A couple of weeks ago, I went to Voicetrax, a voice-over training school in Sausalito and wrote about my experience for the Pacific Sun:
As with most people, I don’t like hearing the sound of my voice. Even though I know that my voice sounds different in my head than it does to other people, hearing it played back to me is always a little unsettling. So, standing in a recording booth behind a microphone, about to record a mock voice-over audition at Voicetrax, a voice acting school in Sausalito, is a tad uncomfortable for me. It doesn’t help that outside the booth, a room full of advanced students is listening to my every word.
I’m supposed to read a monologue where tap water tries to convince the listener that it is better, cheaper and fresher than bottled water. Through a window in the booth, I can see Samantha Paris, owner of Voicetrax, sitting behind recording equipment. A successful actress who was the voice of Roxy in the 1980s cartoon show Jem and the Holograms, Paris is a compact and bright-eyed woman in her late 40s.
Through a speaker, she tells me to practice reading the monologue before we record it. The mic goes off and it’s suddenly quiet in the booth. I look down at the script in front of me. “Hi, it’s me, Water,” I mumble, trying to summon high school drama class to my mind.