Episode 001: Focus On Nailing Your Audition with Lili Wexu

Show Notes

Lili Wexu is an experienced Voice Actor and Voice Acting Coach. In this episode we discuss techniques for voice actors to improve their odds of success when auditioning. 

Get coached by Lili:  https://getcleverabout.com/voice-over-coaching-with-lili-wexu/
Lili's Website: https://www.liliwexuvoiceovers.com 
Lili's E-Books: https://getcleverabout.com/voice-acting-announcing/
Get her books on amazon: https://geni.us/AR17ucJ

What is Booth Junkie Podcast?

Interviews about and for voice actors.

Mike: So I wanted to bring in someone who has been in the game for a long time, but is also willing to share her experience and expertise with us. Lily Wexu has been the public voice of the Olympics, the opening and closing ceremonies been a voice in video games, television programs, radio, and TV commercials.

Mike: She's kind of done it all. She's got 25 years of onscreen and voice acting experience, and she's really done the community, a solid by sharing her experience and her considerable knowledge in her ebook series. Get clever about voice acting and. Announcing it's really targeted towards new voice actors and to really help them avoid some of the pitfalls that a lot of us fall into when we're brand new.

Mike: So Lily thanks so much for taking your time and, and sharing your time with us today. I really appreciate it.

Lili: It's such a pleasure to be here. Mike, I'm a fan of yours and I'm very happy to be here.

Mike: I really appreciate it. So many, people, especially during the pandemic, when they hung out their shingles to become voice actors, they weren't necessarily trained actors, but they might have good pipes.

Mike: They might be, really facile in, in one area of something maybe it's animation or their corporate work or whatever it is that they're doing. Can we dig in a little bit on like the audition process? Like how do you know that you've nailed an audition? I think I get that all the time. I certainly have my own imposter syndrome over.

Mike: Is that any good? Yeah. Yeah. But so many people that are just starting out, they throw their auditions out into the ether. And never, we never get anything back, right? Yeah. Especially pay to play sites. How do you know? Oh yeah. what are some tricks if you want to talk about it, can we talk about auditioning a little

Lili: bit?

Lili: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think it's a really, it's a big topic and I just wanna say that I spent years recording auditions. Never hearing back, like yeah. Years for sure. Okay. So, I mean, I. I've grown as a performer as an actor and just a person on the marketplace for so many years, you just learn things and you become better at your craft.

if you dedicate a lot of energy to it, mm-hmm, , you know, eventually you're gonna get there. you're gonna feel exactly like what you described before for a really long time. Like, is this any good? you know, and one of the first things I wanna say about that is just, get coaching, get coaching, because you're gonna have another set of ears.

Lili: You need another set of ears to tell you to guide you.one of the difficulties of having our own home studio is that you're just by yourself. You're not getting any feedback. You're not getting any feedback from clients. Nobody's telling you like that audition was good. If you had just done this, I might have, you know, Nobody's telling you, so you need another set of ears.

Lili: Um, so just get a coach for your audition. So that's just number one. one of the things that I've noticed that people do all the time in auditions and in any practice run, and there are, I mean, I know that slow talkers exist out there, but most of the people that I end up coaching, just talk really fast.

Lili: And so they'll grab, they'll grab copy, and they'll just steamroll through it. They'll just like, Go and go and go, um, still guilty.

Mike: I still find myself guilty of that.

Lili: Yeah. And I, and I did, and I still do as well. And it took me years to just slow down. Mm. And, you know, my grandfather used to say he built a studio with me, one of my favorite studios that I had, and he used to say, "go slower, it goes faster" and that sentence is always in my mind because it's true. Yeah. So the reason I say that, especially in auditions and I'll give an analogy. I used to run a music venue and we used to book bands. And all these bands would come in and, uh, you know, they were all like, most of them were just loud, you know, rock bands and just rocking out. And one day this guy came in and he was playing acoustic guitar and he was real quiet and he was playing a song and everybody just like came in right.

Lili: And was just like listening to him. And you could hear like a pin drop. and when you slow your pace down, that's what you're doing because the producers, the clients listening, they're listening to all these auditions of people who just went, oh, I have to read this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Lili: Mm-hmm they all end up sounding the same until the one person is like, Hey, how you doing? I'm out here. Mm-hmm okay. Now listen to me, you know what I mean? So it's like a, they just, you just draw them in just by the sheer act of taking your time. So that's just number one, you know, take your time now. Of course there is copy that calls for you going fast.

