Iwasgonnaeatthat

Hey op,

I just wanna say that you may be doing yourself more harm than good if you wanna be a SAG-AFTRA VO guy. When you work for free you're de-valuing your craft. Anyone in the arts has worked for free, but for V.O. work, it just doesn't help unless it's your own passion project. When people tell you they haven't the budget for a VoiceOver, then they aren't people you want to work for. They're unprofessional. It will do nothing for you, career wise. I'd say really, the only time to do free v.o. work would be when you're contracted for demos (union job) and the ad agency asks you to maybe do a couple extra tags for them as a favor. Since you're already being paid to be there, and chances are that if they decide to go ahead and produce the demo spots, they'll bring you back. Also, to increase your range, you may want to look at dropping your upstate NY accent (ignore this if you already can drop it). It's fine for local ads and small jobs online, but it really places you in the listeners head as "being from somewhere" as opposed to just being a voice. I just didn't hear anything without the "flat 'a'" sound.
There's a ton of us down here in NYC and it IS hard to break into it, but I've been able to earn a really nice living doing both on-camera and v.o. commercials. Please feel free to p.m. me if you have any questions.

Union is the way to go, you can always tell which jobs are union, both when you work them and when you see them. I hope you're able to join soon.

Source: I am a sag-aftra v.o. actor that makes a living at it.

Too funny to see this on here. I, too, did a show on History. I played about 20 characters in "The Epic History of Everyday Things". Good times were had by all. I hope your shoot was as fun as mine.

Actor here. Our industry is maybe the leader of the headshot/resume combo.

Hey Mo,

Congrats on all of your success. I see you occasionally at V.O. Studios in NYC as I'm running around auditioning. I like inventors and whatnot. Can I come on your show as a guest correspondent? Just looking for some work over here.