19 Oct Some days being a Male Irish Voiceover sucks…
A slow day in the life of a normally busy Irish Voiceover Artist…
As I sit here in the sunshine in my garden. I’m realising that I’m not working. I’m writing my first ever blog post because things are unexpectedly quiet right now. I finished a 90,000 word audiobook last week and I’ve been doing the odd job here and there, but I am super frustrated right now as each day that passes with little work means that little bit more stress.
I think the problem for me is that I’m not American and I’m not British. Even though I can do those accents pretty much perfectly, unless you are Benedict Cumberbatch or some other massive star, normally people want a native speaker. So I may be very talented and I may be able to do all manner of voices and accents, and yes often people trust me to do those jobs, but on these slow days it sucks. It sucks knowing that I am as capable as most voice over artists out there at doing the jobs that they are getting in their native accents.
What’s even more annoying is that so many people blindly ask for General American Voiceover for pretty much everything without really giving it much thought as to why they are asking for that. It seems that the Americans are needed all over the world, from India to Denmark. People don’t realise how good a soft neutral Irish accent can be for their content. Listeners would be glad of the break from listening to the overly used generic, cocky and loud General American Accent. I know what I’m talking about. I’m a classically trained actor with degree in acting and yet here I sit, waiting for voiceover work to come to me, when some guy who lives in West Texas and bought a USB microphone yesterday starts to reap the rewards of the geography of his birth place.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not always struggling. My many wonderful and loyal clients keep coming back once they hire me, but I just know that if it wasn’t for this lovely Irish brogue that I’ve been landed with I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this blog in the sunshine, I’d be upstairs in my state if the art studio, sitting in the dark, narrating all sorts of beautiful work into my microphone.
Oh… my phone just pinged…. I have a job to do! Woo Hoooo…. END
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