Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi, everyone. My name is Monique Robinson, and I am a professional voiceover talent. I just wanted to do a quick video on 10 ways to learn voiceover online. I get asked a lot how I got into voiceover, and also I get a lot of stories from people who say that they want to do voice over. They want to do cartoons or commercials or trailers, but they don't know how to get started. So I created this guide so that I could give it to them to kind of helped them get started in voice over and learn. Um, so I'm going to share this with you guys, and hopefully it will be of help. First, I want to talk a little bit about what voiceover is. It is any time you hear a voice and don't see a person that could be anything ranging from an actual commercial or a cartoon to these things that we don't think about, like the recordings that you hear in an airport or on your GPS, those air all voiceover. So it's a vast industry, and there is lots of work for all types of people. You don't have to have any specific kind of voice because basically the people that are going to be buying your voice are looking for a specific voice. Of course, they're not gonna know how to tell you what that voices until they hear. So there people ranging from Children all the way up to, um, people in their eighties. There are men, there are women. So it's a very great opportunity to use your voice and, um, do something worthwhile. So give me a moment, we'll get started.
2. So Why Training?: So when I offered training as the first step to voice over, a lot of people really don't understand why I point them in that direction. Voiceover is ever changing. When I think about five years ago when I got my first bit of training, Ah, lot of it was Get a demo, put it on a CD, mail this CD out to all these people that buy voiceover. By the time I got out of my training at the end of 2011 that was no longer the way to get work. And things have changed again from last year to this year because equipment is not as expensive as it used to be. Before he usedto be a voice over person, someone would hire you. You would travel to a recording studio, you would do your job and you would go home. Now a lot of this is done at home, so there's a technical aspect that you have to learn so that you can do quality voiceover work. There is a process that you have to follow in order to audition and market for work. And then there is the type of voice that people are looking for at this moment at this particular moment, it's the conversational voice, which is what I do. Um, but before it was the big announcer voice that so much dying out. Um, but depending on what the niches, be it animation or commercial work or narration work, it's a different type of voice. So to be the best in a competitive market with lots of competition you want to start out with training. Training is going to get you a demo. Demo is what you need to get work. So training is going to be the first step in the process to becoming a professional voiceover talent. You can start without training, but understand that the jobs that you get will be a very low pay, meaning you'll have to work 40 60 even more hours a week between marketing and actually doing voiceover. So if he want a lucrative career and a life where you have a bit of freedom, you want to start with training. I have created a clickable guide for you, and I'm just gonna go through this guide and give a little spiel on each of these people that I've recommended for training. I have either trained with these people or I know them personally. And that's why I have picked thes 10 sources for voiceover training. They are trusted. They're not going to do things like have you created demo over a weekend after? You really don't have the knowledge yet. They're gonna push you. They're going to kind of help you decide what voice ever you want to do and what actual voice over you're gonna book, because that's not always the same thing.
3. #1 and #2: So here we go. Okay. Number one on my list is edge Studio. This is a very popular place to get your education from industry leaders. I'm just gonna click on our clickable guide and we're gonna go to Edge Studios website and we're just gonna do a little shuffle in Edge. Has a lot of resource is for our people who are interested in voiceover as well as people who are voiceover professionals. Up across the top, you'll see voice over production. They are a studio. There's voiceover education. There is pro voice actor. Resource is. And then this home studio technology. All these things are reasons why edge studio is one of the top places where people go to get education initially for voice over. And like I said, the industry is constantly changing. So you're not only going to train in the beginning, but you're gonna train throughout your career, So this is a good place to start and go back. We're gonna click on voice over education, and we can see all the classes that were scrolling just a second ago. Um, there also going across the top here, and you can see there is a freer free career center and you've got voiceover training you can see here. There's some alumni reviews. There are coaches that have specific niches. I'm just going to show you all the different coaches. So if you're interested in a particular type of voice over work, you can look at the bio of your coaches and figure out who you want to learn from. There are a lot of industry leaders here. One other good thing that edge studios does is lets say you just have a cheap mike and you want to try out voiceover for free. You can register here, and they have a monthly voice over competition where they give you some copy and you would record it and upload it. And then they listen to it and they pick a winner and it's free. So also, when you register here, you get access to the free career center, and some of the other resource is that would be very helpful for you in the future. So that's edge studios. That was my number one pick and will be going to number two. All right, we're back on the clickable guide Number two on my list of 10 places to learn. Voiceover is Bill Dewees. Bill lives in Chicago, and if you look at his website voice over training dot org's he is a voiceover coach as well as a professional voiceover. He has a very popular YouTube channel. So if you're