We have been teaching voice acting and developing voiceover programs for more than 20 years. Over that time, we have met personally with hundreds of aspiring voice actors. The primary assumption upon which people consider voice acting is because they have a distinctive voice, which they believe will quickly lead to a successful voice acting career. This is not a reasonable expectation and nowadays, most newcomers have heard the rebuttal. Actor and director J.B. Blanc, put it succinctly: “A good voice will make you a voice actor as much as a good pen will make you a writer.” Training is required. Once the newcomer accepts that training is in order, the next goal is to figure how much to invest in order to determine if he will be successful. A reasonable request, but not answerable in the short term. No credible teacher would venture a guess without first working with the student for a consistent, sustained period. These assumptions are reasonable on the part of the newcomer but naive nonetheless.
Years ago, some teachers (certainly not all) depended on this naiveté to make a living. In addition, because the newcomers often came with grandiose assumptions, the teachers didn’t have to pitch the
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