Featured Voice Over Artist: Rob Paulsen

Other great voiceover artists can be a source of inspiration!

Next in our series of voiceover greats, we suggest you check out the wonderfully talented Rob Paulsen, who says he is "Getting paid to do what got me in trouble in the 7th grade."

Rob is best known as the voice of Yakko Warner and Dr. Otto Scratchansniff from Animaniacs, Raphael from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Pinky from Pinky and the Brain. In his long and lustrous career, Rob has played more than 250 different animated characters and thousands of commercials.

From Rob's website:

"Born in Detroit, Rob Paulsen spent his childhood in Livonia and Rochester, attending Junior and Senior high school in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Rob loved cartoons like most kids but aspired to be a professional hockey player. “Fortunately, thanks to some big, strong, kid from Winnipeg who drilled me so hard my ears are still ringing, I learned around age 18 I had neither the talent nor the temperament to make a living playing hockey. So, I turned to my other passions: singing and acting.”

The goal of bringing absolute believability to a fictional character, live-action or animated, is what every actor strives for. Those who are committed to their career and who combine experience, passion and skill are likely to succeed.

Those gifted with exceptional talent who focus on maximizing their potential by finding their own niche, quickly break away from the pack...."

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Voiceover Tip: Copy the Vocal Patterns on TV Commercials

Here's a great tip and exercise for voiceover artists: use TV commercials as a source of practice. Really listen to the commercials on your TV or radio. When you find a good commercial you like, try to parrot the VO actor who is speaking the lines.  You'll be repeating the words, of course, but also try to copy, as exactly as you can, the nuances, the tone, the inflections he or she uses, and the musicality.

Then mute or turn off the TV or radio and grab any random bit of text, such as an ad in a piece of mail or magazine. Try to bring the new tone and vocal patterns you've been copying to these new words. You will be using the style you've been mimicking with this new material.

This will really start to train your ear and attune you to what is currently “hot” in the advertising world. And it gets you practicing, reading aloud, and using your voice in new ways.

And it's fun! Enjoy!

Voice Actors: Expand Your Comfort Zone!

We all have our happy places when it comes to acting. Some of us revel in playing the hero or heroine, while others feel perfectly at home twirling our mustaches as the villain. Either way, it’s good to know where your comfort zone is and where you enjoy playing. It pays to know your strengths so you can take advantage of them and carve out a niche for yourself in the area you may be best suited to. But it’s also good to be aware of your strengths so that you can take time to work on the areas you aren’t as skilled in. In this way, you expand your repertoire and make yourself a more versatile, interesting, and employable actor.

It’s certainly not our intent to detract from the idea of doing one specific thing very well. That’s extremely important. It’s just that, if that one thing goes out of style, you want to have something to fall back on. And just because you’re good at one thing doesn’t mean you can’t learn to do other things equally well. For example, our good friend, the otherworldly talented actor Dee Bradley Baker, is known far and wide for his creature voices, monster babble, and alien squawking, and that’s what people tend to hire him for. But when called upon to do so, he also turns in a very moving, believable, human performance.

The best actors push their personal boundaries and continue to grow throughout the life of their entire careers; filling them up with memorable, interesting, and bold characters. If you feel you’re having a hard time pushing your boundaries on your own, get into a class where it will be someone else’s job to give you a friendly shove in the right direction. Classes can hold you accountable for your work in a way you often can’t do on your own.

Use your auditions as a place where you always push your boundaries and expand your comfort zone a little. Open yourself up to all possibilities. Widen the circle you play in.

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Check out our VoiceOverVoiceActor website for more tips and exercises. We post daily VO tips on Facebook and Twitter, and our book, Voice Over Voice Actor: What it’s like behind the mic includes a wealth of exercises to build your voice and keep it ready for a successful voice over career!

Voice Actors: Do You Need a Web Site?

Nowadays a Web presence is practically essential for anyone trying to market themselves in this business. It serves as your calling card and news feed, letting people know what you’re up to. As we’ve mentioned, the Web provides a way for new people to find you, and it’s a fantastic place to post your demo reel for quick and easy access by potential employers.

Once you have a Web site set up, you can make a business card that includes your Web address (preferably an address that’s your name, like ArchibaldTuttle.com or TaraPlatt.com, although sometimes, if that’s not an option, you’ll have to get creative: ArchibaldTuttleVO.com or YuriLowenthalIsAVoiceActor.com). Then, whenever you meet people in the VO business, you can give them your card: suddenly all your info is at their fingertips.

Even the most basic Web site should include your name, general contact info (phone number, e-mail, etc.) and/or your representation contact info. In addition it might also include a list of credits and/or upcoming work, and maybe a clip or a demo reel of your voice.

Many actors choose not to have images of themselves on their Web sites if the site is for voice-over only, as one of the great things about voice-over is that it isn’t looks-based (remember our note about packaging). Instead of displaying your photo, you can put up images that showcase either the work you’ve done or the qualities or essence your voice evokes.

