I recently saw a fellow voice actor push out on their social media a job they booked that was a national gig with a lot of eyeballs on it.
I was both happy and a little let down. This actor is a decent voice actor with some good credentials under their belt so it didn't surprise me when I saw that they had booked that pretty cool job (pretty good $ too, I'm sure!)
I watched the video with their voice on it and I gotta say...I wasn't impressed.
I really felt like it wasn't their best work. Is it okay for me to not like what they did?
Should I just blindly 'rah-rah' a fellow voice actor even if they didn't quite 'nail it?' Is that a fair reaction?
Does that make me a bad person?
Or is that the competitive side of me, in that, I feel like I could have done a better job?
I should be happy for them because that was a nice gig. But all I could think was 'meh. He didn't quite nail the landing there'
I refuse to just blindly pat people on the back even when I have my thoughts on their performance. I would want the same for me. In fact, I did it to myself a few weeks ago when the wife and I were playing a video game that I did a voice for. After my character's first appearance in the game, we both kind of looked at each other like, ''welllll, that wasn't my best work." And get this....it was okay to react that way. In fact, I took that critique that I and my wife had and used it to get better. I actually booked a new character role not too long ago, in no small part, from the lessons I learned on that 'sub-par' role I had in the video game. I really got into who the character was. What are their nuances? How can I make them different or stand out?
It's all in HOW you critique someone and give feedback. My wife is a master at telling you her thoughts on what you've done while being positive. Read: positive feedback. If I ask her opinion on something my first instinct is to get defensive (thanks Mom! ) but when I push all my insecure bulls&&t out of the way and REALLY listen to what she has to say, I become better at what I'm trying to do. A fresh perspective, a different view on what I'm doing can open my eyes (and performance) to what I maybe hadn't seen yet.
The quest to get better at something takes work and input. If that input is positive and constructive there should be NO issues with it coming your way. It can only help, right? That is, if it's asked for.