Where in the name of heaven do I find job postings for voice over work? It seems to be a very insular community. Is the only "in" through taking high-priced classes?
Maybe I don't know the best way, but my father is a Voice Actor, and is very successful. He offers great work shops in the L.A. area and often takes serious aspiring voice actors under his wing. I've noticed that in his field there are some tricks.
- Of course you have to have a good agent. He works with a well known agency.
- You have to understand the trends of the business. When I was younger, he worked on a lot of cartoons like Duck Tales, Gummi Bears, Bearnstien Bears, Snorks, and a bunch of other ones. But these days, the younger voices seem to be a trend. He has had to tailor his work in a new way to get into the right realm of voice acting again. Good thing he has a great agent.
- This is the most important in my opinion. You have to be honest and HARD WORKING. I noticed that a lot of people in entertainment are ego-centric. They won't take a job unless it has a great image attached to it. When my father got his job, he took any and every job he could get. The side product was that he became extremely good at it. He has more practice than anybody, and he now bears the nick-name "one-take Brian" to most of his colleagues in Hollywood. So when a commercial is done and they need to lay the VO tracks on the video... he's the man they call in crunch time because they know he'll get it done fast. He saves sound engineers money on reduced studio time too. So I guess hard work and integrity pay off in a business where there's a lot of less honest and less hard working people.
It's a great business and he loves it. It's very lucrative for him too. However, I've seen a lot of people fail at it. Get out there.. make demos, get your name known, practice your trade, and take what you can get.
I hope it works out. If you live in the L.A. area and are interested in a good contact or his workshops, contact me. He has a good repertoire of well known roles and he knows most of the famous Voice Actors out there from Jim Cummings to Gary Owens.