Landing your first global voiceover
As a voiceover there are always certain moments that are always certain milestones you hope to reach. for me they include: When my voiceover booth was finished and all my shiny kit arrived; when I recorded my first job in my home studio; when I signed with an agent; when I won an award.
Then there is the bucket list of brands you’d like to work with that you try to navigate your way onto their radar and Netflix has been on mine. So last Summer when we were with our good friends, both brilliant creatives who work in TV, the conversation came round to work and my friend said he was working on something that he thought my voice would be a good fit for.
These conversations don’t happen often enough as you don’t really want to plague your pals all the time, but he started to explain how he was creating a series with Netflix about firsts in History. Sounded fascinating.
Then he went off to Canada to shoot a movie for about 8 weeks and I was sporadically sending texts to see whether I could demo a script or send something else through… and then came the moment.
ITN Productions got in touch to ask me to audition for the job. YEESSSS.
They’d landed the commission and were making 10 episodes. I can’t tell you how proud of myself I was just saving the file as Netflix demo. That was almost enough! Such a significant moment, I had to pinch myself.
I’m not sure people really understand how hard it is to land these gigs in this world. It is majorly competitive and as well as being talented it is of course about who you know, as cliche as it sounds.
Visibility is key and in a crowded market place, not always easy.
With this demo, there was another case of a few weeks passing and waiting to hear. Texts and emails being sent to try and I was so trying to be cool whilst desperate to know whether I’d landed my first series with Netflix.
Then as I was coming out of a meeting in Spinningfields in Manchester on a cold November evening, my numb fingers tapping away at my phone screen, I noticed a text I’d missed from that morning.
I’d got the bloody gig!
So then came the logistics as I’m based in Manchester and the VO was to take place in London. They wanted to fly over a producer from LA and so we had the backward and forward discussion about fees and timings etc and then we got the date set! Of course, my five-year-old had been sneezing in my face for the week before so on the day I was struggling. When the production manager asked if I’d need anything on the day, I felt like a total diva requesting honey and lots of ginger tea! Plus I checked in with my vocal coach Nic Redman about how to sustain my voice during the day, she gave me priceless tips on my neck and feet positioning which made such a difference.
I don’t know if I would have lasted otherwise as we were on a tight deadline, with a lot to get through in two days of recording.
So what’s it all about:
History 101 is a new type of history show for a new type of audience: Big History delivered in an unadulterated hit of premium archive and jaw-dropping infographics. This landmark series tackles the biggest developments of the past 100 years and breaks them down into a fast-paced, easy-to-understand 20 minutes, that helps answer the big questions: Why is the world the way it is and how did we get here?
The ten episodes span a wide range of topics ripped-from-the-headlines, covering scientific breakthroughs, social movements, and world-changing discoveries: the Space Race, Plastics, Oil in the Middle East, the AIDS epidemic, Nuclear Power, Robots, Genetics, the Rise of China, Fast Food, and Feminism. Unpacking not just what happened but why, and how this created the world we live in today.
Archival footage of the events takes viewers back to key moments, allowing them to hear the story directly from the voices of the time; exciting new animations put the stories in context and are packed with ‘take-home’ facts. Did you know that China recently used more cement in three years than the United States did in the entire 20th century? That a space rocket can generate temperatures on re-entry that are half as hot as the sun? That we share 60% of the same DNA as bananas?
History 101 isn’t just surprising statistics and little-known facts. It’s classic storytelling with an updated twist, asking provocative questions about the world we live in – why do we bother going into space when it’s so dangerous and expensive? How did China become a global economic powerhouse, and why was the rest of the world so slow to notice? Answering these questions tells an entertaining story about how we got here, but it also gets us thinking…about where we might go next. ”
If it’s made you think – OMG I need to have that woman voice my next documentary, then I’ll be delighted to make your acquaintance!