12. Inside Voice Over w/ Lena Hill

In this episode, host Cinnamon Denise interviews professional singer and voiceover actor Lena Hill. The show dives into her career journey from her early days as a singer to becoming a globally recognized voice actor. 

Lena discusses 

• her experiences working with a mentor, 
• the importance of storytelling in her performances, 
• and her marketing strategies. 

She also shares insights on finding one's unique voice and talks about her notable role in the popular video game 'Five Nights at Freddy's'. Lena's inspiring story emphasizes the importance of human connection and staying true to oneself in the creative industry.

Chapters

• 4:17 Lena's Journey into Voice Acting
• 7:43 The Importance of Mentorship
• 10:37 Marketing Yourself as a Voice Actor

Transcript

Sure. Goodnight. My someone. Goodnight my love. Sleep. My sleep, my love. Our,

you hear a i, there's no space. It's l. Why don't you bring the dogs inside? Oh, okay. Dad, are, are we gonna have to what color? Green. It's all right, dad. I'll get the dogs. You try to get some sleep. I.

Come on, scout. Come on spirit. Good boy. Leave it. Scout. Come inside now. I said leave it scout. Leave it now. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the show. What you just heard was the shifter's episode one, voiced by Lena Hill and Alan Adelberg, written by Matthew Clark. Produced, edited, mixed and mastered by our incredible guests.

Lena Hill, my name is Cinnamon Denise. That's cinnamon like the spice. And Denise, like Denise, welcome, welcome, welcome Lena to the show. Lena is a professional singer and voiceover actor based out of Austin, Texas. But her voice has literally been heard around the world. She's gotten to perform at many really.

Fancy places like Carnegie Hall and Walt Disney Concert Hall, and you can even hear her voice. For many cool companies like Big Lots Tuesday Morning, Dillard's, office Depot, world Market, Marriott, and even local people as well. Lena, welcome to the show. I'm here.

Yes. How are you doing today? Let me ask you, let me ask you, I ask all my guests a surprise question. So for the audience, she doesn't know what this question is. Lena, when do you feel the most in control? Oh my gracious, this is such a fantastic question, especially since we're in the midst of a pandemic, uh, some personal thing that's happening in my life.

So things have felt quite out of control, which is. Something that I, I'm learning to embrace as, uh, as well as learning to embrace uncomfortability. So I think when I feel the most in control is actually when I let go the most, and when I let go the most, I feel calmer and more prepared for. What is to come next, which we don't know, right?

I mean, that's why they say, you know, prepare, you know, and prepare your things so you don't have to get prepared. Right? Yeah, yeah. Walk into the, we walk into a booth as voice actors every day with copy and with. Preparedness that we've done the work, we've scored out our scripts, we have warmed up our voices, we have thought, we have made some pretty interesting choices, and as soon as we get a client on the line, they have different thoughts.

So it's all about going with. What, going with the flow, I'm being pretty excited about whatever comes to you and the act of creation no matter what, um, is being asked of you at the time. Oh my goodness. That's, that is a good perspective. That's, that's, that's a one way of looking at it. Let me put it that way.

So y'all, the thing about Lena is that she's an incredible singer. I believe you're a soprano, right? I sure am. Yeah. Lena is an incredible singer. I've listened to a lot of her. Her music actually, which I don't know. She knows that, but yes, an amazing voice actress. Lena, tell me what has been the way your, your development into voice acting?

Did you start off as a singer, developed into a voice actor or did you start off as a voice actor and developed into singing or they both happen at the same time? I've always been a singer. I think my mom said that I sang before I spoke. That has always been my number one outlet for communication and for feeling.

I mean, like anytime that I go through anything in life, I go to music, right? If I'm going to perform it or if I'm gonna listen to it, that is what makes me. Feel. So when I was going into college, my initial thought was I wanted to be in the music program and then after my first year, my freshman year, I realized that I was so far behind all the other music majors where like.

Everybody else played piano and they had a modicum of, of, uh, theory, knowledge and all that kind of stuff. I just felt so far behind. But, uh, so I decided to shift focus, but I'd always been an actor. I'd been in lots of school musicals and stuff, and that had definitely been my first love to be on stage.

But I thought I'd be on stage singing and acting and not just acting. And then I fell completely, deeply, head over heels in love with the process of acting and finding character, and I became obsessed with it. So. I didn't actually come into voice acting, you know, as an actor in Los Angeles, you get to do it every once in a while.

It comes around, it comes on your, uh, work list here and there, but I had never focused on it entirely until I moved to Austin five years ago. I. And I was lucky that I took a acting class at a CC, and in that acting class there was this amazing fellow named Shane Wells who was a voice actor. I was like, Hey, can I have coffee with you?

He was like, yeah, let's have coffee. So I translated all of the work, the vocal pedological work that I had done as a singer and all of the acting. Technique work that I'd done as an actor. And I was like, this frees me up so much to be in a booth, in a in front of a microphone that I don't have to worry about aging.

I don't have to worry about how tall I am. I don't have to worry about necessarily my gender because I can play little boys if I wanted to. It just seemed to free up the creative process so much, and the two worlds just came together in such a beautiful way, and then I fell in love with it. This industry.

