Dive into the captivating world of voice acting with the charismatic Dex London and me, your host, as we unpack the laughter-laced trials and triumphs of this unique art form. Ever wondered how a voiceover artist transforms simple script into a living, breathing character? Dex peels back the curtain on the vocal discipline and self-care that propels one into the spotlight, emphasizing the sheer tenacity needed to voice everything from audacious video game heroes to the gentle narrator of your favorite audiobook.
Accents – they're the vibrant threads in the tapestry of voice acting, and this chat with Dex is a treasure trove of insights on perfecting them. We regale you with tales from the trenches, highlighting how an authentic accent can captivate an audience and the dedication it takes to master this craft. Dex's own vocal escapades, coupled with nods to iconic performances, underscore the breadth of opportunities that await a voice actor willing to explore the nuances of dialect.
Wrapping up our longest episode yet, we pivot to the hustle necessary to carve out a successful career in the fast-paced voiceover market. From navigating casting calls to networking like a pro, Dex and I lay out the roadmap to turn passion into paychecks. A massive thank you to Dex for his wisdom and wit, and to you, our dear listeners, for tuning into an episode that promises to echo in your mind and inspire your voice acting ventures. Keep an ear out for more episodes that promise to be just as engaging, and don't forget to connect with the incredible talent that is Dex London!
Check out Dex's work and Podcast on the below links!
Dive into the captivating world of voice acting with the charismatic Dex London and me, your host, as we unpack the laughter-laced trials and triumphs of this unique art form. Ever wondered how a voiceover artist transforms simple script into a living, breathing character? Dex peels back the curtain on the vocal discipline and self-care that propels one into the spotlight, emphasizing the sheer tenacity needed to voice everything from audacious video game heroes to the gentle narrator of your favorite audiobook.
Accents – they're the vibrant threads in the tapestry of voice acting, and this chat with Dex is a treasure trove of insights on perfecting them. We regale you with tales from the trenches, highlighting how an authentic accent can captivate an audience and the dedication it takes to master this craft. Dex's own vocal escapades, coupled with nods to iconic performances, underscore the breadth of opportunities that await a voice actor willing to explore the nuances of dialect.
Wrapping up our longest episode yet, we pivot to the hustle necessary to carve out a successful career in the fast-paced voiceover market. From navigating casting calls to networking like a pro, Dex and I lay out the roadmap to turn passion into paychecks. A massive thank you to Dex for his wisdom and wit, and to you, our dear listeners, for tuning into an episode that promises to echo in your mind and inspire your voice acting ventures. Keep an ear out for more episodes that promise to be just as engaging, and don't forget to connect with the incredible talent that is Dex London!
Check out Dex's work and Podcast on the below links!
Hello, welcome back to Infinite Prattle. This is part two of the new video, as you can see, version of the podcast and we have Dex London returning. In this episode we're going to talk less about dying and death and destruction. We did it in an uplifting way, I think. I feel. I think it was. I think it was, I think it was reflective. In this episode we're going to talk about what Dex is venturing out to now with his voice acting career, which is hopefully going to blossom and bloom soon, and we'll talk about how he's doing with that and what he's discovered so far.
Stephen:
So yeah so let's talk about that. You're listening to Infinite Prattle with your host, Stephen. Thanks for joining me for unscripted, unedited .
Stephen:
Welcome back, Dex. Thanks very much for joining me. I would say again, but I'm going to ruin the room.
Dex:
Very exciting. I was going to ruin the fact it's just one back to back episode really, but how bizarre is it that, you know, a month has gone by and we're still wearing the same clothes?
Stephen:
crazy, it's crazy, isn't it? It's crazy.
Dex:
Some people wear green.
Stephen:
I'm actually like the reverse you are the green screen, I am the green screen.
Dex:
I'm fascinated by the fact that every now and then, one of your headphones disappears.
Stephen:
I know it's really distracting, isn't it?
Dex:
I'm miserized.
Stephen:
I don't know why it's just this one. It's not doing it. To the other one no, the other one's the shadow. No, it's just that one. I don't know. Try to figure out. No, there's nothing behind me that would be doing it. I have no idea.
Dex:
Sometimes, when you turn sideways, half your head disappears as well.
Stephen:
That happens in real life as well. Really inconvenient Just morph into a different dimension Crossing the road. Just the nightmare.
Dex:
Really careful.
