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Build Your Voiceover Business On A Loyal Client Base

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by Peter Dickson

Today, I want to talk a bit about CLIENTS. And more importantly, why you should keep hold of them. It’s always tempting to strive for more and try to get as many new clients as possible, but when it comes to your voiceover client base, it’s not always the wisest decision. It’s important to remember that a loyal client base, who like your work is always going to be a safer bet than a new client who you’re still trying to sell yourself to. More can also be less.

Most of you have probably heard of the parable of the wise and foolish builder. The wise builder builds his home on rock, while the foolish builder builds his home on sand. It’s not hard to guess whose house faired better in the long run. Your voiceover business is a fitting comparison to this parable and I just want to run through why I think retaining that loyal client base is the rock that a solid voiceover career is built on.

But even though retaining clients is extremely important, it’s still no simple task. It’s a problem for all service businesses, not just ours.

Retaining A Client Base vs Acquiring New Clients

Big businesses spend billions each year globally on marketing their goods. Service companies spend similar amounts of money on acquiring new customers. But what the savvy ones amongst them have realised, is that it is more cost effective and cheaper to retain a client – than it is to acquire a new one.

Most of the big businesses in this country employ people in what are called customer retention departments. It is cheaper and easier to retain the client who will then give you repeat business than it is to search for and acquire a new client.

This is why it is vitally important to look after your existing client base. You can do this most obviously by delivering good work and keeping your promises, but there are lots of other simple things you can do to keep clients happy and keeping you in mind.

Read the rest of the article at Gravy for the Brain…

 

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The 5 Types of People you Should be Contacting when Marketing Yourself as a VO Talent

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by The Voice-Over Roadmap

As a VO Talent and Self-Marketer, you may know the types of places you should be reaching out to in hopes of landing work (Video Production Companies, Animation Studios, E-Learning Companies, etc…) But do you know who the best people are to contact at these companies?

Sometimes you may find a number of contacts listed on the website for a potential lead, and you don’t want to send a mass email to a bunch of people at the company all at once, but you also want to be sure you make contact with the person most likely to hire you for a gig.

In this post, let’s take a look at the 5 types of people you should be looking to contact when marketing yourself as a VO Talent, in order of likeliness to be the person handling voice-over at the company, and thus, the best one to contact.

1. CASTING DIRECTOR

Many of the production companies and other leads you contact won’t have someone with this title – in fact, most probably won’t. But when you do come across leads in your marketing efforts that have a Casting Director on board, that is the person you want to contact.

This typically means that the company does a high volume of casting talent for their projects and therefore have a dedicated person on board to handle it. A Casting Director is in charge of working with the Directors and other creatives at the company to provide them with talent best suited for roles in their productions. They arrange auditions, are the main source of contact between talent and the company, and also maintain and update the company’s talent roster if they have one.

Different companies have different naming conventions and titles for their employees, below are some alternate titles and similar positions you may come across for Casting Directors.

Alternate & Similar Positions: Head of Casting, Casting Assistant

2. CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Read the rest of the article at The Voice-Over Roadmap…

 

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Using “Creative Inelegance” to Soundproof Your Studio

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One of my first jobs was running live sound for bands at a local amusement park. From this, I learned a lot about about acoustics and noise. (I also learned a LOT about working with demanding customers.) So when I decided to start doing voiceover seriously and set up a studio in my home, I was certain I could construct a recording environment that would work for VO. I found the quietest place in my house I could find – my closet – and using some heavy duty clamps I picked up, I clamped heavy blankets and comforters around the inside shelves of the closet. If you can afford them, heavy duty quilted moving blankets work really well to absorb the sound. If you can’t afford that, just use comforters, regular blankets, or anything you have on hand, as long as they’re thick and heavy. I also bought some cheap throw rugs and placed them on my concrete floor to help absorb the sound there too.

I originally couldn’t afford a mic stand, but thankfully the USB mic I bought came with a desk stand. So I placed the mic on one of my shelves, then surrounded it with a couple of old pillows I had.

And to my surprise, this set up – as ghetto as it was – worked pretty well. The audio that came out of this rig was remarkably noise free.

Never be afraid of what I like to call “creative inelegance.” Necessity is the mother of invention. No matter how janky it may look, no matter how much your friends may laugh when you tell them, if it sounds good, that’s all that matters.

And why in the Hell are you telling your friends in the first place? Just say that you built a voiceover studio in your place. That’s all they need to know. That’s what you should tell a potential client. Tell them that you’ve custom built your studio with a focus on acoustics. Because that is exactly what you’ve done.

A thing about acoustics

There are two kinds of unwanted sounds you’re going to be dealing with when you work on your studio: noise from the outside, and reflective noise – or “flutter echo” – from the inside.

Read the rest of the article at MarleyAudio.com…

 

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Do I Need A Sound Reflection Filter In My Home Studio?

