How voice actors bring characters to life
The power of the human voice brings life to our favorite animated characters.
The magic of the human voice brings the characters of your favorite shows to life. Whether it's Thirteen in My Hero Academia or Sharley in One Piece but do you know the face behind the voice? Morgan Berry voices each of these popular characters among many others. It’s not uncommon for a voice actor to take on many popular roles and Berry is no different.
It is common for successful performers in this field to come from two places: acting and broadcasting. It tends to be easier for actors to make the transition than it is for broadcasters because spoken word is not completely about having a good voice. It’s just acting, off-camera.
Berry explains that the main thing that helped her when she started voice acting was that she had been acting on the stage for years. “The main thing is, grow in the art of acting,” Berry said. “Take acting classes get involved in your school’s theater department, get involved in a performing arts, a local Performing Arts company that you know, do some research to see what’s in your area, and just really put some feelers out there and grow in the art, there’s also a lot of professionals who are coaching online with this pandemic. Make sure you learn from actual professionals, look them up on IMDB make sure they actually have credits.”
Popular voice actors can even make salaries that are comparable to Blockbuster film stars. The voice actors for the animated show ‘Family Guy’ received raises that allowed them to earn between $175,000 — $225,000 per episode.
“No matter what you’re doing your voice-over should have a personality to it,” Lewis said. “Whether you are doing an advertisement or just recording an audiobook, you should always have a personality so it gets people invested.”
As the industry continues to shift and grow, technological changes have made this career choice more attainable than ever.
“Now, especially with the pandemic the horizons are definitely going to broader,” Lewis said. “the medium is changing and adapting and through that opening a lot more opportunities for people to grow and bring more people into the fold.”
Despite the opportunities, the competition is still fierce. There may be as many as 10,000 people in Hollywood who are making a living as professional voice talent. A recent google search for “voice over artist” returned 316 million results!
“You need to be ready when that opportunity comes,” Berry said. “You don’t want to go in for your first audition and have it suck. Because then that’ll be on the director’s mind, and they’ll just remember the crappy job you did. So, you have to be ready when that opportunity presents itself.”
Knowing where the roadblocks are will help you plan another route around them. It’s not easy, but not impossible. New voices breakthrough through the industry every year.
