Here at Such A Voice, we bring together some pretty incredible professionals from all different parts of the world to provide our students with a top voice-over education. Our staff members have such a wide variety of backgrounds and unique personalities. From working VO actors starring in movies, video games, and national TV commercial campaigns, to producers spending their days working on voice-over demos as well as broadcast voice-over work, to copywriters, casting directors and many other industry skills in between! We genuinely love bringing our expertise and our experiences together to create the best programs for our students.
For this week’s staff spotlight, we’d like to introduce you to our Vice President of Production, Claudine Ohayon!
SAV: Hey Claudine, thanks for joining us today! We’d love for you to tell everyone a little bit about what you do here at Such A Voice.
Ohayon: I do a couple of different things here at Such A Voice. I serve as a producer to students, which means I help prepare them for their demo recording sessions, as well as direct them once they get into the studio. I am also the Vice President of Production, which means that I oversee the production process through to the final product of the amazing demos we create for our students.
SAV: You have an exciting background in the arts as an Emmy Award winning director/producer, a live announcer, and a killer VO talent! Tell us more!!
Ohayon: I was always very interested in and excited by the many aspects of production and the arts. I begged for a Panasonic tape recorder for my eighth birthday. When I got it (thanks Mom and Dad!), I would go out into my neighborhood in Brooklyn and interview people about their lives, and then I would sort of do the voice-over parts in between the interviews. In high school, I directed original musicals and I would have parts in the performances as well. When I got to college, I was drawn to studying journalism and television production. In my senior year, I did an internship at CBS news and pretty much kept working from there, landing jobs in public relations at several major networks. Then I worked at VH1 for several years, where I won an Emmy Award for a World AIDS Day Special that I produced and directed about people living with AIDS.
The whole time I was doing the production work I was also performing. I did improv in New York City, appeared in some indie films that friends of mine made, and acted in small roles on TV shows. I first started doing voice-over work for promos for friends and co-workers at MTV and Lifetime. Then I decided that I wanted to pursue voice work more seriously. The only thing I needed was a demo, so I produced my own. I got together with an engineer friend of mine with copy I had ripped out of magazines and transcribed from TV commercials. He recorded my reads and then we produced the spots and cut a demo just like I do now with our students at Such A Voice! Soon after, I landed an agent. I have been working in voice-over ever since. I’ve voiced commercials, promos, narrations, science and medical videos, animation, audio books, and live announcing, to name a few.
For a long time, it was frowned upon to be a “multi-hyphenate.” People wanted to put me in a box of either being a producer/director type or a performer/actor type. I’m really glad that’s not the case anymore.
SAV: What was your favorite voice-over job that you’ve done so far?
Ohayon: I did a couple of full-length animated films, “Plan Bee” and “An Ant’s Life,” playing the idealistic lead bee and the brassy ant that gets things done. Voicing these animated characters was such an incredibly fun experience. Animation is my dream gig!
SAV: We’d love it if you’d tell us something (if you wouldn’t mind sharing) that most people don’t know about you.
Ohayon: French was my first language. My mom is Swiss and my dad is French, so they only spoke French at home. When they put me in preschool, I cried nonstop. About a week later, the school called my parents and suggested to them that maybe I was crying because I didn’t understand English – and they were right! So I stayed home for several months and learned English from watching soap operas. True story.
SAV: Who is someone that you really admire?
Ohayon: I have been a long-time admirer of Pamela Adlon. When she played one of the friends in the quintessential teen movie “Say Anything,” everyone said I sounded just like her. At that point in my life, a lot of people made fun of my deep and raspy voice – a group of guys even used to go around calling me a truck driver! But being compared to her was empowering and gave me the sense that maybe my voice could be an asset.
Her career has always been enviable to me- she’s done a ton of animation, winning an Emmy for voicing Bobby on King of the Hill and she’s appeared in a bunch of really interesting series. She’s now writing, producing, directing, and starring in her own show, “Better Things.” I actually auditioned to voice the promos for her show this year!
SAV: What’s a skill that you’d like to learn and why?
Ohayon: I would very much like to have the skill of being able to sing harmony because my bucket list fantasy dream job is to be a backup singer.
SAV: Any voice-over marketing disasters that you can share with us? (So we can all learn how to avoid them…)
Ohayon: I can’t think of a single particular “disaster,” but more of an overall attitude of not promoting myself consistently enough. I used to feel like I didn’t want to “bother” people by following up, reaching back out, and putting my work out there in a promotional way. I have gotten better at that, but could always use improvement.
SAV: What does a perfect day look like to you?
Ohayon: Waking up without the assistance of an alarm, doing my morning meditation, then having a great cup of coffee out in my yard on a crisp fall day with my husband and dog. Doing some creative work in my studio. Going for an afternoon hike with a friend and having a really good talk. Spending time with my kids – just enjoying being with one another. Having a good phone call with my parents. Doing some more work in the studio. Being sous chef to my husband as he makes a delicious dinner (he is an amazing cook) while my son provides the soundtrack (he’s a gifted singer and piano player) and my daughter bakes something decadent for dessert. Eating together as a family outside with a nice glass of wine. Taking a walk around the neighborhood after dinner, then snuggling up and watching something funny. Sleeping on fresh sheets with the windows open. Please note: a perfect day does not include laundry or errands!!!
SAV: I have to ask… would you prefer a comedy club or a dance club?
Ohayon: That’s tough because I LOVE improv and I definitely love to laugh. Truth be told, I’m usually the first one on the dance floor and often the very last one to leave at the end of the night.
SAV: We’d love it if you’d tell us one of your favorite inspirational quotes. Something that drives you to follow your dreams and to never stop learning, growing, thriving, and having fun in this exciting voice-over industry!
Ohayon: I am not much of a quotes person, but one that really speaks to me is: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
Next week, we will be catching up with one of our voice-over coaches, Dave Tolar. Stay tuned!
