Getting Started: An Introduction to Voiceover (VO)

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Let's start by giving you a huge warm welcome. My name is Melissa Tom. So without further ado, we will get straight into it. So Brava, we specialize in the art and business of VO. It's a huge thing to take on, but it is one of the best jobs in the world, in my opinion. It is a real dream to work with the clients and colleagues that we do on such a kind of exciting and creative career.

So I'm going to talk you through a few things that you need to. think about when you get started in the world of VO. And before you get started, you need to think about budgets and training and all that kind of thing. So I'll talk about the skills. I will talk about a few of the different types of VO for you today.

There may be some of you here that are experienced VOs. I know we often get a lot of people that come back to just dip in and chat. But I'm going to run this talk as if all of you are right at the beginning, cause that's really who this talk is for today. [00:01:00] So I'll talk about a little bit about how to get started.

I'll do literally probably 30 seconds on what we offer at Brava. You know where the website is. I'll tell you how to contact us, but really this is more of a chat about the sorts of things you need to think about when you're thinking about taking that first step. All right. So who can be a voice actor or a voiceover artist?

Well, I suppose the simple answer is anyone. You need a lot of skills to be able to cut it in this game, and that's like any craft, right? I know there are many of you that are professionals in lots of different disciplines. You can take VO on as an additional skill set. You don't all have to think, I have to be a full time voice actor.

I'm a full time voice actor along with running Brava, but that takes you know, a long time and it takes quite a lot of grit and determination, but you can absolutely have VO as 5 percent or 10 percent or a larger percentage [00:02:00] of the rest of your kind of working life, really. Life experience matters.
Yeah. The thing I love about voice acting is that you can be any age and I found in the world of sort of stage, TV and film acting, I found that as I got older, the roles for women, particularly for me, kind of dwindled slightly. And I always remember kind of scrabbling around for those, you know, precious monologues.

I would definitely say with voice acting, it is slightly different. We actually struggle to cast. from a talented pool of well trained actors when it comes to voice acting. So any age is brilliant, by the way. My children are voice actors, but also the older you get. If anyone here is over 80, I've always said I'll train you for free.

So skills that you need. So, lots of people will have the conversation, is voice acting acting?

Well, of course it is. In my belief, that voice acting though is a slightly different set of skills. And when people come and train with us, I think [00:03:00] especially actors who come through. Drama school, stage, TV and film, they are usually quite surprised at the techniques that we teach and the way that we teach voice acting because it is a whole new world to add to your skill set.

Now, of course, at drama school, you will learn a lot about radio drama and audio books and that's great. However, we approach voice acting here as those two elements are fantastically creative and if you can get work in them, brilliant. We all love to do an audio book or radio drama. But the reality is that those worlds are shrinking and the opportunities are much smaller in those two areas than they used to be.

So here at Bravo, we do train you to be really well versed with the commercial opportunities. My background is as a voice actor and broadcaster, but I have run startups, I have run digital marketing agencies, I've been head of comms, I've worked with advertising companies and agencies, and all of that is brought into what [00:04:00] we do.

training here at Brava. And that really, really is important if you're running your own business of one as a voice actor, because you need to understand how the commercial world works as well as all the other areas. And you need to understand how to negotiate and liaise with those clients. And of course the commercial world works much, much faster than most of the others.

So, the skills that you will need are those new, specific voice acting performance and technique skills. You will need to understand how to work your own home studio. Now, tonight I'm sat in my control room, which is where all the admin magic happens, but I do have a booth opposite me, a soundproof booth.

You do not need to worry too much about that. And again, that's something we take you through right from the beginning. You can be a successful VO voice actor with a simple microphone that you can, you know, you can get USB. Let's not go down that route today. But it doesn't have to cost you that much is what I'm saying.

All right, if you have any [00:05:00] questions, don't forget to put them in the chat because we always have questions about microphones. Okay, so the third set of skills that you will need along with performance and technique and technical skills are of course business and marketing. Now, we are living in an age where we are much more used to marketing ourselves.

