Metaphor Between Afghan and VO
Last summer when I was on my voice over retreat with my accountability group, Kim Handysides taught us how to crochet granny squares. I learned to crochet as a little girl and have always loved all needle crafts, but there was something about sitting around
with a group of women I was already close with and stiching and talking. It reinvigorated my love of crochet and somehow now linked it to my passion for voice over, so thank you Kim.
Anyway, as a little girl, when I was in second grade, my beloved Mommom Harriet taught me to crochet and knit. We started with crocheting. Her approach to both was the same. She wanted me to get it right. She encouraged me just enough so that I would not give up, and showed me what I was going to make, telling me that I would finish, but as I went along, for any mistake I made, Mommom pulled it out and had me re-do it. When something was nicely done she would say “beautiful work, Laura.” But, if a stitch needed correcting, she would look at it and sho me exactly where the last good stitch was. Then Mommom would pull the stitches out to that last good one, set the needles or hook back, and again I would re-start. Perhaps this is what got me so used to doing multiple takes in VO without flinching?
Well, since last summer, Kim really got me hooked on the granny squares. I decided to do an afghan club where the subscription sends me a kit each month. It is extremely exciting and fulfilling. Every month in the mail I get a package with beautiful yarns and
directions for the squares. At some point it will turn into a blanket. I chose a project called the “Happy Days Afghan.”
The more I work on this project, the more I realize that my approach to it is a rather solid metaphor to my approach to my voice over business. Like crocheting an afghan, our voice over career is a journey giving us multiple opportunities to try, do, and re-do until things look right for us.
How Long We sit With Things
Last month one of my squares turned into a pentagon. I felt fairly confident I had followed the directions flawlessly. I read them over and over. I counted stitches. I looked at the photo. Yet in my hands I held a pentagon, and what I needed was a square. I was not sure what to do. I thought perhaps I would hem it? Clearly any stitcher would no that would really not be okay. After about six weeks, I was looking at it again in dismay and a little bit of disgust. As time went on, my inability to get it right bothered me.
If this were voice over, and I weren’t booking, I would hire a coach or take online classes. I would talk to the gals in my accountability group. I would post on Facebook chats. So why, with the pentagon, was I just sitting there, stumped, paralyzed? When I did seek online help, I knew my stitches were correct, so the flaw was in my perspective, my analysis of the pattern.
Time to Reshape Things
Wanting to fix the pentagon was not about being a perfectionist, I began to realize just like in voiceover, it was about making my blanket what I wanted it to be. I kept hearing my Mommom’s voice in my head, and I got to a point where I just couldn’t leave it as it was. I think what was bothering me was that I had a pattern- a path- a roadmap as it were, and it still went wrong. I did my best and it was not right. So now It was time to re-do it. In VoiceOver, there is no road map for our career- we can build it and change paths, and we can talk to coaches but no one has a crystal ball and much like with my afghan, things can and will go sideways.
So two nights ago feeling the very strong presence of my grandmother I began pulling out stitches. I pulled out until the last good
row, just as she showed me as a little girl. The tricky thing in the square is that the early part of the pattern is round and I had to build corners. Since what I did was very wrong, I had to try something else to make mine look like the photo in the pattern guide. I didn’t rush and I concentrated, and low and behold my pentagon took on a new life as an adorable square.
I had a lot of feelings about this. Much like in my voice over journey, I learned not to rush, its a marathon, not a sprint. I learned to enjoy the journey, because it’s in the doing that a sort of evolution occurs. I could also see that even when someone very specifically tells you how they got to a certain point, that does not mean that you will get to that point using those steps. I think that as both a professional voice actor and a voice over coach, this mattered a lot. Simply, there just is not one right way, or one size that fits all, and you can help people and guide them, but much like my afghan pattern, there are variables. Lastly, there is great joy in discovery. Much like finishing these beautiful squares, learning new genres, working on one’s VO craft, and booking work with new clients or repeat work with cherished ones is quite joyful, and all should be savored.
