I’m sure you’re very familiar with how this works: 80% of your voice-over career will be auditioning, auditioning, and you guessed it…more auditioning. I don’t know about you all, but I never looked forward to auditions. I was raised as a musical theater kid and I would get this plummeting feeling in my stomach every time I approached a stage or a room full of casting directors. No matter how many years passed, the audition anxiety never seemed to wane. I remember thinking, “I wish they wouldn’t look at me so intensely. What are they writing? Why is it so long?”
When I discovered voice acting, I got this hopeful feeling, “No one can see me. This is great!” I thought I had finally cured my panicky sinking stomach. I get behind my mic and pull up the audition slides, and what do you know, there goes my stomach once again leaving my body.
How is this possible? No one is here to watch me audition – it is just me and my microphone. It turns out that my own thoughts on my performance are just as intimidating as a room filled with every casting director in the world. Knowing I couldn’t completely escape this feeling, I needed a way to make it more enjoyable. Thus, I concocted my very own ‘Audition Recipe’.
Key Ingredients
Everything in its place.
Before every audition, you’ll need to set yourself up for success. You would never run without stretching first and surely you wouldn’t cook spaghetti without tomato sauce. All good things require preparation.
- Vocal Prep – Apples
- I bet you weren’t expecting actual ingredients, but apples have really helped the overall performance of my voice. I had a voice-over coach who insisted I eat an apple before every recording. It helps hydrate the vocal cords and makes my throat feel gunk-free. I usually pair this with a cup of hot peppermint tea and of course, water to stay hydrated.
- Vocal Prep – Tongue Twisters
- In voice-over you speak a lot more than you are used to. You’re going to be re-reading lines over and over and you’re going to hit a point where your mouth stops working. Certain everyday words are going to start to feel unfamiliar in your mouth and suddenly may even sound alien to you. This is especially true if you’re reading long paragraphs for audiobooks or narration. Before every audition, I make sure to give my mouth a workout with some exercises and tongue twisters. You can always do a quick Google search for popular tongue twisters and choose your favorites. These are some of my personal favorites:
- “You know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York.”
- “Red Leather, Yellow Leather.”
- “The Big Black Bug Bled Black Blood.”
- “Susie works in a Shoeshine Shop. Where She Shines She Sits, and Where She Sits She Shines.”
- In voice-over you speak a lot more than you are used to. You’re going to be re-reading lines over and over and you’re going to hit a point where your mouth stops working. Certain everyday words are going to start to feel unfamiliar in your mouth and suddenly may even sound alien to you. This is especially true if you’re reading long paragraphs for audiobooks or narration. Before every audition, I make sure to give my mouth a workout with some exercises and tongue twisters. You can always do a quick Google search for popular tongue twisters and choose your favorites. These are some of my personal favorites:
I usually repeat each tongue twister three times. Feel free to change up how you say these phrases and emphasize different words for variety.
- Vocal Prep – Cold read
- Voice-over work has taught me many things, but my biggest discovery? Sometimes, I don’t know how to read. Practicing pronouncing words you know you will stumble on or simply reading aloud to get a feel of unfamiliar words in your mouth can really help set your mind at ease when auditioning. If you feel you have been saying the same line a thousand times and can’t seem to get it down, take a step back. Remember to breathe. Take a few minutes outside of the booth if you have to. I roll around on my floor for a few minutes and imagine I’m a jellyfish. Whatever it is you need to do to reframe and reset.
Time to Cook
Now that you’re set up for success, it’s time to put all of that into a hot skillet – or in this case, your microphone – and begin your audition.
- How you should sound vs How you want to sound
- On every audition slide you will see what kind of voice the casting directors are looking for. For example: female, mid-twenties, optimistic and confident, American southern accent, etc. Sometimes they will even include Youtube clips of examples of how they would like the talent to sound. Now, I understand that this can be helpful to many, but I soon learned hearing examples was hindering my performance. I was trying to sound exactly like the audio examples I was hearing. I was bending my voice to fit their exact descriptions leaving no room for my own creativity. Before you listen to any examples, how does this character sound to you? How do you want to portray this character? How does this character’s voice intertwine with your own?Of course, you don’t want to completely ignore the voice characteristics casting directors want, but before you hear another’s voice, decide and settle into your own first.
- Love your non-verbals
- If you’re doing character voices, it’s important to include non-verbals. This includes, but not limited to: grunting, sighing, giggling, gasping, and more. It really brings the character together.
- Does adding extra squander your audition?
- Following your non-verbals, say there isn’t necessarily a giggle written into the script you’re reading for, is it okay to add it in your audition? If you feel the character would have laughed, then laugh. If it says your character is climbing the side of a building, adding in some non-verbals that express struggle or movement will not hurt your audition. One of the many beautiful things about being a voice-over artist is how you can set the scene without physically seeing the whole picture.
Let it Cool
You’ve done it. You recorded your audition, you cleaned up the audio and you sent it in. Now you’re waiting for an answer, for a reply. Then those fun thoughts come in. “I haven’t heard anything back yet. They must think I’m awful. I knew I shouldn’t have added anything extra.” Thus this endless cycle of torturing yourself continues. Preparation for an audition sets you up for success, but what you do after you’ve made your submission is just as important.
- Post Audition Check-in
- Ultimately, this is a wellness check I do after I submit my auditions. I’ve set myself up for success and I have to continue forward with success in mind. That means no sitting around refreshing your inbox to see if you’ve received a reply. Did you do your best? Did you enjoy yourself? Did you discover a new sound you didn’t know your throat could make? If your answer is ‘yes’ to at least one of these, you’ve done your part. Now, let it go. On to the next audition. You are your biggest supporter. So, don’t forget to clap for yourself at the end of the day.
This recipe has helped me work through my audition nerves little by little and has taught me not to take myself too seriously. There’s a lot of self-discovery in voice-over. With every audition comes more experience, which leads to growth, and then inevitably welcomes reward.
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