Stephen:
In the last episode we kind of talked about we didn't really want to give too much away about the podcast but the whole podcast Phoenix from the Flame kind of theme for it and about how your first few episodes are about. The podcast are about that and the career changes you've had etc. Going to listen to podcasts seriously, it's very, very good.
Dex:
If you only want to listen to one of them episode four they get better. The last episode four, I feel, is one of the shorter ones.
Stephen:
I've not listened to episode four, yet I've not listened to episode four yet. All right, I know this will go out a couple of weeks after the previous episode as well. You'll probably be on episode six by the time this goes out.
Dex:
Yes, by the time this yes.
Stephen:
Don't commit to anything. Episode six is the best.
Dex:
Episode six Riky, could you believe.
Stephen:
Yes, again, genuinely not just saying it because he's on the podcast. His podcast is very, very good and I highly recommend it, but what we're going to talk about this episode is your new venture into voice acting would be the correct term for it, I think.
Dex:
There's a huge debate on that.
Stephen:
Oh, is there. Have I prodded the hornet's nest?
Dex:
An interesting industry because there's some people. So the term which I always find really weird is voiceover. Right Now, voiceover to me is the thing that you do.
Stephen:
Yes.
Dex:
I've just created a voiceover for this product, but it's used as a noun, so people call themselves a voiceover, a VO.
Stephen:
Yeah.
Dex:
Right, it's a bit like calling yourself a marketing to me.
Stephen:
How bizarre.
Dex:
A voiceover. What?
Stephen:
Because I always thought it'd be like voiceover artist or voiceover artist.
Dex:
So I quite like the term voiceover artist because I think it explains everything. Yeah, right, but not everybody does. Not everybody likes to call themselves a voiceover artist or a VA. Some people find that a bit pretentious, so they'll call themselves a voice actor. There is a difference in that, for the true sense of it. My understanding is a voiceover is done in your own voice yeah, as in a promotion, for example, and voice acting you might be doing a character.
Stephen:
Yes.
Dex:
And so I get the difference between the two. And there are voiceover artists that only do their voice. You know that all they do is they don't do any kind of characters or acting or whatever they do their voice and variations of it. But I think most of the people in the industry, certainly the successful ones, have to have a range, and the wider the range then obviously the more they can go for.
Stephen:
Yeah.
Dex:
I think, I think it's strange because I think I would.
Stephen:
Even if it was someone doing their own voice, I would think I would still think that was a voiceover artist, because even that intro that I did, that's my voice and I'm a voiceover on that technically.
Dex:
But it's hard.
Stephen:
I found it hard.
Dex:
I jump my words up and I know what I'm going to say, but when you come to say it, it's getting the tone right, the volume right, how you say something, how long you're going to say a word and this is the issue with the industry, because I've only been playing at this really for the last sort of four months or so there's people who've been doing this for years and what they found when COVID hit was an explosion of people going. What can I do from home?
Stephen:
Yeah.
Dex:
Oh, I know I've got a voice, therefore I can do a voiceover, and it's a bit like saying I've got hands, therefore I'm a pianist. Yes, we can all talk, yes, we can all hit the keys on the piano, but there is an awful lot more to it and down to how you breathe, how much, how hydrated you are. So you've got to think about the amount you're drinking, and it should be I mean, I'm drinking completely the wrong thing here, because it should be just water. You're avoiding diuretics like tea and coffee and alcohol, because they dehydrate you, warming your voice up, and that's before you've got to deciding on the delivery. And then, of course, something like 60, 70% of work.
Dex:
These days they require you to have a home studio, hence this room cupboard that I'm in because they expect you to be able to produce broadcast quality audio, ready to go, ready to go, yeah. And so that means you've got to have equipment like the microphone and all the rest of it, but high quality, and you've got to have the right software. And then you've got to have the ability to edit, mix and master that to a reasonable standard. So you've got to be I'm going to hate to say it, you've got to be a sound engineer, because sound engineers know way more than someone like myself. But there's an element of sound engineering that you've got to be able to do to deliver something that's ready for someone to use, and often you're doing that five, six, 10 times a day as an audition.
Stephen:
Yes, and that I think that's when we had our quick chat, so I had to interrupt you when we had a quick chat. I'll say quick chat. We're on the phone about 90 minutes. I think I expected about 20 minutes and me and Dex could probably have our own podcast together. To be honest, it was a bit insane, but when you hey, I'm James, you're James?