Lili: Right? Right. I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking overall in general, the copy. You're gonna find on pay to play sites, even commercials from your agents, all that. it's gonna be to your advantage to slow

Mike: down. Yeah. It's, it's hard because, and maybe you can, you can talk about it, but for me, it's, it's actually like luxuriating in the words.

Mike: It's not huge pauses between the words. My coach always says, connect your words, Mike, connect them together. Right. Mm-hmm mm-hmm because it's not, I. Love and it, you know, it's not these huge pauses between words. It's no, it's luxuriating them in a little bit.Let's talk about pauses cuz you, you brought it up. Sure, sure. Pauses are important. It's not necessarily between the words, but between certain sentences, there are certain strategic sentences. Like the other day I was, coaching this, this student and she had this copy and it said.

Lili: Something like "no time for self care?". And then the next sentence was no problem. Right? So she was reading it like no time for self care. No problem. You know? No, wait a second. Give us, give us a second there. Right? No time for what are you talking about? No time for self-care no problem. You know that pause there is going to give me time to know that you understand what you're reading and it also makes sense.

Lili: Because you're coming in with a problem and a solution, right? So you're giving us that time to just take that in. So remember that the people listening, they're an audience. They, they have to, you know, they they're choosing you. Yes. They're casting you, but they're just people listening to you. So they have to be affected by what you're doing.

Lili: If you're just reading like wall to wall, you're not showing me that you understand mm-hmm, what you're reading. And you're not giving any dramatic impact and I'm not talking about dramatic impact. Like, Ooh, I have to make a dramatic impact. like that's not dramatic impact. Dramatic impact can be as simple as a well placed pause.

Lili: Right.

Lili:

Lili: And this is a little, also an editing hack. Now you may have this great read and, and be like, oh, I didn't put that pause in. Well, just go put it in, just put it in there, put it in, in your edit and then listen back and go. Yeah, that sounds good. That Dr. That, you know, does it, does it draw you in, if it, if it draws you in, then it's good.

Lili: You know, put it. Another since just we're on editing, you know, those breaths also just, you can attenuate them. Mm-hmm , you know, you don't, don't get rid of them, but you can attenuate them so that they're not like overpowering. Right? Yeah. So I often, what I'll, what I'll do is I'll get rid of the ones at the beginning of sentences, but I'll leave the ones in the middle of sentences and just kind of reduce them a little.

Lili: Yep. So these are just little hacks that, yeah, that, uh, and there's more, I can tell you way more, but the, these are just like little editing

Mike: hacks. I, the people watching this are gonna be like, yeah, tell us all of it. Tell us all of it. I'm sure. Cause I'm like, yeah. Tell us all of it. I mean, a lot of this stuff, I, I know cuz I've, you know, I've had to do all a lot of this same stuff of breath, attenuation, whether it's deep breathing and don't cut them out because all of a sudden your pacing gets all weird.

Mike: So that's other thing

Lili: for sure. For sure. Let's talk about that. Cutting them out and you know, cuz yeah, you're just so good at all. Editing stuff. Right? Like cutting them out. You don't wanna cut a breath out because what happens now is that the time that that breath was there now you're bringing that sentence closer together.

Lili: And now that pause we were talking about it's even less. Yeah. So now you sound even more rushed. Frantic. Yeah. Frantic. Yeah.If you can just go slower, put pauses, dramatic pauses, especially if you're presenting a problem. And then you have a solution, you know, any turn in a script, you wanna highlight if a word repeats, you wanna highlight that word,but there's all kinds of things in a script that you.

Lili: underline in your performance, but you can also do it with pauses. Mm-hmm another,thing about auditions,we always talk about, they have to sound natural, right? and it's a real struggle for all of us because this copy is not written in a natural way, for sure. Sure. It's better than it was.

Lili: It's better than it was, but there was still plenty of terrible scripts out there. The some are really bad and you have to keep in mind that a lot of companies. write these scripts as just someone in their office. They're you before productions were like a big deal. Yeah. And I will say you will be more competitive if you can make a bad script.

Lili: Sound good, because everybody's gonna sound pretty decent on a good script. Mm-hmm that's not where you're gonna. Book the most of your, you know, most of your work where you're gonna book a lot of work is if you're really good at making bad scripts sound amazing. Yeah. It's not that much fun, but yeah, that's true.

Mike: And sometimes you really have to throw their gram, their grammar away. Their com is their, their periods. That's what was gonna say, throw it

Lili: away. yeah. So my next thing I was gonna bring up is punctuation. Um, because of all this bad writing and even, even if it's good writing, sometimes punctuation written punctuation is not the same as spoken punctuation.

