Author Archives: Christian Reifsteck

Typecasting, is it Really that Bad?

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Typecasting is the state where an actor is constantly brought in to act for a particular type of character. It happens across all forms of acting and voice acting is no exception. Some people will be grateful that their voice serves a selected character but others will be rather miffed at the idea of only being able to voice one or two types of characters throughout their careers.

Honestly? I don’t blame them.

Part of the appeal of voice acting (in my opinion) is the idea of being able to voice a wide variety of different characters in different stories across different mediums such as games and animation. To suddenly realize that you might only fit a select few types closes many doors you thought were previously open. Not a good feeling at all.

So what can you do?

The best advice is, of course, practice! Not just practice your regular routine practice voicing things you’ve never voiced before! Take characters from shows you’re watching and record over their lines, try and figure out what makes the character really them. Pick up on techniques other voice actors are using and add those to your repertoire.

But there’s a hard aspect about attempting to break out of a typecast.

If your voice doesn’t commonly fit for the character you’re going for, you’re going to have a much harder time competing for roles than someone whose voice does fit. Is it impossible? Of course not, and don’t let anyone stop you from going for it! But you do need to think about this before submitting that audition.

But if people like your work with a particular type, is it really all that bad?

Personally I think it’s subjective. Someone who constantly voices a young main protagonist may have a much better opinion of their typecast than someone who only voices side characters and the like. But if you enjoy the character you’re voicing then just embrace it and take comfort in the fact that you can probably play that character better than anyone!

Pushing Past The Ten Percent

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It’s easy to fall into a negative mindset when auditioning for your tenth project in the last day, only to find weeks later that you weren’t given any role with only a faint idea as to why.

We seek out our fellow VA’s for critiques on our performance, contact members within the community for help with enhancing demos, and watch others succeed where you failed.

This leads to feeling that you aren’t going anywhere, that your performance is plateauing or only getting worse from here on out.

“This is the best you’ll ever be.” You say to yourself and think that perhaps passing on the next audition would be a nice change of pace. Much like other artists, progress can be scarcely seen by the naked eye. It’s only when you dive into the nitty gritty and really compare yourself to previous work do you see some semblance of progress.

But what if I told you that you may be closer to getting those roles than you think?

I mean it’s easy to not believe that right? You don’t get a role, end of story, done. But as someone who has worked both behind the microphone and worked with producers I’ve experienced first hand the deliberation that can go into the selection process. Not every casting decision is 100%, sometimes it’s deliberated about for days on end!

There’s a story a teacher of mine told me that I feel exemplifies this really well.

When he worked for a short-story magazine he would take 100 submissions and plow through the first page, removing those with technical problems like improper titles, garrish font choices, and spelling mistakes. He would take 100 stories and knock them down to 50.

Then he passes those stories onto another member who sits down and quickly skims over the stories, looking for ones that would fit the theme they were going for that month or that all would look well together lined side by side. They knocked it down from 50 to 20.

Now it’s the really difficult part as these stories are now all incredibly well-written and competent, all of them have the possibility of making it to the final publication. However, the third team member had to take that number from 20 to 10, not an easy task when dealing with great writing! It’s unclear on the criteria that pushed those 20 to 10, as it was left to the jurisdiction of one person.

The editor of the magazine is now left with 10, incredibly well-written, properly formatted, amazing stories and they have to select 5 to be published. They deliberate back in forth, pour over every page and every word and eventually reach their decision.

Think of it much like the auditioning process. If you can produce high-quality audio that meets the producers specifications, you automatically beat out the ones who can’t! Potentially half of the applicants? Gone.

Then you move to having your audition be selected to move from the 50% to the top 20%. Maybe it was a certain technique they liked, perhaps you had more emotion than others or you had the perfect pitch for what the producers wanted. But now you’re dealing with those who all meet that criteria as well.

You’re now in an uphill battle and much of it is left to both skill and luck. Maybe you make it to the final 10% and then even make it to the top 5 submissions! But with only one possible victor you fall before someone else.

So perhaps in those ten auditions you tried out for don’t always assume you were thrown away immediately. Know your worth, and understand that the pressure is always on to push past the ten percent.

The Art of the Audition

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So you’ve gotten yourself acquainted with a new microphone, created your accounts a number of different websites, and now you’re ready to find a project and start auditioning!

But it can’t be that simple, right?

On the surface it seems rather simple! Taking a look at the lines, recording them, exporting them in the appropriate format and sending them off. But there is so much more to a good audition than just those three steps, and to help you get the most out of your audition here are four different tips I’ve found in my auditioning process that’s helped me massively:

  • Read the Instructions Carefully!

It sounds like a no-brainer, but making sure you take the time to digest every piece of direction the director has given you can make or break an audition right from the get-go. As an example, I’ve sent in an audition for a character that I knew was going to have a robotic sounding voice. Knowing how to do some basic filtering, I decided to take the initiative and put one on my audition. It was only after I auditioned did I see that it specifically said not to apply any sort of effect onto the audition. A small oversight lead to wasted time, and failed potential for a role.

