Thinking of starting a voice over career? It’s not too hard to come by nowadays, with a bit of preparation and investment in the right places, you’ll be well on your way to start your career as a voice over in no time.
Voice over careers can be very lucrative for a full time or even part-time profession, but like all good things, this does come with time and investment into the industry, unfortunately, not overnight.
Let’s go through the key things you need to sort out in order to start your own career as a professional voice over.
Invest in a home studio
First thing’s first, when considering a voice over career, 9 times out of 10 you’re going to need your own home studio at your disposal. This of course is going to take some investment, that being said, what exactly do you need to build your own home studio?
For a home studio adequate for voice over recording, you will need:
- A microphone
- Recording software (such as Logic Pro)
- Decent laptop or PC with at least 8gb RAM
- Studio pads for soundproofing
- An audio interface (to connect microphone to laptop)
This initial investment will likely cost you around £1000 to £2000, which could be considered costly at first, but this will pay itself off after you secure your first few projects.
If you’re really on a budget you can experiment with other soundproofing solutions such as using a blanket to numb out external sound, which should work as an initial fix, to then be improved upon at a later stage.
Practise & build a portfolio
Now that you’ve got your studio together, you want to now practise what you want to preach.
You won’t become a voice over overnight, it’s not only about having a nice voice – if it was that easy there’d be millions of voice overs out there. You need to first practise your different voices (yes, different voices), namely establishing a go-to informal and formal delivery for the two main types of clients you’ll start off with.
There are an array of voice over practice scripts out there that you can work with to get the initial hang of things, ranging from ad voice overs to audiobook excerpts and more. This can be your initial portfolio you use as leverage to get new jobs, namely when approaching companies, who will ask for past examples of work from you.
Get your initial recordings in, then once you have a few example demos to work with, use that to your advantage.
Find an agency to partner with
Finding clients is the tricky part of being a voice over. Starting out, you won’t get very far on your own, so it’s recommended that you find an agency to partner up with.
Start out by searching terms such as “audition as a voice over” and see what comes up, more often than not you’ll find voice over agencies searching for new talent, people come and go everyday.
Once you find a few, reach out to them via email and attach your portfolio examples, then sit back and wait until an agent gets back to you and you can go on from there.
Remember, as you get more seasoned in the game you’ll have a lot more examples to use to your advantage, and you can then start leveraging your projects more directly with clients. Until then, utilise the voice over agencies whilst they’re there, it would mean less effort on your part to find new clients.
You could alternatively go the route of only prioritising direct contact with clients, but you aren’t guaranteed to launch your career that soon, as there’s less security from a client perspective than if they worked with an agency.
That said, would you rather an entire grape or a slice of a much bigger watermelon?
In other words, you may go far by yourself but with a team backing you, possibilities are endless.
Starting your voice over career
A voice over career is sometimes not as black and white as getting a studio and starting from scratch. Depending on your career background, say, if you’re an actor, you may find yourself in the career path through your agent, or mutual contacts potentially.
If you are starting from scratch however, it’s key that you approach the process with patience and enthusiasm, as you’ll need that to fuel your efforts moving forward, putting you in a position where you could potentially do it full time!
You can then join the thousands of successful voice overs in the world who enjoy a flexible, remote career that’s doable anywhere in the world.