There's a huge conversation to be had about social media. My only thing I'm going to say about that tonight is just don't worry about it. If you are active on social platforms, great. If you are not, great. You know, there are plenty of ways of getting work without having to kowtow Instagram. it Is a useful tool by the way, social platforms, but if it's not your thing, that's absolutely fine.

So, what is VO? Normally, we, I will throw this out to you, but I don't think I can hear you on this one. So I will ask the question rhetorically and answer it myself. So Wikipedia, good old Wikipedia defines voice acting, or voiceover, as a production technique where a voice is recorded for off screen use.

That's [00:06:00] the important word there. off screen. That definition is great and you'll hear us talk about it a lot in this industry. It kind of misses out a few really important things. One thing it doesn't mention is the client. And for me, it's very technical. So it's a technique that's recorded for off screen use.

That's great. That does tick the box for the technical side of things. But for me, we, we certainly view ourselves as creatives. And so for me, I would add to that. In order to bring clients words to life and you'll hear a lot of people in the industry talking about that the real Skill comes when you know really how to do that.

Where you don't just reel off those words and just read the script with a lovely voice. Because a lot of people do think that's what voice acting is. And I promise you there is so much that you can learn. And you can be taught to know how to deal with sessions when they go well.

But more importantly, to know how to deal with sessions when they don't go too well. Okay, [00:07:00] so lots of people will ask me what's the difference between voiceover and voice actor. They are interchangeable, but my definition really is that many of us in the UK started as voiceovers. So to give you an example, I started out in the world of commercial radio as a breakfast host for GWR, Galaxy, dance music stations and with no training whatsoever.

I remember being given my first show and I think there was 20 minutes of dead air on core control. And I started doing radio adverts because I was in the same building as the producers and I had a nice voice and they asked me and I read the script and didn't I have a lovely voice. That to me is voiceover where you tend to use the same voice to deliver a range of scripts.

A voice actor, for me, and for all of us here at Brava, will be trained in the three main areas of voice acting. And I'll take you through that in a minute. But particularly, also able to deliver character work. I think that's really [00:08:00] the key. Often I have people that will come to us, or talent, and they say, Well, I'll do commercial and corporate, but I don't do characters.

And all I can say to you is, is a trained voice actor will pretty much take anything on. The only thing I Don't do is Erotica. It's a perfectly valid area of EO. And if those of you here fancy it you know, there are plenty of ways that you can get into that side of the industry. But anything else that's thrown my way, usually I will be able to say, yep, I've got tools and techniques to give that a go.

So I hope that is helpful. Okay, let's move on to the next thing. So where can you find voiceover? Well, All of you have heard of TV and radio adverts known as commercial VO. So I'm sure you're well versed with that. Gaming, obviously gaming has exploded over the last few years. So video games, online games, that's a huge area, of course.

Narration and documentary that consists of a whole. wide range of sub genres. [00:09:00] And when you join us here at Brava, that's the, that's the core module really. Number one is narration. Stage one is narration, stage two is commercial, and stage three is characters here at Brava. And that is how we kind of slice it up when we train you.

Some people will say I really want to voice for video games. That is great. Go for it. But we don't teach voicing for video games. We teach characters because characters will be applicable across the board in all of your VO work and all of it is really wonderful to learn. I kind of warned you because the trainings.

Some of the best bit, I would say that, but it honestly really is. Audiobooks, of course, that's part of narration. You can produce that yourself or that can be done in house through a production company. There's a platform called ACX on Amazon, some of you may know it. But that is where you can liaise with authors or the texts are of varying quality, I would say.

