Voice-overs

[Lennon]

Anyone have any idea where to start if I wanted to get into doing voice-overs for TV?

[Miss Zippy]

There's no hard and fast way in, but it's a good idea to get as much 'voice' exposure as you can. Write to all your local TV and radio stations and offer to do some unpaid work experience, even if it's not initially doing any voice over work. Also, don't forget hospital radio as a way of gaining some experience. Oh and don't forget to send in a tape/CD of some of your 'work' to these people. If it's purely voice-over work you want to do (rather than this being a stepping stone to doing something else), then the work itself can be irregular and working unsocial hours; you are often called up at very short notice to cover. Like all 'media' jobs, hands-on experience counts for everything and it's often who you know and not what you know, so go and schmooze some local TV/radio exec types. Good luck!

[mikewith]

There are actors who also do voiceover work... then there are professional voiceover artists... who usually started out as actors and got sidetracked. Have you considered acting lessons?

[Lennon]

Thanks for your answers. Well, mikewith, I did drama in an amateur theatre society for 10 years from the age of 5 to 15. At 16 I got an A in Drama at GCSE, then at 18 I got a Theatre Studies and Dance A Level. So I've got background in that sort of thing, and miss it a lot but I never wanted to do it as a career as its such unstable work and half the time, its not what you know its who you know etc etc. But I was curious about voice overs as I'd love to try my hand at it, but wouldn't know how.

[mikewith]

There are many voiceover agencies: their websites tend to be aimed at the people buying their services rather than prospective artistes, but should give you na idea of what's involved:
http://www.lipservice.co.uk/index.html
http://www.speak-voices.com/ (has a page called 'Getting into the voice business')
http://www.voiceovers.co.uk/
and http://www.voicebookers.com/