Is voiceover your passion?
Then get ready to suffer, baby!
So many people think that passion is equivalent to love. It’s really closer to an intense, burning desire. With “intense” and “burning” being the operative words.
Did you know that the word “passion” actually means suffering?
So, when you talk about having a passion for something, it really means that you are willing to suffer for that thing.
When we have a passion for someone, especially when we are young and dumb, we tend to overlook that someone’s very serious flaws.
It’s the same when you have a passion for a particular career.
Pro athletes suffer for their sport. Broken bones, sprains, concussions, and then ice baths just to deal with the regular muscle wear and tear. Drug abuse to deal with the physical pain is common too. And I’m not sure about other sports, but pro football players in particular don’t have a very good life expectancy. Talk about suffering for your passion.
Have you ever seen a ballerina’s bare feet? Talk about suffering for your art!
Film actors might seem to have a cushy job, but that job comes with incredibly long days, no privacy, constant memorization of pages and pages of dialogue, frequent travel, sleep deprivation, extreme discomfort from working in high temps, low temps, rain, etc, dangerous set conditions…and all of that’s once you GET the job. Never mind everything it takes to get to that point.
In order to do certain jobs, you have to have enough passion to get through the suffering and keep going in spite of the pain. Do what you will to soften the blows, some careers just come with a certain level of discomfort built in.
Side note: I had a cat who used to like to eat rose stems. Like, what??? Ow!
Voiceover isn’t a bed of bioengineered thornless roses.
Here are just some of the ways you will suffer in voiceover:
Self doubt
Impostor syndrome
Professional jealousy
Difficulty finding work
Difficulty booking work
Near constant rejection
The indifference of agents
Aggravation at P2P algorithms
Losing your voice from overwork
Nasty responses to your cold emails
The fear that all of our jobs will be replaced by AI
Working through your tech phobia to learn audio editing
The intense discomfort of having to do cold email/cold call marketing
Frustration from trying to find the midpoint between “conversational” and “boring AF”
Having to forgo certain foods or beverages that you love because of the bad things they do to your voice (bye bye, morning lattes!)
Spending lots of money just to get to the point where you are good enough to still need a part time job to make a living
Realizing that getting the flu or COVID can now mean missing out on work for much longer than the few days you’re actually in bed
Intense anger triggered by outside noise that you never experienced before you started recording from home, including: airplanes, cars, motorcycles, dogs, cats, children, birds, lawn mowers, snowblowers, road construction, HVAC units, fire trucks, the trains that you don’t even live near, etc.
This list is not complete, by any means. But it’s just a few of the things you get to look forward to if you want to do this for a living.
Recently, a friend of mine told me that he was hanging up his voiceover hat for now. He already has a lucrative career, and wanted voiceover to be his retirement “thing,” but after two years of coaching and marketing on the side of a 40+ hour per week job, he admitted he doesn’t have the passion to put the sheer amount of time and energy into it that it takes to make this a full time thing. At least not right now. He admitted he doesn’t love it enough to do all of the things it takes to make it a career.
This view still gives me the butterflies…I love it SO MUCH
When I was doing theatre, professors and others would often say “If there is ANYTHING else you would be happy doing, please go do it.” Because in order to make it in the theatre, you have to be willing to sacrifice A LOT. I mean, like, pretty much everything.
I once met a Broadway actor who came to Minnesota to do a show at the Guthrie Theatre, and he was so sweet, and open, and excited and grateful to be there. He talked about how in NYC, he and his wife and two kids lived in a very expensive two bedroom apartment, and every morning in order to shower, they had to move the cat litter out of the tub, because there was literally nowhere else in the apartment to put the cat litter box. Showering on top of stray cat litter and having to spend months away from your family in order to do what you love…that’s suffering for your art.
In comparison with some of the ways that I’ve seen stage and on-camera actors suffer for their art/career, voiceover seems pretty cushy. But that doesn’t mean it’s a piece of cake.
So many people get into this thinking it’s going to be easy, and they get mad and defensive when gently corrected by industry veterans who are just trying to point out the obstacle course of punishment one must go through to get to the reward at the end.
If you’re new to this, just be prepared. You won’t last long here if you don’t have a passion to match the suffering.
If you’ve been here a while, was there anything about this business that almost made you quit? What was it? Share in the comments!
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!
P.S. Did you enjoy this blog? Please subscribe (—> over there, to the right!) to never miss a new post.