I have used ACX in the past. If you want to do [00:10:00] self production, then please, please get training because we can save you so much time on the editing. I cannot tell you. I have had people come to me who have been voicing audio books for a long time and producing them. And they will tell me that they're spending four hours.

editing one hour of recording. If I record an audiobook myself in my studio, I'll record an hour, an hour's worth of the book and it will take me 10 minutes to edit. So that's the amount of time we can save you and that's why you train. Another area of narration is corporate. Now, corporate VO really is, for many VOs, they're bread and butter, and this is where we talk about understanding how the commercial and corporate world works.
It's a different sort of skill set with the negotiation and the language that we use and the speed of delivery. I often will get commercial jobs in and they'll say, can you be free in the next hour? Yes, fine. No problem. I know many of you with acting will have had the same thing, but of course that sometimes if [00:11:00] it's a big gig and they will want you to be available and you can say yes or no to that, which is lovely because we have the agency to say no.

There are live events as well. I won't go too much into that right now. We do talk about much more about that on, on the course, but for me, I would. Say my main bulk of VO is certainly corporate and commercial, although I have done plenty of video games as well and toys, but I specialize in c, corporate and commercial.

So planning. Well, the first thing to remember is that you, all of us here at Brava. really view voice acting as a craft, and a craft takes time to learn. I was working with Patsy Rodenberg recently, which I've mentioned a million times, because it was great. But we had a big discussion on I think it was the Romans, maybe?

Who said that it takes seven years to learn your craft. And we were, we were sort of saying, well, we think it takes longer. But, you know, voice acting is a lifelong pathway, and we're always learning. However The beginning is front loaded, and that's [00:12:00] really why we do these talks, and why when you approach Bravo, we have a personal call with every single person that approaches us, so we can get to know each other, and we can think of the best way to advise you.

You know, it might be that Bravo's not the right fit for you, or you're not the right fit for us, or whatever, and that is absolutely fine. The talks that we have at the beginning is about saying, right. Who are you as a creative individual? What experience do you bring? Who are you now, and where do you want to be?

And if we feel, or I feel, that you would be better placed with a different coach, or a different style of learning, then we will absolutely do that. It is not in anybody's interest, anybody's interest for us just to kind of bring in as many people as possible, because we want to make sure that you come out the other side you know, satisfied and ready to go.

And most importantly, confident, and I would probably say all of us here at Brava all of the master coaches here are really well known in their field, they're experts in their field, and we, we really do know how to [00:13:00] bring your confidence up. And if I'm honest, confidence is the one barrier to entry. You can do as much training as you like.

Trust me, you can do as much sports Fiddling with your home studio as you like, it's never finished, but at some point you have to bite the bullet and say I'm going to launch myself, I'm ready to go, and you have to get out there and start hustling. So having your confidence built up, and I'm talking about working with all kinds of people by the way.

You know, we work with lots of people who are already confident, but there's always more work we can do. So the next thing I was going to mention was, you know, put time aside to explore your options. There are lots of different ways of learning voice acting or voiceover. Obviously, there's a ton of stuff online.

And, you know, the reason I set up Bravo was because when I became a full time voice actor when I moved to California. There were all these sort of online ways you could learn in YouTube videos, and that's great, and random coaching sessions. But I wanted it all. I wanted [00:14:00] to fill in the gaps that I had, because I was already an established commercial and corporate VO.

But I wanted much more working characters. And I just knew what I wanted, and I wanted all the time to be about me and my training. And so we don't sell pre recorded webinars here. That's not to say they're not useful. They absolutely are. That's not how we train. We're one to one. We're live. Some of our sessions are in a group.

But for stage one, all of those 10 weeks, bar one is with me. And it's on a one to one basis. So I hope that's helpful for you. Budget. You know, you are going to have to work out what your budget is. And trust me when I say, everything is front loaded. Everything comes at once. So that is why here at Brava, we break things down into three, those three core areas.

Narration, commercial. And characters and there is no rush to do any of it. You can take as long as you like however, we tend to work on commercial time here and I'm quite [00:15:00] good at making sure you don't lose momentum. All of us are, but be realistic about the kinds of budgets that you have and we'll talk about that.