Lili: And I really wanna emphasize that because notice, if you read a sentence, like, I want to go walk my dog, you know, you just went down. I want to go walk my dog. That's what was written on the copy, but I wanna go walk my dog. That's also a period, but it's suspended. It's like a suspended period.

Lili: Mm-hmm . Punctuation, try to, I get people to actually record themselves talking like rant about a subject. You know, traffic's a big one. we all hate traffic, um, anything and you don't have to rant like a, I'm not talking about like an aggressive rant. I'm just talking something you can talk about for two, three minutes.

Lili: Where you can just talk by yourself, record it, and then listen to yourself. And then if you had to write that down, what punctuation would you use? That's a

Mike: great tip. That's a great tip.

Lili: Yeah, that's cool. You would, it would be a different punctuation, you know? Um, so you, you have to kind of reinvent the punctuation.

Lili: Not only move it because a lot of the time, a lot of the times like the commas in the wrong area, but period, there shouldn't be a period there, or things are on different lines. and so like we make, oh yeah, we make periods. No, no, no, no, no. Your job is to rewrite the script the way it should be when spoken.

Lili: Yeah. So that's a big way to make things sound natural, And it's hard, still hard to do. I'm not gonna lie to you and say that this is easy, but once you understand that, wait a minute, how can I say this? So I'm not just going down like a. How can I say right? How can I make a period?

Lili: That is a spoken period. Right, right, right.

Mike: You certainly hear that if you, if you really go back, like that was a, that was a very enlightening moment for me when I really sort of discovered that. Cause I'm, I still, like, that's a, that's a habit I get into is as I wanna go down at the end of my sense, everybody does it's normal.

Lili: Right. We wanna do it. Yeah. It's if you listen to it's like a brain.

Mike: Right. But if you, if you listen to a lot of, you know, I go through and I, I download IPOT TV and I download all sorts of reference commercials that I use for my own sort of reference. If I need to go back to a script and. Those phrases.

Mike: It's that suspended period that you said they lift at the end. And I think it's a trick to get the listener, to keep listening. Um, mm-hmm and it's to make it sound more conversational because we don't like, I notice myself. I'm not even, I'm not going down when we're just wrapping here. I'm not going down on my sentences every time.

Lili: Exactly. Some you will, some, you won't, some, some will be three in a row that you're going up and then it's a different up one was up here. The next one was up here. And then only one of them was down here. Right? So there's different openings of ends of sentences.

Mike: And it can be really, it can be really challenging, especially when there's these staccato little phrases, when the periods are, like you said, in the wrong places, or God forbid you get a script and it's double spaced with, you know, five words when really it should be one long sentence.

Mike: Yes. Can be really hard.

Lili: Can be really hard. Yeah. Or like the pause is in the right place. Like. Da da da is. And then they put a pause after is it's like, no, we don't. I had one commercial I just had to do. And actually, you know, and I, I said to them, I said, guys, this, we don't talk like that. Like, it was something like, uh, our agents are.

Lili: It was something like that. Like our, a, it was like a, a security agency and they were like, our agents are committed, empathetic, da, da. And I'm like, I'm sorry, but like, our agents are two dots, empathetic. Who, who, who talks like that. Right. Nobody talks like that. Right. Our agents are committed. Empathetic, you know, the committed is tied to the first part and we had to rewrite it on the fly, you know, and I'm grateful that those clients were like, they're lucky , you know?

Lili: Yeah. Because sometimes it doesn't happen or sometimes they're not there and they really want that pause. Cause they're like, you know, in my edit, in my video, I have a pause here and the guy said that to me at the beginning, I said, okay. And then I just said, I'm gonna do it. You know? And I did it and it sounds like crap.

Lili: And they're like, oh yeah, you're right. It tiny. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So you. in the audition. You're basically sometimes teaching them. like how to rewrite the script. Right. You know, you're saying, look it, you gave me this, this doesn't work really well with the punctuation that you put in, or the spaces that you put in.

Lili: I'm gonna show you how this sounds better. . So if you think of it like that, then you're like, and you're allowed to do whatever you want. There's no, like audition police. Who's gonna come and say, right. That's a good point. Like you're good point. You know, there was a period right there, you know, it's, it's very different than say in acting where some of the punctuation is there.

Lili: It's giving you a lot. It tells you a lot about the author and how they're thinking. Like I'm. Thinking about a David mammo play or right. You know, like there's certain, um, when you're

Mike: doing theater theaters, you gotta cross on a syllable. Right? You, you really gotta there's interrupt on the right syllable.

Mike: Yeah,

Lili: exactly. And it's, it's, it's really giving you insight on the intention of that character, but in, in our world, all that is baloney it's it doesn't exist. So we're lucky. We're lucky. Yeah. We don't have to respect any of that. so make it your own. So that's another, um, another that's great hack.

