Unmasking the voice vulture

Growing up as a daughter of business-minded parents, the culture of owning a small shop was evident in my household. Voice acting wasn’t a big interest for me until I discovered video games in our small, cozy 10-unit computer café in 2009. A child wouldn’t be able to enjoy things without becoming attracted to what it sees. Video games and cartoons are eye candy for me and still are. Now, 14 years later, my aspirations and interests are still attached to the same fascinations I experienced when I was six. From that time on, I always knew I wanted to become a voice actor.

Voice work is broad and versatile and hearing the voices of different characters is soul-bending. Here, you can shapeshift into a knight, a sorceress, or even an animal. Voice actors are good at that, especially in storytelling. When I first started working as an entry-point voice actress in 2022, I expected it would be hard. Hard in fact, that most people won’t take you seriously in the craft you’re trying to make. Being a woman speaking on the mic is one not to be taken seriously in the industry.

You do not only need a microphone and a voice, but you also need skills — an acting skill that would allow to you play humanistic emotions without looking at the camera. To start this career, every voice actor has to join numerous auditions and casting calls. New actors are willing to accept different projects to gain experience and place bodies of work in resumes for future reference.

These projects have their budget to pay the talents hired to do the work, but the thing is, it is not always the case.

Wages and rates are vital in the industry, where salaries depend on budgets allocated for each project. Experienced actors have their rating guides that reference the Global Voice Acting Academy standard rate guide or, in the Philippines, the VocAlliance standard rate guide. The local rate guide was created by known and esteemed voice artists in the country for different types of projects that voice actors will encounter. However, local creative rates are not set in stone by the government and some local voice actors are often left with no choice but to cater to international projects more than local ones.

It is not all fairytales and rainbows in the voice-over industry. From a local perspective, voice acting is one of the most underpaid professions in the country. A lot of Filipino talents are taken for granted and they suffer from artist exploitation, where they are treated unfairly for the benefit of the projects involved. This type of exploitative struggle is felt and even swallowed whole by almost all voice actors in the country when financial needs and creative freedom are exploited to benefit others. I have been victimized by it.

There are other issues such as understaffing, delays in voice talents’ salaries, and regulating the quality of work that actors put in. These issues would make employment harder for aspiring Filipino talents. It discourages not only those who are experienced but even those who are only starting, and makes them more susceptible to burnout from all the work they are made to do and for lesser pay.

Exploitation truly affects the industry, undermining it as the cycle goes on. My voice acting journey is still thriving nevertheless, considering the countless lapses, struggles, and injustices I have received from not being treated and paid right. With a tint of hope, now that we have more presence, and with the mainstream media booming with animation and games, it is now or never that we must take advantage of this interest to make people aware of the craft that we do.

There is a dire need to amplify the calls for salary and minimum wage increases, especially in the creative industries. We are here to use our modulated voices in unveiling and capturing the voice vulture from killing the bright future in the world of voice-over.

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Maybelle Aton, 20, is a student journalist taking up communication at the University of the Philippines Cebu. She is currently a freelancer in voice acting and graphic design.