Results Day and Lifelong Learning

Proud Mum on results day!

This week my eldest son received his GCSE results. I’m relieved to say they were a cause for celebration, even though it made me feel rather old to have a child big enough to be collecting exam results!

The next stage in his education will be studying for A-Levels at Sixth Form College, and his chosen subjects are Geography, Geology and Business Studies. He doesn’t have a clear idea yet as to what he wants to do as a career – how many people really do at the age of 16? I know I didn’t, and until quite recently I still joked that I hadn’t really decided what I wanted to be when I ‘grew up’.

That was before I trained as a voiceover artist. Now I know that I’m doing what I should be doing and I’m loving my career. Not sure if that means I’ve finally grown up or not…..

Anyway, I started thinking about the subjects I took at school, and whilst none of them were courses in how to be a voiceover artist, some of them have definitely been useful to me, as I’ve outlined below.

English – This one is kind of obvious. I need to be able to read and make sense of a voiceover script before I can record it.  If it has been translated from another language there can be grammar errors that need correcting first. I also sometimes get asked to write scripts. Without good English skills I wouldn’t be able to do this.

Maths – Every small business owner needs to keep accounts. Even if you have an accountant you still need to have an idea of your ‘numbers’ as the Dragons are so fond of saying. I can’t say that I’ve need trigonometry lately, or calculus, but basic maths skills are definitely important.

Geography – Being a digital business and working through the internet means that I can work very easily with clients in other countries. In fact I’ve worked with companies on four different continents so far. It’s useful to have at least an idea of where in the world people are based, and what time of day it is there.

History – Even though I didn’t take History further than GCSE level it was one of my favourite subjects at school, and I came back to it later when I studied Archaeological Science at University.  This interest has lead to me pursuing work in audio tours and guides, and I’ve recorded over 30 guides for museums and walks around cities all over the world.

Science – I took physics and chemistry to A-Level and continued to study physics at university. You might not think that this would be much use to a voiceover artist, but you’d be surprised! I’ve recorded quite a few technical scripts for example for chemical companies, and having some idea of how to pronounce those chemical names and terms can be useful…

German – I studied German to AS level (when AS was a two year course) and I really enjoyed it. In fact I got a better grade in German than the rest of my A-Levels, so I probably should have taken languages instead of sciences…Anyway, my German has been useful as I once had to record a voiceover in German. The client wanted two versions of their video – one in English and one in German, and they wanted the same voiceover artist to record both.

French – Both French and German have been useful when I’ve been recording scripts for audio tours for places in France and Germany.  There are always lots of place names, street names and people’s names to pronounce.

Music – Recordings are often enhanced by music and sometimes clients will ask me to find something to go with their script. A knowledge of how music works can be handy when editing it down to fit the video.

So, it looks like all the subjects I took have been useful in one way or another. If I was starting all over again, the one thing I would like to have studied at school, which would have helped with my current career, is drama. There can be a lot of acting in voiceover – obviously in the games industry, audio drama, and animation there is plenty of scope for acting, but even in corporate work there is acting involved. One day I can be playing a ‘teacher’ and instructing people in how to do something, the next day I can be playing the role of the friend or colleague. It all depends on who the audience are going to be – and knowing that makes a difference to my performance.

When I lived in America I did finally get the chance to study acting at college, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just wish I’d had the opportunity sooner.

Although there are no qualifications in voiceover as such, there are plenty of opportunities for training, and I have taken courses in various genres of voiceover from e-learning to audiobooks, and commercials to documentaries. New fields are always emerging, such as voiceover for Virtual Reality, so the learning never stops. There are always more techniques to learn and put into practice.

So, perhaps one of the most useful things I learned at school was  - how to learn. Learning is a lifelong skill and one you have to keep up if you’re going to have any success in this business.

I don’t know yet what my son will end up doing, but I hope whatever it is he never becomes complacent, and keeps on learning new things for the rest of his life.