If I had the time to put together a VO learning program this is what I would do.
First, naturally, I’d recommend reading through my website.
In a class setting, I would aim to strengthen acting, improv and auditioning competency while complementing this with a real world business mindset.
1. For anyone interested in “show business,” I feel it’s important to break into “show” long before breaking into “business.”
Art before money.
As I say over and over on my site- I prefer that a professional artist’s voyage start free of the distraction, confinement and obstruction of money. You start as an amateur- literally for the love of it. You perform because you love it and it brings you (on balance) enthusiasm, enjoyment and satisfaction. Start with any performing for free for fun, trying it out and seeing how the shoe fits. Assignment: get in a play, an open mic, stand up, childrens theater show, read for kids at a library or rest home.
1a. An actor is fundamentally a collaborative creator. Assignment: make a show, a podcast story, a TikTok performance with one or more others. This will need to be an ongoing habit- creating stories/performances you like with others.
2. Improv: Next, I want you to get used to and good at improv. (Click this link for a deeper dive into how to put together an improv company.) A live audience’s feedback always brings an improvisational flavor to any live performing. It also serves as a corrective force that instructs one’s grasp of timing and calls for wielding your “show energy” with intent. An improv class with a good teacher can be a helpful start, but nothing teaches improv like improv in front of an actual audience. Improv games in a class with good guidance can be a safe start, but performing for a live audience without a supportive net is even better.
3. I’d recommend all aspiring actors to read a book on marketing and business. I know it’s probably the last thing an artist would want to bother with but it’s important to see yourself as a business start up, once you’ve decided you like acting enough to make a go at paying the bills with it. Start by reading: “Marketing Basics for Your Small Business,” by Esparza.
4. Getting good at acting: There are many differing views on what good acting is and how to get there. What is valid or works for one learner may not work at all for another. And many with mediocre advice or with parasitic designs are happy to take your money or insist on you signing up for their “program,” no matter the results or pay off.
I don’t mean to imply that all teachers or programs are worthless or worse, but I will say that I don’t see becoming a voice actor as mostly a matter of classroom training over real world experience. I see it as the opposite. Experience is the best teacher, where both success and stumbles are most instructive. Take class study early on and in moderation, is my view.
For me, whatever works is valid and different for each and all acting is a matter of where you place the emphasis on “external techniques” versus “internally sourced authenticity.”
5. I’ll recommend an acting book that I rather liked and that spoke to me as useful. That book is, “Mastering Shakespeare,” by Kaiser. I like that Kaiser frames learning as a conversation, not a monologue. I also like the idea of practicing adding color or depth or flavor to performing by choosing specific seasonings of tone or focus. I suppose his take might be characterized as more “British” or perhaps “externalized,” as opposed to a psycho-drama process of dredging up inner emotions, memories or even trauma to have at the ready to apply to a script.
Kaiser’s brief book may be a bit inscrutable to a reader who isn’t familiar with the Shakespearean scenes used as examples, but his concept of improving one’s acting by intentionally applying very simple and specific seasoning choices strikes me as useful, especially in VO, where we are called upon to perform multiple distinct reads, with choices that must be varied yet appropriate.
6. Excavate yourself: As I detail elsewhere, I do find benefit in exploring, excavating and bringing to the light my ever-flowing inner currents of emotion and memory. All of us have vast stores of buried treasure along with rivers of emotion or trauma and chambers of powerful energy and vital fuel. We are also constantly processing our lives on many levels as it comes at us.
I am on a daily ongoing expedition to discover and make available these inner resources with what I call my “dry erase diary,” where I write for an hour or two first thing upon awakening. I write whatever I thing or feel, whatever bothers or entices or energizes my mind and heart. I allow myself radical, unfiltered honesty, letting out the good, bad and ugly and then afterwards, I delete it entirely. I’m then free of it and my mind is charged with an authentic and honest exercise of self revelation. I feel more myself and have more of myself to bring to my life and my work. So, my assignment is this: make a habit of writing in a daily journal for yourself.
7. In addition to accessing your life memories and emotions, acting is dependent on accessing your imagination, along with free association. You need to fill your reservoir of imagination with what is beyond you. Read of people, places, and things not of you or of your world. Read a lot. Also travel to new cities and locations. Be around people you’re not typically hanging around. Splash around in humanity- it’s part of an actor’s job to wade into the world to experience our common humanity.
8. An actor needs human understanding, a grasp of psychology and the rules of human interactions. The more you are surrounded by relationships that matter- friends, family, group activists, group creative collaborations, even pets- the better you will grasp the human condition and the more authentic insight you can dial in to your acting.
Acting is in a sense a rechanneling of your experience, your imagination, and what you have learned from others. There is no better human education than a long term relationship, such as marriage, having a child or even caring for a pet. Even helping someone. The stakes of caring for another are our ultimate source of meaning and satisfaction and the more of this in your life the better- as an artist and as a human.
9. I’m a big fan of filling one’s internal database of popular story telling and fortifying that with a growing understanding of the history and evolution of the entertainment industry.
First, as I detail on my “Fantastical Fundamentals” page, I’d love for an aspiring voice actor to be familiar with certain iconic books, TV shows and movies as well as even video games. I find it also very useful to be up on what is remarkable and influential in popular media, as it not only offers fresh ideas and inspiration, but it also informs an actor’s awareness of what stories are being told as well as their tone and pacing in our contemporary context. Most all movies and TV is derivative of something else that is popular and successful or that once was.
Knowing a history of entertainment, its shows and personalities, the icons and high water marks, also provides an actor with a reassuring short hand to communicate with creative decision makers in a session. If you “know the code” you inspire trust and confidence.
Read one or both recent bios on Buster Keaton. His varied career as a movie maker, writer and performer from vaudeville in his youth all the way to movies in his later years is an excellent overview of an enduring creative life that also provides an excellent sketch of the evolution of the entertainment industry. He moved with the disruptive changes of the entertainment industry with admirable sustained success. Two excellent books on Keaton’s life are by Dana Stevens (“Camera Man”) and James Curtis’ “Buster Keaton.” As a side note, I’d observe that much of the visual story telling in modern movie making and animated comedy and timing track back to Keaton’s brilliant, innovative early movie making (and to Vaudeville in general).
Another recommendation: If you’re angling for working in animation voice overs, read Reid Mitenbuler’s “Wild Minds,” an excellent and entertaining detailing of the evolution of animation in America in the 20th century.
10. Auditioning solo: This part of class should be as much like a real world audition as possible. You are provided copy and must produce two contrasting auditions on your own and bringing it with you to next class to be played and critiqued. It is amazing how clear the good and bad leap out at you when played against other’s takes, as happens with real world casting directors.
Side note: an invaluable learning experience would be assisting a casting director as they sorted through their various auditions.
11. Classroom session: Next would be an actual session record that would entail a substantial role performed by learners with some major roles performed by seasoned pros as we record an entire show’s episode. Each enters the studio as they would a gig. You learn by doing, being directed, but also by seeing live what a pro brings to the room and how they respond to direction or problem solving that comes up.
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