Voice Acting

Hello everyone,

Wow! First blog post. Exciting!

I wanted to start this whole blogging thing with a topic that hasn’t been that discussed, or at least I haven’t found it on many websites. And that topic is voice acting.

Voice acting is an integral part of any brickfilm, with the ability to make or break your creations. If you’ve watched my last 2 videos (the Lego Super Heroes series), you’ve probably noticed a huge increase in quality when it comes to voice acting, and that’s due to the awesome people I collaborate with. In the following paragraphs I will guide you through my process of finding and securing the services of great voice actors (VAs) that will help you bring your videos to the next level.

The first thing you need to do is make a list of all your characters and the type of voices you want for each of them. Once you’ve done this, try and pair them together in such a way that they could be played by one VA. Don’t ask one voice actor to provide his voice for all characters. It won’t sound good and I don’t think there are that many VAs that would agree to something like that.

Now, once you’ve done that, you can start the actual search. The first place where you should look for a VA should be your group of friends. It’s always more fun when you do something like this with people you know and get along with. If you don’t have friends that are willing to help or your audio recording equipment isn’t up to par then your next best bet would be Youtube. Try searching with keywords like ‘voice actor’, ‘voice demo reel’, ‘impersonations’ and ‘*your character* voice’. The one that I had the most success with is ‘voice demo reel 2013’; I added the year because I wanted to be sure the person is still active on Youtube and still voice acts. Once your search results come up, just start listening to the videos. This is going to take some time, especially if you need a lot of voice actors, but it will be worth it in the end.

The next step would be getting in contact with the VAs that you’ve chosen. I found that a standard Youtube message works best. When writing your message to them try and give as many details about what you’re trying to do as possible; maybe even add an excerpt of your script or attach some of your work for them to get an idea of what you’re about and you’re skills. The most important thing here is ALWAYS BE POLITE!!! Think about it this way: if someone agrees to help you out, they’re doing you a favor without receiving anything in return. You don’t pay them to voice act for you and there isn’t any other form of reward. They’re just nice people that are willing to help, so treat them with the respect that they deserve.

Also, there may be cases in which a voice actor agrees to help out and then doesn’t return your emails. This happens, and it has happened to me. When you’ll be confronted with a similar situation, always remember that there are other fish in the sea. And again, be polite and gracious about it. Don’t send them an angry message asking them why they won’t respond or that they suck. That’s not going to help, at all! What you can do however is look for someone else to fill the role.

Some other tips I can share with you are: don’t change the script every other day, because if you do it will become very stressful for your actors, and work on a schedule. Having a schedule will not only help you when working with VAs but also will help you mobilize, get to work and not slack off.

Well, that was pretty much it. I hope this sheds some light on this whole voice acting thing and helps you in your future projects. As a final note, I just want to thank all the voice actors that work with me! I am very appreciative of their help and for being awesome at what they do!

Catch you later!

Atlas Animationz