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by Hugh Edwards

The question “Do I need a sound reflection filter in my home studio” is often asked to us in our mentoring area at Gravy For The Brain. This blog will provide a definitive answer to that question!

The first thing we need to do to answer this question, is define what a home recording studio (or any recording studio for that matter) is, how mic’s work, and how it’s all used.

What’s the Point of a Home Recording Studio?

The point of a home recording studio is to provide a stable, repeatable recording environment with no sound ingress and no sound egress, while minimising any unwanted noise/sound reflections going into the microphone.

What does all that mean!? Let’s go through them one by one:

  • A stable and repeatable recording environment: We need to be able to have consistency in the recordings so that we can record a project on day 1, and then for example, do re-records/pickups two weeks later and have the recorded sound match exactly.
  • No sound ingress: We do not want any external sound coming into our recording area – the only thing we should pick up is the mic, not noise from the kitchen, passing cars, nearby school-kids screaming, the cat whining for even more food and so on.
  • No sound egress: Likewise we don’t want our ranting, wailing, screaming, crying or otherwise fantastic voiceover dialogue to bleed into the kitchen and upset the said cat – she’s trying to eat the food you just gave her.
  • No Sound reflections: Sound reflections are the sound recordist’s nemesis. The perfect scenario is that your mic picks up just the vocals that you speak into it. Let’s consider then an extreme example of recording in the kitchen, by the cat; you speak into the mic and the mic picks up your vocals. At the same time your vocals reflect off the wall and into the mic creating a tiny delay, which the mic pics up. At the same time, the vocals reflect of the ceiling which is a different distance to the mic, and is picked up with a different delay. At the same time, your vocals reflect off the cat bowl and then the ceiling and then the wall, and are then picked up by the mic with, again, a different delay. In reality your vocals are bouncing off all walls, ceilings, floors and objects in the room, and all are being picked up by the mic….which sounds like….reverb. This noise in fact, is your room noise. It sounds like a kitchen. The noise of a kitchen sounds pretty awful for recorded vocals and the aim is to remove all sound reflections altogether so that we just get your pure vocal into the mic and that only.

Read the rest of the article at Gravy for the Brain…

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7 Places to Learn Audio Editing for Audiobooks

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by Karen Commins

In my last article for narrators, I wrote about 3 ways to become a computer super user. One piece of software that all audiobook narrators need is a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Coaches and new narrators often ask me where they can learn how to use their DAW.

The 7 options listed below in no particular order will help you learn the DAW software.

1) The Deyan Institute offers classes in Pro Tools for Production and Pro Tools for Post-Production, as well as an option for 6 hours of Pro Tools instruction.

2) Edge Studio offers webinars in Audition, Audacity, Pro Tools, Reaper, and Twisted Wave.

Read the rest of the article at KarenCommins.com…

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2020 Vision: Making New Years’ Resolutions Stick for your Creative Goals

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by Stage 32

2020 Vision Making New Years Resolutions Stick for your Creative Goals

Welcome to the new decade! The holidays are the perfect opportunity to take inventory of all the activities you have done this year and examine what has worked for you and what you need to improve on.

A Resolution is only as good as the plan devised to execute it.

And before the planning, comes the soul searching. Every activity we undertake in this life, be it professional, or personal, has an opportunity for growth at its core.

I am offering below some questions you may want to ask yourself that will show you what your top 5 priorities should be for your script, project, or film and some of my personal recommends and practical suggestions for the areas that you have decided, after careful examination, that contains the most of your weak spots.

How are your pitching skills?

If you know who your ICA (Ideal Client Avatar) is and you what emotion you need to convey to solicit a read or an in-person meeting, you are ahead of the game.

If you can write a query email that states who you are, the comps of your project or script, and gives just enough information on the story and plot to incite interest, you are ahead of the game.

If you can sit in a room or get on the phone with an interested party and be able to establish a genuine connection (knowing the person you are pitching to and making a personal compliment stick does go a long way) while being able to convey your passion and the most important elements of your story in less than 5 minutes, you are ahead of the game.

For some great tips on how to “sell” I would suggest you read “Born to Win” by Zig Ziglar.

What is the positive to negative feedback ration you have received so far?

If you have gotten at least 70% response to your queries or meetings and scripts submissions regardless of the reaction, you are ahead of the game. You made enough of an impression for an executive to take the time to let you know they did read you or thought of your project and therefore were able to respond in some manner.

If you had a polite pass, such as a compliment on some aspect of your story and writing or a pass with actual details on why your material was passed on, you are ahead of the game.

If you got a response for you to keep in touch with the progress of your project or script, you are ahead of the game.

If your feedback ratio is under 70%, then bluntly put, your material is just not good enough or its time for the current marketplace has not come.

Read the rest of the article at Stage 32…

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What’s the BEST Acting Technique?