not looking to invest any money yet in voice over, but you want to learn, go to bills YouTube channel. So on the clickable guide, we're just gonna click. And here we are on bills Voiceover training website. These are his products. He also does individual coaching if you're interested. He also holds events. Sometimes he travels to different locations. I know that he's had an event in California. Um, and I've seen him running the voiceover Ah, convention circuits. So, um, he also does a few workshops in Chicago and online, So you've got some options there. He's also got a resource page that you can look at and a blawg as well. I have the voiceover playbook, which is really good to get you started in voiceover. If you're already started and your careers kind of stale and you just need a refresher on how to market or anything like that, this is a very good starting place. If you take his advice and kind of have a lot of initiative, you can do very well. Um, but there's all kinds of things in here. There's the top 100 voiceover questions. That's a great one for people that are just trying to learn about what we've got. Vo Character Success, Audiobooks Success If you're interested in audio books ah, the voice of a fast track course. If you're looking toe, just get into voiceover and fast track to success. He's got that for you. He does demo productions. You see, he's got recordings from his some of his events that he's had, um, a course on pay to play sites, these air sites where you pay a membership fee in order to get access to voice over jobs and you bid against other voiceover talent. So he tells you how to succeed in doing that. So Bill is a great resource. You see his link to YouTube. If you want to check him out and see if you like his teaching style, he's a great option. So on to number three
4. #3 and #4: All right, Number three on our list is voiceover extra. This is a site created by John Florian, and it has a ton of information about voiceover, and there is a hub of voiceover learning. So let's go there. Click on my little guy Looks like already clicked on it, but we are at voiceover extra. If you see here, there are it's tons of options here. There's a classified section. There is a calendar. There's a queues. There's a contact us, but across the top, you see, for newbies, there's a whole section just for people looking to learn about voiceover on the side. There are resource is for, um, equipment as well as books and other things. Websites learning. Um, but what we're most interested in is this for newbie section before I get there, I just want to discuss this home page a little bit more cause they're ton of resource is on this particular site as well, not just from John, but also from leaders in the industry. Just like edge studios. Lots of guests, um, teachers who come in and do all kinds of ah learning seminars and training classes, this middle section where it says news and features. All these are articles broken down into the areas that they are talking about. We've got the business and marketing because that is a huge part of your voice over business. Home studio, another huge part of your business. Like I said, you don't go to the studio as much anymore. Some people do. I do rarely. It's very rare. Most of my stuff is recorded at home in my home studio, so this is about setting it up also about other options. How to do mixing and condensing and those types of things, Um, industry news voice acting in general. And then you've got some Resource is here. You also see across the top these same settings. It's just another way to get to these parts. Um, the most important part you wanna look up is this training section. There are constantly webinars going on, and webinars are basically things like what you're looking at right now. It's a seminar, but you could be anywhere in the world. Log in and they're very inexpensive. Let's look at the one that's coming up on December the seventh. If you look at the price, that's only $39 and you can learn about becoming a voiceover athlete, which is basically we're gonna scroll down a little bit so we can learn a little bit more. And that's basically why you need toe. Learn to add exercise into your life and how it will improve your voice over work. So it's a good seminar. Um, John Mellie is a great guy. He does the voice over marketing podcast, which I do. I've listened to on a regular basis, and there are a lot of great tidbits of information there. But that's basically after you have gotten your initial training. Let's go back and go to the newcomer section. This tells you how to use this website and where to get started, and it basically pulls all the articles that you want to read cause the's are geared towards newcomers to the voiceover industry, and this has come totally free. So if you want to learn about voice over again and don't want to spend any money, come here first. Um, also edge studios where it shows you to go. There was a newcomer section there and of course you've got the whole YouTube channel of build. We so far. So let's go to the next one. All right? Number four is Larry Hudson. He owns voice Over Heaven, and he also has a organization called Wow, that meets regularly. And they dio, um, online kind of exercises and improv, and they talk all things voice over. So let's go over to V o Heaven. All right, so we are in V o heaven. And if you see here, he does training on the applications that you're gonna use in your home studio to actually record your voice over, um, on skill, share their a couple classes on how to use audacity. That's a free audio recording software. We've also got adobe addition how to use that for voiceover purposes so that you can have everything formatted correctly for people that are buying actual voice over. Um, like I said, we've got the weekly voiceover Wow, workouts that you can get. And if you look, it's very affordable. $20 a month. You've got how to get to voice over full time. You've got audition booking tracker. You've got calculators. You got quiet booths. Um, Larry Hudson actually teaches webinars through voiceover extra. So when you click on Webinars. You'll see his name pop up a lot, and that's where I got familiar with him. But like he's like you see here he does work independently as well for education purposes. So on to number five, we are at the halfway mark.
