How I Was Hijacked in the Uncanny Valley

or My Voiceover Nightmare

As we’ve discussed, I’ve been doing voiceover work for the majority of my post-grad life. Though I have a few horror stories, of course, for the most part it’s been a lovely and sort of surprisingly consistent cornerstone of my creative career.

Voiceover wasn’t something I dreamed of getting into when I was younger, or even something I knew very much about- like so many things in life, it was a classic case of “one thing led to another and now I talk to myself in my closet and sometimes to you on your tv or with you and your friends during lockdown.” A typical A-to-C journey.

In 2015 I was hired to perform improv and sketch comedy on a cruise ship that looped between New York and The Bahamas from April to August. One evening, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, a guest asked me where the performers slept at night. I gently broke the news to her: we slept on the boat. I lived in the ocean for four months straight and it was the best-paying job in Chicago comedy.

When I got off the ship, high off the concept of being paid to perform, I started brainstorming other ways I could somehow, maybe, get this to keep happening. I had worked in the box office at Second City before they hired me to check in on The Bahamas 16 times in one summer, and each employee got one free class in their Training Center. I redeemed my box office freebie and signed up for a voiceover class, which inspired me to invest in getting a demo made, where the delightful sound engineer gave me a long speech about how I would need to pound the pavement and, bafflingly for 2015, send a cd of my demo to every agent in Chicago if I ever wanted to find representation. At the end of his speech he revealed that he liked the work I was doing and would be happy to pass my materials along to his own agents, before I made my way out to the pavement of course. I signed with his agents immediately and never did find a use for those gleaming cds.

Since then, voiceover has consistently been a healthy portion of my income. It has never reached a critical mass, aka it has never been enough to be my fulltime gig, but I have been the voice of Rivian and Starbucks, Motorola and NYX Cosmetics, the Big Bus Tour in Chicago and The Gemological Institute of America, and many, many more. My agents have told me that back in the day, the jobs I book would have paid enough for me to send my kids to college. But let’s not get caught up in the details of gory modern life- the point is that we’re all having a good time.

A few weeks ago, a friend referred me for a recurring voiceover gig at her fun, creative, corporate job. This filled me with delight for two reasons: 1. see: fun, creative, 2. see: recurring, job. I’ve been wishing to move the bread and butter of my income to more reliable work in any semi-creative veins, and invitations like this make me hopeful that the universe is hearing my prayers. Behold my cd, dropped off for your consideration!

I took my time with my submission, rattling off a few other auditions for my agents before I sank my teeth into this lengthy text. It’s hard to convey in one take that this is just one version of a read, but you must understand that I am amenable to feedback! but I did my best. I went to bed nervous, which I never do after a voiceover audition. When I first signed with my agents they emphasized that my job was auditioning, and booking was a bonus. I do tons of auditions almost every day and have trained myself to mentally release them almost as soon as I hit send. But when I woke up the next day, this one was still bugging me.

When I get home from work tonight I’ll listen to it, I thought to myself. I’m sure it sounds completely fine! A second listen will soothe my soul. But when I clicked open the audio file, this is who greeted me:

Why……………was my voice so low? That wasn’t how it sounded in the recording, or when I listened back. Was something wrong with my computer? Or my speakers? Or my brain??

I quickly emailed my contact at the company, letting her know that a mysterious error had occurred, one that I wouldn’t be able to replicate if I tried, and that I would get a clean copy to her ASAP! She responded kindly, and I was about to let it float down the brain river of weird things I may never get to the bottom of, but then I realized: what about my other auditions??

I clicked through my trash to another audition I had done that night. Then another. Then another. And at the top of every single file, the same stranger greeted me:

Somehow, in a way that I couldn’t replicate if I tried, my computer had been lowering the pitch of every single one of my voiceover auditions for an unknowable amount of time. I empty my computer trash pretty regularly, but every file that was still in there was low, and uncanny, and unusable. Weeks, if not months, of auditions were lost, hours of effort and expectation and hope that one of these might be the one that could send a kid to college, or even make the idea of having one feel more doable. Grief flashed in the pan and disappeared down the drain, because at the end of the day, what else could I do.

So much of the mental game of this career is about the catch and release of expectations- being on hold for a big job for a week and getting let go the day before it shoots, booking a life-changing commercial and having the campaign be cut before it airs, landing a meeting with a prestigious manager and having him tell you that if his infant daughter told him that she wanted to do what you do, he would sit her down and tell her no because it’s just a dead end. Hold on tightly, let go lightly; it’s a nearly impossible balance.

That night I mourned the loss of weeks of work, both literal and potential, figured out the audio problem (aka restarted my computer), and called a friend to scream and cry and eventually see the humor. Like who?? Was this deep-voiced lady?? And why?? Didn’t she book?!?! The tightrope between overworking a muscle (see: jaded, gristle) and bringing it to the point of fatigue then letting it rest (see: resilient, bodybuilder) is so, so hard to tiptoe, but laughter is my best guess at the lifeline.

In that vein, I made a little lemonade out of a few weeks’ worth of lemons: a fake ad and Best Of compilation from the woman who hijacked my system. Though she may not have booked anything, she certainly tried her hardest.

And at the end of the day, isn’t that what counts?

If you’d like to hire this woman, she’s unfortunately unavailable, but if you’d like to consider me for any of your voiceover needs, I’m happily back in business.

Enjoy your long weekend and double check everything forever,

xx Olivia