Red Flags and Sean Connery

You know how some voice jobs just flow from start to finish? You connect with the director, you’re on the same wavelength, the reads get better and better – love soup? This wasn’t one of them.

You know how some voice jobs just flow from start to finish? You connect with the director, you’re on the same wavelength, the reads get better and better – love soup? This wasn’t one of them.
 
I was asked to voice a bank commercial. I sent through a custom demo and it was approved by most of the team. (This was one of those setups with a committee of decision makers.)
 
Someone in the client team wasn’t convinced I was “the one” and requested a directed audition. The colleague hiring me told me there had been 100+ emails back and forth already about the project. This might have been a red flag, but I shrugged it off and agreed to the Skype audition.

The person directing the session was Simon. We got on Skype and Simon was giggly and effusive. “Look, I’m not a voice actor…” he began, then proceeded to give me a line reading. It wasn’t good. Another red flag moment.
 
Simon told me the client wanted a storytelling tone (the script wasn’t a story by any stretch of the imagination.) He also told me the client wanted it conversational. We gave it a go. Simon wasn’t happy. Next, he became obsessed with the idea of inflection. He wanted more of it. Inflect up on one line, down on the next, for variety. I politely suggested it might be best to let the inflection follow the meaning of the sentences, but Simon needed his inflections the way he needed them, so I went with it.
 
Then Simon’s boss joined the conversation. He wanted natural, conversational – inflection flew out the window. I could do that. But he also wanted me to sound like Sean Connery. (Red flag #3.) Ten takes later the session ended with Simon still unhappy on the inflection front and his boss no doubt deeply disappointed I wasn’t Sean Connery. Later that day I heard they’d decided to go with a male voice instead – someone with a “sharp, clear voice” like Sean Connery…
 
An acting teacher of mine used to say, “Rejection is protection.”

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