Voice Over Actors: Taking Care of Business!

It is true that as actors we can often be more focused on the craft of acting and forget to put energy into the business side of our voice-over acting. This part, while essential, may not be as much "fun..."  But it is just as important as tuning your vocal instrument.

You must find out who might hire you to use your voice and where they are located. It's a pro-active way of forwarding your career in voice-over. So for a moment look at VO as a military objective. Select a few targets and do a little recon, or research. And you won't even need to get your hands dirty.

Start with what you like. For example, if you really like the show Naruto, you might search and find out that in the United States, Naruto is licensed by a company called Viz. A little more looking (with your friend Google) might turn up that the English dub for Naruto is recorded at Studiopolis. Voila! You now have a production company to add to your hit list when you have a demo to mail out! With commercials, you might have to be a little more investigative, but there are resources (such as adforum.com) out there that can help you find the ad agency who produced the commercial and who's associated with the promotion of that product.

So, for this exercise, pick an area to start with: animation, video games, or commercials. Now choose three of your favorite shows/movies, video games or commercials. Begin to do a little Internet legwork. Find out who the production company is, and in the case of commercials, the ad agency who commissioned the spot. Try and discover if the company/agency casts their projects in-house, or if they have a relationship with a separate casting company. In some cases, you may even find that the same studio/ad agency produced more than one of your selections, then you know they're definitely somebody you want to target.

There is plenty of information available on the Web, and a little digging could turn up e-mail addresses or maybe phone numbers that you could use to contact the company and find out who might be best to send your reel to. Start a file and keep the info you find for future reference.

Good hunting and good luck - make it fun!