  • Record to Read then Record to Perform

Sometimes you’ll be recording and no matter how many times you reach a certain line you always flub it up somehow. The best advice to fix this is to not only read the script in your head the first time you see it, but record one small run through just to get used to saying the words. Once you’ve done that a few times then you can go back and give it all the energy you can muster!

  • Record in Mono!

Super simple tip but you always want to make sure you record everything in mono. Recording in stereo not only takes up more time, but makes it much more difficult for directors to mess with your audio once they get it. Save you and them some time and effort by recording in mono!

  • No Half-Energy, Give it Your All!

The most important tip of the list and one that really separates the good from the great. An audition is your chance to show your skill, don’t throw it away by not giving it every ounce of energy you have! Record a take oozing with energy, then do another and double that until you feel completely satisfied. If you get an opportunity to listen to others and feel you aren’t energetic enough, then that’s a sign you just have to make even more for yourself!

These are four tips that I’ve learned over the course of practicing for a year but these aren’t the only four! There are plenty of other lessons to learn on auditioning but I hope these have given you some insight. Go out there and achieve

 

 

Three Tools to Start Your Voice Acting Experience

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So, you’ve acquired your microphone of choice, found a suitable place for recording, and you’ve finally gotten used to hearing your own voice on recordings, where does one go from here?

To the internet of course!

Online VA has had quite the ride in the early years of the internet, enough history to serve as its own blog post to be honest. The only way to be heard in the mid and upper 2000s was to lend your voice to flash animations on Newgrounds or give your voice to a wide variety of Machinimas (videos made using the in-game assets of video games) on YouTube.

For those humble years, they served as the beginnings for a number of different voice actors who would go on to provide their voices in professional projects as they grew their talent and following.

Some notable examples include: Chris Niosi, Edwyn Tiong, and Kimlinh P. Tran.

But the landscape has changed over the past few years and lending your voice to projects, while still having many difficulties, is much easier than it used to be. There are a number of websites out there for gathering new voice actors and matching them with project directors of all kinds, here are three of them that I feel every online VA should have in their arsenal.

  1. Castingcall.club is a website that took over the online VA scene by storm in 2017 and it shows no signs of letting go. Its extensive account customization, easy to use interface, and its growing user base make it an incredible tool for any new voice actor to jump in and start auditioning. It also features a nice notification system that alerts you to when your audition gets upvoted by other users, selected by the producer, and you can follow accounts to see when they upload a new audition.
  2. Twitter, now this social media platform is great if you wish to interact with the community at large. Many artists and producers are always throwing links to casting calls, which then get retweeted by voice actors to show up right into your feed. I’d recommend using Twitter once you’ve established yourself and created a demo (since most casting calls require one, plus there are tons of users out there who can help you make one!)
  3. Voice Acting Club is the second juggernaut in the online VA scene. Don’t let its forum-style push you away as it offers very clear categories for easy exploration as well as sections for posting individual clips and voice demos for critique from other users. There is also a bit more variety on Voice Acting Club as Castingcall.club is flooded with projects centered on a certain polygonal sandbox/survival video game that rhymes with Time Raft.

These three tools are an online VA’s best friend in finding projects to audition for. Now go out and let your voice be heard!

“How Do I Get Started?” The First Question I Ever Asked

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“How do I get started?” It’s a question that appears in some form or another across different panels from multiple conventions, and truthfully it’s a hard question to fully answer! I’ve listened to many expert voice actors tell their story on how they got into the business. Some of them were theater actors who saw a new opportunity open up, some were fans of animation and wanted to put themselves out there, but I always seem to hear one answer ring true.

“You just, start.”

Now that’s a bit blunt for an answer but when it’s said and done it’s the truth of it all. At some point there needs to be a time where a budding actor decides that this is to be a focus in their life. Once that is decided there are a few things every actor needs:

  • Recording Software
  • Microphone
  • Recording Space
  • Patience

For recording software it all depends on your budget and what you’re willing to learn. I’ve learned both Audacity and Adobe Audition and find them both equal in terms of quality. Audition does give you strength in terms of editing effects but in terms of exporting they’re both similar. The benefit Audacity has is that it’s completely free! But you’ll need to download a few plugins to make sure you can export the right kind of files (that would be .wav, try to avoid .mp3 as much as you can.)

A microphone is also pretty simple and depends on the budget. Professional Voice Actor Crispin Freeman has a wonderful page on the kinds of equipment you can get. I’ve found that a simple Blue Yeti USB Microphone with a Pop Filter is perfectly fine for me, at least at the level I’m at now.

Recording space is something a lot more flexible. Simply put, it’s a place where there is no background noise, it has good acoustics (sound should never be echoing in this place), and it’s in a place where you’ll be comfortable recording. There are a ton of guides out there for setting up a recording space, but one of my favorites is E-Home Recording Studio’s “How to Set Up Your Recording Room”, it’s focus is on recording music but it gives thorough explanation on why things are set up the way they are.

But the biggest necessity is patience. When I’ve talked to professionals in the industry I gained a sense of just how much time they’ve put into their craft, I learned how many auditions they’ve missed, and the most important lesson I learned from them is that you will lose many more times than you’ll win.