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by Daniel Bradford

What even is an ‘Acting Technique’?

Let me start by saying that all of the different techniques, concepts and paradigms we use in order to conceptualise and approach acting (or any activity for that matter) are not ultimately true. They are mere representations and conceptualisations of the ‘thing’ itself. They are as we say, ‘fingers pointing to the moon, they are not the moon’. Meaning no technique can ever fully encompass the entirety of the actual experience of acting. They are abstractions, useful though they may be. The idea is to choose the most useful ones for you and to keep upgrading your set of tools as you progress throughout your life and career. By continuing to occupy a ‘beginner’s mind’ you will be humble enough to gently discard old concepts in favour of new, more subtle and useful ones. Eventually you’ll be able to let go of them completely, however, only once you have truly mastered them. Here’s a couple ways we can think of it.

Acting and Human Behaviour

Acting techniques in their best forms, are abstractions of human behaviour. They are ways of breaking down and codifying the behaviour we already do as humans. Its a kind of reverse engineering. We see the end result and we work backwards from there to figure out what led there in the first place. We can then use this new blueprint to lead us there again. It’s a kind of psychology but with a specific purpose, different to that of the traditionally therapeutic setting. Its goal is slightly different, though one could still argue both are attempting to ‘hold the mirror up to our own nature’.

Essentially the process is about making the unconscious conscious and then letting that new understanding or approach become unconscious again. See ‘Four Stages of Competance’ in Glossary

The Fundamentals of Acting

Larry Moss* breaks down the formation of human behaviour and therefore acting into three main areas:

  1. Objective/goal – What a person wants
  2. Obstacle – What is in the way of what they want
  3. Intention/action – What they do in order to overcome the obstacle and get what they want

To me, this is really as simple as it gets when breaking down not just human but any animal behaviour, even bacteria! 

The idea is that if you reflect upon your own behaviour and that of others, you will see that this paradigm is simply a breakdown of how humans behave moment-to-moment. It’s not meant to be some lofty confusing system of magic that bears no resemblance to reality. Nor does it promise, that somehow, if one learns these complicated spells and incarnations, one will become a great actor. 

Acting Techniques as Tools

The idea is that we begin to view the world through the lens of the paradigm we employ, we see how it fits quite well to some extent and gives us a foundation to work from. Now the danger of this is becoming too attached to any one paradigm or abstraction and treating it AS reality, or trying to make reality fit IT. It is at the end of the day, as all words and concepts are, merely a tool to help us along the way towards our goal. An example from clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson goes something like this:

‘If you are attempting to chop down a tree, a knife is better than your hand. But if you come across an axe, discard the knife in favour of the axe. If you then come across a chain-saw, discard the axe’ and so on. 

Read the rest of the article at Mindful Acting…

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5 Tips to Find the Perfect Acting Class

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by ActingClassFinder.com

For many aspiring actors––and for those who have worked in the industry for some time––the right acting class is an essential tool for developing and fine-tuning their craft. Acting is an incredibly personal occupation, so knowing how to find the right acting class for you is an important skill all its own. The best acting class should be an organic fit with your creative goals, schedule, and budget––and can make the difference between plateauing and thriving in your acting career.

Here are a few tips to help you find the class that will push you creatively, advance you professionally, and not break the bank.

FORECAST YOUR SPENDING

While actors are meant to explore all the realms of imagination, we exist in a world with realities, and one of those realities is financial. On average, an acting course can run anywhere from $200-600 dollars per month, with private sessions and workshops ranging from $25-100 or more per hour. Budgeting with an eye on your goals and income is an important first step in the process of choosing a class.

Miata Edoga, professional actor, President and Founder of Abundance Bound, a financial education service for actors and creatives, offers this: “The choice of a class really needs to be approached from your ability to sustain that choice.”

Edoga suggests coming from a place of clarity, not self-denial, when prioritizing the financial commitment to an acting class. “Ongoing training and honing of my craft is important, and I have to find a way to do that than I can financially sustain for the long haul. We must become people who forecast our spending. A forecast is when I say, ‘These are the resources I have, and this is how I am choosing to allocate those resources.’ This is how I am choosing to spend my money––and getting really clear on what those choices are and then holding myself to that.“[Financial forecasting] is different from budgeting,” says Edoga. “That’s a more powerful way of looking at it than ‘you can’t have this or can’t have that.’”

OUTLINE YOUR GOALS

Jim Carrey famously wrote himself a check for 10 million dollars in his starting days, using visualization as a method to outline goals for his acting career. Choosing the right acting class requires a similar commitment to goal setting, and while writing a million-dollar check may not be your style, writing down your goals is a fantastic way to reverse engineer the steps you’ll need to take to achieve them. One fantastic tool for goal setting in any industry is the S.M.A.R.T. system: setting goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. 

Read the rest of the article at ActingClassFinder.com…