Over the years, I have had around four or five students yearly who reacted very negatively when they ran into difficulty with some form of voice over delivery challenge or other. In many cases, they would belittle themselves or make some kind of remark about not being good enough or not measuring up to the achievements of some of my other students.
Reacting negatively to constructive critique in voice over coaching sessions is very counterproductive, especially when one does it with a self-destructive attack.
There are, of course, many psychological reasons for this that may have nothing to do with voice acting training. I always try to get the affected student to take a deep breath several times and try to get him/her relaxed.
Some students get very frustrated and angry at themselves when they don’t fix problems as quickly as they assume other students do. This is a big mistake. It probably emanates from a general negative belief in one’s own general worth compared with others.
In the voice acting coaching sessions, I always try to get my students to think positively throughout each session, to get them loosened up and comfortable, to keep their minds off their mistakes, and to focus on the message and mood of the script we are working on.
Most of all, I feel that it is important to keep all interactions with the student positive and uplifting and to be generally complimentary outside of the teaching process. I also make a concerted effort to stress the significance of the fact that the student made it through the evaluation process. An average of forty percent don’t make it.
