VOPlanet Blog

Professional voice actor and voice over coach Julie Williams answers questions about her career and offers advice for making the leap to working as a full-time professional voice actor. She talks about who can benefit from voice over coaching and shares useful tips for how to choose a voice over coach. And she offers valuable advice for up-and-coming voice talent.

Look up the word versatile and it’s quite possible that a photo of professional voice actor Maria Pendolino is right next to it. From slinky smooth commercial voice overs to highly technical medical jargon, Maria is a voice over chameleon. We are quite lucky to have Maria on the VOPlanet VO Team and even luckier that she had moment between all her awesome endeavors to sit down and answer a few questions about her career, favorite voice over jobs and the future of voice over casting.

The demand for a neutral international sound has popularized a voice over accent that is not quite American, British or European. Transatlantic voice overs, also known as Mid-Atlantic English, International English or Neutral English, are in demand and voice actors who have mastered the accent are being cast with increasing frequency. Voice buyers and voice actors are sometimes unsure of what exactly Neutral English is. To get a better idea we went to the experts. We talked to Juliette Gray and J. Michael Collins, two of the top professional voice actors who book Transatlantic voice over work, about what the accent is, how it’s being used and what exactly it sounds like.

Whether you are new to the voice over business or you are a veteran voice over director, insights from the voice actor’s side of the microphone are invaluable. Preparation before and guidance during a voice over session are vital to bringing out the best performance from voice talent. VOPlanet's Kevin West asked voice over session masters Debbie Grattan and Kelley Buttrick for tips on how to direct voice actors.

Many voice over recording sessions are now being recorded and directed remotely. The vast majority of voice actors now have home studios custom built with technology and sound quality that rival brick and mortar commercial studios. Of course being in the studio with the voice actor and directing the session in person is ideal. Luckily there is technology available that enables us to connect to remote studios and direct VO sessions from any where as if you were there in person. Let's take a look at the most popular methods top creatives are using to direct VO sessions remotely.

Is it best to hire voice actors through a casting agent? What about Union versus non-Union voice talent? Does it make a difference? Let's explore.

We continue our dive into voice over websites and tips for casting voice overs and hiring professional voice actors. This time, let’s look at freelancer sites. Can you really book a voice over for five bucks? Should you? Read on my friend…

We continue our discussion on hiring professional voice actors with a look at the different online voice over casting options. Are those top-of-page ads touting cheap voice overs legit? Hiring a voice actor direct from their personal site can be a great option if you have the time. We discuss some important points to consider when hiring a voice actor direct from their website.

No matter if you are new to hiring voice actors or if you’ve booked voices online before, you might find the process a tedious and time-consuming hassle. It can be nerve wracking to plow through hundreds of websites to track down the perfect voice for your client by deadline. To help make casting professional voice overs faster and easier for you we will explain the different kinds of voice over websites and give you helpful tips to navigate through all the voice choices out there.