Put First Things First! The Newcomer’s Training
Join Voice Over Expert Bettye Zoller in her lecture “Stop! Put First Things First! The Newcomer’s Training”. People everywhere are spending money and maxing out credit cards building home studios when it is premature to do so. Don’t get stuck in this trap — listen to Bettye’s advice first and get trained!
Download Podcast Episode 41 »
Tags:
Bettye Zoller, VoicesVoices.com, Inspiration, Voice Acting, Voice Over Training, Voices.com
Transcript of Put First Things First! The Newcomer’s Training
[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: I’m on my soapbox again. Cover your ears. This morning I answered two e-mails, the kind I get regularly week after week and the same message people tell me on the telephone and in my seminars and this is it, “My husband and I are planning my studio, my recording studio and we’re trying to choose equipment and we’re making budgets for the expenditures so that I can get my recording studio setup in my home, on my computer. Of course it’s going to be very expensive because I realized now that I’ll also have to buy a new computer.”
They don’t have a demo yet. They haven’t even had much training. Read my lips. Oh, you can’t. Well, keep listening. This is the wrong progression for starting a voiceover wannabe career, whether you make it or whether you don’t. You don’t need the studio equipment now, you need to get trained. Next, you need to spend your money on a killer voiceover demo that is produced for you by a seasoned professional who knows what he or she is doing but the training comes first. Your dollars should go into workshops, phone consultations, private one-on-one consultations. You should be networking, you should be on the internet reading all various wonderful voiceover groups and sites and podcasts we have now.
There’s a wealth of education on the internet and it’s free of charge, just as the wonderful things Voices.com does right here on this site and you should be networking, you should be getting into actors’ groups, you should be making friends of people who are already doing voiceovers and you should have a realistic attitude about this business. Be sure and take a business course too. Be sure to know about structures and pricings and read all you can, read magazines, start reading Adweek and Advertising Age. Study, study, study. Practice at home too. Learn from the pros. Listen to television, the national commercials. I always tell my students if you are a woman, just listen to the female stuff, if you’re a man you want to listen probably mostly to the male stuff because never the twain shall meet. Female work is pretty much different from male work in our business. Capture some of the professional you like on a recorder and then sit and practice. Also listen to the narrations on video games, cartoons, anime, podcasting all over the internet, telephone messaging. Study, study, practice, practice. Don’t spend money on that studio right now.
And another thing, if you don’t know how to operate recording equipment at all, you’d best get training in that as well. The most expensive recording equipment in the world and all the recording software is not going to do you any good if you don’t know how to use it. If you live in a big city you won’t have any trouble finding some recording training often at a community college or the support groups that exist but if you live in a small city, you’re probably going to have to travel to a larger city to enroll in a course in recording engineering. I urge you to take some recording engineering training. It’s so important. And you have to get your room soundproofed. Don’t forget that but that all comes later. If you’re not a working voiceover talent, if you don’t know how to do voiceovers and how the business really works, you’re not ready to build that studio. A word to the wise, that’s my soapbox installment for today. I’m Bettye Zoller. Visit my website, VoicesVoices.com.
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
Absolutely!!
As usual, Bettye is right-on in this recent podcast. The more I speak about voice over training across the US, the more i hear the same question…”How Do I Make A Demo?” This is, in almost all cases, a serious case of getting the cart ahead of the horse.
For example. if I wanted to go into a field like aviation, would it make sense for me to get my pilots license prior to learning how to fly?
Make no mistake, professionals in our industry recognize individuals who demonstrate professional skill and job knowledge. These traits are key components of building long-term repeat work relationships… and… long-term repeat work relationships are a key element in building a successful career as a voice actor.
For those just starting out here are some steps in order that you may want to follow.
1. Learn about the field.
2. Become educated and develop job skill and knowledge.
3. Determine you individual voice strengths.
4. Represent those strengths on separate commercial and narrative demos.
5. Continually market yourself.
6. Enjoy the process.
7. Regularly repeat steps 1,2,5 and 6.
Great Thoughts Bettye!
David at Voice Coaches
Bettye,
Thank you so much for providing such detailed information for newcomers to the world of voice over. I have studied weekly with a private coach for over a year now, and I just completed my first professionally produced commerical demo, and I was lucky to already have a home studio. I realized, once I started asking other voice over actors at local workshops how they kept their career booming, I realized just how much work there is available online. But, as you said, it’s very important to continue the training and coaching, and thank you so much for re-iterating that. I dream of being on a podcast someday soon, and you are a huge inspiration to me. I truly enjoyed your advice, and look forward to hearing more from you on these great podcasts at voices.com, my favorite online voice casting website so far!
Sincerely,
Keely Rene Field
I met Gary Owens (variety show- Laugh-in and radio personality) once about 25 yrs ago in his studio while he was doing his radio show on air. We spoke for about a half hour, during our conversation he stopped and commented on my voice, he said I should get into the buisness, my voice was extrordinary, and I have been told for yrs by all walks of life how my voice was so strange, diffrent and unique to mention a few dicriptions of my voice. This voice over thing never went any further than that, I accepted the compliments but never took it serious. Im 54 yrs old now, I have never tried anything that I really wanted to do, of course my life has been fulfilled with family and other accomplishments in my carriers, but there always hangs that question, what if I pursued radio, or voice overs, Im not getting any younger, and my voice hasn’t change very much, I know this because I still hear remarks about my voice all the time, I am a full time student now on disability, im physically fine, I just cant do the job I once did (oil production) due to an injury, I have limitations on my back. Anyway, im very interested in this field, I live in the Los Angeles area and dont know anyone in this field or where to go to take the first step, what should I do? what can I do ?
Sicerely
Steven Z Casillas (310) 963-0023
P.S. Just trying to get things crossed off my bucket list, I have no intensions of dying anytime soon, just a metaphor.