Saving to be a Voice Over Artist with Victoria Sechrist and Samantha Peller

Jun 8

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On this episode of Financially Naked: Stories from The Financial Gym, our host is Victoria Sechrist, a Boston-based Financial Trainer, and she is joined by Gym client Samantha Peller, and they are going to talk about saving to be a voice over artist.

A voice over actor only uses their voice and includes jobs such as commercials, animated characters, audiobooks, and online trainings.
Samantha started her career as an actress doing musical theater, which was her major in college. She also has done some on camera work as well. Eventually she ended up being a creative arts therapist.
Her career also led her to do trainings and she used her voice for the e-learnings her employer was producing. Someone at her work asked her if she had ever considered doing voice over acting.
During COVID, with all of the theaters shut down, there was a huge move for actors to go into voice over acting, because you can do it in a home studio. Samantha was already interested in this before COVID.
Voice over actors tend to get into it because someone says they have a good voice. When you go down the path, you quickly learn that voice acting has nothing to do with the quality of your voice and everything to do with the way you interpret the script in front of you.
A lot of the training for voice over actors is learning to tap into the truth of the story you are telling. If you have a nice voice, that is icing on the cake.
Everyone who gets into voice acting has a nice voice, but it is more of how they connect with the audience. Not everyone can reach somebody very deeply just using the power of their voice.
Samantha had been working with a financial advisor for about two years and she learned a lot from him, but she wanted to move to more of a community environment and be at a more supportive place, and for these reasons she was drawn to The Gym.
Samantha’s first trainer was Stella and she set her up with a plan that laid out how to save for short-term goals. She opened high-yield savings accounts and named them to make them more meaningful.
One of those accounts is her voice over dream fund. Some equipment that voice over artists need to buy include a microphone ($200 to $400 to start), headphones ($100 to $200), a way to treat your space (approximately $200), and your training ($50 to $2,000).
A big expenses is your voice over demo. This is like your resume, which shows the work you can produce and different segments. This could include anything from a commercial demo to an animation demo, and the cost ranges from $1,000 to $3,000.
There are a couple of different ways to get work. One way is direct marketing, which is to reach out to potential clients, like advertising agencies, producers, e-learning companies, audiobook companies, etc.
The other way is a pay-to-play service, where you pay into a membership of a website and that website will allow you to get sent auditions that match up with your voice, depending on the algorithms.
Voice actors do not need to memorize their lines and they are discouraged from doing so, because looking at the lines is another way to connect with them.
Samantha would like to work her way up to hiring an editor to produce her work. Currently she is doing that work herself. Not only do you need to have your own studio, it is expected that artists be audio engineers as well. Samantha started out using Audacity, which is free, but she would like to use more advanced recording software.
Samantha has a passion for children. Any project she can work on that is related to helping kids, like e-learning, animated projects, audio book, apps, etc., excites her.
Starting out, it is recommended to try out all areas of voice over acting to see where you fit. The jobs you are booking regularly will further define the path to head down.
Samantha is part of a community called Voice Actors NYC, which is mostly Facebook based. This community has shown her that being a voice actor in a Disney movie is attainable if you keep down the path.