If any of you contact us for a chat, you know, we'll talk about that. We are. You know, we are a set fee, we don't ever do discounts or anything like that, it is what it is. But if you find that you need a different way of learning, then we can certainly signpost you to lots of resources online and you can kind of create your own learning pathway, I guess, through that.

Be realistic about your goals, I mean, you know, you're all intelligent, creative individuals that are here today. I don't think you need me to tell you that, but I always say make a plan, make a plan, you can break the plan, you can ignore it. But make it because the act of just sitting down and working out exactly what it is that you want and the first step you need to take to get there is critical.

It's really, really key. Again, here at Brava on the first stage, we, we talk a lot about marketing and Propositions and making plans. So I will, we will guide you with that. But for those of you that [00:16:00] come to the talk and, and go off and, and study or learn in a different way don't underestimate the importance of that.

Certainly when my start husband and I, my startup husband, no. When my husband and I worked with in startups you know, everything came from an idea that was written on the back of an envelope, essentially. I was gonna say fag packet then, but that those days are gone. certainly do not smoke. Right don't rush anything and I think that's something that's really key to remember is we have all different types of people that join us.

We have people and talent that I really want to get going and they're all fired up and it's important to kind of manage that and to channel that energy and that excitement, but make sure that each stage you learn properly and correctly and you commit it from the mind. to the muscle memory. That's something that we do so much here at Brava.

You know, and it is frustrating because you want to do it all at once. We also have other people, other talent that don't even recognize [00:17:00] how talented they are. And that takes a different set of skills to work with them. So everybody is different and that's really why we are, we have to work on a one to one basis with you.

But don't rush it, take it one step at a time. For those of you that work with Brava and for those people that have already been through our training, excuse me, you will, you will know that we take it one step at a time and you'll look back and realize that the work we've done has, has gone in. So for us, it's always about following that set route.

Start with narration. Always, always start with narration and then when you have your demo for that, we'll talk about demos in a bit you can then move on to training in commercial, and then characters, we normally recommend that you do that as stage three. So I will carry on chatting and I will come back to your questions probably in about 15 minutes, something like that.

Okay, if you hear a funny noise, that's my mouse because my magic mouse has decided to stop working on its magic [00:18:00] mat. Okay, so agents. How do you get the work? Well, agents is one way of getting work. Everyone gets really sort of stressed about agents and all I can say in the world of VO is do not panic.

If you are supposed to get an agent, you will get them at the right time. If you want to have an idea of how it works. for me as a voice actor. I've probably got about 18 agents. You could, they're territorial so they're all in obviously in different parts. Many in America, quite a few in Europe.

I've got one main UK agent because our territory is really tiny. And they work on your behalf. They get you the bigger, better jobs. You will get paid commission in much the same way as acting agents. And, but you can be, if you want a full time VO without an agent. It is absolutely possible. I would say that everyone starting out in voice acting will have to be comfortable with the hustle.

So another way of getting VO work is through something called [00:19:00] P2P sites. And that stands for Pay to Play. Also known as subscription sites. Many of you in the acting world will probably know of Mandy backstage, but there are so many others that, there really are a lot of these P2P sites. There's a huge discussion about the pros and cons about them in the industry, and it is our job not to tell you what to do, ever.

You know, I'll always talk about the fact that you are quite capable of making your own decisions. What we will talk you through are the pros and cons of those, of using those sites. I feel that they have uses. But you have to be very aware that you are signing away those performances that can then of course be used for AI and generative AI and that is a whole different conversation.