I had to study though with a coach for a year before I felt comfortable really pursuing it as a profession. And after I did that, it's been kind of nonstop, constant. I'm obsessed. I love everything about it. I love the technical side. I look all of the gear, the gadgets, the engineering, all of that. And then the acting and then the vocal technique, like all of it is.

So it's just it. It hits all of the things that I'm really interested in as an artist. So that's a lot. And the thing about it is it's in a beautiful story because people always think, oh, you woke up one day and you're like, I'm gonna be a voice actor. No, not at all. And the thing that a lot of people want to know all the time is, how do you even get work as a voice actor?

And the first thing you said was, get a mentor. Right. And tell us about your relationship and the process of you getting a mentor. You said, can I have coffee with you? What went from there? Yeah. So I asked, uh, Mr. Wells, can I please have coffee with you? And he said, sure, yeah, that'd be great. So we had coffee and talked and then I just kind of said, Hey.

Can you be my mentor?

And he was like, yeah, sure. I didn't even know. We actually agreed to it. I was just like, by the way you are. So I came to him for a long time and it was exactly what I had been wanting in all the other areas of my. Professional careers in singing and in acting. It was like if you have somebody who's gonna show you just a little bit of the ropes and then tell you also things to look out for on a personal level, because you can read all this stuff, you can research and find it, but it's nice to have one person to say, oh, I'm so scared.

And then they say, you're doing okay. And then by the way, also check this out, or. You are worth more money or giving you a little bit of confidence along the way. And as that, uh, relationship ran its course, and he's still a wonderful friend and I adore him. I switched over to another person, and that's just on a completely different level because we're in the same voice type, we're the same age range and stuff, but she is far more seasoned than I am, so she's able to kind of like help me.

Move in a different direction than I was before. And that's the one thing that I will say is marvelous about the voiceover industry, is we're not as competitive with each other as the other areas that I'd been in before. Like if there's another, I'm five feet tall and I'm a redhead, and if there's another five foot tall redhead in the room, we kind of glare at each other in this industry when they're too.

Women x kind of people that have a high timber sort of voice, and we both kind of do the same thing. We're like, oh, that's really cool. Like, uh, you do those projects. It just feels like every, um, most people have a, there's plenty of work out there, right? Yeah. Well, the thing is, you as a voice actor, you really, really, really exemplify knowing your uniqueness.

Like literally no one has your voice. You know, someone else, like you said, may have red hair or maybe five feet tall, but have your voice think not, you know, you know, and they may sound similar, but still there's, there's gonna be a difference. Now, after. You got a mentor. Here's my thing. You have to do some sort of marketing, right?

Like, like you have to. So, so, so what happens there? I'm a huge fan of direct marketing and there's lots of ways to go about this, but. I feel very strongly about you get work, and work comes back to you over and over again, through not just connection, but through relationship. So when I do direct marketing, I find out as much as I can about the human being that I am reaching out to.

Then I continue to talk to that person as a human being and not like I wanna be a best friend and because I'm a best friend, you're gonna hire me or something. But I wanna make sure that I'm showing that I'm a human and they're human and we're both doing human things together. But in that marketing, there's also a, here's, here are the things that I can do for you.

Like. What if you watch any commercial out there, you have to do the same thing as an individual. So I'm gonna solve these problems for you. So I can go to a client and say, I have an extremely versatile voice. Here are kind of the five archetypes that I do. And also that not only am I the right brained creative type.

I'm also a middle child, so I'm the Jan Brady. So I, I show up on time. I turn things in on time. Everything that I turn in is pristine and perfect, and I am extremely organized. So I, I try to tell these clients that I take the worry away from them so they don't have to seek out, uh, 10,000 people or 10 people if that just to do the job.

That the one job that I can do. So I try to aim my marketing at. As a human, uh, connection who is a problem solver. And so far it's worked for me. It does take a little bit more effort than just blanket emails or form stuff, but, which is fine. That has its purpose. But so far that I think I'm in a voice type that there's a lot of, there's a lot of us women who have this sort of timur, so I feel I have to bring something else to the table in order to get hired and, and that's the human connection.

Right. That is the factor of knowing who you are and focusing on that and sharing that with others, and really having a human factor in your interactions with people that you're direct marketing to. Takes a lot of courage, I think. Is, and maybe you're not a shy person. Not a shy person. So I'm like, oh God, I'm super shy.

I mean, hi. I spend, I spend most of my days in a dark box and I'm totally fine with it. Yeah, it, I am, I'm a shy person and it does take a lot of work for me to say, this is okay. I'm not bothering people. I.

They don't respond. It's not a, I don't like you or it doesn't say anything as a mark against who I am. So there had to been work done prior, but, right, exactly. So, so I'm also wanting to know how do you focus on who you are in, in your industry, not only through your connection with people, but when you are performing, when you're recording, when you're doing your work.

Yeah, such a good question. It has been a journey for me for sure, and it's really tricky and I go back to my college voice teacher, his name. His name was Raymond Baysmore, and he was just the most, he's the larger in life than life. Uh, personality. And when I sang, he would always say, find your signature.

