Your on voices.com or voice123.com and you check out a new job that has been posted. And it has a budget of $1000! Not bad
Then you read the job description and find out that this job is an audiobook. And it’s 110,000 words. That’s a rate of less than one cent per word.
Watch this video to learn how to decide which voice over jobs make sense according to the word count.
You’ve just finished a 4000 word e-learning voice over project and you send it to the client.
They love the interpretation but they tell you that the name that you read is not pronounced Smith but Smyth.
Oh no, do I have to record this entire job again?
Nooo! This is a job for pickups. So what is a pickup?
A pick up is simply re-recording only the sentence in which the mistake is made.
But you have to be careful. It is very important to make sure that the sound of the pickup matches the original recording and does not stand out.
Here’s how to do that:
I produced records in the 90s and I had a recording studio. Often voice over talent would ask me to record their projects and from this I developed an interest in voice over. So I asked an actor acquaintance I knew how to being this career. “oh, that’s impossible to get into!” she said. “I tried it and couldn’t get an agent blah, blah, blah…”
In spite of this advice I put together a demo and began directly marketing my skills to ad agencies and video production houses. “they’ll just throw your demo away… blah, blah…” Soon I was narrating all the videos for Princess Cruises. From this experience I landed an agent.
“Hey!, I got an agent”, I said enthusiastically to my acquaintance… Continue reading
You only need to read through a handful of audition descriptions before you run into the word “conversational”. Or you may find the direction more negative such as “no disc jockey or announcer”.
As voice over styles evolve, there is a trend toward a more natural, personal read. But what exactly is this “conversational” sound and how do you achieve it? Here’s how to perfect your conversational technique. Continue reading
Voice Over is unique artistic performance because it is entirely produced with sound.
There are other performances of sound–a live rock concert for example– that depend on sound but they have other aspects that contribute to the experience: costuming, lighting, pyrotechnics. But voice over is only sound.
Think of an audiobook. The setting, the weather, the characters, the plot and the emotions are entirely conveyed by the reader’s voice. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
But as you create a voice performance you’ll find that some sound is your friend. And some sounds are your foes. Continue reading
So you raise your voice over audition up properly, give it the finest preparation, a positive attitude and an engaging personality.
You sigh and you heart beats faster as you send your mature baby out into the world. You have such pride and great hopes for its success. And as you leave the casting studio or press the upload button…
You slam the door and think “get out of my life! I never want to listen to you again!” What’s up with this? Continue reading
The first WHY is inside you
I’ve talked about my Three Legged Milking Stool voice over marketing strategy. One leg of that strategy is using Online Casting to begin marketing your talents. The two biggies in this “pay to play” universe are Voices.com and Voice123.com. You’ll hear pros and cons of these sites but they’ve both been around for over ten years so they must be doing something right.
I consider both to be the “minor leagues” of voice over but in a good way. They are a non-critical arena to learn to hit the various curve balls you may encounter in the voice over business. You can practice self-direction, auditioning, recording, editing, taking direction, formatting finished files, uploading files and… getting paid. Continue reading
This one goes to 11
There’s a term that has moved from the domain of electrical engineers to the everyday world of the home voice over studio. Unfortunately the “techie” baggage the term brings with it confuses or even frightens many aspiring audio engineer/voice talents. And that term is “gain”, specifically microphone gain.
So what is gain and how do you control it to produce the best voice over recordings?
