The VO Meter Episode 24, The International Roundtable Part 1

The VO Meter… Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to Episode 24 of the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
So today we’ve got a little bit of a… We’re going to do things a little bit differently. We’ve actually got a two-part episode this time because we got so many…
A two-parter.
Oh my gosh, To Be Continued. Didn’t you already hate that when, like, back when it was kind of a novel concept? I was just like, no, I have to wait a whole nother week.
Except it always meant something special.
Usually it did. I think it’s overdone now.
Probably, but let’s just go back in time and pretend like we had something cool to talk about.
All right. Well, we do. We do.
In fact, we had such an amazing panel of international voice over talent, some from the US, like Christina Melitia and Christian Lance, some from… or in Sophia Cruz, some from all over the world, like Simone Kliass and Humberto Franco… Oh, that’s right.
Thank you for pronouncing his name correctly. So, Simone’s all the way in Brazil and Humberto’s all the way in Portugal. And we also got Susie Valerio, I hope I pronounced that correctly, who is also a Portuguese talent but living in the UK.
And so truly international sound there. And then…
Oh, God. And Sophia Cruz.
And of course… Well, I mentioned Sophia. Yes, so another US talent who specializes in bilingual Spanish and English voiceover.
So we had such a huge information-packed panel, we realized that we couldn’t possibly fit it into one episode and still have time for our hour-long rant. So we made it into two parts.
Well, we put it off more than we can chew, which is typical fashion for the way we do things. But nevertheless, it’s better for our listeners.
Yes, yes, indeed. So even more information. Because we know this is something that I’ve heard and it kind of makes me chuckle when I see it online.
When people feel like they can’t pursue work where they’re at. Because they feel like there’s still this idea that you have to be in New York or Chicago or LA. And if you’re not in any of those places, then you just shouldn’t even try and pursue voiceover.
Couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only are there regional agencies throughout the United States, but there’s all sorts of work that’s not necessarily agent-based, but people need voices for their projects. They might be individual businesses needing a phone message.
They might need corporate narration. There’s really… The opportunities are only limited by our imagination.
And your background doesn’t matter either. The other takeaway from this panel that most of you will hear is that no matter what accent you have, there’s a market for it, most likely.
Exactly. Exactly. Especially if you’re living in another country and pursuing voiceover within it.
So, we’ll get to our fabulous guests in just a few minutes. But before we do that, we have current events. So what has been happening with you, Sean?
Well, I’ve been doing a lot of work for GVAA recently, the Global Voice Acting Academy. Some of you guys know I kind of… I’m the membership liaison.
I kind of… I’m your go-to guy if you’re a member with us or if you’re interested in becoming a member with us. And we’ve gotten…
We’ve got all these great workouts and coaches and events coming, and I’m really excited. I got to do interviews with Joyce Castellanos. You might know her as the promo queen or the VO mama.
Just an incredibly sweet woman who’s been a casting director for promo, commercial, and narration for over a decade now. And she’s just a wonderful woman to work with. We had a lot of fun doing our interview session last weekend.
And then I also got to talk with a video game veteran, Brian Summer. He’s just an amazing character actor. He’s done a number of games for Telltale Games.
He’s worked on The Wolf Among Us, which is sort of based on the Fable series from DC Comics, or Vertigo, I forget, as well as The Walking Dead series, and just a number of video game titles reaching back a decade as well. And we also have a new dialect coach and speech therapist, Eliza Simpson. So we’re going to have an interview coming up in a couple weeks.
But I’m really excited about that, because people who know me know I have a penchant for accents. I just love… It’s just like oral candy for me.
So that’s A-U-R-A-L, not O-R-A-L.
Big difference. Ew.
Well, most candy is the oral type, right? I mean, yeah, you eat it. But we won’t go down that rabbit hole.
Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. This is dangerous territory.
Danger, danger, Paul Stefano.
Moving on.
Moving on. But yeah, so I’ve been having a great time. I’ve been leading a lot more workouts, too.
It’s kind of funny because some people have actually approached me for my coaching rates, and I’m like, ah, I don’t market myself as a coach. I love directing people. I love helping people improve their performances, but I am not a coach.
But I appreciate the compliment. I really do. And on top of that, just my regular voiceover work.
I got a new… I’m actually trying to cast a project for one of my main clients right now for English Anyone, and they had a really unique commercial that they were trying to cast, because they wanted a native, like either Chinese American or Asian American actor, to convey a very authentic sounding Chinese accent at the beginning of the spot, and then transition into an almost neutral American accent by the end. So that’s a tough cookie to crack.
And I’ve got a few submissions in. What was that?
It’s a hell apropos based on our current episode.
Absolutely, absolutely. And I love that some people, like nobody was like, why does it just have to be this specific person? Everyone was just like, oh, this person would be great.
This person would be great. And I was like, oh, man, I love this community so much.
That’s great.
So that’s pretty much everything going on with me. What about you, Paul?
Well, I had a very busy couple of weeks, actually. I know you have. You’re right.
So I’m glad you asked. Last week was probably my busiest week since I’ve been in the business, which was weird because there was no real rhyme or reason to it other than the themes of constant effort and marketing. So I did a series of narration dubbing from Russian for videos on cryptocurrency.
That was interesting. Interesting. Yeah, it was a funny story because the way it came to me, it was from one of the freelance sites that I worked with, and I’d been on the project and they sent it to me.
There’s a lot of negotiations about what I could do and what I couldn’t do based on the bid as far as matching up the voice. They did not want to pay me to match up the voice with the Russian version. I offered based on a fair rate and they said, well, just do it however you would and we’ll match it up because I offered them a fair rate based on the GBA rate guide.
Thank you, thank you.
Chain drop.
And then they asked, does that include dubbing? And I said, no, here’s what that would entail and I offered them another rate. I basically charged two-thirds on top of my normal rate to sync to video.
Yeah, that’s an incredibly time-intensive service.
Yeah, it almost doubles the work. And depending on what the work is, I sometimes will actually double the fee. If it’s something I think it was going to be that long.
So they balked at that, but then said, fine, we’ll pay you the regular rate. So long story short, or too long already, I did that job and was paid for it last week. It was about five hours of audio, so that was pretty intense.
And then I also did a live session for kind of a weird request. It was a video game, at least that’s how it was pitched to me. And this came from a studio who I reached out to two years ago, 2016.
I sent them an audition. It was at that point for a, I think a radio ad. They said, no, no thanks, we have somebody already, but we’ll keep your information on file.
And I thought, sure, they will, you know, they’ll probably just recycle it and I’ll never hear from them again. Lo and behold, two years later, they come back to me and say, hey, we have a video game we’d like you to do. So let’s do a session this week.
So we dialed up the studio on Wednesday of last week. And we did the voice…
Was it Codogo Call, I guess?
Actually, we used Skype. It was just a directed session. They didn’t need to record on their end.
I recorded on my end. But we just used Skype for that. And it turned out it was a video game for a human resources department of a company, a very large company, actually, that cannot mention, sadly say, but you would know it if I did.
But anyway, we did the session.
Wait another two years. Maybe you’ll get permission.
Maybe, yeah. So it turned out to be a video game as an interactive way to train their employees, which I thought was pretty cool. I hadn’t really heard of that before.
Yeah, I believe it’s called gamification, or just turning instructional, especially e-learning materials, into more interactive, entertaining media.
Oh, really?
I’m all about that, yeah, definitely.
Yeah, it was a new field for me, but I enjoyed it. It was doing two different voices, an alien, and sort of the mission control of a space station.
Oh, interesting. Yeah, it would be great for that one.
Yeah, I actually did a job like that a couple of months ago as a mission control for another video game, so that was kind of in my wheelhouse. So that was done, did that last week. I finished my first book for Findaway, which I’m just waiting to come out.
Findaway Voices, they’re a publisher of audiobooks that is out there.
I’m with them as well, I haven’t heard from them in a while, but I am.
So I have my first book done, I think I’ve talked about it in other episodes, and I’m waiting for it to come out on Audible. It’s out on some of the other services out there like Playster and Librio.fm, but it’s not out on Audible yet, should be out there any day. They said there was some issue with the cover art that they had to fix.
So I keep checking frantically the Audible results to see if it’s out yet, and you can find it soon, it’s called The Nimble Dodger, or you can look for my name, Paul Stefano, obviously, on Audible or Amazon. And then on a related note, my daughter’s audiobook finally came out, it’s been published on Audible. It’s called Bianca Finds Her Bounce.
It’s a children’s story about a little girl who suffers with depression, and it’s now rated by Anna Stefano, A-N-N-A. So check that out, and you can buy it now on Audible. It has two reviews so far, they’re both five stars, so pretty excited about that.
And wow, what a heady topic to tackle for her first book.
