We currently live in the age of digital connection. We check our phones daily and there are a plethora of apps and platforms available to see what is going on in the lives of the people we know (or only know from social media and have never met in real life!). While I have to admit that sometimes this access can drive me crazy and can pull me out of the current moment, it can also be leveraged positively in both our personal and professional lives.

As a voice-over actor, jobs can come and go, but it is important to keep clients, casting directors, agents and other people in the business updated on your work. You must be diligent yet respectful while placing yourself in “top-of-mind awareness” for people in the industry. By keeping the lines of communication open, a one-time client can become a recurring one.

Keep Updated Records

For your voice-over business, it is helpful to have the following lists for your reference:

• clients for which you’ve already worked
• clients whose projects you have auditioned for but not necessarily booked – YET
• clients on your “target” list: those you haven’t encountered professionally, but would like to in the future

For the first two lists, respectful (i.e. not bombarding their email) communication is helpful, such as keeping in touch and letting them know what you have been working on in your career. The “target” list, on the other hand, is a great resource for you to brainstorm how you can connect with these people: maybe it’s through taking a class, a respectful introduction email offering your services, or a friend or colleague in the industry who can help make the introduction for you.

Keep Lines of Communication Open and Consistent

Have you ever gone out for coffee with a friend and they went on and on about what was going on in their life, and then didn’t open it up for you to share? Leaving a one-sided conversation always feels negative and I believe the same principle applies to your voice-over updates. I would recommend updating clients (past or present) on your work once every month to three months, making sure to leave it open for them to share their recent happenings. It establishes a mutual relationship and they know you are a working actor who is also a caring human being.

“But…I have nothing to say!”

You want your updates to be recent and appropriate to the business. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about a booking – it can be a revamped website you are excited about, an improvisation class you just started or a commercial that is still airing from the beginning of the year. There are always slow moments throughout the year, but a great way to authentically connect is, “I’m still celebrating my booking from last fall, a national commercial for X Brand, if you haven’t seen it yet, check it out here!”. Feel free to include links to your work, and you should always have your website and contact information in the signature of your email. These updates keep you at “top-of-mind awareness” for clients and casting directors, while also building relationships through sharing.

Don’t forget your colleagues and voice-over community!

When done authentically and with a generous spirit, I believe people are genuinely curious about your career! They want to celebrate wins with you and encourage you through the lows. Keep friends and colleagues updated on your work as well as clients and casting directors. You never know when a fellow voice-over actor isn’t right for something but refers you because they know you are active in the industry. The voice-over community is so supportive, but if you aren’t communicative and participatory, you may lose out on opportunities.

Social Media

As I mentioned before, we live in the age of digital connection – so utilize it! However, be mindful that what you are posting is alright with the client or casting director. Often, information about casting or booking is confidential and sometimes they require you to sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). Always curate what you are posting and make sure it’s within your right to do so.

Find the follow-up technique that works for you. Aside from technique, talent and creativity, there is still a business aspect that needs to be attended to in order to be successful. Be authentic, generous, and communicative, and you will have repeat clients and genuine relationships in the voice-over industry.

Source

Training and Recording a Voice-Over Demo

It is imperative prior to recording a commercial demo that you have the proper voice-over training, so it’s the best quality it can be. You will work with a teacher or coach on various voice-over techniques and learn how to adjust a read based on what the casting director and/or client is asking for, while staying true to your natural and authentic voice. You will also find out through working with your coach, what styles of commercial voice-over suit you and where your specific “voice-over niche” or “brand” falls into the commercial voice-over industry. Do you excel at reads that need a “sweet girl next door” quality or the edgy, millennial, straight-forward sound? Or can you do both if you make the acting adjustment? These questions can also be answered as you continue to book work within a specific “type”, but it is always helpful to know this prior to marketing yourself and recording your demo. Once you are ready for your recording session, you will want to focus on creating a commercial voice-over demo that shows range and spots that reflect your unique self and what you do best. Your voice-over demo is what a headshot and resume is for an on-camera or theatre actor, it becomes your “calling card” and is representative of your work.

Putting yourself (and your demo) out there!

Once you have your demo and training in place, it is then time to let the world know you are a voice-over actor! Make sure it is known on social media, that you have marketing in place to reflect your voice-over talents and brand, and a website where people can hear your work and contact information to book you. You would be surprised how many people work in other industries unrelated to the voice-over field but then need voice-over talent for their in-house training videos, narration, or commercial spots. LinkedIn is a great resource to connect to people who are in your circle, but also work in marketing where your voice talent may be needed. There are also pay-to-play sites (a website where you pay a monthly or annual subscription to have access to auditions) that can also help you secure work and build a portfolio and/or clients.