Whether you’ve been able to tune in to our Clubhouses the past few months, fellow professional female voice talent and coach Diana Birdsall and I have been spending A LOT of time talking about voice over marketing in our weekly club “Ask the VO Coaches.” Why? As working creatives, we wear a lot of hats, but we have to run our business like a business, which means building lasting relationships with clients. The best way to do this is with marketing. This week, we were fortunate to have the amazing Montreal-based talent, coach, and demo producer Kim Handysides join our panel! Kim is a true inspiration and a wealth of knowledge. For those who don’t know, Kim happens to be in a weekly accountability group with me and Diana, so we know her quite well. Kim has blazed a path for women in voice over, pushing the boundaries of what women can earn, where women can work, and proving just how much one woman can do! Kim has done it all through smarts, fierce determination, creativity, and oodles of talent. So, if you sadly missed hearing her wisdom, here is just a taste of what you missed out on from the great one.
Kim did a thoughtful analysis of how to sort out what our clients are interested in. Whether you want to blog, do a podcast, do or videos, there are a lot of ways to present great content to position yourself as a problem solver for those who might cast you. Kim gave the example of saying you are an anime guy and staking your claim through a targeting marketing approach. She suggested a thoughtful blog about the art form, or perhaps doing a review of a video. Kim suggests coming up with a list of different topics within the main category of anime so that you can appeal to people in that field. This example can be applied to other genres. 
Ok, after a very enjoyable time sheltering in place with my family during the pandemic, if you asked this working mom where the first place I’d be flying to would be, I would not have guessed Dallas, TX. So, why, when we can finally go anywhere, am I using my coveted Amex points to travel in style to Dallas (not that there is anything wrong with Dallas, but we can all agree it ain’t Paris.)? Well, J. Michael Collins and his mazing team are hosting the 
If I could shout it from the roof tops, I would. I would not be where I am today without my VO Powerhouse as we call ourselves. My beloved accountability group includes me, Diana Birdsall, Kim Handysides, Michelle Blenker, and Shelley Avellino. In our panel called “Build a Badass VO Career With a Powerhouse Accountability Group,” we will help you consider why you need one and how to create one that will help your career the way our accountability group has helped ours. I don’t know where I would be without these amazing women who life me up, inspire me, and have helped me be my best self every day. Sitting on a conference panel with them is an honor and a dream come true and you can find us on Saturday, August 28th at 3:50 PM in Room 2.
I am really excited to be a part of this amazing panel! First of all, to share a stage with Randy Thomas, Joe Cipriano, AJ McKay (who by the way did my main Radio Imaging demo), Brent Williams, and Scott Cartwright is like a dream come true. My path as a female radio imaging voice was different than most. I did not come to radio imaging from a career in radio. Rather, I learned about it from one of J. Michael Collins’ webinars and fell in love! Because of the energy and the vibe, this genre is perfect for me. I look forward to talking about the ups and downs of my journey and how I’ve worked hard to grow the radio imaging side of my business over the years. When I look at the other panelists, I know that my path into imaging was different than theirs. While I may not be as well-known or famous in the industry as they are, I believe I offer the perspective on how a regular professional voice talent can build an imaging career. This panel is Saturday, August 28th, at 5:30 in Room 1.
As part of the joy of coming to One Voice USA, my demo partner Dave Scott ( of All Systems Go AV) and I really want to give something back to the voice over community. Dave and I will both be attending the conference in person, and we will give out postcards with the demo giveaway rules at One Voice. If you are a working, professional voice actor, and you take a picture with either one of us or both of us and post it on instagram and tag the conference and both of us, you will be eligible for a free video demo! It can be EITHER a commercial demo OR a narration demo, and it includes both a video version, an MP3 version, the planning session, and the necessary prep sessions! After a year in, we are very excited to meet more of the community and we thought this video demo giveaway is an awesome way to celebrate our coming back together!