Mike: Make it your own.

Mike: I like.

Lili: Yeah. Um, another, uh, tip that I have, and I've worked on this with students and it really helps them. do an activity just before you start speaking. Right. And those who are like perform performance inclined, whether they're singers or teachers or actors or anybody that has a little bit of that, or moms or dads that like to read, you know, a lot of people have like the performance bug in them.

Lili: Mm-hmm , this can work where you do a physical activity. So, um, for example, I, I was working on a commercial with a student and, um, It was like a commercial, um, for like a Panera bread or something. So it was like a salad. They were selling a salad or whatever. So like, pretend you're actually, you know, and if you need to go get a fork and stick it in your mouth, you nobody's watching.

Lili: Nobody cares. You know, just pretend that you're like eating the salad and then, and then start your line because doing that physical activity is gonna get you out of that. What is written down, it's gonna bring it into your life and what it means to you. Right? Right, right. So the challenge here is sometimes finding that physical activity.

Lili: We're like, oh, I don't know what to do, but like, it can be anything. It could be like, you're pretending, you're, let's say you're, you're talking about a credit card, a new credit card. You can look in your purse or in your wallet for it and be like, oh, here it is. Right. For sure. You know, for sure.

Lili: And you know, so these little physical activity things can really, um, Help you just to get outta your head for a second. Yeah. And just say at least the first line more naturally. Right?

Mike: Right. I, for me, you know, as, as a guy, a guy at my age, the common direction I get in the, uh, audition scripts is pretend like you're talking to one of your buddies at the bar.

Mike: Yeah. So I'll go, you know, I'll do the panto before I'll go. Yeah. You know, Bob? Yeah. I was just talking about somebody about my mortgage. Yeah. And my Ameriprise mortgage, you know, whatever it is. and you can, you can, you can really just lead into it

you're bringing it into the real world and so that you can come into it. Yeah. So that's when another one is obviously in that same vein and, and for, and, and it's also helpful for people like to improvise, you know, improvisers they'll really respond to a physical activity like that.

Lili: The other one that's related to that is OB obviously the ad lib, you know, I'm sure you know, this it's like, you just start. Talking before. So, you know, Diana was just thinking the other day. Yeah. That, you know, I really wanna try this and have you ever tried the new blah, blah, blah. You know, all of a sudden, you're just, it's amazing.

Lili: You sound like a real person. and then what happens is that everybody just read it. Have you ever read and then use come in and you sound like a real person asking a real question and the person listening goes, wow. Oh, Guess what? You just became a favorite. You just became a shortlist because you got their attention.

Lili: You actually sounded like a real person as the first time they hear a real person. That's why it's worth spending a lot of time on this kind of thing. It's because it makes you stand out of this really can sea of people who all sound the same. Right. You know?

Lili: Cause I

Mike: do think that a lot of people don't realize, and I want to, I wanna keep going with those, these hacks. Yeah. Cause this is, this is absolute gold for, for people. It's my understanding that if a lot of people have multiple agents, but a lot of times those scripts will go to multiple agencies. Oh yeah.

Mike: So it's not just going against, you know, the 40 or 50 guys or, or gals that are in your agency's roster. It might be going to. Hundreds of people,

Lili: hundreds, hundreds of people. Oh yeah. Hundreds. Because it's when it's a casting like that, oftentimes a they're inexperienced because anyone experienced knows. That they're not gonna listen to 500 auditions. So your auditions are not even being listened to.

Lili: Yeah. Um, because the reality also is that once, and this is true. If you ever cast anything yourself, like once you find the voice that you want, you're done. You don't keep looking. Right. So,that's something that if you do have the luxury of having many agents, you wanna, you know, pay attention to, You at the beginning, you're just doing a lot of auditions as a practice run to get to know your, what you're doing. And you're hopefully working with a coach and you're trying things and you never know where you're gonna land.

Lili: So you have to just try a lot of different things. eventually you start to get to know your voice and you start to get to know what works a, because you're getting hired all the time in that sector, or you're just getting a lot. Activity in that sector. Mm-hmm and your coach and your agents, everybody's kind of always sending you kind of the same type of thing.

Lili: So you're starting to get an idea of like, okay, this is, this seems to be coming up over and over. Or sometimes it's stuff that you love too, sometimes it's just like the one thing you love doing, and it just works, you know? Right. It doesn't always work like that, but pay attention to what you're attracted to.

