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Look around you. How many voice actors do you know that are one trick ponies? Not many. The key to success in the VO industry is to understand and be able to work in a variety of genres.
You need to diversify your training...
It is important to be able to diversify within your business so that you can grow your business. And what I mean by that is to diversify your performances, diversify your coaching and training so that you can give a well-rounded performance no matter what genre is requested of you. It's wonderful, and I am the queen of strategic target marketing for any specific genre. However, in order to get yourself at the top echelon of performing in any given genre, right, our goal is typically the same. Our goal is to be able to engage, to connect with that audience, to be able to tell the story, to be able to really have an emotional connection with the person that is listening to you.
And in order to do that, diversifying your training, that means training outside of your genre training, outside of commercial training, outside of maybe just e-learning or corporate, uh, will really help you to be well-rounded in your performances. Okay? If you are currently doing a lot of work in corporate or a lot of work in e-learning, I say go out and take an acting class. Uh, go out and take a character class because they can apply to every genre. And I've said this multiple times before in regards to characters, we are always a character when we are performing, even if we are just voicing something for e-learning or a corporate or an explainer, because we are a character. We are an employee of that company that knows about that product. And so we need to be able to excel in all areas of that performance in order to really connect with our audience. So again, take an acting class, take an improv class.
I think an improv class would be amazing for any genre, and that's not just for character work or animation. For example, if you're doing corporate narration, a lot of times I'll ask my students to not just read or narrate the story to me; that means reading the words to me because look, I can read the words myself. I'm absolutely fine. But what I want you to do is to really be in a scene. I want you to be engaged, and I want you to tell me that story as if you are in that scene. And I want to move in that scene with you. I want to be able to hear your point of view, hear your emotion in that scene. Even if it might be some dry, boring copy that talks about corporate responsibility, there is a purpose.
I actually was mentioning this to one of my students just the other day. Every word that is written for a piece of copy has a purpose. And it is our job as actors to find out what that purpose is. It's not enough to just read the sentence and, you know, quickly say, oh, okay, I understand what that means. Because a lot of times, copywriters are asked to create a piece of copy in a certain amount of time that is supposed to generate a message from the company. And a lot of times it may just sound like a particular message that we've heard over and over and over again. But keep in mind that each company has its own story to tell. And if you can understand that copy to be able to, um, tell their story better than 200 other people who are auditioning for the same job, then you are gonna be the one that gets that gig.
And in order to really, I feel, be that engaged, to be that good of a storyteller, you need to diversify your training. And that includes acting training, improv training, um, and even when we're talking about our businesses -- so not even just for your performance, I want you to diversify your training about businesses. So take a marketing class. I cannot suggest enough for people who are in this business to take a marketing class or take a business class. Because again, we can have the best voices in the world, but it doesn't do us any good. If nobody knows how to find us. Then we can shine with our performance, right? We can shine with our, uh, what we, I think all of us want to do as voice artists is to be in that booth and just go and create and explore and connect.
So diversify in not only your performance, but in your business skills as well, because that will make you a more well-rounded person who can reach more people so that you can then do more creative jobs that fill your soul.
Thanks for reading!
Keep on rocking your business like a #VOBOSS
About Anne Ganguzza
Recipient of multiple Voice Arts Awards for Outstanding Narration Demo - Anne Ganguzza is California-based Voice Over Coach and award-winning Director & Producer specializing in target-marketed voiceover Demo Production. Anne's production team creates SOVAS-nominated demos across several genres, including Commercial, Corporate Narration, and eLearning, and her VO BOSS podcast is the winner of SOVAS Outstanding Podcast in 2022.