This past weekend I had the pleasure to meet Pamela Jones and Bill Lawrie from Soundswrite . I took part in their voice over workshop. I had so much fun with these two and the other actors who were also part of the workshop. We spent two days where they crammed a lot of very useful information into a fun, motivating and “hands on” well rounded introduction to the business.
We tried a little bit of everything that there is to explore in the voice over world. They covered voice overs, narration, audio books, animation, ADR, WALLA and marketing on hold.
For an actor like me, for whom size can often be an area to continuously work on towards a smaller “good for camera” performance, the exaggerated large size allowed and even valued in voice over work is a welcomed gift. There’s no better joy than finding your short coming to be a gift in disguise.
During the animation portion of the workshop we had to pick a character based on a brief description and the actual drawing of the character. This was one of the times when people tell me “your accent is gone”. I have taken endless hours of private coaching with Trish Allen to address the accent issue and although it seems I have been able to fix the over worked articulation of my mouth I am still unable to dictate when the accent goes away. Truth as it turns out is that it doesn’t, it can only be replaced. Duh!
Simple as it may seem I question if my self image is attached to this accent and if letting go of it, although something I am able to do, isn’t too scary at this point. Otherwise how could I explain people telling me “your accent is gone” when I am playing a character? Weird. A bit like the acting business.
So the workshop got me really excited and I should be setting up a recording booth at my apartment soon to start sending out for auditions, better yet, without an agent and taking charge of part of my career in this crazy fun world.
Gui Fontanezzi 