As you contemplate your dawning career, you’ll be drawn to other places to train. And while you’ll always have a “home base” at The Voice Actors Studio, you may want to take online courses or travel to other cities for conferences or workshops. All that is an important part of your ongoing education in VO. Hearing new ideas from new people can refresh and give you ideas for doing better.
Ongoing training is a feature of most career fields. Just remember the California Gold Rush back in 1849. Lots of miners flocked to the gold fields.
But who made the real money? Not most of the miners! Money was made by those who supplied the miners— including the madams, the shovel salesmen, and even a guy named Levi who made some stout canvas pants.
Most miners went home as poor as when they arrived. A few made it big, most just moved a lot of gold coins through their fingers.
So out in the big world, there are coaches and then there are coaches. World-Voices Organization (WoVO) has a “best practices” policy statement that you might want to read.
Still, here we sit in Las Vegas, just 4 hours from Los Angeles. There’s a wealth of VO training over there. Often times TVAS will invite top LA coaches to teach right here in our sandbox! There’s also a bunch of opportunity online, including webinars. There are no-cost online groups that meet regularly, with voice actors from around the world in Google Hangout or Skype groups.
Check with voice actors you know and trust for advice on Trainer X or Trainer Y, for webinar A or B. Join groups that suit you on Facebook or through WoVO.
Next time: What about those big VO conferences?