But as long as you are prepared and you understand what is going on, you can make your own decisions about whether you use those pay to play sites. Those sites work with you paying an annual fee and that annual fee will give [00:20:00] you access to jobs and clients, essentially. Now, to give you an example, when I trialled all of those out in, when I was in California, I think Voices.

com was around about 200 a year and I believe now, I don't use it anymore, but I believe now it's gone up to about 650 a year. So that just gives you an example of of those costs. That's just one huge site, by the way. They're a different cost. Obviously when you join an agent website there is no cost to put your profile up on that database because they will take their 20 percent cut.

I know a lot of you are actors here so I'm not going to talk any more about how commission works. But I did want to talk about how those P2P sites work. There's lots of politics around it We always say at Brava when we're training, we will deliver the professional information. And then when we get to the pub, we have Brava drinks once every quarter.

We don't talk about them, but everyone who's training will discuss what, how, what their experience is of them. And that network is really lovely in a kind of [00:21:00] safe environment, I guess. Okay. So another way of getting work after agents and P2P sites comes down to cold calling. And I would say that everybody I know.

doesn't like cold calling. My response to that is if you have put in the work, and the time, and the energy, and you have worked out what your proposition is, and you've had your headshots done, and you know exactly how to deal with difficult clients, and you know about negotiation, and you've got all the performance tips.

Coming out of every, everywhere, every pocket, then you are going to be contacting those people with a, with something that meets their needs and that's the whole basis of marketing really in the world of advertising. So it's, when you're ready, you won't feel bad about cold calling people. Well, I certainly don't anyway and trust me, you know, cold calling is something that I'm very used to.

It does take a bit of Getting used to we can guide you on all that and how we do it. But [00:22:00] just feel the fear and do it anyway. I don't know if any of you have got that book, but I think it's an old one that does the rounds and I'd certainly recommend reading it. And ultimately, being a successful VO really, really does come down to the hustle.

And I know it's kind of a bit of a, you know, a phrase that you probably hear, but you know, I hear so much noise. from lots of different people in the industry saying that the VO market is saturated and the VO market has too many voice actors. Well, A, I think it's brilliant that more and more people want to be voice actors.

It is a wonderful career. It is an amazing creative endeavor. 99. 9 percent of the clients I work with are incredible human beings, many of whom are still friends. I think it's fantastic that more people want to join this industry. I also think it's funny how you never hear, if someone says they want to be an electrician, you never hear someone saying, it's just too many electricians around.

So I say, why not you? Rather than, I can't do it, there's too many out there, I think you need to flip [00:23:00] it over and say well, why not you? What experience have you got that is unique, and all of us have something that's unique? I mean, I am, I sit in the market as a British, white, middle aged, female voice actor.

The reality is that I'm half Indian. I know I don't look it, but I am actually half Indian. And but, but that's where I sit in the market and I get plenty of work. So even if you think you're the same as everyone else, there are other elements that you can base your proposition on. Don't worry too much if I'm talking too much about proposition, but it's really important.

And that's something we're really skilled at here at Brava is working with you to work out what experience you bring to it and how we can, how we can help you work out what your key messaging is. You can tell I used to work in agencies, can't you? Key messaging. Okay. So, all about the hustle, getting your own work, cold calling, very important.

Okay, so repeat clients really is what you're aiming for. Now, it's interesting about repeat clients. [00:24:00] I've got a Masters in Marketing, which I can categorically tell you was fascinating to study. But as soon as I went into the world of advertising, there's no way you talk in that world, in the real day to day world, in the way that you talk when you do a degree.

So, You know, relationship marketing is, is a buzzword. Yes, it comes down to relationships. Personally, I feel that repeat clients has fallen off a bit over the last 10 years. I get lots of work from lots of new clients. Lots of new clients. I get lots of new clients every month, I would say. So that's just kind of a big change that I've noticed.

I do have plenty of repeat clients, but I would say the balance actually is more from new work that comes in. Many of you here might already be voice actors and might have different experiences, so please share them in the chat and I'll go through them at the end of this talk. Okay one of the best ways, once you've trained and you've got your demos, to get work is starting with your own networks.

