Q and A with Gary Travers
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Gary Travers of VoiceOver USA. This is what he had to say about the good, the bad, and the ugly about the voiceover business.
Q: Where were you born?
A: Lewiston, Maine.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: Auburn, Maine.
Q: How long have you been doing voiceovers?
A: Actively, about thirty years. But I actually began doing “outside” voice work much further back, from nearly the beginning of my earliest employment in radio, as a teenager,
Q: How did you get started?
A: While working as a part-time DJ at one of the local radio stations while still in high school, I learned that you could make a little extra pay if you recorded a commercial that ran on other stations besides your own.
Q: Is voiceover a good way to make a living?
A: I’d have to say no, except for a few people. Most folks do voiceovers as a sideline and therefore they also do something else. While VO can pay extremely well on a per job basis, doing enough voiceover jobs to make it a full-time living requires that rare convergence of talent, marketing skills, and luck. There are many successful full-time VO talents around the country, but for each one of them there are probably 50 others who do nowhere near enough jobs to make a good living at it. So there’s nothing wrong with just doing VOs as a supplement to your day job, and that’s reality for most people.
Q: What was your first gig/voiceover?
A: I seem to recall it was for a new hard rock type of dance hall in my hometown, and it was very psychedelic with black lights, strobe lights, Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix posters, and all that. This was in the late 1960s. The VO was for a local radio commercial to announce their grand opening. I was probably all of 17! I sure would like to be able to hear that spot now. On second thought, no I wouldn’t.
Q: Did you dream of being a voiceover artist when you grew up?
A: No. I didn’t know anything about voiceover work until I had worked in broadcasting for a while as a kid, where it was part of the learning process. I definitely wanted to be in broadcasting when I grew up, either on radio or TV. And as it turned out, I worked in both. Then voiceovers came about from that.
Q: How was VoiceOver Miami born?
A: VoiceOver Miami was born as what was intended to be a one-time-only CD compilation of Miami-area voice talents, and I started working on it in late 1994 and released it in Spring of 1995. The ‘one-time’ aspect didn’t happen; it’s still going strong today.
Q: What inspired VoiceOver Miami?
A: I’d like to say I originated the idea of putting multiple voiceover talent demos into a compilation CD package, but I didn’t. It had already been done by a few places, including Catspaw studio in Atlanta and ProComm in North Carolina. It was seeing those packages lying around at a Miami studio, where I happened to be one day for a voiceover gig, that gave me the idea for VoiceOver Miami. Being able to replicate your own CDs was still very new at that time. Up until the early 90s, only record companies were putting out CDs; it took a while for smaller players to be able to get in on the action. So creating the first-ever compilation of South Florida voice talents, and releasing it on a compact disc, was doubly innovative for Miami at the time and it generated some buzz.
Q: What is VoiceOver Miami?
A: VoiceOver Miami is a marketing service for pro, Florida-based VO talents. It started as a CD package, quickly became a CD package and a website, and now, after releasing fifteen annual editions of the CD package, VoiceOver Miami continues as the website only.
Q: Is VoiceOver Miami your main company?
A: VoiceOver USA is the parent company of VoiceOver Miami and it is my main business enterprise.
Q: Are you still doing voiceovers or mostly just running the site?
A: I don’t do as many VOs as I used to. I’ve become mainly focused on running VoiceOver Miami and marketing other talents. But I still have some long-time clients who use me for VOs every so often.
Q: Did you still work in radio or television?
A: No. My days as a broadcast talent are over. I was last on the radio as an air personality in 1986, and my last appearance doing TV weather was in 2004. The broadcasting business , specifically music radio and TV news, has changed significantly since I was a part of it. It’s not as good a place to be, career-wise, as it was. This is a radically new, digital world we live in now, and the changes come faster and faster every day.
Q: What is the best advice you can give beginning voice artists?
A: Be realistic about trying to make it as a VO talent, as most people don’t do enough VOs to turn it into a full-time living. Also understand what your VO style is and where it fits in; maybe try to specialize in a certain genre that suits you. Listen to a lot of other, good pro talents and try to understand what they’re doing. Seek any available coaching opportunities from recognized top coaches that come along, because even long-time VO people still visit coaches sometimes to try to raise their performance to a higher level . And also realize, first and foremost, that voiceover is a form of acting; you must be believable and “seamless” as a professional voice actor. VO is all about sounding sincere, and once you’ve learned to fake sincerity, you’ve got it made!
Q: What is the best advice you can give a seasoned veteran?
A: I would never give advice to a seasoned veteran.
Q: What current projects are you working on?
A: Working on a new thing, but I can’t talk about it right now.
Q: Do you have new business ventures or community services activities you are working on?
A: I just agreed to be onboard as an on-camera spokesman for a new start-up that will be producing “looks-like-news” TV spots. Some of the well-known but now retired Miami TV news anchors are also on the talent roster of this enterprise.
Q: What do you like to do when you aren’t working?
A: I enjoy physical fitness activities, reading, cooking, listening to music. And learning new things.
Q; What is the most important thing to do in the voiceover business?
A: Make sure you get paid!
Q: What is the best sound equipment to use for recording voiceovers?
A: All you really need is a broadcast quality microphone and some editing software. Don’t spend more than you need to for either. And with the software, get something simple. There are some well-known audio softwares out there that I think are too high-end and complex for simple voiceover recording by a VO talent operating from home; all you need is to be able to record, edit, and sometimes mix. The other bells and whistles just make your life unnecessarily complicated.
Q: Do you have any tips for how to use programs like Soundforge and Garageband quickly?
A: I have never used either, so no, I don’t. I personally use Sony Vegas. Any new software seems daunting at first, so you just have to get acclimated to it and work through any roadblocks. It’s always a learning curve, over time.
Q: Do you have a motto you live by?
A: No.
Q: Where will you be in ten years?
A: Still around, hopefully!
Tags: Gary Travers, Lindsay Glazer, Miami Voiceover, Voiceover Miami, voiceover talent
