My Voice Over Origin Story Part 3: Blowing it
- Chris Butera
- Jan 13, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 4
In my last post about how I got started as a voice actor, I detailed how I convinced my then-employer to pay for my voice over training and the subpar experience I had. Here are all the early mistakes I made that almost killed my career!
After my failed first attempt at voice over training and no demo to show for it, I grabbed some of the scripts I had been working on and a few more from Edge Studio’s online voice over resources (a collection of scripts from existing commercials that have already run for aspiring voice actors to practice with). I decided I would produce my own demo.
Sounds like a bad idea? It is.
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Voice Over Career Killer 1: The Self-Produced Demo
Any voice actor worth their salt will tell you this is the first "don’t" on the voice over do’s and don’ts list. A self-produced demo has the potential to kill your voice over career if you don’t smarten up and course correct. Especially if you only have three hours of coaching.
I recorded the demo with a former bandmate and coworker who studied sound engineering and had a home studio. I got in the booth and read the copy in a bunch of wacky voices for about an hour. I thought it was great.
It wasn’t.
To clarify: My friend had done a decent job mixing and recording my demo. I was terrible. My choices were bad, my technique was awful, and worst of all, I was using scripts that had already been performed and recorded by somebody else who got paid for those spots.
Below: My abominable self-produced demo. Don't EVER do this.
On to voice over career-killers two and three!
Voice Over Career Killers 2 and 3: Bad Gear and No Booth
The bad news was I thought I had a decent-sounding demo. The worse news was the demo was self-produced by me, an untrained guy who had no experience in voice over whatsoever.
Even more to my detriment, I didn’t have a studio and (thankfully) I didn’t know how to market myself or find work. To cut my teeth, I did projects on Reddit and Casting Call Club for very little to no money. Not the worst idea to try voice over as a hobby, but not anywhere near professional.
The “gear” I used for these hobbyist projects was a Blue Yeti USB podcast microphone, an SE Electronics Reflexion Filter, and a gaming laptop with a noisy fan that kicked in all the time.
You could not go more wrong as a voice actor looking to make a career out of this. Even worse, I didn’t know how wrong I was!
Voice Over Career Killers 4, 5 and 6: Great Headshots, a Bad Website and Worse Marketing
After about six months of Reddit jobs and cluelessness, I got a big head about my so-called voice over prowess and thought I could land an agent with my self-produced demo and lack of training.
I reached out to my friend Derek Soto —a professional photographer I knew from my metal days— for headshots.
Although I did this step too early (mistake 4: putting the cart before the horse), this was probably the one good idea I had in this era of rookie mistakes. I still use those headshots to this day and will give him a jingle when I need an update.
That being said, thinking I could land an agent was just about the worst idea I had.
Make that the second-worst idea.
I built a generic website, signed up for a voice over pay-to-play site, and emailed my bad demo to several agencies and companies (this did not last long).
And the Truth Will Set You Free
Long story short: I booked nothing and no agencies responded. It wasn't until after I blew it that I realized I did everything wrong in voice over and needed to course-correct as soon as possible.
I stopped what I was doing, shut down my site, and canceled the play-to-play.
My next goal was to figure out what I needed to do right, and an unrelated hobby led to a crazy conversation that changed my life and voice over career forever.