5. #5 and #6: all right, we are halfway done. And if you notice the next one is Tish Hicks. She is based out of L. A, and she is the owner of the Vo Dough. Joe and I have done some personal coaching with Tish, and she is a great teacher. She's done some work for Subaru. She's done on camera. She's basically taking the idea of voiceover and mixed it in with martial arts learning. So if you're interested in martial arts, she's gonna be who you want to go to the learn from, because that's what she kind of brings into her voice over training techniques. So let's go to the dough Joe and the first thing she's got on her learning page. You can see there's all these different things here. Um, she does webinars, and she does live teachings in L. A. So if you're in L. A. You can actually go to the dough. Joe, if you're not in L. A. She does do Web training and coaching, and you can see that here. There's a thing called Fight Club when you're actually a professional and you have to be vetted to be able to go to fight club. But you basically, um, auditioned for casting directors. And at the end of Fight Club, there's a winner, and that person wins an opportunity to work with whoever the guest casting director is. She's got some free webinars here so you can get like an intro to voice over. You see, right here you should do voice over. This is going to be alive weekend, but she also does this online as well, so it's good to check back and see what she's got going on. And I'm just going to scroll through here real quick. Doesn't look like she's got very much going on. Oh, you should do voice over. It looks like it's sold out. Currently. It's very popular. Like I said, she's got a different take on voiceover training than some of the other teachers. And then she's got some reviews, and there is beautiful Ch'timi. You can also schedule, uh, 15 minutes voice over once over consultation. And that's where somebody who is also already doing voiceover. But let's just click on the free Webinar since we're here. And this is for on camera actors who want to start doing voice over, and it looks like she had one back in November. And who knows? Maybe there'll be another one. So you just have to come back and kind of check and see what Tisha is going on. But that's number five. Tish Hicks. Go to the dough, Joe, and we're skating on to the next one, all right, before I go to number six and there you see it on the screen and you're just itching to find out what number six is. I just wanted to stress to you that when you download your guide just the way that I'm clicking on each title, you can click on each title. It's gonna automatically take you to the resource. So just remember, once you download your resource guide your printable version, you can print it or you just save it on your computer. And then you can just click to whichever resource you want to use, and you can use it over and over and over and over again. So I tried to make it easy for you. Next on the list is the Global Voiceover Academy, so it's another source for voiceover learning all around the world. So let's go there and the first thing we see is workouts. You see the different kinds of narration you see there's medical narration. We've got intro to narration techniques. We've got promo voiceover techniques you got building characters for animation. Audiobooks. There is unlimited learning available. You see, you can give do online classes. You can look at a recorded webinar. There is demo production, and there's a free consultation if you just don't know where to get started. You've got personalized coaching so you can do one on one coaching career. Kurt coaching any of these coaching things here? You've got group classes that are running in California. You've got services you got. Resource is, once you get your career started, um, Webinars we'll look at all Webinars. Okay, we just clicked on Webinars and you can see Ah, whole plethora of different classes. Most of the classes don't require a prerequisite. So, um, if you're new, you can kind of diggin wherever you wanna dig in. But just know that you want to try to do the 101 things first so that you aren't lost in a more advanced class. Um, also, if you just wanna learn things like accents for everyone. That's a question and answer with a dialect coach. We have more audacity. Training. Um, fine tuning your voice strategy on you See the prices here. Um, but with Global Voice Academy, you're getting training not just from boys over professionals, but also from other industry leaders. Like ever. Oliver. He's a boot director for a talent agency. We've got talent agents that you can learn from. We've got the dialect coach, of course, Um and there are a lot of different classes for you to take, and they're pretty economical. And I just want you to understand how economical this is. When I first learned to do voiceover, it cost me about $3000. So you are trying to learn voice ever out of really good time where you can learn from industry leaders now for basically nothing, and you can continue to learn from industry leaders or economical cost. So again, training is your first step, and it is so convenient to do because you can do it from your home now because of technology so on to the next resource