Yeah, it was something that was pretty easy for her to identify with, so she picked it up and did the story. It’s only four minutes long, so it’s not like it was labor intensive, but still the first one, and the first one is always the most exciting.
Well, I mean, it was way smarter for her to do that. I mean, my first book was almost 200 pages, and it took me forever to complete. Yeah, I’m sure.
And the last thing I want to mention…
Oh, no, go ahead.
And the last thing I want to mention, and hopefully it’s still there by the time I release this, depends on how quickly I can edit it, but I’m currently featured on Voice Over Extra, thanks to John Florian. So that’s Voice Over with an X, tra.com, and I’m one of the featured articles on the front page right now talking about networking, so that was a lot of fun.
Yeah, and if you want an organic Voice Over textbook, basically, there’s no better resource than Voice Over Extra. I’ve said this a few times on the podcast, but when I really started pursuing Voice Over, it was one of the first sites I could find. I studied it for an entire year.
I read all of the current articles they had, and then whenever they had a new one, I would read that. They cover all different areas. They have Voice Over Tech, ideas for editing workflow, or just workflow in general, marketing, different performance techniques.
Studio setup. It’s an amazing resource, and it’s free. I highly, highly recommend it.
We’re still featured there. If you go to the resources section or the bottom right-hand column of the front page, the VO Meter is there, front and center, with a link to our website. So check that out, too.
Is it front and center? It’s not like bottom right, tiny little icon?
It’s bottom right, but it’s the first one in the list. So that’s pretty exciting.
I just don’t want all our podcast fame to go to our heads, you know.
Too late for that, obviously.
Too late for that. Paul’s head just grows three times every time I see him. It’s just massive now.
So that wraps it up for current events. But before, er, it would not be an episode of the VO Meter if we didn’t cover some…
Questionable Gear Purchase.
All right. So I’ll start off this time because I haven’t had one for a while. I’ve actually been good to my wallet and my budget.
But I tried to go out and buy an iPad Pro to do all of my script reading and annotating for a script prepped for audiobooks. And it failed miserably.
Well, I’d love to hear more about that because so many people were like… Some people had had similar issues with the previous iPad models and that was the biggest complaint is the styluses don’t work or I can’t mark things up as fluidly as just a pen and paper. And then when the iPad Pro came out, you started getting more positive reviews because it’s a bigger screen and the stylus works and what have you.
So I’d love to hear a negative experience for once.
Well, what happened to me, and it’s a little bit of can’t teach an old dog new tricks, I did get the Pro that has the Pencil support built in, and it came with a keyboard and a camera connection kit to allow you to plug in a USB card for transferring files. But what ended up happening was the stylus wasn’t really usable for some of the things I was hoping it would be, namely editing on the go. So I downloaded the Twisted Wave app and was hoping that I could use this as a mobile recording rig as well.
And the Pencil is really done for annotating and maybe signing documents like PDFs or Word documents. You can’t use it as a stylus replacement or a mouse replacement.
Oh, so like you can’t really drag and drop with it or anything like that?
So I was hoping I could use the Twisted Wave app and the Apple Pencil to drag the playhead in Twisted Wave and it didn’t work at all. All it did was… well, it didn’t do anything with the Pencil.
You still had to use your finger with the Twisted Wave app. Now, that’s not to say that Thomas, the developer, couldn’t change that in the near future, but for that, it still doesn’t work. The Pencil is really just for marking things up on the iPad Pro.
So if that’s all you want it for, to mark up scripts, to sign documents, then it’s still maybe a viable option. But what I use my portable setup for is an actual laptop replacement. So I take it with me on the road to record.
I use the stylus as a replacement for the mouse. So you can drag Windows, you can actually click on applications and icons and double click, open them up, use it as a mouse replacement. And that’s not what the iPad is set up for yet.
So in my case, it really wasn’t anything that I needed. And I spent a lot of money for it, where it was basically something just… that was a luxury that I did not need.
So I did get rid of it, and I’m back to using the Windows computer with the stylus. And I guess audacity at this point, when I’m on the road.
I wish you could say you were happy as a clam, but the disappointment is prevalent in your voice.
Well, it was an experiment. And the reason people love the iPads is because they just function so well. It had great battery life.
It’s super thin. It’s like an iPhone on steroids, just wider and bigger. And for that reason, it would have been great to be a portable solution.
But for me, it’s just not ready for prime time yet.
And depending on what you’re used to and what you can get used to, the iPad can be a great… I don’t know. I personally view it as a supplementary tool.
I like using it as a script reader as part of my mobile setup. But I admit, even though I’m pretty facile about using Twisted Wave with just my fingers and stuff like that, it’s fun if you’re on a bus ride and you have nothing better to do, just edit some tracks. But yeah, for most people, I understand that it’s not the most conducive or productive way to edit audio.
I’m so much faster on just a laptop. So I don’t really have a questionable gear purchase this month. I do have a questionable gear sale that I’m in the middle of.
And I’m actually, after hemming and heying about it for a couple of weeks now, I’m deciding to sell my Neumann TLM 103. And I can already hear the collective gasp. In the interwebs.
So let me first say that the mic itself is amazing. It sounds great. But I have to be far more selective about when I use it in comparison to my 416.
Because, I mean, my space is treated, but it’s not isolated. And usually, in rural Washington, that’s not a big problem. But I just realized that this thing has sat, this beautiful mic has sat in its case for six months.
And that’s an atrocomacy to me. So I really wanted it to go to someone who could get better use out of it. And so right now, somebody from an audiobook production house is talking with me about selling it to them.
We’re still negotiating a price, but hopefully it will work out in both of our favors.
Did you tell them the history behind it and this show?
Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, no, I didn’t tell him this one. But I will back up a little bit because it’s kind of relevant.
So, like I said, MySpace may not be the perfect one for a $1,000 condenser that can hear… The most common analogy I hear is that it can pick up a mouse farting in another state, and that’s pretty true. Yep.
But the 416, I mean, I live with my family. They don’t have to worry about being as noisy and stuff like that as long as we’re a few rooms apart. And no one’s ever complained about my audio.
And the thing is, it’s like I realized unless someone asks me to use a different mic, do I really need one? You know? Like, I’ve used the 416 for e-learning, audio books, all the things that they say you’re not supposed to be able to use it for, no one has complained.
So it really got me to think about that. And the truth is, if like I love the 103, but it’s not my dream mic, it’s not the one that my dream future studio features, if you will. And that one is actually a similar mic called the Gefele M930.
So you might know that…
Oh no.
Oh no. Oh no. And it’s so silly because it’s just like, if you’ve been following the podcast, I literally haven’t had a questionable gear purchase in months.
Well, that’s all about to change. It’s all about to change.
Well, I’m not going to go rushing out and buying everything, but the thing is, it’s just like thinking of your business in stages. What is the best use of that investment? You’ve got $1,000 sitting in a box that you’re not using when you could be reinvesting it in any other area of your business.
For example, my laptops need an upgrade. That would be great. Or you might need additional acoustic treatment.
So it really got me to kind of rethink and kind of see that I might have been putting the cart before the horse a little bit and just kind of reanalyze where I really want to take my business, where I want to take my studio. Well, you really wanted to try it. I did want to try it.
You’re right.
The way you came about it was the same way I came about it. I said, oh, there’s a good deal on a 1.0. Well, you know the story by now.
Well, we thought it was a 1.0, too, which would have been fine in this environment because I hear it’s got a more controlled, smaller pattern.
But you always want to try the 1.03 in your studio, just like I did, and that’s why we traded and I sent it to you. And now at least you’ve had that experience. You can say the 1.03 was blank for me, and it wasn’t this, and now I know.
Well, again, it was not the audio quality that was an issue. It was sort of like the user interface, I guess. The 416 is far more user-friendly to use, and it’s lighter, it’s low profile.
Heaven forbid if I drop it, I’m not going to have a heart attack. Like, you know? And also, I freaking hate the Neumann shock mount.
I’m sorry. It’s two pieces that you have to connect with elastic bands, and it’s $120 by itself. And I’m just like, this is not…
After moving from a Rycote custom one, I’m just like, no, I don’t like this at all.
I had to watch a YouTube video to figure out how to connect it when I got it shipped to me.
It’s one of those… I mean, they’re very traditional and ubiquitous. The spider mounts that you see everywhere.
Neumann tends to use them for a lot of their mics. But it’s just… I don’t know.
The technology has changed enough that you can have a little bit more… I mean, me, I love the Rycote mounts. I found out about it from Paul Stracuerda and Jordan Reynolds.
They’re just these great little… I think they even partnered with Rode for the new NT1 kit. But it’s just these little adjustable shock mounts.
It works really well. They’re nice and compact. They’re easy to figure out.
