Meghan Sardar giving voice to a vocation

At 23, voice-over artiste Meghan Sardar has cashed in on a favourite pastime.

It’s a cinch that you’ve heard him. His voice spans promos and channels, the baritone resonating in endless homes across the country. Yet, not many people know the man behind the voice. He is Meghan Sardar, a 23-year-old voice-over artiste from Mumbai, who has transformed his idle fascination for voice recordings into a full-blown career.

The attraction for recordings took root in 2006, when he was doing his bachelor’s course in mass media from M.D College, Mumbai, and visited a friend who worked in a recording studio. Sure enough, he contracted the bug. He kept at it till he got some freelancing work, dubbing English movies into Hindi, among other assignments.

After graduating in 2008, he followed the course he had charted for himself and took up a job as a producer for UTV Movies, an entertainment channel. However, the lure of recordings refused to diminish. This meant that during his free time, he would sneak into UTV studios and practise voice recording even as he watched other artistes to help hone his skills. As his interest and talent got noticed, he began recording for in-house promos even as he continued with his job. He improved with every promo till he was finally chosen to launch UTV Bindass Dadagiri—Season One, in 2009. Subsequently, an audition for Star channel came his way, and he decided to convert to voice-over artiste, a full-time profession, in 2010.

The transition wasn’t easy because for a brief period of nearly three months he worked simultaneously at two places. This meant that during the first half of the day he worked on recordings for Star One and Star Gold, and then till late night he attended to his duties as a producer at UTV Movies.

The hard work has paid off. Today, he has to his credit promos and audio-visuals for channels and companies like UTV Bindaas, Star One, Star Gold, Zoom, Viacom Motion Pictures, Food Food, and Reliance. While refusing to reveal his current income, Sardar says one can charge `3,000-7,000 for a 30-second promo, depending on the language. So the voice-over for an

English promo will fetch more than the one in a regional language. Also, for an audio-visual, one can get `8,000-12,000 per minute.

Though he hasn’t received professional training, Sardar believes that the tricks of voice modulation learnt as part of the college theatre group have come in handy. “My experience in college as a dubbing artiste, doing lip synchronisation for regional cinema, has also been of great help,” says Sardar. It shows. He has a big repertoire to prove it.

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