Lili: Now, you may. Really knock it outta the park in a sector that you you're not in love with. You're just good at it. Mm-hmm that happens too. Mm-hmm um, but just, you know, there's a lot of cues that will tell you eventually where you're, where your niche is gonna be. And,once that happens, you're not gonna audition as much,you're you, you know, that struggle that we're talking about auditioning so much and never hearing anything back, it's gonna be less and.

Lili: partly because you're just doing less auditions and you're doing auditions that you have a high chance of booking. So your booking ratio is gonna go up. So instead of like one out of a hundred, where you got lucky, you don't know how come you got it, you're gonna be like, You know, one outta five, one outta 10, one outta eight, you know, mm-hmm, one outta three, you know, and over time also what happens is that you start to build a community around you, of the clients, agents, all these people, and then you're in a small pool.

Lili: Oh, we're, we're, you know, you're one of three voices we're gonna submit, you know, oh, you're one of 10 voices we're gonna submit mm-hmm . So the pool that you're in starts to get smaller and smaller. Right? Right. So your ratio goes up because you're not competing anymore against hundreds of people. Right.

Lili: Yeah, for sure. So that's another thing about auditioning and that that's why you need training. And that's why having a second set of ears is gonna speed up your journey because you're not gonna have to spend years, you know, figuring this out on your own. You're just gonna get other ears on it. Yeah.

Lili: That are gonna help you. so anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there because I don't want people to feel like, oh, I have to be doing 50 auditions a day. I really don't believe in that philosophy. I think at the beginning, you wanna audition as much as possible because you're finding yourself and you wanna get experience.

Lili: You're getting that practice in, you're getting that practice in, and you're also seeing, you know, what people are looking for, right? The themes that keep coming back,Way they express themselves the types of scripts that are out there. Mm-hmm, , mm-hmm, the ones you like, the ones you don't like, you know what you wanna waste your time with what you don't wanna waste your time.

Lili: Yeah. You know, so, so it's all very useful, but after a while, as you go through your journey, you do wanna audition less and less. Okay.

Lili: So another couple hacks that we can talk about. so you know, the two takes, there's a whole debate. Do you do two takes? Do you do one take, do you do three takes mm-hmm how many takes should you do for an audition?

Lili: Mm-hmm you know, mm-hmm um, I think doing two is a pretty safe. Place to be, if you're inspired by all means, you can do three. I wouldn't do more than that because then unless it's very short mm-hmm like, if it's like four words, then yeah, you can do four or five. Cause it's so short and it can go in so many different directions, what you really wanna do here is differentiate your auditions. And I know this is like, this is like a thing, cuz a lot of times I'll get my students to send me their auditions. I'm like, send me what you. And all here, two takes that are exactly the same. Right. like over and over, right. Just they're, they're all exactly the same.

Lili: And I'm like, okay, there's a problem with that. Because what you're saying is I can do the same thing twice and nobody really cares about that though. Like, that's a skill I don't have any use for mm-hmm , you know, what you wanna show is that you can do different things.

Lili: And so people like rack their brains, like, oh, what can I do? What can I do? It could be a simple. As simple as you're doing one slower, like we said, and one faster mm-hmm , you know, it could be as simple as that, or it can be one where you're, smiling and one where you're more serious, it can be one where you're just very, very intimate into the microphone and one where you're projecting more.

Lili: So you wanna do them a favor and be like, this is where it can go. And it also shows range, which is really important because most people wanna know that what if the client wants, you know, I'm thinking that the client is gonna want this, but what if the client wants something else? I wanna know that that, that actor can, can go there.

Mike: one thing I've heard is sort of on that same line is you can often consider your slate a third take. Because your slate can sound different and be like, oh, that's what Mike sounds like. And here's what Mike's interpretation of character sounds like.

Mike: And then here's the second interpretation. So you can say I'm, I'm directable in some way that your slate can sound different, even if it's just like, just your name or, Hey, it's Mike, here's two takes you can. I

Lili: think that works totally. If your slate is very natural, right? I think, um, people have a tendency to.

Lili: So, and so hi, I'm Soandso right. And then it doesn't sound natural. Right? Right. So if you are gonna, you know, it's funny cuz slating, I don't even slate. I rarely slate. Oh really?

Mike: So many of my auditions say slate and then to, you know, there'll be very prescriptive feel

Lili: what you need to do because I feel like so many say.

Lili: Do not slate. It's funny. Like, I feel like most of them say, do not slate or say nothing. And then when it's wanting slates, it usually says slate, you know? Right. But, um,

Mike: so for the people who are, who are they're unfamiliar, a slate is when you say your name in the beginning, and maybe you'll say a number of takes or something, you'll, you'll take.