And it’s great. So you can already see my tech lust coming in droves now. But the truth is, I can get a similar sound or a different condenser for a third of the price.
And I doubt anyone will complain.
Or not. And just save your money, like you said, or invest it somewhere else more wisely.
Exactly, exactly. So I have a little bit more flexibility. I have room to aspire, room to dream now.
And if I can help another talent have a wonderful mic, all the power to me. So before we get into our international panel, actually our VO Meter stick this month is from the husband of one of our guests today. So that’s Jason Bermingham.
He’s married to the lovely Simone Kliass. And he talks about being an American working in a foreign country recording in English. And a little bit about being a sort of a husband-wife VO team as well.
So without further ado, Jason, take it away with your VO Meter stick.
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick.
What did he say?
It’s time for the VO… Oh, never mind.
The VO Meter shtick?
Oh, got it.
Paul, hi, it’s Jason Bermingham here in São Paulo, Brazil. Thanks for including me in this. I’m Simone’s husband, and Simone brought me into the voice over market probably about ten years ago.
We met when we were both working with Pay TV, and she kept encouraging me to do voice over because it’s a big market, and I had no idea there was English language voice over in Brazil, and today it’s my main gig. Now, I’m sure Simone talked a lot about the work I do in English, and we’ve done presentations about our work at VO Atlanta with our accession for voice over in the global community, but one thing we don’t talk a lot about is the challenges of working together as a couple. You know, we have our own home studio, which we’ve built ourselves, and often I record Simone for international jobs, which means I’m basically her sound engineer.
Which can be a little trying sometimes because you get a client on the line and you don’t really want to introduce yourself as Simone’s husband because that’s not your role in that job. You’re basically doing what you do every day, which is working as the sound engineer, playing back takes, making choices for editing. So often I’m just introduced as Jason the sound guy.
However, sometimes during the sessions we let our intimacy show probably more than we should without really thinking about it, and Simone starts calling me Amor. And we start having a little bit more intimate conversations. Sometimes I think clients probably wonder what’s going on in that studio in Brazil.
But then if we ever catch ourselves doing that, then we do say, Jason is also my husband, he’s not just my sound engineer and everyone’s relieved. But it’s a challenge working as a couple. It’s wonderful.
It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done. We grow together, we work together. And I help Simone promoting her work in the United States, and she helps me promoting my work in Brazil.
So, we grow as a couple, and it’s been a wonderful, wonderful journey.
Thank So that wraps up our questionable year purchases, as well as our current events. And we have such great content coming up, we don’t want to waste any more time, so let’s get right to our Zoom room with our International Roundtable.
Hi, everyone, we are joining from Zoom right now, and I’m so excited because we are doing our first truly international panel. We have guests from three different continents, four different countries, and so we’re just gonna go ahead, rather than me introduce them, I’m gonna let them do that themselves. So why don’t we start off with Ms. Sophia Cruz.
Hi, thank you so much, Sean and Paul, for having us. And really touching on the international aspect of voiceovers, I feel that there isn’t enough information about this, so thank you so much for taking the time to have us here. My name is Sophia Cruz, and I’m a Los Angeles-based voice actor.
And I have been doing voiceover for the past 10 years as a professional talent. And I’m really excited to share about what it is that I do. I was born in Mexico, in the city of Orizaba, Veracruz.
And that is where I hail from. And obviously now I’m in the United States as an American. So I call myself the perfect blend of Mexican and American, because that is what I am.
I’m a bicultural talent, understanding both sides of the, you know, the countries and everything that comes with that.
Very cool. Thank you. All right.
Ms. Simone Kliass.
First of all, thank you so much for having me at your podcast. It’s a great show. And congrats.
And it’s an honor for me being with the other talents that you invited. They are great people and wonderful professionals. So it’s a pleasure.
So I’m Brazilian, as you can hear. I live in São Paulo. I have been…
I’m an actress since I was nine years old. And I’m in the voiceover area since 99. So yeah, basically that.
But there’s a lot of things to talk during this podcast.
Well, absolutely. I had no idea you almost had two decades of experience with that. All right.
Up next, we have Humberto. Wonderful. And what about you, Humberto?
My name is Humberto Franco. I live in Portugal. I’m a Voice Over Talent full-time that speaks English, non-American, non-British.
So it’s an international English. I speak Portuguese from Portugal, which is different from Portuguese from Brazil. And I also speak Spanish, but it’s a mix of Spanish from Spain, from Latin America.
So it’s also an international Spanish.
My name is Susie Valerio. I live in England, and I record in Brazilian Portuguese and in international English. I also speak Spanish, so I can do it like I have recorded in Spanish, but my main languages are Brazilian Portuguese and international English.
So thanks to everybody for joining us again. As Sean said, we’re really excited about this panel, and it’s something I think will benefit all of our listeners greatly. So the reason this came about was in Rio Atlanta, I was talking to Humberto, actually having lunch with him, and he was talking about the difficulty he had as a bilingual talent, specifically speaking Portuguese and being a native of Portugal, and looking for jobs and finding that there was a greater demand or a lot of demand for Brazilian Portuguese.
And later on, at Rio Atlanta, I met Simone, obviously, and said, hey, I think I have an idea for a topic. So that was where the initial conversation came up, and I think it’s a great one that we can tackle. But really, the first question I had for all of you is, as bilingual talent, which is your mother tongue, and which of the voices do you use more?
Is it your mother tongue or is it your region now where you’re living? So let’s start with Sophia.
Sure. So my story is a little bit unique, I think, in the sense that I was born in Mexico, but I was raised in the United States. However, no one, being an illegal immigrant in the United States, we didn’t speak English, obviously.
And so my mother actually to the state does not speak any English. So I only talk to my mom in Spanish. So when you grew up with a family that doesn’t speak, you’re in a brand new country, you don’t even understand the language.
It definitely presents itself as challenges. So I say that to say this, that I feel that I’m Native in both because to a certain degree, I am. I had no ability to speak English.
There was no ESL back in the day, not that I’m super old, but there just wasn’t those resources available in my elementary school. And so I didn’t learn English until ESL finally came to my school, which was in third grade. So up until third grade, however old you are then, seven, eight, I didn’t speak any English.
I only spoke Spanish. So my native tongue is Spanish, 100%. However, from third grade to eighth grade is how long it took me to master English and master it without an accent.
I feel that then I switched to natively speaking English because I work so hard to not have the accent and really learn all there is to learn about English. So from that side, I feel like I have to. And so to answer your question, I actually speak both fluently and well.
I get requested to speak both on a very frequent basis. And thankfully, the voice over market in the United States is to this point in time in 2018, a very important commodity that did not exist when I first started in voice over back in 2005. In fact, in 2005, I was dreaming for the day that today we have, which is that you can speak English and Spanish in the same project, voice over project, commercial or e-learning or app or whatever.
So today, I actually get requested to speak both of them in the same project. And I do book on the same amount of English and Spanish on a regular basis. So both of my work is 50% English and 50% Spanish.
That’s great. So a quick follow-up question that’s a little off script, but because you brought it up. My great grandmother was from Spain and grandmother was an influence Spanish speaker.
And she, my mom, tells stories about encouraging her not to speak Spanish outside of the house. Is that something your mom did as well? I know you mentioned that you only speak to her in Spanish, but outside the house in school, did she encourage you to speak English?
I remember my mom saying my grandmother would always be saying, English, Barbara, English.
No, I did not have that, actually. And I know there’s a really successful voice actor in Los Angeles. Her name is Silvia Villagran.
And she has that story where her parents told her she could not speak English in the house. I did not have that. My grandparents and my mom all were happy once I was able to speak English because I became the official translator in the house.
I translated everything, and every meeting, every work, I went to my grandparents’ work to do their employee reviews. I translated everything. My grandfather thought I was going to grow up to be a US embassy official translator because I translated everything, every document.
And that’s why I actually learned to not like Spanish because it just became such a burden to me. I mean, when you think about a small child having that kind of responsibility. And so I didn’t like it.
And so I kind of shied away from like translating even to this day. I have an official translator on my staff, Sophia Cruz, VO, because I don’t want to translate anything ever again. I mean, obviously I do it.
But yeah, but no, I was not discouraged. I was actually encouraged because I became a valuable asset to my family being the only person who spoke English.
Interesting. Well, thank you for that. And Simone, which is your native tongue and which do you use more often?
My native tongue is Portuguese and I live in Brazil. So most of my jobs I record in Portuguese or some of them, like Sophia, I can record in both languages, but only when they need a strong and Brazilian accent. Because I don’t record…
If they request native speaker, I can do that. I have a strong accent, so I have been doing, for example, I’m the voice of the International Airport in São Paulo, Brazil, and I do in Spanish, Portuguese and English with a lot of accent, with my accent. So because they requested that, because they said this is a Brazilian airport, so the voice has to have accent.