Stephen:
Yeah, let's get it going when we were talking. I was really surprised you said that that I was thinking. You know, when you get in work, I don't think I expected auditions and I don't know why, because for any other role in kind of like entertainment or you know, you expressing yourself like, if it be it voice or like acting, et cetera, you would have no audition.
Stephen:
And I just expected it's a sub-shortener of acting and I kind of just expected that you would have like examples of your voice out there and they would be like that voice sounds good.
Dex:
We'll just employ him to do it. And maybe that's what the idea may have done. You know my website and I believe there'll be a link.
Stephen:
There will, there will.
Dex:
You know that's got demo reels on it and the various subscription sites I'm on have demo reels. So there'll be one for with a number of different commercials and there'll be one that's a narration one, that's a gaming one and so forth. But increasingly clients want to hear a bit of their script as an audition. I saw a wonderful I don't know if it was a tweet or if it was on LinkedIn a few days ago and it said so, you want to be a voice actor? Well, I hope you like interviews because it is like doing an interview. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Dex:
You know, when I get a role to go for that says we don't want a custom audition, just sending you know something. This is a I don't know, this is a narration role. Sending your narration reel. Oh, it's great, because your application takes, you know, a couple of minutes and when you get good at it, then you can, you know, record and edit and mix and so forth. Your audition in, you know, five to 10 minutes. It's taking me longer than that. Yeah, because you know I want to get it right and I'm new to it. And the industry average in case anybody's thinking, oh, I want to be a voice actor the industry average is something like one booking for every hundred auditions.
Stephen:
Wow, that's now that's scary.
Dex:
That is frightening really.
Stephen:
That does frighten me yeah.
Dex:
That's obviously. There are people in the industry who are getting one in 10 or one in 20. But that still means that you've got you know between nine and 19 that you're doing, that you're getting nothing for.
Stephen:
So potentially like a lot of your auditions, you know you're not really getting paid. You could be doing three or four hours work a day in audition, not seeing them come back from that. Yeah.
Dex:
Well, so welcome to my world. So you know, Los Angeles is full of people who want to be an actor, who are waiting tables right, and there's a reason for that. And voice acting, it's kind of 10% you've got a good voice and it's 90%, you know, perspiration, hustle, training, improving. You know, I've done pretty much full time for the last three or four months training with a wonderful organization called Gravy for the Brain, which is a great name, run by Hugh Edwards and Peter Dixon, who are, you know, industry greats. Hugh is a producer and casting director and Peter Dixon, if you don't know the name, I mean he's the voice of all sorts of things, including X Factor. I mean he's done like 30,000 commercials.
Stephen:
Yeah, absolutely, when you said his name, I was thinking never heard of the guy and I knew that a few things did not work.
Dex:
You've definitely heard him. Oh, I definitely heard him.
Dex:
If you haven't heard of him and you know loads of training with them and you know live training, webinar stuff, courses, blogs, practice producing stuff and then sending it to them to get feedback on. You know, improving it's a huge thing that I'm only scratching the surface of. And, of course, once you have that momentum and you start to get some bookings and you start to get some stuff going on, then you've got some clients to keep in contact with. Then your customer relationship management picks in. You can tell I was a business studies teacher.
Dex:
You know your marketing kicks in because you're keeping contact with that client and say, hey, you know that project we worked on last quarter, that was brilliant. Just reminding you, I'm around. If you get anything else coming up that's like that, you can use me, you know, but you've got to get there first. And so what people like myself do who are new to it, the main way initially to get work is through the subscription sites or the pay-to-play sites, and they vary from sort of £99 a year to, I mean you can spend hundreds, in fact in some cases thousands, to be allowed to be on their site to get the chance just to audition.
Stephen:
Yeah.
Dex:
There is some work going on by equity at the moment the Actors Union to try and change the rules, because the rules in the UK at the moment are that it is illegal for a recruitment firm to charge the candidate for looking for jobs. Right, they can only charge the client, except in the entertainment industry. It's the only industry that's specifically excluded from that, and the argument from equity is that the client should be paying. They're the ones you know they've got the budget for their whatever. They should be paying, just like every other client would pay. If you want to recruit someone for your business and you go to a recruitment agency, you don't usually pay them up front. You'll pay a percentage of the fee, so there's work on that, but at the moment it's the would-be voice actor that pays. So and obviously what you do as a new voiceover artist is you join all of them Because you don't know any different, and very quickly you realise that some are going to produce a lot more than others.