Find your signature. And I didn't quite know what he meant because I always just tried to sound, sound, sound like everybody else. Sounded like, that's pretty, I'm gonna sound like that. And it took me until, I guess, a couple of years ago that instead I was like, I'm gonna find out. What I sound like, like what do I sound like when I am telling a story, especially as a voice actor, like we, most of us are pretty good mimics.

I like to listen to what other people do and like, that's what's gonna get hired. That's what's gonna, that's what's gonna get me jobs. And what was great about Shane was that he said, it's all about the read. It has nothing to do really with how pretty your voice is or how, um. You have made sure your cadence is just like everybody else's.

It's all about what you, your internal story has brought to the project. And that happens with seeing too, right? Had a voice teacher here in Austin who kind of drilled that into my brain too. He's like, it's the story. Please stop trying to think about how you sound and think about what story you wanna say.

So I had this little like trick that I do before I jump into a booth, and it's something that I learned in college, and that's just bend over from the waist, put your arms flopping down to toward the ground, and then just do like little sirens like,

and then say a sentence, hi, my name is, my name is this, this is what my name, and I'm feeling good today. And that's where your voice is supposed to be. That's where it's supposed to sound. So just stay right there. Stay where your voice is and then you don't have to worry about how you sound. You can just worry about what story you wanna say.

Yeah, exactly. So you're not, so you're not thinking about, I. Three things at a time versus thinking about one thing at a time versus three things at a time, right? Essentially like when you are, when you are creating a character for a show. Or maybe like I do one voice for, uh, big lots where her voice is far deeper and stuff, but instead of like, I'm going to create, instead of like manufacturing a.

A sound. I was like, I'm going to create a character and then just see what sound comes out of this character. And she just, she just happens to be very low and luxurious. Like, it's just, you know, it's just one of those, uh, so you remove yourself from the judgment, constant judgment of like, I'm not sounding right.

I'm not sounding pretty. And instead the, the voice is already there and you can just worry about the story that you're telling. That, that's, that's great advice. I think for anyone in any industry worry about the story that you're telling, at least in the creative industry. Worry about the story that you're telling.

That's even a, I think a marketing, um, a marketing point. Uh, worry about the story that you're trying to tell, think about. How you want, what, what you're trying to say. Right. You know? So I've really enjoyed hearing your insight into just what you do and even some of the soft skills that you've had to acquire that you already had to maintain your career.

So I have one more question that is a surprise question for her, but I think she'll have a pretty quick answer. Uh, what is the coolest. Job that you had, voice acting job. Well, the coolest one's probably the one I'm the most known for, and it's, I am this character called Lefty in this game, five nights at Freddy's.

Now, I didn't know, like I said at the beginning, well, no, I didn't say this. What I was thinking was when I do a project, I usually do it and then I immediately forget that I did it. And that's a problem. I really need to stop doing that so much. So I did this video game called Five Nights at Freddy's and.

I did it. It was really fun. I played this creepy little scared girl or scared thing. I guess there's no to this, uh, little creature, and I enjoyed the session so much. We had a great time. And then I immediately forgot about it. And then a year later I got a request to my website for an autograph, and I was like, woo, I don't even know what this is.

Back through my invoices to find out what I did. And I was like, I, 'cause I was sure it wasn't me. I was like, this person has the wrong person. I don't do any, I don't do cool things. I do rank and file work and looked back through my invoices. Sure enough, I was in this video game, I had a meeting that night.

We have a small group here in Austin of full-time voiceover pros. And I was like, yeah, so I did this thing and I got this, uh, request for. An autograph, and they were like, what was the game? And I was like, it's called Five Nuts at Freddy's. And they were like, oh my gosh, you're like, that's one of the biggest games in the world.

And I was like, oh no. I had no idea.

So that part that has, I mean, there's a Funko pop there. People have plushies of my character. I was at Target one time and I passed a t-shirt that had my character on it, and that was surprising and pretty wild. But definitely the coolest project that I've ever done, and I'm very honored. To be part of the Five Knights fandom fan, as they call them.

I think all of these fans are smart and interesting and kind, and I've enjoyed being a part of this family a lot. Oh my goodness. That that's, that's really cool. Let me just put it, let me just, let me just say that really cool to. To know that to some people, you're a celebrity, but you can still live your life like a normal person.

You know? That's a luxury, just so you know. So stuck in a box. I'm stuck in a black box all day. Exactly. Well, y'all, this has been an amazing episode with Lena. Alina, thank you so much. And to the audience, where can they follow you? You can follow me on TikTok at Lena Hill va, on Twitter, Lena Hill, va. I think Instagram is Lena Gwendolyn.

I. Yeah, it is. Yeah, so any of those platforms, or you can go to my website, lena hill.com. There you go. Well, if you wanna get an autograph, all you gotta do is go ahead and send her an inquiry on her website. But anyways, y'all take care. Lena, thank you so much for being on the show. Y'all take care of yourselves, be kind to yourselves, love on yourselves, and stay in control of you.

Focus on who you are. Tell your story. Talk to y'all soon.

Don't forget to leave a rating of the show. Helps to make us better. Thanks so much y'all. Take care.