How On Earth Do You Get A Voice Over Agent?

It's one of the trickiest issues for voice over newbies - how do you secure professional representation?

In this video I take you through a couple examples that should help put you on the path to securing an agent.

Video Transcript:

How on earth do you get a voice-over agent? It's a tricky one. 

Titles 

Hi, hello. I hope you're well and I hope you're in fine voice. Now, how do you get a voice-over agent? There is the $64,000 question. It is very difficult. It is hard to get a voice-over agent so you have to start with that mindset to begin with. 

I think the first thing is to find something distinctive and different about your voice. 

Is it your regional accent, if you've got one? 

Is it your age? Is it the tonal quality? 

Are you very low pitched or high pitched? 

Have you just got something that is part of you that nobody else has got? 

If you're thinking to yourself, but I haven't got anything distinctive, I can assure you you have. You just have to go to some friends and say, "Please can you note down some differences in my voice or some things you notice about my voice, whatever that is?" and get them to come back with this list that you can then distill into a voice description. That's a very useful tool to have. You can then create something that is you, and you get a bit of an idea of what your voice actually sounds like. It's a very good exercise to go through.

Then you can present that to the agent that this is what I sound like. Don't put down "I am a complete beginner." Don't say that. What you can say is, "I'm a fresh, new talent." It sounds much, much better. It's much more appealing to agents, as well. That's the main thing that you can do.

The other thing really is to get some work first. I know that sounds like I'm putting the cart before the horse, but you can get work through the pay-to-play sites or throughout your own endeavours, through knocking on a few production companies' doors and so on. 

Certainly using the pay-to-play sites and the freelancer sites, you can just build up a body of work. By pay-to-play, I mean sites like Voice123, Voices.com, Voices Pro, Bodalgo, and so on. Getting that body of work, a little bit of a portfolio of work first, is again, much more attractive to a potential agent. 

Those are a couple of things that you can do. Don't give up. That's the other thing I would say. Probably the first agent, when you knock on their door, will say, "No. No thanks," but what they mean is "No, not today." It doesn't mean that three months down the line, six months down the line, they won't have an opening for your kind of voice, so keep knocking on those doors and don't give up. 

Thanks very much for watching. I hope you do get an agent eventually. Take care, look after your voice, and see you next time.