Dex:
Some of them are very United States of America centric, some of them are more. We just have more roles for British accents. My American accent is not good, so I don't even try because it's not the sort of you can't do an accent you could get away with with your mates, but but not professionally. Yeah, you know, it has to be really rock solid, otherwise there's no point to it. And so, you know, I attempted it, checked it out with someone in New York that's talking about, and he was like no, don't do an American accent. Now I'm not saying I'll never be able to do it, you know, but I need training to get to that point.
Stephen:
Yeah.
Dex:
Obviously, if you're American you have that naturally and obviously there's lots of different American accents, but the kind of neutral American accent is very much in demand because America's a big place, yeah. But actually you know, in the UK regional accents are particularly, particularly case. So there's a reason that you know your house insurance adverts have someone with a Yorkshire accent or an Irish accent or a Black Country accent. You know that the soft regional accents are really in that kind of genuine, the genuineness, the authentic, the full-fledged face there, face their operations in places that have got these sort of dialets.
Stephen:
So I believe, like like a Newcastle accent, jordyland, edinburgh, you say Yorkshire, they're all like relatable accents the calming and if you've normally followed a complaints line you'll get through to someone in Edinburgh because it's a calming accent and you know it's strange, like it's something in the psyche that relates to that and absolutely like calms you and you come off the phone thinking I'm gone. I went on there complaining and I've actually signed up to extra money. What's going?
Dex:
on.
Stephen:
I've just gone on there, but yeah, so that's so interesting, like how you know how you go about it. I don't know. You know the whole. I never, I never even think about the accent thing, really about. You know we've spoken off pre-meeting about accents. I never even thought about an American accent. Or you know World Dialects kind of thing and doing it in South Africa or anything like that.
Dex:
You know, and there's voiceover work for all sorts of people, you know, so the jobs that come up. There was one recently that came through and I thought, well, I can't do that because, as well as freaking English, you've got to be able to speak Cantonese fluently. My Cantonese is really ropey, so there's all sorts of things, you know. There's this stuff where they want a Brazilian accent or they need somebody with a genuine French accent, or whatever.
Dex:
You know, just depends on the there's a role for everybody, whatever accent they naturally have, and the really good voice actors if you want to call them that voiceover artist. You know they might have a Midlands accent but they're able to do you know a London or a sea pronunciation, you know an RP accent or they're able to do a broader version of their own accent or maybe a Liverpool one, but you know what it's like if somebody does an accent and it's slightly off. Really. You really notice it.
Stephen:
I find it with Northern Ireland accents, you know, in films, because obviously my mum's from Northern Ireland?
Dex:
Not now.
Stephen:
And, if you like, if you hear an accent in a film and someone's meant to be like from Belfast or especially like the strong, like Shankill accent, you either have to nail that or you sound ridiculous. And there's a few films out there I think in the name of the father's one of them, where I can't remember what actor it is now, but he's got the most terrible Irish accent. And I think Brad Pitt had an Irish accent in one of his films and it was awful as well, and it's just you know.
Dex:
So was this. I think was it Lockstock.
Stephen:
Was it Lockstock?
Dex:
He was in where he was, a traveller, wasn't he?
Stephen:
Yeah, and he's not English, it's not Irish, it's just quite, and I think he gets it. Sometimes, when he gets it slightly off, I suppose it's like hitting a bum note, isn't it? If you play in the piano or guitar and you hit a bum note, it's really obvious.
Dex:
The one that stands out for me as being on point the whole time, and I can't remember his name but the waking dead, the walking dead, the walking dead.
Stephen:
Oh, the one that plays a policeman.
Dex:
Yes, now he was in Four Weddings and a Funeral. I can't remember who he is. Someone will look this up now. This is the power of Google.
Stephen:
right Is either one of just Google is, either one of the plays, the main protagonist.
Dex:
Main character, who was?
Stephen:
the policeman. He's called Andrew Lincoln, apparently. I would never know that.
Dex:
Now my son thought he was American, because my son is only 15. He's only seen him in that series right.
