With a background in Production & Sound Engineering, I originally got into voice-acting for the geeky, technical stuff. It didn’t take me long to realize however that I was having much more fun in front of the mic than behind it, ultimately voicing dozens of video game characters for a variety of titles.
MY VOICE ACTING ORIGIN STORY
A funny thing happened on my way to work one day, it was back in 2002 and I had just landed a brand new job as Associate Producer for a small independent video game developer in Montreal. It was a dream come true and I could not believe my good fortune.
As a young, single, pc gamer with a mind full of ideas I set myself to the task of doing everything I possibly could to show this new employer that I could make a difference. Working more over-time than regular hours I poured my heart into my new job, and as a team we made miracles on a shoestring budget in the hopes of one day cracking the market with a hit title of our own.
With an indie development budget of around zero, saving investment dollars for additional audio, including music, voice-overs and foley effects, was unrealistic at best. Although the company had invested in a robust effects library, outsourcing music and voice-acting was too expensive to digest.
That’s when I decided to pitch the idea of an internal recording studio, one that would allow us to record and create our own audio, including foley effects, voice-overs, even music. Starting primarily with a lot of passion, blood, sweat, and tears of joy, a new internal recording studio was born. Staffed with a skeleton crew at first, this internal production facility eventually become a staple of our development clout, cranking out hundreds of hours of audio for an increasing library of 3rd party games that had been added to our publishing list as the studio grew.
During all this growth I had gladly taken on the new audio production role, hiring local actors and voice talent to come in and perform tirelessly at the craziest times of day or night in order to meet our publishing deadlines. Working with a hardened team of audio engineers and musicians to get our work done in record time.
During those hectic production cycles, we often still suffered form lack of budget, forcing us to think out of the box in order to provide all the necessary audio for a given game, which found me recording my own voice on multiple occasions in order to fill the gaps of our lengthy script criteria.
This ultimately led to a variety of full-scale narration recordings, character voicings, foley work and numerous character development experiences, that over the years gave me the confidence to experiment and go beyond my own expectations as a voice actor.
YOU MAY BE A VOICE-ACTOR
If sentences like “Give me 5 death sounds, ranging from short to long … without sounding like you’re throwing up” seem familiar to you, you may be a voice-actor. Or, if you’ve ever spent hours trying to enunciate a seemingly redundant phrase, just to get the intonation right while maintaining a believable accent not native to your own upbringing, you may be a voice-actor. If you’ve ever clearly visualized a motley crew of imaginary people in your mind that vividly represent your growing host of lead characters, each with their own backstory and quirky personalities, you may be a voice-actor, and if so, cheers on you. I wish you continued success in your audio adventures … and tea with lemon is your friend.