6. #7 and #8: Okay, Number seven on my list is Mark Scott. The funny thing about Mark Scott is we actually just saw him on the other screen because he teaches classes for the Global Voice Academy. But he has his own website. He does his own trainings. Sometimes they're even free. So let's go to his website and see what he's offering directly. So we're just gonna click on Our clickable died, and this is his free three part course on becoming a voice over person. So if you look here, you can start watching his three part video. Siri's about turning your voice over. Dream into our voice over reality, and he's got some reviews on his course. And if you go to his main site, which is just gonna be Mark Scott voiceover dot com, he can see his information, his rates, his demos and then along the side, the right hand side. You see a master class in Twitter? Probably Twitter for Voice Ira. Let's just look and see what that is. No, this is actually a one. A one training for Twitter. So he's doing a Twitter course. He's got a voice over acting one on one course he's got nimble for voiceovers. Seven marketing emails that convert you see that one's a little bit more expensive. Um, and then he does article. So he's got a blawg, and you can read his block post for free, and they are very informative. Ah, his Twitter account actually is very informative. Informative? That's how I became familiar with Mark Scott through Twitter. He was posting his block posts on Twitter, and his blawg is very informative. His Facebook presence is very informative, and on occasion he offers, uh, guides. If we go back to his home page, he's got a free e book tools for my voice over toolbox. You look to the side. You can put in your email address and get that free guide from him. He's got these air, his block posts, you conceal his blog's, and then he's got information for his clients as well. So that's Mark Scott, and he is in Canada. It's just in case you were wondering, Let's go to the next. Okay, next on the list is Rodney Saulsberry. Once I click on this link, you may recognize him because he's actually an on camera actor as well as a musician, and he does voice over and he's in L. A as well. So we're gonna go to Rodney's coaching site. Um, you've got his voice over information as well, too. Um, you look here he does politicals. He does trailers, pro mose and commercials. You can look at him as an actor. You disease, pressure leases and you can see him on the red carpet. We are interested in voiceover training, So I have skipped to the voiceover coaching section of his website so that we could go over this. And what he offers is a little different from what the other people offer. He has voiceover training as well. He does conference calls, and you can register for one of his conference calls. But he offers what's called the consultants club membership. I'm gonna click on there for you. And basically, for a low monthly rate, you get access to learn from Rodney and access to YouTube, videos that he's recorded and phone calls. You get one free 30 minute session a month on one free 62nd group session on the phone per month. If you are a consultants club member and then here's some highlights of what you get critiques on your current demo. If you have one, you get access to conference calls and the conference call archives blogged posts. Um, he'll help you re editor demo to make it more competitive in the market. This is pretty much for Advanced, but he's got some options here for people just getting into voiceover as well. There's a $50 per month option for associate. You don't get the personal coaching, but you do get access to the conference call archives, the blog's interviews and educational videos and audio training modules. So look, you can cancel at any time and you can pay with PayPal. So just you got some reviews and, of course, members of Consultants Club wearing their consultants club shirts. So this is an option as well. And if you notice there is a vast array of training, so you pick your poison on to the next
7. #9 and #10 plus Conclusion: all right. We are already to number nine. We have one more left after this one, and then I'm going to let you spread your wings and fly. Okay, so now we're going to Vo to go. Go. And when we get to this page, you're going to see another familiar face. This is more training out of l. A. And I have I had the pleasure of taking a few training webinars, um, through vo to go go and have had interactions asking questions and such. If you are a fan of the show, the NBC show Heroes, then the puppet Master will look very familiar to you. He is one of the teachers and creators, co creators of Vo to Go Go. He also, if you're an actor, is one of the co creators of rehearsal the mobile app for actors that are rehearsing their lines. So that's a very interesting fact there. But vo to go go is dedicated totally to voiceover training. There are articles there are training's If you see here, there are live classes mastering voice bank mastering voice registry Mastering voice over pricing bonus on Mike Voiceover workshop thes air workshops that you can actually go to physically. There are also a number of online courses and you can do online learnings as well. Okay, because most of you guys were going to do this. We're just gonna go ahead and click on become a voiceover pro. Um, this is going to be a ongoing commitment to learning voiceover. So if we scroll down, you're going to see the same structure as Rodney Saulsberry. You're gonna see monthly fi options, and if you scroll down even further, you can see some reviews and then what you'll get for your membership options. And if you see there are a lot of benefits to these, you can go to his website and click on the ones that you want. Um, you can also click to sign up, and I'm sure it will give you options. And, um, you know all the features and benefits, But what I want you to click on initially when you get here, since you're just learning about voiceover is the get started section. This is where somebody who is just learning voice over the best part of this is it is free , free, free, free, free, free. So you want to read all this information, you can register for vo to go go membership. You get daily vo mentoring. You can click on the confirmation link in your email it instant access to getting started in voiceover class. And as you scroll down, it gives you a little bit like, Are you serious about voiceover and notice again? He Reese emphasizes the fact that there is no charge whatsoever. I don't get paid