Friends, families, do they own businesses? You know, ask to do their voice [00:25:00] messaging. All of that counts, right? All of that is real work in the real world. 

The great thing about voice acting is we have the script in front of us, we don't have to memorise the script, yay, and we don't have to be seen very often. So, auditioning now, auditioning really is how you will book work in the you, The UK, we used to book work directly off our demos. Demos are still very important, and I think I'm going to talk about those in a second.

But actually, we're moving much more towards the American style, which is where you will be sent either by your agent, or you will access it through the online book. Databases, you'll be sent a sample script and you will be required to record that script. It will be a bespoke script every time for that particular job.

And you know, every single day, I've been doing this for a long time. I can categorize, even when I train all of you, I will say, You know, have a plan, do them all first thing, and even, even today, I never do my auditions first thing. I'm always doing them last [00:26:00] minute. So, just be aware that that's usually now how we book work.

You'll submit that audition as an MP3 from your home studio either via a website, or you'll just email it to your agent, and you'll never hear from them again unless you book the job. or unless you get a cheque of ale. So that's kind of how auditioning works. You still can book off directly off your reels.

I do get lots of inquiries saying, can you just do this today or tomorrow? Never met them. They heard my reels. And they'll just send me the script and we don't even talk. It's great. So you will have to develop your acting skills, your reading skills, your sight reading skills, complex terminology.

Trust me when you start training with us. You'll be like, yeah, that's really simple It's just a couple of paragraphs of text But when you have to deliver it with nuance and emotion and range and sell a product or a service Suddenly it starts to become a bit more difficult. Okay, so We'll have five or ten more minutes of me talking and [00:27:00] then I'll go to the questions.

So please stick them in. Unlocking talent. So having a good voice is definitely not enough. It's vital to be able to be heard. And I would say that we are, there's much more work being done on things like accent bias, which is great. We want all types of voices, all accents. Honestly, I mean, we cast at Bravo as well.

And I'm not going to start talking about diversity because we have gone backwards. There's, there's a lot of. work that perhaps started, but the reality is that, you know, we find it incredibly difficult to find well trained, available, committed voice talent in certain areas. So, you know, we can work with you together on that to see where you might fit within that.

So, you will need to get proper training, honestly. I mean, we work with broadcasters who've been on air for 40 years, we work with all sorts of different people, we work with opera singers, we work with rappers, we're just so many different kinds of talent, [00:28:00] and Every single person will mail me after session one of narration and say, it's much more than we thought it was.

And it really is, but it is wonderful stuff. And when you have that knowledge behind you, it will bring your confidence level up. And that's really what we're aiming to do here at Brava. So marketing and business acumen is incredibly important. I'm assuming that all of you have worked or are working and you will bring.

Whatever that is to your career as a voice actor, it doesn't matter what arena that is in. For me personally, going through startups in Silicon Valley and advertising has been instrumental to me being a voice actor. Excuse me one second because I've been talking since eight o'clock this morning. Stamina is very important, breath control, uh, I know there's a few vocal health coaches in here so I'm not going to talk too much about those right now.

Being comfortable with complex terminology, so medical reads are huge, I do quite a few of those every week, and [00:29:00] I love being challenged. The harder the script you know, the more crazy a character director is, the more I love it, because I've been doing it a long time, so it's really great when you get something different through.

And I love, I love having something that, that seems quite difficult at first and then together with a producer we, we get something that we're both proud of. Being able to take direction is really key. You know, you've got to have thick skin. That's the only way I can describe it. Obviously I came up through commercial and, you know, probably been through a million redundancies, a million takeovers, you know, on the breakfast show, you'd, you'd work on the breakfast show for three years and then you would.

You would get an email the day before and say, right, well, we don't need you anymore. And they'll be like, oh, okay, I'll just get my coat. So, you know, I, I guess resilience is important not to take things personally. Always meet difficulty with you know, with being charming, don't react in those sorts of ways, but just being able to be, to understand that it can be quite tough.