Mike: Two seconds and say your name.

Lili: Yeah. So it basically comes from the film industry in the film industry. You know, you have that clapper board and it says it identifies the scene. That's a slate. Mm-hmm so that's what we do. We identify ourselves, you know, I'm Lily WEX, Sue I'm Mike. That's, that's a whole thing. Do you do it? Do you not do it? You know, I say, if it's written down, do it, if it's not written and you want to do it, then do it. Um, and certainly if it says don't do it, then don't do it. and another thing too, on that same note, I don't say, take one, take two, take three.

and the reason I don't do that is because I was casting something and people who were saying, take two, take three, just took me out of it, interest. . Yeah, I was like, uh, this is bugging me. Like, I just wanna hear the read again, you know? Right. Mind you. What's good about that is that, you know, that something else is coming.

Lili: So that's another thing in auditions. You decide what, what you wanna do. Mm-hmm if you're more worried that they're gonna not listen again and you feel like you have a good second take, then say it. You know, if you, if you think your best take, you should always put your desk your best take first.

everybody doesn't expect you to be amazing two times, but they do want you to be great in the fir you want, you have to grab their attention. Mm-hmm in the first one. I would never say take one, but I would say if you have multiple takes, you could say, take two, take three.

Lili: You don't have to certainly it's become a standard. So people expect usually another take, except if it's long. they'll assume that you're doing probably a couple takes mm-hmm you know, so you don't have to say it if you don't wanna say it.

Lili: Right. I know some people put like a, a tone in between them. I, I don't typically put a tone in between mine, but they'll put like a little, I would say, you know, a little, yeah.

Lili: I would say if you're gonna do something, say it mm-hmm if you're gonna do something, because just based on my experience, it took me out of it.

Lili: A beep would certainly take me out of it. Yeah. It's like what? I agree. It's like your mind just got jumbled now and I forgot what I just heard. here's the thing, you know, and you know, this Mike it's, you know, they're anti announcers, they're anti this, they're anti that, you know, and then if you, so, so if you show any kind of proficiency, which is so important, you need so much proficiency in your work.

Lili: Like people don't realize how, you know, how, how much proficiency goes into it. Mm-hmm . But you can't show it. You can, you can only show it by putting pauses in the right places and attenuating your breath. So they're still there. So they're not gonna go, oh, they inten attenuated the, the breath. They don't know that.

Lili: As long as they hear them, they go, this is a real human, you know, they didn't edit everything out. Mm-hmm so that kind of thing is good. But other than that, you don't wanna come in and put a beep in cuz it shows that you know, too much. And then they think, oh, they're not an actor. Right. Interesting. And it's really unfair.

Lili: It's really unfair, but that's the way it is. You can have a little makeup on.

Lili: That's fine. I mean, we all like to wear, you know, especially ladies mm-hmm , but I mean, behind the mic is the same thing as a camera, you know, it's good to have something on your voice, but you don't wanna have it so overpowering that you sound like, right. You're straight out of a radio. Right. You know? And because that, because some of.

Lili: Like you and me, like, if I start speaking, I come straight out of a radio. So we're at a disadvantage. Yeah. Cuz we're like, we sound too good. Yeah. You know, so you wanna dial it down. So

Mike: yeah. My regular voice often sounds yeah. You

Lili: amazing like sound announcer. Amazing. I wanna listen to you all day. Like I was like, oh my you, my ears.

Lili: I'm like, you sound amazing. You sound amazing. But that, and I talk about that in the books. It's like, it goes against you. So, and you kind of, when you start to put beeps and things like that, that also goes against you. Yeah. That's good point. You don't wanna do anything too fancy in there. Yeah. You just wanna take out the stuff that's distracting your mouth noises.

Lili: You're overpowering breaths. You know, that stuff is distracting. If you're talking too fast, it's distracting. Mm-hmm that's as far as it goes, you know? Cool, cool. And the last thing I'll talk about also, because it's a little technical. In auditions is you wanna watch your audio range? So this is something very specific, but like, in an act, I call them like acty spots.

Lili: So where you're like a character, like, especially in radio mm-hmm , you know, so you can go all over the place. You can go up on your levels, you can be like off mic, you know, all that stuff works really, really well. Mm-hmm when you're doing character work. So, you know, like, uh, if you're, if the, the, the, the, the guy in the spot is running, you know, you can totally go like

Lili: So I was, uh, at Dan's play, you know? Right. Your audition's gonna sound amazing. So all that can work really well, adding real life into your, into your reads. But if you're doing any kind of narration, um, or announcer role that is, you know, not supposed to be announcery, but it's an announcer role. You, you wanna be mindful of your range, so you can still go up and down and, and in your intonation, like, like we talked about like the punctuation that is like hanging in the air, but you have to stay within.