for recommending these individuals. Like I said, either I know them. I have learned from them or I have met them. And, um, I know other people who have trained with them. So that's why I'm recommending these 10 people, and you can see here there is no charge. So if your brand new, these are the best places to get started because you don't know if you want to commit to a monthly fee or if voiceover is even something that, in reality after you learn the ends and outs, the good and bad pros and cons. If it's something that's really going to work for your lifestyle or work for you in general or you don't want to invest in a full on studio and patches so that people can listen to you while you do voiceover and the technique and the training and all the other things that it takes to be a voice over person. You can learn all that before you start investing large sums of money into voiceover. So that's Rio to go, though, we've got one more and it's a doozy. So we will see you in a second. Thank you for hanging in there with me. Here is number 10. It is Camp box. This is a training system for Children on Lee. The reason why I put this here is because often times parents will be looking for things that their Children want to do. Um, a child may want to be an actor and actress. Ah, child may actually want to be the voice of a cartoon or a commercial. Uh, Lisa Biggs is the leader of this website, and I know her very well. She's a personal friend and, uh, can't Box is a great place for Children. Toe. Learn about voice. Um, so let's head over to camp. All right, so we're on the camp box website. Um, here is an opportunity to sign up for the next camp box. Webinar. Those happen periodically. Here is a video on intro voice Over for Kids, and if you look here, you'll see their voice over workshops one and two days. Those are throughout the country. We have private coaching with Lisa Biggs and career counseling. If you want to start, you know, getting your child into voiceover and planning out their career. You've seen my list of 10 places to learn about voiceover online. What's next? Let's say you didn't like any of those 10 options that I gave you. When you do a Google search and you're looking for voiceover training, what you want to look for is some place that is not gonna rush you to do a demo. So any workshop that says Hey, hang out with me for two days or hang out with me for five days and I'll do you a demo at the end of that. Those are not the places you want to go because you're not gonna be ready for a demo in one day. You're not gonna be ready in two days. You're not really gonna be ready in a month. Um, there's a lot of little nuance things that you have to learn with time and you can learn pretty quickly. So I wouldn't say Wait a year to do a demo. No, that's not true either. But you want an instructor that's going to work with your ability. So, um, you want to make sure that you and your instructor get each other? It's a one on one type relationship rather than a class of people that don't know each other because it's going to change your dynamic. And voiceover ultimately is an individual thing that you do with your voice on Lee. You're going to spend a lot of time alone. So So get that in your head just to begin with. If you're with the coach and they tell you something and it doesn't make sense, okay and they explain it to you, and then you guys get to a place where you kind of can communicate on the same level as great. That's a good instructor, and you want to stick with that. If it seems like your instructor speaking Spanish and you're speaking Chinese and you never really get on the same level, it's time for you to find a new coach, a new mentor. I I'm not a trainer, and that's why I have suggested 10 quality training. Resource is, that's why I give out this guide, because with the marketing piece of voice over and my life and all my other obligations, unfortunately, training is just not a place that I have time to go to right now. Maybe sometime in the future. Um, I still feel five years in that I'm kind of new and I've got a lot to learn, and I'm still trying toe navigate. What part of voice over I want to be my niche pretty much right now. I do whatever comes in, so I do voice over for commercials. Sometimes do E Learning's. I do video games. I do Children's voices at videos. I do e books. How do your books You name it, I do it, and I'm still trying to figure out where I want to focus if I want to focus. So with all the things that go on in my career, I'm not really in a place to feel like I have 100% teach. But these teachers are 100% a plus. Teachers that can totally jump. Start your voice over journey and it is a journey no to waste over. People have the same path of how they got into voiceover and who they trained with or what methods work for them. It's a very individual process, so know that going in, it's also a very difficult process. Sometimes you'll have a lot of work. Sometimes you'll have no work. Sometimes he will be stressed about rent, so just know all these things going in. It's It's a really tough industry, and as technology gets better, it gets tougher. Thank you very much for taking the time to go through my course. Download the clickable guide at the bottom you can see from my screen cast. It is very easy to go through all 10 of the websites just with the click of a button, rather than having to copy and paste or even worse, type every website out. Um, please go take a look and, um, find one of these coaches were one of these websites that you feel like you can learn from , and what I would like for your project is I would love to hear your feedback on one of the 10 suggested methods of learning voiceover, that would just be awesome. So good luck on your voice over journey, and I hope that you have unlimited unbridled success, have a wonderful day and take some of my other classes.
Moniece Robinson
