The Magazine of Santa Clarita readers write in regularly about the voice-acting business. Our question this month addresses bilingual work for Spanish-speaking voice actors.
Q: I have a question about voice over demos. I have done a little voice over work including an industrial, a couple of commercials, and I voiced the number/letters for a GPS guidance system. All my voice over work has been in Spanish and back in San Francisco. I would like to get involved with the voice over industry here in Los Angeles, as there is a very large Hispanic community. I trained with Elaine Clark from Voice One in San Francisco. One of the reasons I haven’t run to a production house is because they will produce my entire demo in English. I do speak with an accent. A very ‘light’ charming accent by the way, and Elaine indicated to me that I would only be suitable for ‘exotic’ voice work. My question is: Should I put together samples of the real work I’ve done for the demo or should I go to a production house and put a demo together? – Maritza C., Los Angeles
A: Maritza, you’ve certainly come to the right city to do Spanish/English voice work. The great thing about your situation is that you are bilingual and can speak and read English with a “light” Spanish accent. This doubles your opportunities for finding work. And here in Southern California, there is a lot of work out there: Radio and TV commercials, animation, website narrations, corporate videos, documentaries, educational videos, phone-on-hold systems, audiobooks, and much, much more.
Listen to Spanish V-O Demos to determine whether the material you currently have will be a good representation of your voice. If you don’t have a body of work that is competitive with what’s currently out there (you can listen to V-O Demos by going to www.voicebank.net), then you’ll need to produce a V-O Demo from scratch.
Find a professional bilingual V-O Demo producer. Listen to other demos they’ve produced. Send them examples of what you’ve done, so they can get a good idea of your voiceprint and range. Discuss with them the various categories you feel you’d be confident performing. And make sure that when the demo is finished that you package it so that it “reads” Spanish/English. You can then go back to Voicebank to find a list of L.A. agencies that have a Spanish V-O department, and then submit your demo. You’ll also want to do some research to compile a list of production companies in and around L.A. that specialize in Spanish or Spanish/English productions.
I hope this information helps and good luck.
For more information, Marc Cashman can be contacted at cashcomm@earthlink.net or his website, www.cashmancommercials.com .