So, I think it’s a wonderful thing nowadays that people accept and the market accepts our accent. And I have been doing the same thing for Latin Airlines. I’m the voice of the Latin Airlines, airplanes in English and Portuguese with accent.
So I think it’s a wonderful thing nowadays.
I get quite a lot of requests for English. And I would say that it’s now shifting. It used to be that most of the requests I used to get used to be for strong Brazilian or Latin.
I still get quite a lot of that. But it used to be that I would do maybe 80% in Brazilian Portuguese and 20% English. And then as time has passed, now at the moment, I would say that it’s perhaps 60% in Brazilian and 40% in English, sometimes even 50-50.
I also get a lot of requests for accented English. But I will say 50-50 would be like the ratio of work in Portuguese and in English. And I’ve been, because I’m trying to reach out and get more into the American market, that English numbers are growing and have been growing since the beginning.
So I think it will be more English than Portuguese really soon.
That’s wonderful. And that actually touches on our next question. And you’re welcome to jump in this too, Sophia.
So, Simone, you’ve already explained a little bit yourself, but I’m just curious for the rest of our panel, when you’re asked to do a voiceover in English, do they ask for an accent or do they want more of a neutral, like more standard American dialectal English? And Simone, as you said, they actually request the accent. So I’m curious to hear what some of our other panelists have to say about that.
Well, here in the UK, actually, I have to say that most of the stuff I do in English is not for the UK, interestingly. Lately, I’ve been getting more auditions for America. Here in the UK, they are a little bit old-fashioned in that respect, I would say, maybe, I don’t know, if old-fashioned is the best way of explaining it, either that or maybe they’re not as diverse as you would get with the international market, because I feel that in America, you have more of a sense of a global market, whereas here, the work is more sort of local.
So you don’t really hear, you know, many accents on TV, for example, on TV commercials. Yes, if it’s a French product, you have a French accent during the commercial. If it’s an Italian product, they will have an Italian.
But unless the product is specifically from a country, they will use sort of a British accent. So yeah, at the moment, I would say that most of my work in English is actually for clients in the US.
How about you, Humberto, is there a request for English specifically in Portugal?
Not specifically, in Portuguese I work with a couple of production houses, two or three that give me regular work. All the rest of the Portuguese work that I do is through production houses in Germany, in the UK., some in the United States.
And then I get the feeling that the majority of the work I do in English is for the United States. For some reason, they like my accent that you cannot tell from where I am. I’m understood, but they don’t know exactly where I come from.
So the majority of the… I believe all of it goes to the United States, the work that I do in English.
That’s a spec I see a lot, even on my editions, where it says, we’d like him to have an accent not necessarily discernible. He has to be sort of mysterious, which drives me insane, because I don’t have any of that. I’m wondering why my agent is sending it to me.
No, I mean, I find… I was honestly so amazed in Atlanta to find out that there’s this whole massive wide world out there, because I mean, I’m with lots of agents here in London. A lot of my work is in London.
The stuff I do in Portuguese is always through agents. I have very good agents because as a foreign voice, I can be represented by many. I’m with the best guys in London.
I do have amazing agents, and I get really good jobs in Brazilian Portuguese. However, somewhere along the casting process, they don’t even think of anyone that is not British for adverts and stuff here. It’s just incredible.
It’s completely different to America. This whole thing of the mysterious international hasn’t really happened here yet. I’m hoping that it will change, you know.
If not, I might need to move across the ocean to the other side.
We’d love to have you.
I had people telling me, you know, if you lived here in the United States, you would book a lot more jobs than you are booking in Europe, because a lot of them, you have to be in the studio to record.
Get a flat together.
For instance, Sean knows we had a training session with MJ Lalo, and she just then emailed me and said, send me your character demo, because your accent is what a lot of people are looking for. I said, I don’t have a character demo, I have to do one. So that is the thing, that’s why I believe that the English with, not a Latin accent, but that accent that you cannot tell where it’s from, is being requested more and more and more in the United States.
And in my case, that’s good.
Yeah, I mean, like what Simone said, that I’m really grateful that finally we’re at a stage that accents are welcome instead of seen as something negative, because I was told that I would never be able to do any kind of national work because I have an accent. And so I’m thankful for that shift, and it’s a beautiful shift. And so today I would say that it’s not so much that they want an accent, as much as they want that there is a difference in…
It’s not general American standard anymore, it’s the coveted voice, that they want some ethnicity to your sound, and it’s not that it has to be a heavy accent. And so I can only speak to the Mexican, Hispanic accent, because that’s the stuff that I see mostly. But for the Mexican, there is…
You had said this earlier, and I didn’t answer your question, but there’s neutral Spanish, then there’s Latam, Latin American Spanish, and then there’s Mexican Spanish. Obviously, I specialize in Mexican Spanish, being Mexican. And so they will ask for an English with a slight accent, accented English.
I’ve had to relearn that. Never did I think that was going to happen. I had to relearn how to speak English with an accent, and that is now more…
I see that more frequently than I ever have. Now, most often, though, they don’t want it super heavy. Like when I go into like, when I was two, my mother brought me to America.
No, they don’t want it that crazy, right? They just want me to sound like me, which is I’m kind of a blend. I am a blend.
I don’t sound 100% American. I don’t necessarily sound like I’m Mexican unless I’m going to go, you know, or something like that. So they just want you to sound you.
And so that’s the beautiful thing is that I can sound like myself. I don’t even have to, quote unquote, put on an accent. I can just sound like myself.
And they’re like, oh, that’s good. That’s exactly what we’re looking for, even though I don’t really have an accent. So I think it’s beautiful and I’m really thankful.
And then there are times where they do want it more heavy. So it just depends on the project and how much they want it to be, quote unquote, neutralized and how much they want it to be depending on the market. But yes, there are more and more we’re getting asked for that English with the slight Hispanic accent.
And I want to add something. Can I, Sean?
Please.
They request me the accent in my case because I have accent. I am different than Sophia. I have a strong accent.
So, but for example, my husband is Jason, and he lives in Brazil with me and he’s American, as you know, Jason Bermingham, and he records, he records only in English here all the time, and they ask him to do a neutral accent. So, yeah, he has been recording for, I think, almost 10 years, and he has to neutralize his English because the jobs that he records here in Brazil, most people, it’s their second language, English. So he has to adjust and make it very clear.
So I think if you want to enter in the Latin America market, you should learn how to neutralize your accent to get more jobs.
Very interesting. I’m sure it’s something a lot of our listeners haven’t really considered or thought about. And where is Jason from, Simone?
Does he have a regional dialect?
He is from Oregon, but he was raised in California.
He might have a little bit of a Western… Not when you call it a drawl, but…
Yeah, he was raised in a farm. And in Nevada, in Phelan, Nevada, and in Paso Robles, California. So, he has to learn how to neutralize his accent to get lots of jobs.
Interesting. Very cool.
This is very interesting for you to have in mind.
So, I’m curious, and you can talk about this for both your native work and your English speaking work. Are there specific markets or genres that you specialize in for your various kinds of jobs? You mentioned that with your accented English work, you did a lot of work for Latin American Airlines, but are there any other large brands or markets or areas of Voice Over that you specialize in for each language?
So, I do a lot of radio commercials, and for my radio commercials, I do both English and Spanish, equally the same. And I also do a lot of telepony, and that’s also English and Spanish. I just booked a very big contract, e-learning contract for Spanish only.
But I do equally as much work in English as well. So, for me, I’m really half and half for everything. I also did an app, which I’m really thankful to say for the American Bar Association, for one of a kind for the Hispanic population in the United States.
I can’t disclose exactly what it is yet, but it’s very, very important, and I’m really thankful that I can lend my voice. And they had me do it for both English and Spanish, which I thought was really interesting, because I thought I was only going to do the Spanish aspect of the rollout, and they wanted me to do both the English and Spanish. So I would say that I find myself equally doing the same amount of work, whether it’s an app.
I’ve done Texas Speech. I was a voice for a GPS system in the Texas, and that was all Spanish. And they wanted someone that was authentically Mexican, even though they didn’t make me pronounce the words the way that they should.
So instead of saying Alameda Avenue, they wanted me to say Alameda Avenue, which I thought was very interesting. But nonetheless, I find myself really equally doing both English and Spanish. And I don’t know…
I think it’s how you brand yourself, and I have branded myself as that seamless, flawless English to Spanish voiceover. And so that works. It’s worked for me really, really well.
And I find myself booking those jobs on a consistent basis, which makes me really happy because that’s truly what I wanted to do. So I do commercials, e-learning, corporate narration, telephony, apps, text-to-speech projects all the time in both languages. Oh, and I have to say, I’m also gearing up to do the political season as well.
