How Skateboarding Prepared Me for Voice Over
- Chris Butera
- Jun 7
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 9
"I’ll tell you, one of the great activities is skateboarding. To learn to do a skateboard trick, how many times do you gotta get something wrong until you get it right? ... And you hurt yourself, and you learn to do that trick. Now, you got a life lesson. Whenever I see those skateboard kids, I think, 'Those kids'll be alright.'" - Jerry Seinfeld, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee
I was recently reminded of that while on my morning coffee walk. After dropping the Mrs. off at the bus for her daily office commute, I wandered over to my usual 9am spot: the local skate park. Most days I sit in the fun box and listen to tunes for a bit before carrying on with my day, but this morning was different.
The park was in use.
A lone skater was getting a session in. As I watched from after, nesting on the coping of the concrete bowl, I observed this college-aged kid rip it up on the stone canvas. He was good, too. I watched him pull off a nasty 360 kickflip (aka tre flip) on the quarter-pipe section of the fun box.
This moment took me back to my youth as a dumb skate punk trying tricks he had no business attempting.
Looking for a voice actor who thinks outside the fun box? Get in touch today!
The Tao of the Tre Flip
As he completed the tre flip, I clapped to show my respect. The skater, frazzled, frantically moved his head around, his eyes darting voraciously before finding their intended destination.
He was in such a flow state, he hadn’t noticed the spectator’s appearance in the 20 or so minutes I had been there. The young man gave a humble monk-like bow on his board before moving onto the next trick, a frontside nose slide on what appeared to be an elevated ledge.
He slammed a few times, landed a couple more slides, and started sizing up the grand finale: a nollie kickflip to nose manual on the flat side of the fun box. He knew it was special, as he set up the camera on his phone in a shoe at the top of the ramp, angled with the grit and glamour of the street technique for the perfect shot.
Then he made his first go at it. A missed flip. Too early. A second attempt saw the opposite. Third was a land, but no manual catch.
Again and again he went for it, re-setting and adjusting the camera/phone every time just in case this next one was it, but to no avail. He started to show some frustration: a grunt here, a groan there, but never losing his temper or focus. He slow-rolled some things, held his board up to the light, mapping the trick out like an architect with a plank of sturdy, shaped, seven-ply wood held together with polyurethane wheels and steel as both his pencil and compass.
He made his next pass. Good pump down the ramp, nollie flip: check, slow catch on the manny, but just enough to get it together. However, the speed needed to complete the sequence was lost before he could make it down the other side.
Ever closer, with no cigar, he now knew success was more than possible: it was inevitable.
Two attempts later, it was done. Not satisfied with the slight waver at the end, he went back for more attempts and adjustments to get it perfect; but not before accepting my applause with another humble bow.
I didn’t stick around to see the perfect take, but the skaters’ trials and triumphs were enough to remind me of a life lesson I had long forgot:
When you keep your goal in focus and use your missteps as a guide as opposed to a deterrent, success is inevitable.
What Does Skateboarding Have to Do With Voice Over?
You’ve read the title, and now the story. If you’re still here, your burning question is likely “What does any of this have to do with voice over?”
Everything.
Success is a long, gradual process, but you must keep your goal in focus. Your missteps are a guide. Use them as a tool of navigation, and your success is inevitable.
When you pursue anything, including voice over, you are going to fail. A lot.
Sometimes (especially in skateboarding), failure hurts. What’s important is that you get back up, make adjustments, and do it again. Eventually, you land a kickflip; or in the case of voice over, book a gig.
Rodney Mullen, one of the greatest of all time, views this as one of the most crucial teachings of the sport.
"The point is, is there's no guarantee in this. And no matter how talented you are... your capacity to deal and cope with failure will be tested, and how you deal with that makes the difference between good and great," he said in a 2012 keynote, which you can view below.
How Skateboarding Teaches You to See The World Differently
Skateboarding also teaches you to see the world differently. Every staircase, dip in the road, bank, ledge, incline, decline, is forever a skate spot.
Even fire hydrants.
Mullen likens it to being an open source hacker, a community he fell in love with when he faced hip issues that caused him to contemplate the mortality of his skateboarding career.
"What is it to hack, right? It's knowing a technology so well that you can manipulate it and steer it to do things it was never intended to do," he said in a Ted Talk.
"What they do is very similar to our creative process. They connect disparate information, and they bring it together in a way that a security analyst doesn't expect. It doesn't make them good people, but it's at the heart of engineering, at the heart of a creative community, an innovative community. And the open source community, the basic ethos of it is, take what other people do, make it better, give it back so we all rise further."
In voice over, you see the world differently through tone and inflection. The way people say things is now a treasure trove of information. Their speech patterns reveal who they are, how they feel, what their intentions are, and what’s really going on in their world behind every word.
These new worldviews never leave you, by the way. Ask the Mrs. what happens every time I walk by a staircase or art sculpture, and don't get her started on my speech analysis.
Skateboarding’s Biggest Life Lesson
When you are facing a challenge, you will find that there are many different ways to complete them. This is the same for skateboarding and voice over. There are nuances to every trick, every inflection, and even marketing and outreach strategies.
Two skaters with similar builds and styles do the exact same trick at the exact same time, but the way they push, skate, flick or grab the board, time their snaps, level out, land, grind, or rotate are completely different.
Let's look at the VO side of this coin: two voice actors read the same copy. The way they speak, sound, and choose which inflections, vocal patterns, and melodies to use (more importantly, when to use them) are unique to each person.
Some techniques only work for certain skaters, and the same rules apply for voice actors in terms of marketing and vocal delivery. There are, of course, tried and true methods in both cases, but neither side ever sees a one-size-fits-all.
There are also different voice over categories and ways to skate. Some skaters can do both street and vert, but most do one or the other. Some prefer to skate regular, others goofy-footed. A handful would rather do most tricks switch, fakie, or nollie. Voice actors can work in many different genres, but most stick to a few that work for them. A handful will choose to only work in one or two areas, and a select few will do it all.
In voice over, skateboarding, and other career paths people wish to travel, there’s no wrong way to make it work. The only "wrong" thing you can do is not try, because you have more control over the situation than you think.
And that’s the biggest lesson of all.
“Skate on, my son.” — God, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2
