We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nathan Nokes. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nathan below.

Alright, Nathan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you have an agent or someone (or a team) that helps you secure opportunities and compensation for your creative work? How did you meet you, why did you decide to work with them, why do you think they decided to work with you?

Yes, I have LA, NYC, and Chicago agents as well as a manager in LA.

After completing my commercial and narration demos I started sending those out to agents. Did I hear back immediately? No! It took quite some time to get the agents to start coming through. My first agent was a very small agency.

The first one wasn’t great and it definitely sounded like it. Once I redid my commercial demo, with a prestigious demo producer, I was finally able to get other agencies’ attention.

I decided to work with them because of their dedication to the voiceover industry. They were not just on-camera agencies that would just take a person who happens to be a voice actor but they had full voiceover departments and knew the industry!

They work with me because they saw that we could have a great working relationship. I scratch their back with great voiceover and they scratch my back with awesome jobs and auditions.

Nathan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

The year was 2006 and I was watching TV when a Geico commercial aired. There isn’t really anything special about that until I saw voiceover legend Don LaFontaine. If you don’t know, he was the guy that created the phrase, “In a world…” for basically every movie trailer in the 90’s. I thought that was the coolest thing I have ever seen and I wanted to do that for a living.

How do I get into that business? Is there a company that does that? Where do I even start? All these questions ran through my mind. Low and behold I found a course that would teach me how to get in to the business and to train to be a talent. I would train for several weeks about voiceover techniques then marketing and how to find work.

After some time, I was able to make my commercial and narration demos. Granted, work didn’t come over night. After years of honing my skills and a bunch of “no’s” I have finally be able to make a stable career out of this business.

Finding a voiceover talent is no simple task, for producers, creative directors and other voiceover buyers, which is why my clients look to me to provide pristine audio quality and fast turnaround times to keep their clients happy. Sometimes I will only have a few hours to get it back to the client. The faster my clients get the finished product to their clients the happier they are.

I have recently been nominated for two of my voiceovers which is great to see that my work is getting noticed by my peers in the industry.

For anyone wanting to get into the voiceover industry training is critical. This is not a get rich quick venture. For my potential clients they can be confident that they will always get great audio and great acting. My clients like Volvo, Adobe, Microsoft, State Farm, Dell, and many others can attest I will send the best product everytime.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

What I “knew” a voiceover should sound like. Wow, I was wrong. We all have an idea of what we think a voiceover should sound like, we hear them every day in movie trailers, commercials on tv and radio, and we hear them at work on the phone and in e-learning.

After six years in the business, I am still learning what a voiceover is actually supposed to sound like. Imagine what a used car salesman sounds like trying to sell you a car and that’s what I sounded like. Super excited and announcery…yeah the vo business doesn’t always like that

It took years for my voiceover coaches to beat that out of me but I think I am finally starting to get it, at least my clients think so.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Being able to work with fellow creatives and see the final cut of a project. From video producers, casting directors, agents, and managers. Creating the voiceover is usually the very last thing that happens in commercials, trailers, or really anything else with the exception of animation.

Being able to offer creative suggestions to the producers I’m working with is also another rewarding aspect of voiceover. Sometimes the client doesn’t always know what they want until they hear it and as a talent making certain creative choices is what we as voice actors LOVE to do.

We want to collaborate with our clients and make their narrative dreams come true, but mainly try to make their job as easy as possible by providing an excellent voiceover.

Contact Info:

• Website: nathannokesvo.com
• Instagram: nathannokesvo
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathannokesvo/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/NathanNokesvo
• Other: email: nathan@nathannokesvo,com

Image Credits
Photographer: Alex Moon of Cineshot Media Logo design: Cowgirl Promos