Ooh, very cool.
Great question. I have never thought about that, but you’re right. I do different jobs in different languages.
In my native language, I do commercials, I narrate TV shows, I’m the voice of Sky on air shows. I do promos in Portuguese. I do everything.
Not everything, but I can do much more in my native language. And in English, I do telephony, corporate videos. And now I’m thinking while I’m talking, I’m doing the projects that I’m recording voice over for virtual reality.
I have to do them in English as well because of the international market. So I’m doing this. But when they need a native speaker, I recommend Sophia and other friends, because I really think that it’s very important to know what kind of jobs you can do and what kind of jobs you can’t do.
And you have to recommend the right person. And that way, as you talked to me before we were live, we can have a strong relationship with our clients if you recommend a right person for the job. So I think we have to think what are our strengths.
That’s very important. Like you said, you look a lot better to a potential client if you recognize that I might not be the best person, but Sophia, she’s exactly what you’re looking for. And if you’re right, you both just look like superheroes to the clients.
That’s an incredible point, Simone. Thank you for bringing that up.
And vice versa. I never would try to even start with Portuguese. I know my limits.
I can do Latin American Spanish, but if they wanted to be… I know a ton of people in the Latin American market that could do it better than me. And if I felt that project would be better suited for something, I absolutely recommend people, refer people all the time as well.
It is important for everybody to know what their strong suits are. This is what’s so great about the Voice Over community, is that we have each other and we have a strong community and we know the people that are good in our community and we can refer them. I’m so appreciative of all the relationships I’ve been able to build and having Simone and Jason and knowing them and obviously Paul and Sean, you as well.
It’s good to know people and know what their strengths are so that you have an ability to refer somebody because we were saying that earlier. When someone refers me a client, I want to make sure that that client will go back to the person that referred me and feel incredibly grateful for having recommended me because then they know they got a true professional and I treat every client like they’re gold because they are.
And not only Sophia, but I can refer Susie because she speaks Portuguese and English fluently. She’s native in both languages.
That’s great. Well, both of you actually, Sophia and Simone, you answered my next question a little bit, so I’m going to rephrase it. Because what I wanted to know is when you see specs for a job and it says, in Sophia’s case, Latin American, Spanish, or in Simone’s case, it may say native Portuguese, do you ever try and pull it off and say, well, this person doesn’t really know what they’re asking?
I’m going to do it as me and hope that it gets through. Or is it something you absolutely will not do and refer to someone who you know is a native in that dialect? And Humberto, if you’re there, you can jump in on that too.
Never. Never. Because, for example, Portuguese from Portugal is totally different than Portuguese from Brazil.
I prefer speaking English with Humberto than in Portuguese, for example. Yeah, it’s like American and British English. Or I think it’s worse.
I don’t know. What do you think, Humberto?
I would compare Portuguese from Portugal and Portuguese from Brazil, like American and Scottish. The same base of the language, but instead of potatoes, they say nippies. So if you don’t know, if you never lived there, you won’t be able to understand them.
So if I go to Brazil and I speak my Portuguese that I speak daily here, for sure 75-80% of the people will not understand me.
And that’s really important. I think that that’s one of the things I would like to say, because I think that it’s important for us to remember that hopefully the buyer is an educated buyer and they’re going to know the difference. Maybe the casting director won’t know the difference, but the end buyer will.
And so trying to portray something that you’re authentically not, it’s going to come through and you’re going to look bad. And there’s no point in looking bad when you can look great and you can refer somebody who is qualified. So I too would agree that I never submit.
If I’m not qualified on the specs, I will not submit, or I would absolutely refer somebody else who would be exactly what the client’s looking for. So I see a lot of people for the Mexican market, for example. So I would just say like Mexican Spanish has become very popular in the United States.
It is the most requested form of Spanish just because there is such a big Mexican population here. And I’ve noticed that some other people who are not Spanish, native Mexican Spanish speakers, will say, well, it doesn’t matter. I speak neutral Spanish anyway, or I’m from Latin America.
That will work. And it’s like, no, it won’t. It actually won’t work because I know when someone isn’t a true native Mexican Spanish speaker, like I can hear it.
And so it’s just important. There’s no reason why we need to pretend to be somebody we’re not. I think it’s important to embrace our ethnicity and do that well and then let whoever has the right language, the right accent, the right everything do what they do best.
So that’s my two cents on the subject.
Does it matter based on genre? So for instance, eLearning, Glefiny, obviously they’re looking for an accurate dialect. If it’s a character, animation, does that change your point of view?
Maybe creating a voice anyway?
Right. I think… and Christina and Christian would be definitely the ones I’m sure they’re going to speak up on this, but I would say if you’re creating a voice, that’s a different story because you can definitely…
and actually one of the ways that I view accents is the way that Pamela Vandewaay teaches it, which is it’s not about neutralizing your accent. It’s about learning how to add on the accent that you want to have because who you are, who we all are, we all have accents. It’s not about my accent is better than yours.
It’s about learning how to add on the right accent that books you that next job that you want. So I would say with animation, absolutely, I can learn how to become a tortuga for Latin American versus the Spanish version, the Mexican one. So I think that there is room for you to learn how to add on other accents.
And if you master it, then absolutely, if you’re the right fit for the job, it should always be who the right voice is for the job. Now, if they’re looking for the right native person to have those skills, then it’s up to the native person to ramp up those skills so that we can book the job. So we shouldn’t be upset if somebody else who isn’t quote unquote native books the job if they have the right skill set.
So if we want more jobs to come to the native people, then it’s up to us to build up our skill set so that we are bookable and not find fault in whoever did book the job.
I heard somebody once say that, you know, like a bad imitation of somebody or a bad imitation of an accent when you’re talking about cartoons, probably it’s an amazing character. So I believe that Casey is very specific. But, you know, regarding still, for instance, the Portuguese from Portugal and Portuguese from Brazil, I receive a lot of scripts that they say it’s Portuguese native.
And I start to read and immediately I see that this is not written in Portuguese from Portugal. So many times the clients don’t have a clue. They just know that they have to do in X number of languages.
And Portuguese is Portuguese, so it will be understood in everywhere. And that’s not the way it is. I think we need to educate the clients also.
I agree with Sophia and with Humberto, because I also get a lot of stuff that is actually for European Portuguese. So, no, I wouldn’t try and just try and pull it off. I would speak to the client, if it is in Portuguese, and explain and say, look, it’s very different.
Because sometimes they don’t realize that actually the different accents are even there. So, I would try, first of all, approach them, speak to them. I do actually have a pretty good Portuguese accent from Portugal.
I have a lot of Portuguese family. So, I have recorded sometimes in an emergency, but I always say, I’m not native, I’ll give you a sample, you can pass it on to the final client, but if they want to go with my voice, then yes, but I’m always very upfront because I think it’s completely different, it’s a totally different accent. And if I see something that is Portuguese from Portugal, I wouldn’t attempt to do it without telling the client that I am Brazilian.
I think it’s sort of similar with the Spanish as well, because it is very different, they’re almost different languages, I would say. And certainly I would not try to pretend that I’ve got a Spanish accent, because I can’t pull it off as a native. You know, to my ears it doesn’t sound right.
That’s fascinating. And Humberto’s metaphor of comparing American English to Scottish English is perfect. That crystallizes my mind perfectly, because whenever I’ve spoken to someone from Scotland, it is like they’re speaking a completely different language.
And I will… Can I add in this two cents, because I think this is important. One of the things that I disagree with Spanish Voice Over Colleagues is the purity of language, of Spanish.
Because our job is to… My job is to give the best Spanish performance I can give to whoever is requesting… whatever client is requesting it.
But by the same token, I’d like to use the example, in the United States, there are a lot of people that book a British English that aren’t Native British, and from a Native British standpoint, their English sucks. But the market in the United States bears that kind of British accent as acceptable. It’s not a purest…
in any way, shape or form, it sounds awful to the UK people, but in the United States, it’s a marketable British accent. The same happens with Spanish. And so it’s really important for me to say this because there’s a lot of disagreement within the Spanish voice over community.
Oh, Sophia, the way you speak Spanish isn’t as good as it can be because you’re not super pure, you didn’t grow… you know what I mean? And it’s like, well, that might be true, but the market bears the kind of Spanish that I speak, which is this blend of being raised here and being born in another country and having that immigration factor built into my Spanish speaking.
And so there’s a market for that. And so I just want to make that clear because there is a lot of debate about this, but our job is to just… I’ve been working on my Spanish actually for the last five years, knowing that I was going to enter the Spanish market again.
