Fandub Voice Over
The beauty of a fandub is it gives you a platform to try out different character styles that you either may have not thought about trying or thought about trying but didn't want to audition for in fear of tarnishing your good name because you are mainly a documentary type of voice over. If you are always doing normal documentary and/or commercial style voice overs, doing a fandub allows you to take a step out of your comfort zone and if you win the role at the audition stage you can try out your different voices and have fun during the process.
The producers of fandubs can be from all levels of the trade, a professional producer with a pet project, a student at a film school or a normal school a group of friends with an interest in gaming manga or other styles of cartoon or gaming. The fandub itself could be amateurish or professional dependant on the current skill of the producer working on the project. I have been surprised by some of the projects and I see future stars in the making.
The main thing I see is some of these fandubs give the producer a taste of the trials and tribulations involved in getting voice actors on board, paying a small wage (if there is one), writing scripts, dealing with voice actors who disappear mid shoot and of course making all of the content gel together like a finely tuned engine. Some may look down on these people or these projects but I am sure some of these guys will produce future feature films when they come of age in the film world. The next big thing maybe in their own country and maybe even Hollywood.
Here are two I appeared in a while ago, enjoyed recording for them immensely and it gave me some experience of reading in a different frame of mind. The crazy thing about it is you are getting the Roger Rabbit effect and what I mean by this is playing alongside other voice actors who you never hear until the video goes live usually on YouTube, because of this the acting can sometimes be slightly out of sync with what the other voice actors are reading but more often than not it works fine.
Good luck to all those unsung heroes out there in the fandub production world!