TO HAVE A VOICE OVER CAREER

As a voiceover artist for radio commercials and other forms of radio advertising, TV spots, animation, film trailers, etc., here’s a question I get asked a lot:

“Do you need to move to Los Angeles to do voice work?”

I get asked that a lot because I did move to L.A. There’s a limit to how much voiceover work you can do there.

I play a game with myself: How far can I push myself, how far can I go? Even when working out in the gym.

How far can I go with this? If this is what I really want to do, if what I want to do is trailer work, I want to work with the best. I want to work with the legends and rub shoulders with them.

I mean, why not? Why wouldn’t I want to work with the very best people in the business.

A friend of mine used to say, “The best will do fine, thank you very much.”

So I put a lot of pressure on myself and there was a point where I was commuting to Los Angeles from Vancouver for nine years, going on ten, and the last year of that, I was doing a cartoon series and I was almost booked on another series. As I flew home that week, I thought, “Oh boy, if this happens, I’m not turning the series down.”

Meanwhile my agent always would ask, “When are you going to move here? There are so many things we could do…”

So when you have a family and you have ties and your kids are all ensconced in school, you have friends and neighbors, it’s a tough decision.

Your spouse or your partner can make or break that. If they’re willing to make the move, terrific. If they’re not, you might have a lot of friction to deal with.

But it’s your career. Is it something you really, really want? Maybe it’s not. Some guys don’t come anywhere near L.A. They come in to visit their agents, but they do their work from elsewhere.

But there’s a certain thing about being on the ground. It was taught to me quite a while ago. When you get a call from Jimmy Kimmel or you get a call from the Tonight Show at the last minute, asking can you be at this place…?

I was fortunate enough to be involved in Pixar’s “Up,” and the reason I was in that film is because I was here. I had to be here in L.A. If I didn’t already live in Hollywood, I wouldn’t have been offered that job.

It happened so fast. You’re out there playing, you’re up at Pixar, you’re down here and they’re down back in L.A. You have to go to Warner Brothers and it’s all very exciting. It’s been overwhelming to be on these lots and recording, but it would never have happened if I were not here.

There are things that you can do without being here — industrials, affiliate work, trailers — but you have to have the relationship. And one thing that Hollywood does very, very well is relationships. You must develop a relationship with a certain company or person or trailer house and then you can go wherever the heck you want, but developing that relationship is very important and this town is great for that.

That’s what it’s all about. Hollywood was built on relationships. You’re a nice guy, you’re fun to work with, great!

If you have a chance to meet these people on a set or in a studio, excellent! They’ll remember meeting you.

Another big important thing is being a nice person. Treat everyone nicely. Don’t make it a pain in the neck because they get to hire a billion other people but they brought you in, so why be an idiot?

That’s one of the biggest things, how could you ever be in such a fun business like this and not act like a nice person? Don LaFontaine was a great example of hugely successful voice actor who also was a warm, wonderful person.

I was very surprised. We organized a workshop with Don and we thought, well, we’re not going to be able to get a hold of him. He’s the Don! But he was so gracious and so giving and it was such an amazing experience, so we developed a friendship.

I was debating whether to approach my family to move to Los Angeles and pursue another level of this work. Don said to me, “If you think you need to be here, you need to be here. Tell your kids, ‘Daddy has got to what daddy has got to do,’ and you move to L.A.”

You can do this, but you need to be here. You get to go wherever you want, but if this is what you want to do, with production going other places, it’s still where the magic happens. And I’ve met the most wonderful people in Los Angeles. It’s an incredibly exciting roller coast ride that I hope continues for many years.

And I thank the great Donald Fontaine for that. So Mr. La Fontaine, thank you~So Mr. La Fontaine, thank you}.

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