Dex:
But I was like no, no, no, he's the guy in all these British, very, very British films and he's obviously had a voice coach and he's got this American accent that's not over the top but that's believable that he sustains throughout a really long series in all sorts of stressful situations. It's incredibly impressive. But I can't get away from the fact that I'm looking if I was only listening to it before I'm looking at his face and he's so British and yet he's got this amazing accent. It's a real skill. So I think the whole thing with the voiceover thing is that there's a niche for everyone, right? So you tend to think of voiceovers as coming tonight, that kind of continuity announcer.
Dex:
But you've got adverts, you've got audiobooks, you've got e-learning, you've got corporate promotions, you've got telephone systems, sat nav, the lifts that talk to you. You've got video games. It's a huge industry. Animation, anime sorry, anime, you've got this masses, this mass is. Yesterday I did I did an audition for a documentary about the Mediterranean and how it's sort of an eco disaster, and I did one for pet food. It's just, it's so diverse.
Stephen:
When you get a script, how do you go about? Because I think this comes back to like how you know your voice, because I, I'm. I just started singing in a band when two bands technically like, oh, I was gonna. Weirdly enough, it comes back to what we were saying in the first episode. Really, I was gonna, I was, I was thinking about doing a podcast about how things you didn't achieve nothing. Can I always wanted to be in a band and I'm gonna turn 40. I've not managed to be in a band by the time. 40 and then, weirdly enough, like you're in a band.
Stephen:
I got the vocals. I don't know.
Dex:
Something called auto tune.
Stephen:
Anyway, everyone, everyone's yes when we, if we play anywhere so I'm open we come on late and everyone would be too pissed anyway. But the, what do you play? I'm the singer.
Stephen:
Oh, you say you say what I'm thinking about is when it kind of relates back to the first one, how things like linked together. Like I was going to 40 and then I got invited to join a band. I was my podcast was to be like of, the one thing I never did was 40 was you know I've played musical instruments of and I never you ever never got me asking to get to be in a band. Then before that was actually in two bands and I turned 40. I was like what the hell was hell happened, but anyway. But I think it was what I'm late into. It's like I get a song like and it's all about Lynn Hi, I used to sing when I was younger, then go busking and stuff and I thought I was quite good and then I kind of go out of a busking yeah, I used to go busking, so I thought I was quite good. But I've got quite low confidence level. So even if someone tells me I'm good, I'll be like I think that you know, you're gonna have to sing it.
Stephen:
I'm not gonna, I'm definitely not a single Maybe. I'll. Maybe I'll put a snippet on social media if everyone's listening to because I was but I got a warmer voice up so I'm getting.
Stephen:
So I've kind of had to relearn my voice again because I know I can sing. I Sing in the shower and I think, oh, that's okay. In some days I'm better than others and some days I feel like my brain does not talk to my voice box. Oh, I think one of the things when I first started singing the band is you Sing the song how you think it should be sung, as in the way you've heard it. So you're talking about, like you initially say, you know voice over for an advert. You you kind of hear for me You'd hear like the movie announcers, like yeah, I mean, you know what?
Stephen:
Exactly, yeah. So I'm seeing the song, thinking about like we're singing and we've got a moon-aged daydream by David Bowie.
Dex:
Oh lovely, yeah you immediately think, thinking like David Bowie.
Stephen:
But I'm getting to the point now when I'm getting that out my brain. I know I don't sound like David.
Stephen:
It's kind of like the regional dialect thing, because you can't help us go, david by kind of thing, like you're trying to sing in, like that. But it's also learn how to use your voice and and knowing how loud you can be and where to where to. You know where to put that Strengthening stuff and I feel like I'm getting there a bit now. But it's taken me probably two months of practices to start Getting confident with how my voice sounds. So that's a lot of the long-winded way of saying is, when you get a script and you read it and they say fritz for cat, there's a question at the end of the right I got there in the end.
Stephen:
So you get a script it's for cat food. They say this is the words. Oh, what won't you say in the ad? They don't maybe not give you any kind of prompt to anything. There might not be any direction. How do you then go about in translating them?
Dex:
words to this is what I think it's going to come out of so they I mean they sometimes give some direction on the, on the subscription sites. They sometimes give very little. I found the cat food one, for example. It says neutral accent any gender open to ages. So that's.
Stephen:
Is that all it says?
Dex:
That's all it says. And it says there's a. There was a script. I can't see the script now because it's um, because I've applied but it was something like we care about your pets gut health Really sexy. And then there was another couple of lines.