And so I had to polish it up, for sure I had to polish it up. But there was this debate early on that, well, you’re not 100% pure, so therefore you shouldn’t be working in Spanish. And that’s like…
you can’t say that because the market bears the kind of Spanish… you know, that’s like saying somebody recently recorded a spot that was kind of like a Spanglish version of Spanish and English, and that’s acceptable too. So we are not the ones that get to say what’s acceptable.
It’s what the client is really looking for. And as long as we’re honoring what the client wants to the best of our ability, at the end of the day, that’s what pays the bills for them, is that they’re looking to connect to people that are like me from both countries, blended together, if they wanted to market to the Mexican people in Mexico, it’s even going to be a different Spanish than the one that we offer here in the United States and vice versa. So every market has its own need and marketability of different accents, and that’s something to keep in mind as well.
The thing with the Portuguese that is quite interesting is actually, that doesn’t happen at all. Like in Brazil, if you have someone that has an accent from Portugal, that will never be, you know, it just doesn’t work. People don’t even understand.
And same token, if I record something for Portugal, they will understand me, but the market doesn’t want my accent and the clients are not aware of that. And also, I think there’s one thing I’ve noticed quite a lot on a few sites is people, and I’m sure you get that with Spanish as well, people that speak Portuguese, I mean, you know, that speak Portuguese to a very good standard, but they’re actually selling themselves as bilingual when actually we can hear that they are not native speakers and that again in Brazil, for example, wouldn’t work because we don’t have that kind of in our market that doesn’t work. Even accents within Brazil, people from the Northeast will find difficult to work in the main markets because their accent, even though it’s Brazilian, it’s not the accent that sells.
So I think it’s a bit more, you know, with the Portuguese accent is a bit more specific, I guess.
Yeah, and that’s a good point. It’s just important for everybody to understand their market and what accents are really what that market bears, so that you are marketing yourself intelligently and will actually book the work that you’re marketing. Because I also specialize in marketing, so I have to say that.
You know, like, if you know how to market yourself well and your brand is exactly what you bring to the table, you’re going to book way more work than if you pretend to be something that you’re not. So I think it’s really important to understand the market that you’re marketing to and understand your own skill set, so that you can be able to sell yourself well. And book work.
Exactly, like Sophia said, because, Susie, I brand myself, my marketing is Portuguese, and when I talk and when I speak English, with a strong accent, strong Brazilian accent. Now, this is my brand, this is my marketing, so if I have a job with these characters, I can do it, but if not, I recommend I refer you, Sophia, you know, because you don’t have an accent. But talking about character animation, like Paul Esquedas, yeah, in this situation, we can do, we can try to do other things, we can try, always being honest, because I think the honesty is the rule number one that we have to have, but we can try in animation, you know.
And you need to be honest with yourself. If I try to record in Brazilian, in Portuguese from Brazil, you know, I’ve seen Brazilian soap operas since I was, I was born, basically. So, and they were very, very popular in Portugal.
And that’s why I can, you know, I can, joking around and messing around with friends, speak like Brazilian, you know, with the accent. And if you listen to Brazilian with Portuguese from Portugal, it’s like one is spoken, the other one is, it sounds like a song. You know, it’s very melodic, Portuguese from Brazil.
It’s, I usually do this comparison to this Portuguese from Portugal. It’s like a cube, it’s square, you know, like straight lines. And from Brazil, it’s like a circle is round.
It’s a round melodic language. So I would never emulate, but there are unfortunately a lot of people emulating Portuguese from Brazil. And when I listen to that, it’s like, wow, don’t you have ears?
Don’t you have self-pride? That’s, you know, I speak Spanish. I was hired once to do a TV commercial in Spanish for a South American country.
And I said, are you sure you want me to do this? And the client said, yeah, I want your Spanish with that accent that is not from Spain. It’s not from anywhere.
Okay, I’m okay with that. I can do that. You know, at this moment, I’m doing an e-learning recording and I am a guy speaking English with a Latin accent.
Latin is a broad thing. It’s like I’m Portuguese, I’m Latin, you know. So, but if it’s something specific, if I get an audition saying, you know, like English with Mexican accent, I cannot touch it because I don’t have a clue about the Mexican accent, like Sophia said, you know.
So I’m not going to touch it because I’m going to waste time recording the audition, and then the client hears it and say, oh man, this guy is trying to get some money and probably will take my name off his list forever. Why take that chance? It’s crazy.
Well, it’s good to hear that some of the truisms of Voice Over is coming through in the international market as well, and that you be true to yourself and market your own skills. For instance, I wouldn’t try to do an audition for a 9-year-old boy because I’m going to sound ridiculous, and it’s no different if I was trying to pull off a different language that wasn’t native to me or at least trained very, very well. So, to move on to our next question, let’s talk about some of the other challenges that are involved in being a bilingual talent, as well as some of the benefits that you enjoy being able to speak more than one language.
Anyone who wants to start?
It’s tough. It’s tough. It’s like, you know, this year I went and I met all of you in VO Atlanta.
Like, I’m trying to, you know, like, trying to get in a market that I don’t understand. But yeah, I’m actually, I speak three languages fluently. So, I want to use this broad spectrum that I have, you know, I have my market.
It’s not focused in one point because I speak all these languages. I have like a huge horizon where I want to reach. And I want to try to improve in getting into this market.
Even once I spoke with, I believe it was with Christina Melizia, and I asked her about, you know, do you think I can get like, can you advise me an accent coach so I can improve my accent? And the answer was, why you want to lose what you have that is unique? Why?
Don’t do it. So my English is this one. My Portuguese is native, and my Spanish is a mix of Spanish that I learned when I was in Galicia in Spain from working with people from Colombia.
And you know, it’s like a fruit salad. You know, everything is mixed, and I can pull exactly what I want. And many times the client hears it, and yeah, it’s different.
It will work for me, and that’s it. But it’s a tough job. And just try…
I just want to be myself. People will recognize my voice if they don’t see me, because they already know my accent and say, oh, that’s Humberto. And that’s amazing.
That’s amazing.
Yeah, I would… Gosh, I just… I can’t…
I hope this makes it to the final podcast, but I cannot stress enough how important it is to love what you bring to the table. Like everything. The beauty…
there’s beauty in not belonging 100% to one language, to one country, because you become this beautiful blend of all things, and that’s what makes us unique. And I think the challenge is, or at least I can speak to myself, the challenge for me was when I wasn’t willing to accept that, when I was bent on becoming 100% American because, gosh, I was so tired of getting bullied and being told that I don’t belong and that I’m not welcomed here and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I ran away from my heritage and wanting to embrace this new one, and it wasn’t until I finally accepted, no, I am a mix of the two and that’s okay.
And not only is it okay, it’s awesome because it’s who I am. And so the beauty has come finally accepting that, including all the naysayers who thought your Spanish isn’t good enough, your English isn’t good enough. Like there’s a thing in Mexico called La India Maria ni de aquí ni de allá, but it doesn’t matter.
I am from both. And so for me, the challenge was when I wasn’t willing to accept it now that I have, it’s incredibly beautiful. And I book a lot of work with everything that I bring to the table today.
And that’s what makes me unique. And that’s why I love what Humberto said. Absolutely, don’t get rid of what makes you unique.
Add on additional things that you want because you want to book more work, but never change what makes you unique. Because if you can accept yourself, you’re going to see a lot more success because the confidence that you will bring to the table with your clients is going to be unlike any… I have clients who think I’m African American.
Seriously, I do because they don’t know where to place my accent. They’re like, well, she sounds not neutral, so she must be African American. I don’t care what you call me, just book me.
You know what I mean? You want ethnicity and ambiguity? Sure, I’ll be that.
And then I tell them I’m from Chicago. Oh, that’s why you sound that way. You’re from Chicago.
I don’t care. I could be from New York. Just book me.
So that’s the beautiful thing is that you can be booked for whatever the client wants you to be. Sure, that’s what I am. No problem.
I mean, I find for me, it’s quite similar. I’ve been in England for a very long time. And so obviously my accent has become more British as time progresses.
But here they booked me for Portuguese because it’s my native language. Even though I’ve been here for 30 years, what is my native language? And I’m now getting booked less for English because obviously I don’t sound as Brazilian as they would like me to sound because they sort of imagine someone with a stronger accent.
So for a while I was kind of trying to think about where do I kind of fit in because I come from an acting background. So obviously that has toned down my accent a little bit. To the English, I still sound foreign, but they can’t really place me.
And here they don’t really have the diversity you guys have in America of this sort of international accent. It’s not really quite here in England yet. Which to me was a revelation when I got to Atlanta and people were all mesmerized by my accent.
Because I thought, wow, awesome, there’s a lot of work out there for people that can’t be placed. So I’m feeling super happy at the moment because I’m thinking, okay, so I am not actually a bilingual Brazilian. I have international English.