Lili: If you go super high and your voice peaks, like it's just gonna take us out of it. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. So cuz, cuz cuz people, I, I hear people's auditions, you know, my students that I coach and I, and I go, oh, you know, you just took me out of it because you weren't, you didn't pay attention. Like here, you were just kind of like yelling and then, but it's a narration mm-hmm so it doesn't work, you know?

Lili: Right. You know, it's like the performance you, so the audio range, you wanna, you don't wanna be like to a point where you're like, you're never going up and you're never going down. You're just gonna sound like a computer. you don't want that, but you wanna be mindful when you're listening back.

Lili: If something is going way up and it's different than all the rest, just rerecord that part. Yeah. Just fix that. Cool.

Mike: I think that's, I think that's great advice. Great advice can and that's you can, you can often see it in your wave form in your editor. You can see when the wave form's really big and the wave form's really small.

Mike: Yeah. If that, if those ranges are really huge.

Lili: Yeah. Maybe you just correct it becauseeven if you, when you're listening back, it catches your ear. It's gonna catch somebody else. For sure. Right. For sure. And, but, but I wanna, I wanna specify that for character work, it's fantastic.

Lili: Like you don't wanna peak, obviously. I'm sure you talk about that in your videos, but, but you, so you don't wanna peak, but you, but going up and down and off and all this, it's fantastic. It's gold for character work for animation, for video games, for any kind of character work that you're doing. Um, Yeah, all that stuff is like real life.

Lili: You know, your breaths in those instances, you'd you'd wanna maybe attenuate them a little bit, but not too much. Right? Like you wanna leave all that stuff in. Right.

Mike: You know, as long as you have a, if you've got a good sounding booth, you really can play like that. I, I had to play something the other day.

Mike: Yes. Where I had to be downstairs. So I was like, mm-hmm well, I'm gonna talk from down. you know, I'm gonna talk from down here. My booth can support that. It's not, you know, echoing in reverb. It's the importance of the booth. It's true. True. But it really does. I mean, it helps to act I'm downstairs or whatever it is.

Mike: Yeah. Um, you know, it helps to inhabit, you know, the character yeah. Or whatever. Um, but it does sound, you know, it sounds different when you're way off the mic it're

Lili: really close to. It sounds different. It just sounds real. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like. oh, that person really just came into the room or they're just walking by or whatever.

Lili: Right. Right. And, and it just makes it, and you know, if, if there's another part where you're in front of the mic, for whatever reason, then it's great too. Cuz it shows like, oh you understand, you know, mic, we call this mic technique. Mm-hmm , you know, it's like you, you underst you get mic technique and an actor who gets mic technique.

Lili: It's like, oh yeah. Okay. This person's gonna make the most of themselves and of their equipment. You know, right. And that's someone I wanna work with. Like that's someone experienced or someone who's just aware and talented, you know, it just makes me wanna work with

Mike: them.

Mike: Yeah. I know. I source so much of my work.

Mike: Let me preface. I have a demo, but it seems to be very rare that somebody just says, Hey Mike, I heard your demo. You're hired. that never happens anymore. And so much of my work comes from auditions. Where, where do you stand? I mean, do you bring it up in your books? Where do you stand in on new actors getting, getting their demo done?

Mike: Where do you stand on

Lili: that? You know, this is something like the first thing people wanna do when they get into the business is like the studio set up. Right. And they're like, you know, I need all the gear. And then once, once that's kind of handled and they've been told, no, you don't need to buy the most expensive one and you can do this and you can do that.

Lili: Then they're like, okay, I got it. And then they're like, I need a demo demo. and it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's backtrack a little bit. Right. The demo. I'm not, I'm not saying you shouldn't record yourself and have some things that can be used, uh, that you can post somewhere so people can find you and, and hear you.

Lili: I'm not, you know, but a professional demo. Um, I really feel like you should hold off on that unless, you know, if you're an actor, you're, you're a trained actor. Um, and you have a good base even then, like, I train actually a few actors right now that I'm coaching and. The transition is really hard to voiceovers.

Lili: Like something happens in our brains. When we look at copy that is, let's say corporate or even commercial, something happens to our brains and we just get into this reader mode and it doesn't sound natural. And yet the market wants us to sound natural and it's a very hard transition. So I would say even for actors, um, trained actors who are just starting voiceovers, um, you wanna delay that process until.