And because of that, I [00:30:00] think it's good to have a, a network around you, a community around you. I've been talking today a lot about communities versus tribes, but that is for another blog post, I think, not for today. But here at Brava, we genuinely are a lovely community. We're all ages, everybody is really supportive, and you can choose to opt into that, and you don't have to if you don't want to.

But if you want that support, which is so vital when you are In a studio, working behind a computer for any job, not just voice acting, when we are, you know, generally sat behind our computer day in, day out, it's so lovely to do things in person, to get out, to actually have some real conversations that aren't always connected to work.

So having that network around you is really important. I have found with giving different talent direction. Some people are very used to it, some people aren't, some people don't like it. Some people, especially if I'm working with CEOs, sometimes that can be quite tricky to begin with, but once they [00:31:00] understand that it's not personal and we are just aiming to get the best performance then it, then it, it works itself out in the wash.

So being able to take direction, very, very key. So, let's move on. So, a couple of words really before we go to questions on what makes a good coach or a good organisation. So, anyone that you train with will offer you an education in the best way possible. Here at Brava, it's all for us about the highest quality training we can give you.

Things that are actually meaningful and having those deep conversations. That's really important to me with you. You know, we want to find out as much about you as hopefully you want to find out about voice acting so that we can understand which opportunities to throw your way while we might cast you in the future.

You know, so it's really important that we get to know each other in that way. All of our coaches will always offer you an opinion. We have opinions on lots of things and we really value your opinions too. [00:32:00] So we always invite you to push back and say, well actually you could look at it like this or we don't agree and that's great.

We really want that here at Brava. We will. Push you out of your comfort zone. If we don't do that, you don't need the training, right? If we don't push you out of your comfort zone. But we do it in such a safe way. Elaine Clark, our characters coach, she's been working in characters for 40 plus years out in California.

And when everybody joins the first class, that is a group class, but you can see everyone's like a rabbit in headlights. in the headlights and within 10 minutes, you know, Elaine's done this so long, everybody forgets about that and they just are in the moment and enjoying what they're here to do. So we are really you know, we, we are, we know how to get the best performances out of you for each of our particular expertise.

We'll be honest, of course we'll be honest. We'll help you decide when you're ready to cut a demo. That is so important. Demos really is what you're aiming to do when you start training. You cannot do anything as a voice actor without your demos. Please, [00:33:00] please, never ever cut your own demos. Ever. ever. It's, it's, it's a thing.

I don't cut my own demos, but I produce all of our Brava demos. You know, we don't ever cut our own demos. It's very important that A, they're done professionally and B, that they are done with another set of ears on them. That's not to say that you can't record samples, but your key. demos, your narration, your commercial, and your character demos really should be done professionally.

Okay well, what makes good talent? Well, do your research, you know, explore a range of coaches. The only piece of advice I can give you, honestly, is that it's the right fit. You know, if it feels right in your gut, if you feel motivated, a little bit fearful, excited, if you find that you're looking forward to the next conversation with us or whoever, then that's the right fit for you.

If you come away and it just doesn't feel right. Don't commit. You know there's never any pressure to commit to any learning. There should never be. And also ask as many [00:34:00] questions with whoever you're training or thinking of training with, as you want. There's no limit to the amount of questions.

If you have anything at all that you'd like to talk to us about, Do drop us a line. It's info@bravo.uk.com. Everything's on the website. You can see everything there.

And I really, really hope to hear from some of you sometime soon. Please don't feel that you have to contact us and commit to training. I am more than happy to have a call with you and just talk about where you are at what kind of things you want to consider. You know, what kind of training resources might help, you know, it really is about having these conversations and, and that really is the most important thing.

So on that note, it's been lovely to not see you all, but to hear you and to get your texts, and hopefully we'll talk again sometime soon.[00:35:00] [00:36:00]