I’ve recently been researching the voiceover industry to see how it’s changed over the years and to get a pulse on how it is today. It seems Don “In a world where…” LaFontaine‘s passing brought a nice spike of interest to the field last year.
Ten years ago I was at the William Morris Agency, where I spent the latter half in the commercial and on-air division with Billy Serow, Peter Hess and Brian Dubin. Back then, we rep’ed 20 men and 20 women, recorded demos and then sent CDs to the client for review. The in-house studio seemed to really create a time efficiency. These days, it’s home studios and websites… shortening the review process to minutes, rather than days.
It’s amazing to see the talent that is still out there. I found a very nice piece on the mavens of the industry. Other names came up like Joe Cipriano (Fox, NBC, Food Network), George Delhoyo, Mark Elliot (Disney), James Sloyan, Danny Dark, Ernie Anderson, Harlan Hogan.
It seems the advance in technology has allowed many up-and-coming v/o talent to “shrink the gap” between the top-20 and those below. More and more, the everyday man is getting an equal shot out there. Between free software, better/cheaper mics and plenty of instruction, I think we’re likely to see a bigger cast and a possible aggregation of services in the years to come.
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