Dex:
So, well, there's a couple of things I mean. The first thing is that you can do more than one version. I mean you, you know, two or three is probably maximum, but you can if it's not a very long script. You can say, well, there's three versions here. You know I tend to unless the site specifically says not to, I tend to slate it, which means you, it's a bit like a clapperboard yes, slate. So at the front you say Dex, london cat food commercial or whatever it is. Um, you know three versions. And then you know so, so I'll practice. And then I'll think, well, okay, I'll do a version that's you know I've got no direction here, so I'll do a version that's really dynamic. I'll perhaps do one that's warm. So you've got that base proximity thing when you get, when you get close to the microphone, a bit like you do for a, an advert for diamonds or perfume or whatever, and then maybe a big smiley one. You know two or three different versions, but yeah, because I suppose you don't really know.
Stephen:
I suppose your facial expressions when you're doing it probably help you get that specifically if you smile when you talk, people can hear it exactly. If you are actually smiling when you're doing it. It would probably come across a bit more, wouldn't it? Yeah, exactly.
Dex:
Yeah, yeah. We care about your pets got help. You know it comes. I mean probably not those words, right, but but yeah, now sometimes you get a bit more direction. So sometimes they'll say I mean I had one, not this other thing here, which I think, yes, yeah, so this one had a bit more. This was for a shoe retailer. Okay, exciting, the diverse, the diverse and exciting world of voice acting, and it's it says this must be a UK native voice with a neutral or soft region.
Dex:
The voice needs to be bold and fun, and bold and fun are in capitals, delivering a confident, positive, upbeat and enthusiastic read. The read needs the flow with rhythm, and provide dynamic vocal range to emphasize key messaging, and then it's kind of even, I suppose it's even new to insert what the key points of the script would be then. Yeah, I mean the script was. I'm not going to read it to you because it gives away the brand.
Stephen:
Yeah, definitely.
Dex:
One, two, three, four, five, six. It's seven lines and obviously the final. The final line is a call to action, the good old CTA, you know. Thereafter a dynamic read. You know they're not. After. You know, come to a store and buy some shoes. They're after come buy shoes. They're exciting.
Stephen:
I'm sold. I'm sold, I'm going now.
Dex:
Yes, I choose now, have you got feet? You need shoes, Unless you live on sand. So yeah, some of them give a lot more right, and that one is a good example of a well thought out brief which I went for. You know, it's a particularly well paid one, that one, and you know, I think they've had too. Oh, no, hang on. Yeah, they wanted 50 proposals, so 50 auditions They've got. The last time I looked at it they had 49. And this came out today. So you know, there's been things where they'll ask for 50 and they've had, you know, 112. Oh, you've disappeared. Together mode has been enabled. Oh, there you're back, Back again.
Stephen:
I don't know what happened there.
Dex:
So yeah, sometimes you'll. You know they'll post something at six in the morning and you'll look at it, I don't know. 10 o'clock, 10 o'clock, yeah, and they've already had 72 auditions.
Stephen:
Does that close it, then, or do they keep it open it?
Dex:
depends on the site. Sometimes they'll close the casting, sometimes they'll let you carry on. But, depending on the site, you don't always know where they've actually listened to your audition or not. Some sites tell you it's quite nice to know if they've listened to your audition, although sometimes it's better not. You know if they don't actually listen. Sometimes it's better not to know, you know.
Stephen:
Yeah.
Dex:
Some sites tell you whether you've been shortlisted, some don't. It's you know, it's all over the place, really.
Stephen:
But I think I suppose it's quite a cutthroat industry in the sense that you know I wouldn't say it's luck, but it's kind of. You've got to kind of get in there sort of, I suppose, early in some sense it's hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. Yeah, and you've just got to keep going.
Dex:
And always trying to get better at what you do and never thinking I'm there yet. And the bottom line is that once people are successful you know really properly successful they're hardly using, or maybe not using, subscription sites at all, because they've got they've probably got an agent, all right, who will look for work for them and put them forward for things. They've got contacts with casting directors and producers. They've got clients that have used them in the past. You know they've got maybe some repeat work. Peter Dixon, for example, he did a. So you know you do, once you get a bit established, you've got something to talk about. You can do some cold calling, you know contacting clients and so forth, and say, hey, you know, I'm the voice of whatever. Do you want me to be the voice of you? Yeah, and Peter Dixon did that with a cinema group and he does their listings every week. Now he's just got a regular gig and he's had it for like 13 years or something. So you know, once you get established to that snowball roles, then things happen.
