Is anyone else retraining as a Voiceover?

[Octopus45]

I should say that I'm still doing my normal job (Freelance Merchandiser), but I dabbled in VO work a few years ago and I've now decided to give it a proper go. I signed up with Gravy for the Brain towards the end of last year and I'm working towards making it a part time job. I'm fully aware that its a marathon not a sprint and that competition is high. Just wondering if anyone else is doing similar

I didn’t know this was something one could train for as a discrete skill. (Assumed all voiceovers were by professional actors.)

Is there much work, given that a non-human voice is probably cheaper?

A lot of commercial work is covered by professional actors, but there are lot of different areas where voiceovers are used, for example gaming and audio book narration.

LOL, what?! Is this really something you have to train for?

No, but I've often thought I'd like to do it. Unfortunately I can't do accents, so I think the only work I'd ever get would be technical voiceovers for training videos. Will be fascinated to find out how you find the training and how you get on!

You should definitely do an AMA!

I'm a translator and for some reason my inbox if flooded with offers for voiceover work. Strange as there's really very little overlap, skills-wise. I never applied but would be interesting to explore.

About 10 years ago I volunteered for my local blind society (Italy), reading, translating and recording stuff like school text books and special interests. They had a national database and exchanged recordings.
Editing was so time consuming, like 3x the finished duration but it was a skill I’ve found useful since then.
It was fun, I met some lovely people, but I have a feeling we were the last people before AI took over.

I once did a voiceover in English for New Holland Tractors DVD manual. Not much fun as it was disjointed phrases, a bit like SatNav (Joanna Lumley I’m not)!

I used to do voiceover work when I lived abroad. I was the voice of the Urbanian Pavilion at the Shanghai 2010 Expo!

Lovely to hear about people's experiences. Will do an AMA when I'm further down the line.

I’m not, no one would want to hear my voice! But I have worked with some before and it always seems an interesting job and one that I spoke to did a lot of workshops/classes to I assume improve their range

I thought AI could do this now?

AI does some work, but there's still a lot of work around luckily.