Dan Hurst is a bilingual voice talent who is in demand for both English and Spanish voice overs. He’s been heard voicing for such brands as WalMart, Ford, Caterpillar and Sprint. We took a few minutes to get Dan’s perspective on the voice over industry…
1. How long have you been in the voice over business and what got you started?
About 25 years. I’d gotten laid off from my job and was having trouble finding work. One day my wife asked, “Who does all those voices for those TV and Radio ads?” It had never occurred to me that someone was actually making a living doing that. I started checking around, and eventually found a talent agent in Kansas City that would talk to me. He must have felt sorry for me, because he took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. I had my first job within a week. Pretty soon I was as busy doing Spanish work as I was English.
2. How would you characterize your style, sound, or signature read?
Evolving, even after 25 years. My base, go to style and sound is the mid-deep friendly, comfortable and conversational read in English or Spanish. That being said, I have developed (and continue to develop) a range that includes the movie trailer, to hard sell, to authoritative-informative, all the way to casual-laid back.
3. Have you had any interesting, unique, funny or scary experiences while voicing that you can recall?
There have been so many! Some time ago, I was asked to do a Christmas commercial in which I was to interact with Santa. It was an ISDN hook-up. Everything was set up, except that Santa showed up drunk. It was quite obvious. Santa was snockered. And we kept having to repeat line after line after line.
Now, I have just enough of an ornery streak in me that I couldn’t leave well enough alone. One of my lines was to ask Santa why he was so jolly. So as we were reading through what must have been the 10th take of the line, I tossed my line at him…in Spanish.It didn’t phase him a bit. He continued on with some semblance of his line. I’m pretty sure I heard the engineer snort coffee everywhere.
The producer was not happy with Santa’s delivery, as if that were any surprise. So he tried to offer some insight to the style of delivery he was looking for.
And then it happened.
Santa got into a heated argument with the producer about whether Santa would say something that was in the script!
I got to laughing so hard the engineer had to mute me!
4. Do you have any heroes, mentors or others in the business that you look up to or have influenced you?
Interestingly, the people in the business that I’ve learned the most from are my clients. I’m all for voice coaching and training, but I’ve developed most of my skills by really listening to my clients and engineers/producers, discovering what they want. But as far as voice talents that I look up to and respect, I have a deep admiration for every full-time voice talent in the business. And I have certainly been influenced by such class-acts as Drew Dimmel and Roberta Solomon from my hometown of Kansas City.
5. What is the best advice you can offer people who are just getting started?
It’s a tough business. Let your passion motivate you, but make sure you temper that with a healthy business strategy.
6. What would you be doing if you were not a voiceover talent?
Looking for work…or bail.
7. What is the most important thing you’ve learned since you started in this industry?
That my clients are in business to succeed. If I can help make them successful, we both win. My job is to make them look good.
8. Is there anything you would like to add?
A couple more jobs a day? Is that asking too much?
Thanks for asking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here’s a sample of Dan’s Spanish voice over work, in an orientation video for Trident.
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