Dex:
I'm at the early proper full on hustle stage where you know, I mean I think I started auditioning, I think, on something like the eighth of January. Now at the beginning of February and I've done 50, 60 auditions. I haven't actually got any paid work yet, but you know I've got shortlisted and we'll see. You know there's still still lines in the fire. I've done some self sourcing where I've actually found perhaps a video that a client has got where they've just got music. They haven't got a voiceover and I've voiced it for them for free and said, hey, you can use this If you like it. Just, you know, do you mind me having it as part of my portfolio as a credit?
Stephen:
You can let me promote myself through that kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, that's crap.
Dex:
You know you just got to push and I think you can be the best actor or the best voiceover artist ever, but if you're not willing to push and push and hustle, you're not going to get anywhere. Equally, you can be pretty average and do really well because you're putting a lot of effort in, and I think that's often the way in all sorts of you know it does not just acting or voice acting. I think that's the case in all sorts of things. It's you know, the 1% of people who get picked out of a crowd to star in something amazing. That's you know, that's not a thing you can rely on. It's like a lottery win yeah, definitely. It's like, well, I'm going to win the lottery. I don't need a pension. What you've got to do is you've got to go out and find it and push it.
Dex:
And the people in any industry that go and hustle and push are the ones that ultimately are successful. And then it looks easy, right. And when you see Peter Dixon voice something like well, some of the some of the webinars we've done, you know he's got various of us to voice things and we'll all have a go. And then I'll go oh, you could try it like this and he'll do it, and you just think that's so obvious, that's so easy. And, of course, it's like anything. If you think about the job you do. Right, it probably looks easy to people looking on. But it looks easy because you're good at it.
Stephen:
Yeah, yeah.
Dex:
And that's the same with everything Right it looks easy until you like the singing, right until you start doing it and think, well different than I'm in the shower and I've got those acoustics and I'm the only person that's going to keep up with me.
Stephen:
And yeah, and you're quite correct, especially when you're collaborative, like that, and you got to keep up with the band or the band's got to keep up with you, and vice versa. Yeah, it becomes a different story, doesn't it? It comes a massive different thing. I think you're fantastic, dax, and I wish you all the best in the world for it.
Dex:
Thank you very much.
Stephen:
And I think it might take you up on doing another podcast later on. It'd be nice, just talking random crap.
Dex:
I could have you as a guest of mine. We'll just rotate, We'll just, we'll just. We'll just swap sides, right?
Stephen:
And I'll have a starry background.
Dex:
There you go, you can have a microphone. You keep looking and it will be good.
Stephen:
Well, all the links to Dax's work will be in the description. Go and check him out. Definitely. Listen to the podcast. You have some examples of your voiceover work in yeah, podcast calls.
Dex:
Got some, yeah, so There'll be some in podcast five as well.
Stephen:
By the time this comes out, Definitely, and if you know someone that needs a voiceover artist, consider Dax.
Dex:
I might, even, I might even do it. I might even do it for free, just as just to get it on my portfolio.
Stephen:
There you go, there you go.
Dex:
I tell you what special, special deal If you mention infinite Prattle, you get free. How about that?
Stephen:
There we are, bloody hell.
Dex:
Maximum of five clients.
Stephen:
I was going to say, if you have some terms and conditions in the description as well, that's brilliant. That's brilliant. Thank you so much for joining me, Dax, On the very first video call guest episodes. It's been fantastic. I wish you all success and I'm sure this won't be the last you'll see of us together on a podcast. I'm sure I think you know it's just been so easy to chat to each other, so it's been brilliant.
Dex:
I can't believe that Exactly.
Stephen:
Well, we're nearly on 36 minutes. I think, this is going to be the longest episode ever no. Yeah, I know I'll keep you safe, everyone. I'll keep them shorter. I'll keep them shorter. So we couldn't have done with three episodes out of this.
Dex:
Must be some rubbish you can cut out.
Stephen:
Hey, I don't edit, so it's all going in, mate, it's all going in, it's all going in.
Dex:
It's in the intro. Yeah.
Stephen:
Excellent, so right. Thank you very much, dax. Thank you everyone for listening. Very welcome and say check out the description for all Dex's links and go and check his socials out and go and check out his podcast. It's fantastic. So we'll end it there, dex. Thank you very much and I'll speak to everyone soon.