Your Web site may feature several different things ranging from your professional acting experience to your personal life. If so, make sure that it’s as easy to navigate to your VO info as possible, so that potential employers don’t get caught up in photos of your latest class reunion when all they’re trying to do is listen to your VO demo. If possible, you might want to have a separate site for your personal stuff so that professionals visiting your VO site don’t see anything that might adversely affect their judgment of you: those photos may be funny to you and your friends, but a casting director might not get the joke.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money, nor do you need to know html programming to set up a decent, effective Web site that you’ll be able to update yourself. Shop around, ask around, and find a Web hosting company that works for you. Check out other actors’ sites, and if you like what you see, shoot some of them an e-mail and ask who’s hosting their Web sites and who did the design (sometimes you’ll find that information at the bottom of the Web page). There are even companies that let you design your own free Web page, and that can help when you’re trying to get started on the cheap. In any case, creating a page is something you can do on your own. And a Web site is a resource that could prove very important. So full steam ahead!

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Check out our VoiceOverVoiceActor website for more tips and exercises. We post daily VO tips on Facebook and Twitter, and our book, Voice Over Voice Actor: What it’s like behind the mic includes a wealth of exercises to build your voice and keep it ready for a successful voice over career!

Straw phonation: a great exercise to strengthen the vocal cords!

Check out this cool video on straw phonation from Dr. Ingo Titze.

A respected vocal scientist, Dr. Titze demonstrates vocal exercises that consist of creating sounds into a straw. After a few minutes of these exercises, your voice will feel like it is coming out of your eyes (a buzzy feeling in your face) which he explains is the optimal placement for your voice.

He sings the National Anthem into a straw, which, he explains, helps to strengthen and train the vocal folds for the best transfer of power from the glottis to the lips. He demonstrates the "semi-occluded" phonation which balances the air pressure around the vocal folds: sub-glottal (below) and super-glottal (above). Examples of these semi-occluded phonations are the raspberries and lip buzzing sounds you recognize from our tips and your vocal coach.

Cool, huh? This will all make more sense when you watch the video!

Here is an article Dr. Titze wrote explaining the concept in more depth:

"OVER THE PAST TEN YEARS John Nix and I have been describing vocal exercises that utilize phonation into a straw.1 These exercises are part of a bigger picture of training vocal fold adduction, registration, and epilarynx tube narrowing for the best acoustic power transfer from the glottis to the lips. Use of a thin straw is not the only way to facilitate this power transfer, but a semi-occlusion at the mouth is a requirement. Lip trills, nasals, / u / and / o / vowels, bilabial fricatives, and other semi-occlusions can all be used to meet the objective. 2"
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By Titze, Ingo: Academic journal article from Journal of Singing, Vol. 66, No. 5
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Networking November Newsletter with Tara & Yuri

Check out our latest newsletter, below. There's a sign up button over on your right if you'd like to receive it!

Click Here To Read: Networking November Newsletter, 2013

The holidays are just around the corner, and it is the perfect time to get retrospective on your life (things planned, things changed, things ahead)... Shelf Life is coming to a close (pre-order those DVD's now - you won't want to miss the bonus eps!) and new things are on the horizon. Remember, an outward network is just as important as your neural network so as you engage with friends and family this holiday season, try to treat yourself to some brain work as well! We are planning to rest and relax (and adventure a bit) for our holiday trip to Southeast Asia. Enjoy getting clear with your plans for the future and relish the holiday season as we dive into a new year!

Tara :) (&Yuri)

Yuri Lowenthal & Tara Platt: Raise Your Voice (Acting)!

Click to read more: Networking November with Tara and Yuri, Nov. 2013

Click here to read more “Networking November with Tara and Yuri,” Nov. 2013

How to Succeed as a Voice Over Actor: Great Article from PBS

We found a terrific article from PBS that we'd love to share, "How to Succeed as a Voiceover Artist in the Digital Age."

It offers good suggestions for getting started, ideas on home and portable studios, attending voiceover conferences, continued training, and more. Here is a short excerpt, and click on the link to read the rest!

"...voiceover, like with other entertainment industries, has moved into digital. While voiceover work has existed for decades, new technologies have enabled voiceover actors to record with more quality and to do so virtually anywhere they happen to be.

Most of us probably take many voiceovers for granted: telephony (such as voice prompts and on-hold messages); animation dialogue; videogame voices; audiobook readings; corporate and training video work; dubbing work; e-learning instruction; webinar speaking; documentary film narration; radio, podcast, promo, trailer (the famous Don LaFontaine) narration, and television voicing.

This growing need for voiceover work, along with the opportunities to work from anywhere, make this profession a great and burgeoning business for voice actors."

Read the entire PBS article entitled "How to Succeed as a Voiceover Artist in the Digital Age"