
Let’s start with the basics – what is the relationship between you and someone that you’re paying to train you? Well, it’s just that – you’re paying them to train you. It’s transactional. You’re giving them money in exchange for their insight and expertise (which they hopefully have) as well as their ability to communicate those things to you in an educational way. I know this sounds obvious but it’s important to keep this in mind when you’re receiving coaching because it’s easy to get caught up in other, unproductive ideas about your relationship with a coach. One of these unproductive kinds of relationships is the idea that your coach is simply “the person with correct knowledge” and you are “the person who does what the coach says”. It’s easy to fall into this kind of thinking because when you think about the idea of a coach, you imagine someone who does have all the answers. It’s even easier when you’re new to voice acting and have no other knowledgeable authorities to compare your coach to. Reality is not quite so black-and-white – the truth is that the absolute most any one coach can offer (yes, even the most lauded ones) is a single perspective on good voice acting. Does that invalidate their services? Not at all, and in fact those individual, unique perspectives are still incredibly useful, but it does mean you need to be aware of what you’re paying for and how to effectively utilize your coaches’ unique perspectives.
Understanding what you’re paying for
One of the difficult realities of being a voice talent is that the things that “work” are incredibly individualistic. Figuring out what good, effective voice acting is for you as an individual is a process that takes time, trial, and error. What this means for the coaching you receive is that the techniques you work on with one coach might not work well for you, even if your coach is a successful, working voice talent who utilizes those same techniques themselves. On the other hand, they might be perfect! Or perhaps they’ll only partially work for you (super helpful right?) In a word, the product you’re getting from your coach is a tool. It’s a collection of ideas and techniques that may or may not be effective for you. If it is effective for you then that’s a great discovery! Keep it in your VO toolkit and rely on it to help produce competitive, compelling reads. If you try it out for a while and it’s not working for you, throw the tool away. This can be hard, especially if you still think of your coach as “the person with correct knowledge”, but it’s perfectly acceptable and normal to come to the conclusion that a certain coach’s philosophy doesn’t work well for you as an individual. Move on and don’t think twice about it – you should only be keeping things in your VO toolkit that you have found to work for you.
Expanding your toolkit
We’ve covered your relationship with your coaches and exactly what it is you’re paying for when you purchase coaching services, so what now? Now we actually get into how to effectively receive coaching. When you work with a new coach (that you’ve vetted as some who knows what they’re talking about), you have an amazing opportunity to talk to someone who has already figured out what works for them. So be open to what they’re telling you! Try their unique techniques and ideas out both in your coaching sessions and in reads outside of sessions. Discuss any confusion you have with your coach and try to understand what they’re telling you as well as possible. Once you’ve thoroughly explored what your coach has to say, evaluate for yourself whether their teachings are effective enough for you as an individual to warrant adopting them. Then, try some sessions with a different coach! And another one! Continue learning from as many people as you can so you can efficiently discover the different techniques and philosophies that exist, and more importantly which of those work for you.
Final thoughts
Coaching offers a great opportunity to try new techniques and be exposed to new perspectives on acting. In your sessions be cooperative, curious, and open to new ideas. But always remember that there are a lot of people with a lot of different ideas about how to do what we do. The only version of good voice acting that matters is what works for you, and your ultimate goal should simply be to discover what works for you.
p.s. Thanks to Alex Mitts and Norman Bradley who helped solidify these ideas into something (hopefully) useful
On bad coaches
A quick note before we dive in – there are coaches out there who will gladly take money from you in exchange for... subpar services. Before purchasing sessions with any coach or coaching organization, vet them by researching their background (people who are not actively involved in the voice over industry may not be able to provide relevant insights into current industry trends) and by speaking with others who have coached with them. VAC’s own Discord server has a Classes, Coaches, and Workshops channel that is perfect for this kind of thing. Utilizing the collective experience and knowledge of the voice over community can save you some expensive mistakes!
You and your coach
Let’s start with the basics – what is the relationship between you and someone that you’re paying to train you? Well, it’s just that – you’re paying them to train you. It’s transactional. You’re giving them money in exchange for their insight and expertise (which they hopefully have) as well as their ability to communicate those things to you in an educational way. I know this sounds obvious but it’s important to keep this in mind when you’re receiving coaching because it’s easy to get caught up in other, unproductive ideas about your relationship with a coach. One of these unproductive kinds of relationships is the idea that your coach is simply “the person with correct knowledge” and you are “the person who does what the coach says”. It’s easy to fall into this kind of thinking because when you think about the idea of a coach, you imagine someone who does have all the answers. It’s even easier when you’re new to voice acting and have no other knowledgeable authorities to compare your coach to. Reality is not quite so black-and-white – the truth is that the absolute most any one coach can offer (yes, even the most lauded ones) is a single perspective on good voice acting. Does that invalidate their services? Not at all, and in fact those individual, unique perspectives are still incredibly useful, but it does mean you need to be aware of what you’re paying for and how to effectively utilize your coaches’ unique perspectives.
Understanding what you’re paying for
One of the difficult realities of being a voice talent is that the things that “work” are incredibly individualistic. Figuring out what good, effective voice acting is for you as an individual is a process that takes time, trial, and error. What this means for the coaching you receive is that the techniques you work on with one coach might not work well for you, even if your coach is a successful, working voice talent who utilizes those same techniques themselves. On the other hand, they might be perfect! Or perhaps they’ll only partially work for you (super helpful right?) In a word, the product you’re getting from your coach is a tool. It’s a collection of ideas and techniques that may or may not be effective for you. If it is effective for you then that’s a great discovery! Keep it in your VO toolkit and rely on it to help produce competitive, compelling reads. If you try it out for a while and it’s not working for you, throw the tool away. This can be hard, especially if you still think of your coach as “the person with correct knowledge”, but it’s perfectly acceptable and normal to come to the conclusion that a certain coach’s philosophy doesn’t work well for you as an individual. Move on and don’t think twice about it – you should only be keeping things in your VO toolkit that you have found to work for you.
Expanding your toolkit
We’ve covered your relationship with your coaches and exactly what it is you’re paying for when you purchase coaching services, so what now? Now we actually get into how to effectively receive coaching. When you work with a new coach (that you’ve vetted as some who knows what they’re talking about), you have an amazing opportunity to talk to someone who has already figured out what works for them. So be open to what they’re telling you! Try their unique techniques and ideas out both in your coaching sessions and in reads outside of sessions. Discuss any confusion you have with your coach and try to understand what they’re telling you as well as possible. Once you’ve thoroughly explored what your coach has to say, evaluate for yourself whether their teachings are effective enough for you as an individual to warrant adopting them. Then, try some sessions with a different coach! And another one! Continue learning from as many people as you can so you can efficiently discover the different techniques and philosophies that exist, and more importantly which of those work for you.
Final thoughts
Coaching offers a great opportunity to try new techniques and be exposed to new perspectives on acting. In your sessions be cooperative, curious, and open to new ideas. But always remember that there are a lot of people with a lot of different ideas about how to do what we do. The only version of good voice acting that matters is what works for you, and your ultimate goal should simply be to discover what works for you.
p.s. Thanks to Alex Mitts and Norman Bradley who helped solidify these ideas into something (hopefully) useful