For many years in Hollywood there was an invisible, unspoken agreement between studios and performers: one in which actors would live a high-risk, high-reward lifestyle; and in exchange for living an irregular lifestyle with no guarantees, the studios would make living that lifestyle a sustainable one for actors.
My answer to “How do I become a voice actor?”
Today marks 4 years since I moved to Los Angeles to further my Voice Acting career and earlier this month I also celebrated 10 years since my first trip to the USA, which was my first voice-over adventure and the first big step in my VO career. In my time here in America I have been fortunate enough to work on many wonderful projects, accomplish a number of my goals, make many of my dreams come true and achieve successes that I once would have considered impossible. I'm even at a point where I have people who admire my work ask me about how to become a voice actor.
So I thought I would celebrate all these milestones by sharing my thoughts on what I feel it takes to become a voice actor and what you can do to make it happen…
How to ask professionals for advice
Throughout this year, I've received a number of emails asking for VO advice. I'm flattered and grateful people feel I can help them with voice-over and most of these messages have been wonderful but one or two have lacked in some basic courtesy and politeness. So I just wanted to share some thoughts on politely asking for advice, based on the things I used to do when writing to voice actors and things people have done when writing to me that I have liked…
Why Pokémon GO will end… and how you can save your Pokémon when it does
They say "all good things come to an end" and Pokémon GO is no exception. It's a fun game that has made tons of revenue but due to the nature of the game it won't last forever, in fact just recently even the game devs themselves acknowledged this (via an article from the awesome Nintendo Life).
Though this end still won't be for a long time, I just want to prepare people for this inevitable day and to have a contingency plan of sorts. When this game shuts down, so will all its servers and all your Pokémon will be gone - players will lose what they worked really hard for and maybe even in some cases accomplished as the result of investing real money into the game, so I want to share what you can do to preserve some of that effort.
So let's explore why this popular and successful game has an expiration date and what you can do in preparation for it…
Beau's Voice Acting Adventures… AND WHY IT ALL TIES INTO Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
This past weekend, on Saturday 26th June 2021, I celebrated 3 years since I moved to the USA from England to further my voice acting dreams! On social media, people may have even seen me post about this special anniversary with an accompanying image from the classic Nintendo GameCube game "Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door". In fact, before moving to America and for my first few anniversaries, I done posts with a picture from the game. But why? I thought it may be fun to explain…
Happiness is a lifestyle
If you lift weights once, are you strong enough to lift a car immediately afterwards? No, of course not. What about the second time? Still no. But if you keep lifting, if you consistently put in effort, one day you will be able to, a day will come where you'll just find that you're as strong as an ox.
The same goes for happiness…
You are not being selfish...
A lot of really kind, giving, lovely people worry about being selfish. They are concerned that doing something for themselves or putting themselves first for even a moment is being selfish… it isn't. That's not what being selfish means.
One Year of an Englishman in America
It has now been (over) one whole year since I moved from England to the USA to further my voice acting career. I have been absolutely loving it and am so excited for everything that lies ahead. When I first moved here I wrote a blog post about all the humorous questions I had about America. One year on, I wanted to do a sequel post about my experiences.
How my faith in Voice123 was restored… before they made me lose it AGAIN
Several years ago, after finishing a year-long Premium subscription to Voice123, I wrote a blog post discussing my experience, a review expressing what I personally liked and disliked about the site, why I knew pretty early on that it wasn't for me and why I would not be renewing my subscription. I acknowledged however that one day, I may be in a situation where I may need to try it out again. The blog post became incredibly popular and drives a lot of traffic to my site - if you are interested in reading it, you can do so by clicking here: my original Voice123 blog post.
Last year I relocated from a small town in England to Los Angeles to further my voiceover career and to make my voice acting dreams come true. I already had laid a lot of groundwork in the USA, having befriended many voice actors and so on, but I knew that whilst I was building things up here more in America, I wanted to use a pay-to-play website to help keep me busy. After looking into numerous options, I very reluctantly decided to give Voice123 another go… that “one day” had finally come.
The Power of Being Underestimated
We all have hidden talents. We all possess abilities that others wouldn’t expect of us. Nobody is ever going to know everything we can do or know everything that we are. As such, there are times when people don’t expect much from us. It’s not malicious or nasty, they just don’t know. Yes, there are certain people you meet who will look down on you and that can be incredibly irksome. The idea of a person thinking less of you than you are may sound like it is a bad thing but I think that often it can be a good thing, you can use it to your advantage.
