How to Introduce Your Child to Voice Acting

Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voice Over Experts brought to you by Voices.com, the number one voice over marketplace. Voice Over Experts brings you tips, pills of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors, and performers in the field of voice over. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voice over talent. It’s never been easier to learn, perform, and succeed from the privacy of your own home and at your own pace. This is truly an education you won’t find anywhere else.
This week, Voices.com is pleased to present Sunday Muse.
Sunday Muse: Hi, my name is Sunday Muse. I’ve been a voice actor for the last 12 years of my life. I’ve been in many cartoons such as Rolie Polie Olie, Arthur, Care Bears, Jane & the Dragon, and many, many more. And I’ve been teaching for many years as well. Teaching children, teens, and adults how to do cartoon voices.
Most recently, I wrote a book called You Can Do Cartoon Voices Too, which is what I’m going to talk about today. And I’ll just cover a few points that I feel will probably be very helpful and informative to parents listening to this podcast. What I’d like to start with is a few things on what parents might need to know about getting their kids into this industry.
One of the things that’s really important is that children need to be interested in doing cartoon voices and the parents need to understand what that means in terms of how do we get them out to auditions, what is an audition, what is a callback, what does it mean if my child gets work, how do they get work, who is a good agent, how do we find an agent, these are all questions that the parent really needs to make a commitment to researching and finding out. And then of course, making a decision with the child about whether this is the best career choice or not,
Now, there are many advantages to doing cartoon voices, many advantages. A great exercise for your kids that I could recommend doing at home just to sort of understand the energy level, the difference between normal talking and cartoon talking, and perhaps what it would entail for them to get into the cartoon voice is watching cartoons with your eyes shut. And now, children probably won’t want to do that for long however, it’s a great exercise in just listening to what goes on. You know, when your eyes are closed, how much energy those actors are putting into those voices that you see on TV.
There’s an interesting misconception I think for a lot of parents and children about doing cartoon voices which is, my child has a great voice and you know, he or she wants to do cartoon voices, which is wonderful and he has an interest in doing it. All is great. Children are not cast as characters. For instance, your 9-year-old boy will not be cast in a cartoon as a 75-year-old man or as a 45-year-old father or as you know, the superhero that’s in his late 20s. And that is not what casting directors are looking for from children. For children, they are looking for his or her natural voice. The natural voice animated, meaning more energized, bit brighter than real life talking. A quick example, I’m talking normal right now but if I was to bring that into cartoon energy, it just sort of elevates it a little bit, gives it a bit more, I don’t know, color. And I know it sounds a little bit funny probably in this podcast but literally, it’s an adjustment in learning how to take the natural voice of the child and just animate it, bring it more to life, energize it. That often involves some training for children just to get used to that.
The other obstacle is the microphone, can be an obstacle not always. Where it’s, you know, it’s this new relationship between microphone and yourself. You know, you’re talking into this thing. So, these are some of the points that are covered in the book. And what I’d like to do now is to briefly touch on a day in the life of a voice actor, a child voice actor.
So, a day in the life of a voice actor, you may get a call from your agent telling you, you have an audition tomorrow at 4:00 o’clock at such and such a location. This is all assuming that you have an agent. And you’re expected to show up. You’re also expected to – if you live out of town, out of the city, you’re expected to miss, you know, probably part of school to get there on time. And so, the first audition takes place and then a few days later or sometimes a few weeks later, you may receive a callback for your child. The callback is basically a repetition of the first audition, sometimes not but most of the times it is. And the casting directors, producers, need to decide whether you are the right fit.
Some of the things that the casting directors are looking for in an audition is a genuine connection to the script, an open personality, easy to work with, ability to take direction. And again, as I had mentioned, the natural voice as opposed to a character voice. So, they really want the natural voice of your child. That is what is being cast out there.
If your child is cast in a cartoon, if it’s a lead role, a principal role, they’ll be called by the agent and given a time, a day and a time of where you will show up to do the record. Generally speaking, the record won’t last for more than two hours maximum.
I hope this will give you some insight into what is covered more fully in my book. And the most important thing in all of this is to remember that if your child wants to do this, you have to maintain the joy in all of it, the joy of cartoons is so keen. And that’s all for now. See you later [laughs].
Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this Voices.com podcast, visit the Voice Over Experts show notes at podcasts.voices.com/voiceoverexperts. Remember to stay subscribed. If you’re a first-time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTune’s podcast directory or by visiting podcasts.voices.com. To start your voice over career online, go to Voices.com and register for a voice talent membership today.