Career options

Make your voice heard!

Voice-over artist dubbing for an animated movie

Doing a wide range of voices for ad jingles, films and animations requires versatility, imagination and more than a little practice. If you think you have the confidence to deliver, then concentrate on your voice and make a profitable career in it.

What’s this career about?

A voice-over artist is a person who performs, typically with voice alone, in a variety of media. The different types of voice-over jobs can be categorized into media or products that involve television, radio, film, video games and audio books. Some of these require mainly a distinctive, clear voice, while others also demand considerable acting talent.

All cartoons and animations use voice-over talent. These are basically actors who, while watching the video, speak the parts of the cartoon characters alongside an engineer, creative directors and producers or alone in home studios.

Voice acting is also done for small handheld audio games. People may narrate TV commercials, participate in radio commercials, or possibly be part of books on tape or radio and podcast plays. In these cases, actors must draw from themselves and whatever instructions they are given by directors to determine how to effectively use the voice to make a point or excite listeners.

Also sometimes the actor in a movie can’t say what is needed, then the voice-over artist comes in who can sound like them to correct mistakes, to speak other languages over the original filmed version or to provide singing vocals if there are songs and if the actor or actress cannot sing well.

Adult female artists are frequently called upon to impersonate small boys because their voices are lighter than their male counterparts and the recruitment of children involves so much additional red tape.

Dubbing voice-over jobs also require similar skills, it involves watching the screen image of a human actor, animal or cartoon and voicing the script lines to match the mouth movements as closely as possible. Dubbing is considered a bonus skill in the voice-over industry. Artists capable of voicing different dialects and accents are especially likely to do well in this type of voice-over work.

If you love acting and have a unique voice, then this might be the right career for you! It requires honing your craft, getting your voice heard, and going on many auditions. With hard work, dedication and courage, aspirants will surely get a break in the field. Once your voice gets established, there’ll be no looking back.

PLUS!

  • How do I get there?
  • Key skills
  • Institutes offering a degree in Food Science and Technology
  • Employment prospects and pay packages
  • Hot locations

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Dr Vibha Gupta, a feature writer, is a Ph.D. in Mathematics from IIT Roorkee. Her book Careers: A Pathfinder and articles in various publications are an attempt to guide students in choosing a career according to their natural strengths, talents and skills.

Dr Vibha Gupta

Dr Vibha Gupta, a feature writer, is a Ph.D. in Mathematics from IIT Roorkee. Her book Careers: A Pathfinder and articles in various publications are an attempt to guide students in choosing a career according to their natural strengths, talents and skills.