The Timing of Everything
Whenever I want to accomplish something in life or when I want something to happen, I find it incredibly irksome if someone says "it's not meant to be just yet" or "it will happen at the right time". Recently I realized a reason I find hearing this particularly frustrating: because annoyingly... it's right.
An Englishman in America
I recently began a very, VERY exciting new chapter in my life - my voice acting career has taken me from England to the USA. I am having a lot of fun so far and though TV and movies have taught me well, there is still a lot about America that I have to learn and figure out. Now based in the United States, with today marking one week since I flew out here to Los Angeles and tomorrow being Independence Day, I thought I would take a humorous look at all the questions I have about this great country.
The Difficulties of Waiting...
Waiting is hard, isn't it? It's like the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song goes, "The waiting is the hardest part." When there's something you really, really want, having to wait for it can be tough and the longer you have to wait for it, the tougher it can be. I have been interested in writing a blog post about waiting for a while, yet in a weird way, I have kind of waited to write this blog post. Nevertheless, I have been thinking a lot about waiting recently. For a start, I think there are different types of waiting.
Love the mundane
There's something that I personally feel is incredibly important and try to hold onto in life, a motto I'll occasionally remind myself: never lose your ability to be grateful.
Why keep video game voice actors a secret?
I always find it funny when I watch a trailer for an upcoming video game, recognise a voice and yet the voice actor is not allowed to reveal that they are indeed that character. It makes me wonder: why keep video game voice actors a secret?
Voice Acting and Fame
Voice actors are not renowned for being famous. If your goal in life is to be well-known, to be a celebrity, there are a million better ways to accomplish that than by being a voice actor. It truly is a craft and a business where it is wise to do it because you love it.
If you showed 100 people a picture of Homer Simpson and asked them to identify who he is, how many people do you think would correctly identify him? I don't have an answer for this but I think 90 or more people would probably be able to "guess" correctly. That's 9 out of 10 people or greater. I feel this is quite a fair estimate for the main character of one of the most iconic television shows in history. But if you asked 100 people who voices Homer Simpson, how many of them do you think would know this? Well this time, I might have an answer…
The Cons of Celebrity Cartoon Casting
The other day I had a sudden realisation: I have watched quite a few animated shows in the last few years where a character voiced by a celebrity has been replaced.
When I say “celebrity” I am not talking exclusively of A-listers, what I mean more accurately is a “high-profile” person, someone you can look at and say, “Oh that’s the lady from that movie” or “Oh that’s the bloke from that comedy series”. They are recognisable in some way, though somewhat ironically; it might not at all be by their voice.
Actors and their past performances
I strive to focus on the present and try to avoid looking too much into the past or ponder too much about the future. Yet recently I have had to find and watch many of my old performances. I have reacted to those different performances in various ways and it made me think a lot about how other actors may feel about their performances.
Some actors are incredibly critical of themselves when watching themselves back. Others look back and think of all the ways they could have done things differently. It can be very difficult for actors to stay objective and to not quickly rush to the conclusion that they're terrible.
Though I didn't fall into every trap in the book, there were some performances I watched back that I initially felt dissatisfied with, where upon seeing the final result I thought to myself, "If I had known it was going to be like that, I would have done it differently!" But there are some old lessons I then remembered and also some new things I realised, some reassuring reasons why actors and their past performances are not terrible, which I thought would be interesting to share.
My love for TV shows with reused action sequences
I say this absolutely sincerely and without irony: I love TV shows that reuse action sequences.
I imagine that a lot of people, if they heard that a show reuses footage, could easily jump to some conclusion that it is lazy or being cheap or that the show won't be good. However, I feel there are many benefits to doing it.
The Final Step to Mastering an Accent
Though mastering different accents is not a necessary undertaking on the path to becoming a successful voice actor (or any other kind of actor) it is still a cool and fun skill to have. Being able to convincingly and consistently perform another accent will open doors for you and widen the range of opportunities available to you.
Naturally when trying to learn an accent, you must know what that accent truly is and to be able to listen back to yourself objectively to know whether you are doing it justice. There are abilities you'll want to master along the way, such as being able to perform the accent at different volumes and with different emotions. But there is one way I feel that you can know for sure that you can confidently say that you can perform an accent. Ready to hear it?