I kind of feel that I kind of found my accent and hopefully that will reflect in me booking international jobs, I guess. Because the amount of times I get it in English, I have to change my accent and pretend that it’s a bit stronger and then they think it’s too much. It’s quite a tricky place, like no man’s land kind of thing.
Susie, I have to tell you that your Portuguese is amazing. And you don’t have accent. I was impressed by your Portuguese.
I talked to you in Portuguese and you don’t have accent. I don’t know how, because you don’t live here. But your Portuguese is…
yeah, you’re totally… You can book jobs in Portuguese, whatever job is, because your Portuguese is amazing, really. Yeah, really.
You don’t have accent.
I mean, I do. There’s a lot of stuff in Portuguese happening here in England. So, you know, by default, that’s kind of what I do the most.
But I do… like today, I had a job for the BBC that they left me on a pencil for ages. And then in the end, they went with someone else because they felt that, oh, no, you don’t really sound kind of Latin enough for what we need.
So I’m just now kind of trying to find my feet in the sense that, okay, I’ve just done a new demo, completely new demos in English, focusing on this sort of nondescript international voice.
Yeah, because your English has a British accent. Your English has.
So, the voice of the world, your English sounds British, just so you know. What?
But actually even here, because sometimes people think I am from different places in the United Kingdom. Like even them, they can’t really tell where I’m from. Like they think I’m from here because I look British.
Yeah. So, there’s that kind of confusion when I go like, Oh, actually I’m Brazilian. They go like, what?
Because it’s sort of… Then I kind of… I think that’s what it is.
If I didn’t look… If I looked more Brazilian, then maybe they would perceive me differently, even though I’m working with voice.
You know, for instance, if I met Susie on the street and I spoke with Susie, I would know that she’s from Brazil for one reason. For the end of some words. Like, a British would say, will.
And Susie says, will. The final L is round.
No, but it could be from will. That’s the thing.
Here they think I’m from will. But it’s like I told you, everybody that’s… Those many years watching telenovelas, you get, you know, like, that feeling gets like in your DNA.
You know, so…
Yeah, when I went to…
Yeah, Sophia, go.
I’m sorry. I was just saying, when I went to Brazil, everybody knew I was Mexican. Every single…
When I went to Puerto Rico, everybody knew I was Mexican. Like, you just… We think we don’t know our own people, but people know their own heritage and race.
And I’m not surprised, Humberto, you can say that about Susie.
Yeah, no, but to be honest, like, I go to Brazil and people don’t think I’m Brazilian. In Rio, for example, they don’t really… They don’t know where I’m from.
I get a very non-descript somewhere else kind of thing. I never actually…
Because now you have a mix of both languages. You’re not British and you’re not Brazilian. You’re like a citizen of the world.
You have, like, a unique… You have a unique voice, a unique talent, a unique accent. That’s the amazing thing is that each one of us is unique.
And that…
We’re all snowflakes.
Yeah.
We’re all international snowflakes.
That’s a wonderful point, Humberto.
I love that, Sophia.
All right.
So kind of touching on the points that we talked about before, I love that you guys are all echoing each other to some extent because again and again, you see this, you have to have this an awareness of where you sit in the mix, and you need to understand how the audience is going to perceive your particular voice, but in the same vein, you can’t be too married to the sort of ethnic standards of various genres and markets because you have to be true to yourself. And so while it’s important to, like you said, to be able to add accent tools to your skill set, if you know that you can’t do a convincing enough, like Castilian Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese or what have you, you refer it to someone who you know specializes in that. So like already, we’re just getting so many great tips and recommendations for how to go about this if you’re trying to break into international markets.
So with that said, if someone is trying, like if they know that they’re a bilingual or potentially bilingual talent, what kind of steps or considerations should they make to try and pursue bilingual work?
You don’t need to be bilingual to work in Brazil or in Latin America. For instance, you, Paul, Sean, Susie, Humberto, Sofia, you can… Okay, you are bilingual, but okay.
Talking about Paul and Sean. I know that Paul has been working internationally, and he doesn’t need to be a bilingual artist to do that. So you just have to know the market, know a little bit of the culture and how the market works.
And you can ask me how Brazil works. You can ask Susie how British market and Humberto the European and Sofia the Mexican. You can ask your friends how can you enter and how is the culture in each country.
But as I told you, Jason has been working as a voice over artist in English, in Brazil. So you don’t need to be a bilingual artist to work internationally. This is gold.
The world is waiting for you. Especially in countries that English is not the main language. They need English voice overs.
And they don’t have native. They have a few. Susie, I’m sure she’s working for Brazil as well.
But also, I do, lately I’ve been doing a lot of work for other countries in Europe because more and more companies produce stuff in all languages. So, you know, you might have a company in Holland that is doing stuff in multiple languages and you can enter that market as well, which is fantastic, I think. I think the main thing that I think is to identify, like, are you truly bilingual?
You know, how, what is your level of, you know, the other, the second language? So, then you can actually just sell yourself, as we’ve just said before, you know, appropriately to the client, you know. So, that should be the starting point for everyone because, yes, you could be fluent in three, four, five languages, but that doesn’t mean that you can actually record in all of them, isn’t it?
That’s the main starting point. But that, after that, then, yes, it’s like Simone said, kind of research the market and maybe, you know, speak to people on groups, different groups, and then try and get information from people living in those places, really.
Absolutely. So, maybe reaching out to native speakers, like native voice talent, like yourselves, and be like, hey, would this work? Would this be marketable or, like, kind of, like, just a safe space for them to get feedback before they try and, like, make a bad impression with their bad accent?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I think people are not very…
I think that you have to be a little bit honest with yourself and you kind of… Do I sound bilingual or, you know, do I not? So, maybe try and get a second opinion, I guess.
That would be good. But I think that also, I mean, I always… I love sending jobs to friends, you know, like if someone…
I have a Russian friend and I see someone that, you know, needs a rush, and I will always… I have like three or four people that I always suggest. It’s nice to pass work to other friends.
It’s quite important to sort of enter the bilingual groups and just sort of make friends, I guess, you know, and ask for help.
Humberto and Sophia, any thoughts?
Everything, I believe, it’s sad. It’s like, if you know if somebody comes to me and wants like, I don’t know, Spanish from Catalonia, and I know somebody, I will refer that person. And that’s through referrals, we can get, you know, like, I don’t care.
If I can do it, if it’s something that I don’t do it, I’ll give it to somebody, which in Portugal, that is not the general way of working, because, you know, even in Portugal, a lot of people, unfortunately, if they know about a job and they cannot do it, they will say, well, I’m going to keep quiet and I’m not going to tell anybody. And why? It’s, you know, just give it to somebody else and that person will refer you if something comes up.
And that’s it.
You just… Or not, you know, because you have to refer, not expecting anything, but yeah.
But usually, usually that’s, you know, like that interchange of information between voice talents that, you know, because we know each other, even if it’s through the Internet, but we know each other. So, yeah, just pass the job to somebody that is able to do it. That’s it.
Yeah, and I would say, you know, here’s the thing. This business is about building relationships. This isn’t about, I’m going to go knock on Sophia’s door because I can only speak for myself, and I’m going to see and get all the information she has about the Spanish market.
That’s never going to work. But if you are a person that genuinely wants to connect with me, you want to build relationships with me, a relationship with me as a colleague, and it’s a give and take situation, of course, that’s going to be more welcome than someone just coming to try to… You know what I’m saying?
So I think it’s really important because I know a lot of people will be listening to this podcast. This isn’t about finding Susie and we’re going to have Christian Lance on here. We have really…
We’re all professional people in voice over and we’re busy. And this isn’t about finding, oh, Christian, give me all your context for Disney and let me get… You know what I mean?
It’s not about that. We are a very helpful community, but we want the relationship more than anything else. And I think that’s what’s so beautiful.
If you take the time to build those relationships, go to the voice over conferences, get to know people face to face, that’s where you’re going to make the most out of your connections. And so I just need to say that because I think that’s important. But we are all here.
We are all available as best as we can. We’re all very busy. God knows trying to put this podcast together, right, Paul and Sean?
But we do love each other. We do support each other. And we do want people to see success in whatever market they want to be in.
But when I think about marketing and all my marketing students, I always tell them this. The secret is to focus on the one area you want to see growth in. Because where you put your energy, that’s what’s going to grow.
What I find that most people do, the mistake is that they try to be everything to everyone. And that’s why they look back and they’re like, well, I didn’t see any major growth. Well, that’s because you spread yourself too thin.
I’ve been focusing on the Mexican market. Guess what? That is where I have seen the most growth in.
