Good for you on stepping outside your comfort zone and having a go! When we challenge ourselves and aren’t afraid to fail it gives us the opportunity to learn and grow. No one starts out perfect but the more we practice the better we get. I think of a baby learning to walk - think how many times they fell before they got it. Or the lightbulb - they went through a ton of iterations until they finally got it to work. So, don’t be afraid to try for things even if it’s a stretch right now. :)

Where you let loose and had fun with the script it was fun to listen to. :) Enjoyed the laugh you put into some of the words and the humanisms. Those are excellent. Remember, if you’re having fun, your listener will have fun too. If you’re bored, your listener may be bored too. It’s okay to show emotion and really lean into the script - bring it to life and lift the words off the page.

0:20  When you misread, stumble a little, or hit an odd pace or breath (happens to everyone and it’s okay!), it’s highly encouraged to start again at the beginning of the sentence or paragraph or a point that would make it easy to remove and replace the mistake during editing. If you just keep going and don’t return to a solid point that makes it easy to edit out the mistake, you may need to come back later and re-record, and it becomes challenging to make it sound the same as the original recording. So, a good rule of thumb is to record so that it’s easy to edit later. At the end of the recording, you want to have recorded enough takes that when it’s all edited together and cleaned up it will sound like you never made a mistake once.  (typical comment for other areas as well)

0:34 missed word “today”

0:35 mispronounced “Vacanti”. Don’t be afraid to take a few minutes to do some research if there are any words or names you are not familiar with. Youglish.com, You Tube, Google Translate, etc. can be excellent resources for pronunciations. You can also google, “How to pronounce [insert name/word]” and will often find many references. When there isn’t an exact match, you can look for similar names/occurrences and take your best educated guess. If you have the luxury of time and a contact person for the project, it doesn’t hurt to reach out and ask for a pronunciation guide for any you are unsure about. This may be less crucial in auditions, but certainly important for actual gigs. Doing your due diligence and taking the initiative may also impress upon the casting director that you care about their project and bringing it to life in the manner they’d like to see it completed in.

0:58 added words “at that”

1:01 I hear a little distortion in your audio when you got louder indicating you may have peaked/clipped. A trick is to “ride the gain” if you expect you might be getting louder, turn your gain down a little bit to accommodate for the extra loudness, and then turn it back up to normal as you return to normal talking. Making these “real time” adjustments to your gain could save you another take or pick-ups potentially. It’s a skill and worth practicing. 

1:42 added words “at all”

1:44 read “a” instead of “the”

2:10 mispronounced “phenomenally”

Don’t be afraid to practice reading the script a few or several times to become more familiar and comfortable with the script. And then, quality check it after recording. Compare what you recorded with what was written and look at the details - were any words changed, added or missed? The more you practice improving the quality of your reads and your skill in cold reading, the easier voice acting becomes and the less editing and/or pick-ups that will need to occur on the back end.

Now that you’ve identified an audience, take it even further. Instead of a faceless audience, think of one specific person in particular you are speaking to and imagine they are in the room with you. Think about the who, what, where, why, when, how of the scene to bring it to life even further. Being able to deliver a performance that doesn’t sound like you are reading a script is the ultimate goal with voice acting. 

To take it to the next level, think about how fast things happen in sports in real time. Imagine the scene playing out in your mind - you are seeing all these actions and then you are reacting to them naturally while quickly explaining it to your audience. How would a live event announcer have spoken these words? Think about how you can make your performance feel even more authentic and genuine. 

Regarding your comment, I didn’t really hear or focus on raspiness and I probably wouldn’t have thought about it if you hadn’t pointed it out. :) If this were a regular audition, you probably wouldn’t need to mention anything like that - even if you’re auditioning with a cold or allergies (unless you feel there may be a vast difference that you wouldn’t be able to reproduce without a cold/allergies).

Try to be aware of any movement while recording that could potentially be picked up by the microphone. If movement occurs while you are speaking, I suggest reading that line again after the movement ceases so that you have access to a clean recording to compile during editing for actual gigs and auditions. It’s difficult to remove background sounds during editing.

Keep up the good work!