The Hidden World of Voice Overs – Three
Posted on October 8, 2010
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When a channel starts up, there is a huge amount of work to do. this was the case in the early days of channel five, which from a standing start had to create all the programming, and all the online promos and trails to be able to broadcast 24 hours a day. each programme running in prime time has to have it’s own set of promotional trails. you’ll be familiar no doubt with ” tonight from nine on bloom berg”. Or the one that I became well known for, and which I still do an example of when people ask me what I do. ” Saturday night……on….BBC One”
If you catch the wave of a channel start up, and get cast as one of the voices, it’s great work. In the voice over world great work is regular work. Generally a set of channel execs will ask a producer to cast a load of voices for the next season. the agents get rung, word gets out and you are invited along to cast. If you are low down the food chain with small agent you go to these castings for free. By the time I moved to my existing agent, you are high enough up the food chain for one of two things to happen – either you just get the Job and avoid the casting altogether, or you get paid to go to castings. Its one of the ways of knowing that you have ” arrived”
Someone told me that on any one day in London there are over 4000 voice overs available. With that thought it’s amazing any one person gets any work at all. but the truth is, it’s just like the acting community but more elite. there are 4000 people who in some way shape or form say they can do voice overs, but listen to the channels and Id say the are fewer than 300 who are getting a decent living.
Two things have happened that have changed things. one is the sheer volume of work that requires voice overs has increased massively. secondly, technology has advanced which means that you can do voice overs for the entire world, from one single studio.
This means more work, easier to do, but it still requires you to be known as a voice, good enough, proficient and able.
The early days
I graduated from university with a degree in media production. We had made a film, a radio play and the students who were good at maths did computer graphics, which was practically an unknown thing in 1990. Having been absolutely abysmal at maths, the subject and I had agreed to part company the minute I failed GCSE maths for the fifth time. I had in fact lost touch with maths the way earlier than that. The first foray into algebra at 13 was enough for me to throw down my parker ink pen and give up. Maths is number right? Not letters. then we had to get a scientific calculator, which if I see one in the stationery store still makes me breaks out into a cold sweat.
I took maths at 16 and more or less guessed the entire paper. My pencil had 5 edges. maths paper B had multiple choice where you had to choose one of 5 answers. You can guess the rest. I marked each side of the pencil with an A B C D or E, and spun the pencil for each question. 15 minutes in and Sanjit Bannergee who was sitting to my left was on question 3. Id finished. he was unfamiliar with any grade other than an A. first time taking maths I got a D. Thats not a bad result, and I had a boatload more fun, and probably am still having more fun in a day that Sanjit will have in his entire lifetime. Ha!
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