I happened to marry a huge Bill Murray fan, and from Quick Change to Groundhog Day, I think I’ve seen all of his top hits, but Groundhog Day is my favorite. As a working mom, having a system to maintain efficiency is really important but unfortunately that same system often makes every single day feel the same. I go into my booth and warm up. I do my most pressing auditions first. Next I tend to all 
It’s important to pick the right coaches and I’ve been blessed to work with many excellent ones in the years that I’ve been in voice over. Sometimes you want private lessons and sometimes group classes can meet your training needs. Right now I wanted to shake things up. Kim Handysides and her daughter Lisa Suliteanu book a lot of work. They understand what is au courant and have created a curriculum across genres to target bookable reads. Kim has been an industry leader for 30 plus years and her talented daughter Lisa has been working steadily since she was 7 years old and has been full-time since finishing university. In case you’re wondering what the vibe of their class is like, it is upbeat, inspirational, clever, and fun. With so many coaches in the industry at the moment, this class is designed to put voice actors on the path to success and enrolling was a great step for me, even so many years into my career!
In Groundhog Day, we see Phill Conners taking piano lessons and becoming an amazing pianist. This did not happen over night. It took lots and lots of practice. Right now in The Voice Over Study, we work on different scripts and then can use those tools to go back and really work on a script. The more we learn to unravel it, the better our reads become. For me, having fresh feedback on my reads is helpful. It is also just as helpful to pay attention to the reads of the other voice actors in the class, listen to how they approach the scripts, and think about the feedback that they are given. I try to incorporate this approach into both my auditions and my booked work and bring some freshness to it all.
In Groundhog Day, we see Phil’s relationship with others in the town blossom and develop throughout the film as he gets to relive each day. For me, having an opportunity to meet other voice over actors is really valuable. The other talents in the class are from different parts of the United States and Canada. We are at different points in our careers and we all aspire to focus on different genres of voice over. Still, I think knowing other voice actors is essential to our success, and I am so thankful to be getting to know the other actors in this class as we all learn together.
Just as we see Phil repeatedly attempting to cover the story about Punxsutawney Phil, there are countless ways each script can be approached, so wouldn’t it save a lot of time and energy to understand which reads are actually booking right now? That is the point of “The Voice Over Study,” the nuances of the bookable read are not necessarily my go to read, so I am so thankful for the first few sessions already! For example, the words to emphasize or blend may not be what I had thought of, so this valuable feedback, and the reinforcement of it, makes Kim and Lisa’s class outstanding. In class last week, Kim directed me to hit words I never word have that to enunciate, and the overall gestalt of the read was just a million times better. Her instincts are amazing. Kim and Lisa book A LOT of work on their own, and my goal is to be as busy as they are!
In class we have homework. We have scripts to prepare and we are also supposed to work on cold reading. I also love this, as both make me more efficient and more effective in my daily work. These tasks are something that I look forward to, as I feel like I am taking control of my career and determining my own path.
Whether you are sharing a recent personal experience or your work philosophy, the blog gives a more in-depth glimpse into who you are and how you tick. It let’s folks know what is going on in your head, and you can really open up. The catch though, is that in the voiceover world we give up our private lives a bit for the sake of our public ones. We may not be Beyonce or Lady Gaga, but in our own sphere we have given up our anonymity by existing on the multiple profiles we post and share. So, when attempting to share, carefully think about the way in which you reveal yourself. If you want to seem relatable, make sure that you in fact post blogs that are warn, helpful, and approachable.
When you are having a bad day, don’t blog about it. Call a friend. Go for a walk. Meditate. But for heaven’s sake, do not have a public melt-down for all to see and post it on every voiceover site and share it with every person you know. The voice over community is small. People want to have each other’s backs. We generally lift each other up. I feel that I have a wonderful family in my VO friends. Blog about the lessons you learn from rising up, from over coming, from doing your best. Everyone has good days and bad, but your clients do not need to know about the bad ones. Give them a reason to think the world of you and to hire you. Give them a reason to sing your praises from the rooftops. Give them sunshine and pixie dust and sparkling glitter. Give them what they can get only from booking you! That is what you blog about!