Secure Representation

If you are in a major city with agents and managers who represent voice talent, be sure to research any connections you may have and can politely ask for a referral. Many agencies have contact emails that they release to the public, or a place where you can submit your voice-over demo for consideration. This may not be something that happens right away, but as you continue booking commercial voice-over work on your own, you can also reach out to them and keep them updated on your bookings (with polite discretion! No one likes their inbox bombarded!) A very important piece of advice: voice-over agents and managers should NEVER ask for money upfront or ever, it is only a percentage off of work you have booked through them (usually 10% – 20% is standard). Always do your research to make sure the person you are working with is legitimate and if possible, franchised by SAG-AFTRA (the voice-actors union).

Improvisation Classes!

Speaking of representation, many agents and managers (as well as directors, producers and clients!) LOVE when voice-over actors have improvisation training and experience on their resume. It allows for more freedom in your reads of voice-over copy and helps you to pivot when given direction. It’s also just really FUN!

Networking – Be proactive!

Be sure to connect with various casting directors, producers, and directors in the voice-over industry. This is always easier in large markets such as NYC or LA, but if you do your research there may be studios with in-house casting, locally, near you. If you immerse yourself in the industry and treat this as your business, you are bound to make connections that can be long-lasting and help you build a sustainable voice-over career.

There will come a time when you have secured such a great deal of commercial work that it’s possible the original demo you recorded and coached becomes replaced with your booked spots! This takes time but it is a great goal to have your sights on. As with anything, hustle, hard work, and persistence is involved in booking commercial voice-over work. In the ever-changing world of technological advances, it has become more and more frequent to accomplish your goals from your very own home studio. Keep putting yourself out there, working hard and treating this as your business: there is plenty of commercial voice-over work out there!

As always, join the conversation to hear what other people are saying about Such A Voice and feel free to share your positive experiences!

Source

Vocal training is a lifelong process. It’s necessary to have discipline and awareness in order to learn and maintain healthy vocal techniques. As a voice actor, your body and voice are your instruments and you must be consistently practicing, training your voice, and keeping your instrument in the best “shape” possible. As a voice-over professional, I personally like to think of myself as an athlete, if I don’t train and go to the gym to maintain my form, my skill set will weaken. Below are the areas of focus I believe are imperative to classically train your voice.

Your Body
Your entire body is involved in voice acting, it’s the vessel through which we convey the text of a script. There are many physical demands put upon voice-over actors in the booth, including but not limited to: standing for long periods of time, hours of speaking in various characters for audiobooks, as well as conveying different volumes and character voices for animation or video games. As a voice actor, we must warm up our bodies and ensure they are free of tension when we are called upon to record in a booth for several hours. There are various physical techniques known for releasing tension such as Feldenkrais, Fitzmaurice Voicework, and Alexander Technique. I recommend you try one of the above techniques, or integrate a yoga and/or meditation practice into your lifestyle which helps free our muscles from unnecessary tension.

The Lips, The Mouth, The Tongue, The Teeth!

What do these all have in common? They help us with our diction and articulation in the booth. Voice-over coaching sessions can move quickly and sometimes actors are expected to deliver large amounts of text clearly and concisely in a short amount of time. It’s imperative that you’re ready for any tongue twisting text a client throws at you, so developing those articulators is required. You must train your voice so articulation and diction sounds clear, but also natural.

Breath Support

I graduated from undergrad with a Bachelor of Music in Musical Theatre and breath support is something I continue to work on in my voice-over career. Breathing involves so many muscles: intercostal muscles, abdomen, and diaphragm (this is where tension will come through as your enemy). Yoga has really helped me find ease with my breath and taught me not to push or force the breath unnecessarily. I recommend working with a singing teacher on your breath support, and/or challenging yourself with long phrases (in singing or text) to develop good habits to sustain some of the phrases you will find in demanding copy. Shakespearean text is a great tool to train your voice and practice breath support due to his use of long phrases. If you’re consistently working on your breath support, you’ll soon find that long texts such as narration or audiobooks begin to feel effortless.

Resonators

It’s important to know the inner mechanics of sound throughout your body. Once your vocal cords vibrate to produce tone, that tone then resonates throughout various ducts and chambers. There is head resonance, mouth resonance, chest resonance, and nasal resonance. When you choose to explore all of the sound possibilities different resonation can produce, it will be extremely helpful in your vocal health and technique and in certain voice-over areas such as animation, video games, and audiobooks.