The bilingual English-Spanish market has been my laser focus for the last two years. I just finished saying that I book work in English and Spanish nonstop because that’s where I’m putting all my energy into. It’s not trying to become a Portuguese talent.
It’s not trying to do, you know, Brazilian anything. It’s just Mexican Spanish and English. That’s all I focus on and that’s where I’m seeing the most growth in.
So that’s super important for everybody to pay attention because you’re not going to be everything to everyone. If you want to become an international voice actor, pick one country you want to expand on and become a master about that country and understand what works, get to know which voice over colleagues are in that country and start building those relationships and then you will see growth in that one area and then you can build on and keep going.
One thing I would like to say is that I think, yes, absolutely the meeting in person is fundamental. And from my experience, I mean, I love the internet. I’m always online pretty much.
And I was so surprised when I got to Atlanta and I actually saw everyone like in the flesh because I thought, I realized that I actually had, because I thought I was going to go with the British people I was traveling with. There were quite a few of us anyway. So I was like, okay, fine, we’re going as a huge group.
But I got there and I knew so many people. It was just awesome to meet, you know, Sophia, Humberto, Simone, and all the people that I had been talking to online for ages. And kind of just by building relationships on Facebook, essentially, I think it’s really important that you kind of try and communicate with people and try and be helpful and, I don’t know, just sort of just be nice, generally speaking.
Sorry. In our case, we met everybody here in Vio Atlanta. We have to be grateful for this wonderful conference.
And I agree with you and Sophia, this meeting in person, it’s very important for us. And the podcast that Paul and Sean are doing is not in person, but it helps creating this sense of community that we need. And to strong our relationship, like Sophia said, we have to be a…
I was talking to a friend here in Brazil today because we are struggling with this cachet, the money, the budgets, they are getting down here in Brazil. I know that they are getting down in other countries as well. So I was talking to him, let’s be strong together, let’s create a community and then we can fight with this chopping budgets.
We have to be strong and we have to be strong together. This is very beautiful. I’m very passionate.
I’m a Latina and this subject really makes me feel happy and I’m very happy to be with you talking about this and sharing with others our experience. So that’s why I’m so passionate.
Well, that’s a great note to wrap up on. I just want to say I appreciate everybody being here. Ever since The Atlantic, really, I wanted to put this together and I’m really excited that everyone was able to join us and I thank you all for your time and your comments.
Sean, any parting words?
Well, like Paul said, I just wanted to thank you all so much and I love that you were all on the same page and offered a lot of the same advice and mindsets to build that self-awareness to, like, more than anything before you try and jump into this. Like, if you know your strengths and if you don’t know them, find a coach or find a professional who’s where you want to be and reach out to them and get their feedback, get their advice before you, like I said, shoot yourselves in the foot. And one thing that I want to note is that even if you don’t specialize in being a bilingual talent, as far as I’m concerned, all of us here are international talent.
Any one of us could get booked for an international English voice spot.
Before we go, why don’t all of you tell us how clients can reach you if they want to hire you? Why don’t we start with Humberto?
Well, the clients can go to my website www.humbertofranco.com or through my e-mail, which is very simple, also Humberto at humbertofranco.com.
Great. And Simone?
I have a website in English, ourbrazilianvoice.com, and I have my website in Portuguese that is simonikliass.com. So, but thank you so much for having me, for having us.
Great, our pleasure. And Sophia?
Yes, I can be reached at sophiasophiacruzvo.com, sophia at sophiacruzvo.com if you choose to e-mail me, but thank you so much for having us.
Susie?
www.susievalerio.com, that’s S-U-S-I-E-V-A-L-E-R-I-O, susievalerio.com, and my e-mail is contact at susievalerio.com.
So, thank you guys so much for that validation, that encouragement, and just being here today representing your various countries. Thank you so much. Wow, so thank you so much to our international panel for just sharing that experience and giving us a whole new perspective on just not only if you are a non-U.S.
talent, how you might be able to integrate yourself into US or UK markets, but if you are a talent in North America, how you can sort of branch out to different countries and market yourself that way. So, but Paul, you wanted to talk about some of the little hiccups that we had as well?
Well, it’s just the theme being everyone spread all over the world was actually really appropriate because some of the issues we had, I think, were because of bandwidth in the home countries. So Humberto mentioned that he was having issues with Internet connection and actually dropped out and made a call to his Internet service provider in Portugal while we were on the call. So I appreciate him going the extra mile just to be with us, which is crazy, but we do appreciate it, Humberto.
Humberto’s fantastic, like on top of being a great talent, he’s one of our most loyal VO Pro members for GVAA and he’s so fun to work with and he’s such a humble guy and he’s always singing our praises. He’s really fun. It was so nice to meet him at VO Atlanta.
Yeah, and that’s actually kind of what sparked the whole episode, as I mentioned in the interview that talked to him about his challenges was what made me turn the wheels and say, hey, there’s an idea for a show. So I appreciate him sparking that in me as well. But like you said, everyone was so gracious, and I really appreciated their perspective because they definitely brought up some things I hadn’t thought about.
And they crystallized more in my mind how I should never, ever try and put on a fake accent for an audition. There may have been occasions where I thought about it or may have actually done it, but now I will never do it again. Thank you, everybody.
So the thing is that you can, for example, as Christina will mention in our next interview, you can work with a coach to get a more realistic, more authentic sound, if that’s within your budget. But you’re right, if you find… and this is true not just for accents, but for character, voices, or vocal types in general, if you don’t feel confident that you can do it in an audition, don’t audition, because they’re going to ask you to do that and ten times more when you get into the booth.
Even if your agent sends it to you. So, I’ll give you a perfect example. There’s a series coming out in the next couple of weeks, or has it come out yet?
The Netflix series, Spy Kids, starring Christian Lanz, who we just spoke to, or will be in our next…
Yeah, I mean, he’s… well, you’ll get to hear him more, but you might recognize him as, like, he’s probably the most famous voice double for Antonio Banderas. I recognized him back from the old Nasonex commercials, where you had that sexy 3DB telling you about the wonders…
Oh, that was him?
That was him.
Oh, I thought that was actually Banderas.
I don’t think so.
So anyway, what I was trying to say is that when that came out, I guess about a year ago, I got that from my agent, and they wanted me to audition for it. And I said, no, for Diego. There’s no way I was going to pull that off.
And I’m so glad that was one that I passed on, because that would have been ridiculous. Me against Christian for that role?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it might have been fun practice, but still.
Yeah.
And it’s just, like, remember your audience. If it’s for a video game or even a cartoon, depending on what the creative team wants, they might not want something that… They might want something that’s more evocative, that kind of connotes the idea of this place, rather than something that’s completely accurate.
But, like, again, if you don’t feel confident doing it, don’t. So that pretty much wraps up this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
So our next episode is going to be a little bit different. We’re not going to do our usual current events and questionable gear purchases. We’re just going to go straight into part 2 of our international panel with Christina Melizia and Christian Lance, and we know you guys are going to love it.
And then coming up later in the summer, we’re going to be featuring Peter Bishop, the British voice talent living in New York, and that’s going to be pretty exciting.
Yeah, Bishop’s been great, and he’s offered a lot of sage advice to both of us over the Voice Over Bulletin Board and in private discussions, and I always enjoy talking to him when I can see him in person as well.
Yeah, we had a great time at Uncle Roy’s and hope to do it again soon. And then finally, we have committed, the VO Meter that is, to broadcast live from MAVO 2018, the Mid-Atlantic Voice Over Conference in Herndon, Virginia, in November, November 9th, 10th and 11th. So I’m really looking forward to that.
And I will be joined by Ken Foster, who will be guest hosting, since Sean can’t make the cross-country trip that time. So, sorry to hear that.
He’s replacing me, guys.
I keep trying, but it never lasts.
No one can match my charisma, but…
Definitely not.
I appreciate that. I really, really wanted to go to Mabo this year, but it just didn’t make sense with VO Atlanta. And last year was a very travel-heavy year.
So I’m kind of going to buckle down and refocus and save my finances. But I hope you both have a wonderful time. Val Kelly always makes an amazing conference every time she does Mabo.
I know this year our keynote speaker is no less than Kari Wahlgren, just amazing voice talent. She got her start in anime with things like Foody Coody and Samurai Champloo. She’s a regular on Rick and Morty now, and she does numerous characters for Marvel and DC.
And she’s just all over the map. Wonderful actress. And on top of that, you have Sarah Sherman, voice caster for Disney, Sunday Muse, wonderful character talent out of Canada, and just so many other great guests.
You’re definitely going to learn a lot. It’s a small conference, but the content is huge.
Yeah, it’s going to be fun. So that’s it for now. Please join us for part 2 of our International Roundtable, and we’ll see you soon.
Have a great day, everybody. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.