You can't hold your breath doing voiceovers

I don't want to jinx a no-hitter by talking about it in the 8th inning, but I just found out that a recent audition of mine is one of the finalists for a show on a channel that starts with an "H" and ends with "istory Channel".  One of the hard parts of being a full-time voice actor is landing regular, on-going work. And the new TV show that this would be for (sorry I can't say anymore than that about it. TV producers are neurotically paranoid until it hits the airwaves) is something I'd be excited about and would watch whether I was voicing it or not, so I think it would have a shot at hanging around a few seasons. In voiceoverland, regular gigs like that are gold and are few and far between. I'll allow myself to get excited at the possibility, but always temper it with the reality of having been in this business long enough to know it's nothing personal. You do the audition, pat it on its little butt and kick it towards the producer and forget about it. You usually only hear back if you win the gig, but some agencies get in touch and say "sorry we chose someone else, but we liked your read and we'll keep you in mind for future projects." All you can do is your best and move on. And if you do that consistently, you find that sometimes even the auditions you lose can turn into wins later.

Best left to the imagination

There's a movie coming soon about the voiceover industry, and I'm excited because the trailer looks fun and right on target for the most part. Another part of me is slightly depressed because I've always sort of enjoyed the anonymity and mystery surrounding our industry. At one point in my radio career I was blessed to have been part of a very successful morning show that worked very hard creating theater of the mind. We made it sound riotously fun like there was a huge donkey pantsing party going on at all times in the control room. We did tons of characters and used gobs of sound effects, but in truth it was two guys in a studio and one of us (me) was bangin' sound effect carts in and out of cart decks like a brain damaged chimp. Naturally we had people regularly asking for permission to come sit in and watch, and I had to try convince them of the truth, that it would be dull as crap to sit and watch us do that. If you want to enjoy it, do it on the other side of the curtain. Trust me, it would be much better to be Scarlett Johansson's photographer than to be her surgeon.