Thanks again everyone for entering our Best “Worst” Voice Over Story contest. And thanks to all the voters!

Because it was such a success, we will be having more contests, so stay tuned.

Here are the top two stories:

1st place winner. Iris Braydon

Well, I was living in New York and fresh out of acting training. I had just joined Aftra and then lucked out by booking parts in two big studio features. I then decided that I wanted to get into the voice over world. So, I ended up putting my feelers out there to people who were earning money in VO, and I came across a Puerto Rican woman who’d been living in Brooklyn for most of her life. She did really well in this business and seemed to work constantly. She talked relentlessly about a producer that she knew who records demos for people as a side business, so I decided to hire him to do mine since he was comparatively “reasonable.” FYI- she hadn’t told me that her dinero came from the Spanish market, and that this guy that she had connected me with clearly knew English as a second or third language. Clueless me didn’t consider the impact that that could have on my new, virgin VO demo upon meeting him and I agreed to hire him to record/produce/direct.. Bottom line– $!
2000 wasted and 500 copies of the most lame-ass 5 minute demo with Salsa-inspired background music and improper inflections from my Latin influenced commercial copy. He even encouraged me to do the epitomized Witchy–children’s copy selling a stupid Chupacabra shaped candy…… WHAT AN OVERSIGHT, HUH? One agent who agreed to listen to it warned me not to pass it out to anyone else. He was definitely doing me a SOLID!

2nd Place Winner: Michele Olson

I was in the studio with some familiar voice actors and our sessions were quite fun…on purpose. Most producers loved it. We had a major salad dressing producer in…and we were playing around with the script a bit, respectfully, but going to make it a great session. He exploded and went on to give us a tirade of how lettuce isn’t funny. Needless to say we clammed up with the lettuce police, minded our peas and cucumbers and did not speak out of turnip again. Straight voices for a salad dressing ad. Don’t have fun. Lettuce isn’t funny.
Remember that! P.S… If lettuce was funny I bet they would sell more salad dressing!:)

-Tracy Pattin