Lili: This is, this is the key is until your auditions are sounding really good. Yeah. And the way you're gonna know that is you're gonna know that your coaches are gonna tell you, you nailed. You nailed it. You nailed it. And also you're gonna start to see a return on your auditions. You're gonna start to see comments.

Lili: You're gonna start to see like maybe now you're shortlisted, you know? Oh, you got that gig, you know, mm-hmm, , you're gonna start to see some activity around your auditions. Once, once that happens, that's the time you should be thinking, okay, I can, I can move up the ladder now and make a professional sounding demo.

Lili: Because I'll tell you something. Um, I do book work off of my demos. I do, but they're very specific and I can, here's the thing, if you, if you're hired off of your demo, which can happen, but then you can't deliver, you're not gonna get the, the, the, the S going to retract the client is going to retract.

Lili: Right. They're gonna say, I'm sorry. Um, this isn't working. Because you're not delivering what they, they need. Yeah, for sure. So, so because, um, in the end, everything is audition based. And even the few times that it is not audition based where they may hire you off your demo, like your performance is gonna be the audition.

Lili: You know, the actual track that you're gonna record right. Is, is gonna be in place of the audition. So in the end, like the microphone won't. You know, right. If you can't perform at a certain level, you're going to be found out, right. So you have to set yourself up in a way that is realistic. And, um, so I really encourage people to focus on nailing the audition.

Lili: Right. And you know what, like, and I talk about this in my YouTube videos as well. Is that one time? This I'm saying one time, this hap, this, this has happened. Uh, but this one specific time I record an, an audition. And I knew it was really good. I was like, cause you get to that point, you get to that point where you're like, yeah, this sounds good.

Lili: you know, like, oh no, this sounds good. Mm-hmm . And so the script is also good. Like a lot of things line up, right. It's like, it's right for your voice. The script is good. And you're just, you just got it. You know, you're just at that point where you can just eat that one up. And so. I recorded, um, the audition and I got the job and, um, it was great.

Lili: And then, and then somebody came to me and they're like, from the company, they're like, oh, we're, re-casting the voice. And I was like, that happens. It happens, you know, it sucks when it happens, but it happens. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. So, um, I was really bummed about it, you know, I was like, oh wow. That. Rejection, like it's tough to take,

Mike: but I was like, that's like a different level of rejection than an audition rejection.

Mike: It's like

Lili: exactly. Yeah. With all this, to say that I knew that that audition was really good. And so I used that audition and as a demo. I made it in the demo. Sure, sure. And I cannot tell you how much work I booked. Oh, that's great. Off of that right. Demo. You know, so it's, but it's a work in progress. Like you get, you get to those points.

Lili: So what I'm saying is nail the audition. Spend a lot of energy around recording auditions, finding your, your niche, your niche, um, for Canada and America, we say different things depending. Um, so find your niche and then, uh, when you, you know, um, record those auditions, they can serve as. Sort of pre-professional demos, they can serve on your, on your pay to play site.

Lili: They can serve on your website. Right. You know, so they can help you. They will, they. Play the role of a demo to a certain extent for a certain genre, uh, of a certain length. Um, and they will, they will help you, um, be in the ring with other

Mike: people. I'm so grateful for all the time. You've given us today. I, I, I cannot, I cannot express my gratitude.

Mike: It's it's wonderful. You've been so giving you've given so much that people would pay hundreds of dollars in coaching they would

Lili: no, I. I,

Mike: I wanna make sure that people know how to get in touch with you for your coaching. I'll have links in the description and I'll, I'll put that up in the beginning too, but, um, you do, you've mentioned students a lot.

Mike: You do coaching mm-hmm . Yes. And do we want people to get in touch with you through your.

Lili: They can get in touch through the, yeah. Through the website. Yeah. Get clever about.com mm-hmm and if you go to the bottom, there's a contact. Um, or you can even go to my website if you wanna hear what I do. Um, and my niche and where I've managed to build my business.

Lili: Um, Lilly WEU voiceovers.com. Very good. And there's a, there's a place there says, learn about voice acting. Great. So you can go there

Mike: as well. Great. Great. It's been such. Privileged to speak with you. I've really, really enjoyed it. Thank you so much, Lily, for your time. I, I just it's. It's been great. It's been great.

Mike: I hope everybody who watches this realizes how much gold you gave us during this interview because it's been gold.

Lili: It's been gold. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan of yours and I was very, very happy to be here. I'll come back. Anytime you have me, it's just great. You're so you're, you're.

Lili: Salt beer for sharing all of your numbers.

Mike: Ah, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. All right.

Mike: That's all I have for us today. So thanks. And we'll catch you next time.