Learning Voice Over as a Whole
Join Voice Over Expert Bettye Zoller as she reveals that a career in voice over starts not just in a niche education acquired for videogames, cartoons or movie trailer voice overs, but with a strong foundation rooted in the rudiments of learning voice over as a whole before jumping into any one specialized field.
Download Podcast Episode 30 »
Tags:
Bettye Zoller, VoicesVoices.com, Inspiration, Voice Acting, Voice Over Training
Transcript of Learning Voice Over as a Whole
[Opening Music]
Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voiceover Experts brought to you by Voices.com, the number one voiceover marketplace. Voiceover Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voiceover. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voiceover talent. It’s never been easier to learn, perform, and succeed from the privacy of your own home and your own pace. This is truly an education you won’t find anywhere else.
This week Voices.com is pleased to present Bettye Zoller.
Bettye Zoller: Today I’m speaking my mind in this Voices.com podcast. Once again today, I received an e-mail form a person who wanted to know about studying with me or when my next seminar in a certain city would be and he began his e-mail by saying, “I’m interested in doing movie trailers and movie promos and I want to get in to voiceover training in that area.” I answered, “One does not get into voiceovers by studying movie trailers and movie promo techniques.” Movie trailers and movie promos come form mostly Hollywood. They often are given as political or social favors to friends.
I often get e-mails that say, “I want to do cartoons and video games and can you train me for that?” and I answered, “No, I do train people for that but I won’t train you exclusively for that because I would be doing you a disservice while is it true that video games are fun to voice, it may not be the highest pay in the world but they’re fun and while it is true that cartoon are also fund although most of them come from certain cities. I certainly do give a seminar called, “Character in cartoon voices,” and I’m hoping you can attend one sometime but it would be unfair of me to say that I could train you and you would probably get a character in cartoon work right way because that probably isn’t going to be the case.”
What people need when they are starting out in voiceovers is not to isolate want they want to do. Don’t say, “I want to do movie trailers, I want to do promos, I want to voice cartoons, I want to be a video game voice.” That’s pointless. You want to get in to this voiceover job field. That encompasses many things. It encompasses corporate training scripts that are very dry and boring, e-learning, flash presentations and guess what? There’s a lot of that work out there. You maybe bored but you’ll get paid.
Think about commercials for your local market. Don’t think about doing national commercials right off the bat. I hope you do and some of my students have. Stop limiting yourself. If you get in to voiceovers and you actually get hired, your producers will choice you and they will tell you what you’re going to do. You may never voice a video game, you may never voice a movie trailer or promo but I hope you work. I hope you do voiceovers of many kinds and that should be your goal and you want the voiceovers that pay you money, plain and simple. This is Bettye Zoller.
Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this Voices.com podcast, visit the Voiceover 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 iTunes Podcast Directory or by visiting Podcasts.Voices.com. To start your voiceover career online, go to Voices.com and register for a voice talent membership today.
[Closing Music]
Links from today’s show:
VoicesVoices.com
Bettye Zoller Voices.com Website
Your Instructor this week:
Voice Over Expert Bettye Zoller
34 years as a respected university and private educator in voice, speech, theatre, radio-TV, and voiceover techniques along with her award-winning career in voiceovers and jingles has won Bettye Zoller an international reputation that brings clients and students to her workshops and to work in her Dallas recording studio (she’s an accomplished audio engineer/producer) from all over the globe! She is educated through the doctorate (from Missouri University, University of Texas at Dallas, University of North Texas) with faculty positions in the past at Southern Methodist University, University of Texas at Arlington, Dallas County Colleges. She has also studied with famed NYC acting coach Uta Hagen, in Chicago at the “Second City School” and her career began long ago at Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s Hollywood studio school (as a child performer signed to MGM).
Her voiceover credits number in the many hundreds (she’s never counted!) and range from voiceovers and jingles for national TV commercials to audio books to cartoons, from toys to podcasts to anime. You’ve heard her for decades worldwide! Clients have included American Airlines,Pepsi, Visa, Lifetime TV Channel, The Weather Channel, Pace Picante Sauce, Lionel Trains, Texas Instruments Talking Toys, Seven Seas Dressings, Pedialyte Vitamins, promos for ABC, NBC, and BBC America. She is a Simon and Schuster audio book author, narrator, and producer. She has won ADDYS, CLIOS, GOLDEN RADIOS, and AUDIE awards over the years. She is the author of eleven audio titles sold worldwide and continues to produce new titles annually. She is known for teaching voiceover techniques including audio book narration and production, and her BUSINESS OF VOICEOVERS workshops are legendary with students who credit her with starting them in their lucrative voiceover careers!
Bettye, with four top male announcers, has written and produced a wonderful CD program entitled “COMMERCIAL$PEAK” featuring interviews and sections announced by guests and male announcers of reputation. The foreword is by Dick Orkin of Hollywood Radio Ranch, a man who is well known in the U.S. as a commercial creator producer as well as Voice Over performer and teacher.
Comments
Bettye is spot on. You might think you’re ideal for documentaries or TV commercials, but that’s YOU making the judgment. Let your clients do the choosing, whilst you get down to marketing that great demo of yours.
Great insight! Although it would be a dream come true to be a cartoon character, putting my voice in a box would only limit me to ye olde Hollywood stereotype of the actor wannabee. I learned long ago to just be what is required… IF I wish to eat. lol.
Thanks for the great, great advice. I know almost nothing about this industry, and am just beginning to study the art of voice acting/voice over. I do have 30 years in the music biz as a vocalist/instrumentalist/teacher, and so I know the high value of a good reality check. I tell my own students to study, practice, get experience wherever possible, and be patient. Trying now to follow my own advice in a new career!