Phrasing and Musicality

I have found my music and ear training to be extremely helpful in my voice-over career. While you always want to sound natural, it’s necessary to hear varying inflections and to be able to adjust based on a casting director or client’s notes. Just as phrasing makes a big difference in playing a piece of music, the same can be said for speaking text in theatre, as well as voice-over copy. I recommend listening to music and various voice-over professionals use of phrasing and musicality with a more critical ear. It can be difficult to find a trusted singing teacher, but the right mentor can help you not only train your voice, but also train your ear, which is extremely helpful for a voice acting career.

These are a few books I have found helpful throughout my training:

Freeing the Natural Voice by Kristin Linklater

The Actor Speaks: Voice and the Performer by Patsy Rodenburg

Speak with Distinction by Edith Skinner

Also, don’t forget to join in the conversation and share your positive experiences about Such A Voice!

Source

One of the most frequent questions I hear from other professionals pursuing a voice acting career is, “How much should I charge a client for [insert voice-over project here]?” It’s imperative for voice-over artists to do their due diligence in researching current industry standard rates for various projects, as well as speak with other professionals in the industry about voice-over rates.

At SAV, we’re lucky to have a built-in community of other voice-over actors, mentors, teachers, engineers, and peers. The power of communication regarding ever-changing voice-over rates in the industry is really important and there are various guidelines to consider:

Know Your Worth!

When asked by someone outside of the industry how much I’m compensated for a commercial voice-over, I can see their eyes grow large with excitement. It may sound like a large number for two or three hours of studio time, but what is not understood is the investment in time, money and education that it takes to begin and sustain a voice acting career. As voice-over professionals, we need to remember (especially if we are setting our own rates) that the time we have spent in classes, coaching sessions, and our booth add up to our expertise in this field. When setting your own voice-over rates, or negotiating those set by producers and/or clients, you need to not only consider your session fee (the time spent in the booth recording the specific copy), but also all the training you’ve acquired and the investment in your home studio (which helps make your client’s job much easier).

Usage

Another factor to consider is how the project is being used and in which medium. If you record a commercial that’s airing nationally on television, then that is a larger rate than a regional television commercial specific to a certain market. The voice-over spot you worked on is being seen by more viewers nationally as opposed to regionally, which warrants more compensation. You should not only consider your session fee, but also get the specifics on how the voice-over is being used. My personal opinion is to avoid “in perpetuity” usage because as your career develops, something which was not a conflict in the past could be in the future. If the spot you had conflicts with another brand in which you are auditioning, this could become a conflict that was unforeseen when you initially booked and recorded the job.

Research

Always update yourself on industry standard rates. I recommend reviewing the union rates set forth by SAG-AFTRA.  Voices.com also offers a rate card as well Voice-Over Resource Guide. Upon viewing these rates you may find, based on your current experience, you fall a little lower or higher than said rates. Maybe you have a great deal of experience in the commercial voice-over world, but now you’re branching out into narration, e-learning or audiobooks, so your voice-over rates may be a bit lower for that genre as you find your footing. The most important thing is that you have a baseline rate for yourself and you’re comfortable and confident stating this rate to a client. It’s beneficial to first ask your client’s budget and proceed from there. While stating your rate, also take into consideration edits and pick-ups. It’s customary to include one free round of edits in your rate, but any edits or pick-ups past that incur a fee.

Community

One of my favorite things about being a voice-over actor is the incredibly supportive community. Use your community to communicate with other voice-over actors regarding rates and best business practices. I have rarely found anyone who is secretive or not willing to share their past experiences. By being a generous and communicative community, we are stronger as voice actors and can advocate for ourselves to get paid appropriately. If you are operating from a home studio and all communication is between yourself and the client (versus an agent as the intermediary) it’s usually your responsibility to invoice after sending your VO files. I always include a polite 30-day payment term at the bottom of my invoice. In certain states (for example, New York) there is a “Freelancing isn’t Free Act”, in which you can politely mention to be paid in a timely manner.

Keep it Professional

Always keep it professional. A client may not have a budget that works within your rates presently, but one day they may have a project with a much larger budget and think of you as the talent to circle back to! It never hurts to politely decline when a project has too low of a rate and exclaim, “I would love to work with you in the future when our rates align!”

At the end of the day, we all need to have a baseline of what is an acceptable pay rate and what you may need to walk away from politely. This is a competitive market and when you have put in the training, financial investment, technical education in perfecting your studio sound, and countless hours practicing in the booth you must advocate for yourself and know your worth! If you have any questions, reach out to the SAV community. We’re here to be stronger together as you move through your voice acting career!

Check out our YouTube channel to see more content like this! The video for this post can be viewed here.

Also, don’t forget to join in the conversation and share your positive experiences about Such A Voice!

                                                                                                       About the Author

Megan MacPhee is a voice-over artist, singer, actor, dancer, content creator, and teaching artist based out of NYC. A member of Actors Equity Association, credits include national tours, regional theatre, Radio City Music Hall, and The Metropolitan Opera. Her work as a voice-over artist includes national television commercials, social media spots for various brands, voicing the role of EMMA/GHOST GAL in the animated series “YU-GI-OH! VRAINS,” as well as e-Learning, demos, promos, and audiobooks. She has a Bachelor of Music in Musical Theatre from CUA and Contemporary/Classical training from London Dramatic Academy. To view more of Megan’s work visit www.meganmacphee.com or check out her web series, www.unbalancedwebseries.com

Source

SAV:

Macphee: I’m excited to be a part of the Such A Voice team! I got my real start in the voice-over industry five years ago, but funnily enough my first VO audition ever was when I was a teenager for the babysitter role in The Incredibles movie! No pressure, haha! I then went on to pursue musical theater in undergrad and found my way back into the voice-over world afterwards. I truly love it!

SAV: What kind of voice-over projects have you done so far?

Macphee: I have a lot of experience in commercial voice-over. Right now, you may hear my voice in a television commercial for Lay’s Poppables, or if you stream TV – Smirnoff. Other clients include Fisher-Price, Birchbox, Nina Ricci Fragrance, Our Health California, and others. I am excited to be working on my first animated television series on Yu-Gi-Oh! Vrains as Emma/Ghost Gal which is recording now.

SAV: Tell us more about your role here as a voice-over coach at Such A Voice. How would you describe your voice-over coaching techniques?

Macphee: Such A Voice has such a wonderful curriculum which reflects back to a lot of the training I have had as an actor. Like many of the talented coaches here, I like to also bring my training and style to the curriculum as well. At Such A Voice, we discuss the importance of warming up your body as well as your voice to prepare yourself for the work. I love this  technique that involves reading through the script as flat as possible with no inflection to get the words in your muscle memory and not getting attached to any particular read or inflection. I have tips and tricks to using my body in a way that changes the sound of my read (ie. shrug of the shoulders for a more conversational read, actually pointing to emphasize something in a copy, etc.) We discuss script analysis and ask questions like, “Who am I talking to? What am I really saying? What am I reacting to?” This makes a read sound much more authentic and conversational which is absolutely desired in the industry right now.

SAV: As a coach, what advice do you have for newcomers to the voice-over industry?

Macphee: Persistence and authenticity. I think those are my two words of advice. As with any industry, the work you put in is what you are going to get out of it and you need to be at the top of your game. Even as a professional, you always have to be practicing and keeping your tools sharp, taking classes and coaching sessions, practicing copy, and consistently getting in the booth. I’m having so much fun exploring other aspects of this industry that I am not as familiar with and I’m constantly seeking out growth opportunities. It’s also important to be authentic and find your true voice and niche of where you fit into the industry. I really believe success finds people when they are being true to themselves and allowing their unique light to shine. Clients want to work with the person who knows who they are and what amazing quality they can bring to their project.

SAV: Who is your role model in the voice-over industry?

Macphee: Gosh, so many! My coach Doriane Elliott is an amazing strong lady whom I’ve learned so much from. Darren Dunstan, the director of Yu-Gi-Oh, is also a voice actor. He is a genuine, wonderful person and a great director. As I get to know the wonderful women on staff at Such A Voice, they become great mentors. The list grows throughout your lifetime!

SAV: Who is your favorite superhero?

Macphee: Wonder Woman. That movie was so great and to finally see a strong woman saving the world – nothing beats that!

SAV: What are some of your favorite summer activities?

Macphee: I love eating at a great Mexican restaurant with a margarita in hand. I also love catching up on books to read on a beach or by a lake. In NYC, I like catching up on theatre, maybe seeing Shakespeare in the Park, heading to Central Park or the High Line to hang.

SAV: Which one is better: watching a movie or reading a book?

Macphee: I really love both, depends on my mood!

SAV: Oceans or lakes?

MacPhee: I prefer lakes, I grew up going to the Adirondacks and relaxing by the lake.

SAV: What do you enjoy the most about being a voice talent?

Macphee: I literally love lending my voice and energy to someone’s project and being of service in that way! I also love the community. I find the voice-over community one of the most collaborative and supportive communities in the entertainment industry and I am proud to be a part of it.

We want to thank Megan for taking the time to catch up with us and to thank you for tuning in each week to our blog. We always enjoy hearing your feedback, so be sure to join in on the conversation and see what’s trending about Such A Voice!

Source