Traditionally, as a working actor, the week or two following the 4th of July either meant heading back to set (if you’ve been working primarily in television), back to production (if commercial work or film have been your mainstay), or often complete radio silence until the middle to late August, when a bulk of voiceover production would pick back up again. As luck would have it, this year has been anything but traditional.

Certainly voiceover, as a genre, has experienced a substantial surge in recent years. The same can be noted since the pandemic began, because every industry, every project produced to promote, pivot, train, connect, update, educate, maintain abilities, and forward re-tooled mission statements all require guided direction, most often delivered with intention and understanding by a very capable voiceover talent. And that demand appears to continue to exponentially increase.

Additionally, since the onset of the Corona crisis, we’ve seen a dramatic uptick in the demand for union voiceover. (Granted the technical stats aren’t in quite yet, but personal experience speaks volumes.) Prior to the pandemic, union work had been taking a beating, but it seems producers and clients alike aren’t “experimenting” with national brands so readily right now as they might have in recent years by hiring new or more novice talent. It appears producers are relying once again on the tried and true professional union voice talent in a way we haven’t observed since Pay-to-Play (P2P) sites have increased in popularity.

That said, nonunion voiceover work has exploded in recent months as well. (There’s always been far more nonunion work, than union.) So take heart. Point is: there’s a greater demand for quality voiceover work from talent, especially those who can deliver quality recording tracks from remote locations.

So, whether you’re union or not, if you hope to expand your voiceover bookings, there are four essential elements you’ll need to have in place if you intend to increase your voice acting opportunities.

1. Expert Coaching and Career Guidance
As professional voice talent, we’re expected to consistently deliver our best. You’re building confidence and your reputation with each and every audition submission. To accomplish this you need a reliable approach and practical performance techniques that will continue to improve your skills, while stoking your imagination to create with each take. If you’ve sidestepped coaching for a while now, it’s time to really work on your skills with a private coach.

CLICK HERE to learn more!

And before you dismiss this key element as a sell-job, I know what you’re thinking. “But, I’m broke!” Okay, what else is new? That’s been your excuse since… always! You’ve talked yourself out of developing new skills and furthering your career by adhering to this life-sucking mantra for far too long now. You need to acknowledge it as a form of mental conditioning, and it needs to stop if you hope to move forward in this field. No one achieves success without investing in them selves, and taking some calculated risk. That means investing in coaching and proper career guidance.

If you want to get back to business, then make it your business to GET BACK TO BUSINESS!

2. The Ability to Record Quality Audio from Home
Without the ability to record your auditions and bookings from home today, it’s pretty much impossible to hire you. THIS is the new normal.

If you’re like most, you could probably use a hand preparing, updating and/or maintaining your dedicated home recording space. Our head of production, Jeff Finney, has been advising our voice talent in establishing their home recording “studios” via ZOOM for years now with great success. In fact, this is how we’ve produced hundreds of demos for clients all over the globe.

Jeff begins with our affordable Home Recording Diagnostic to personally advise you, road test your set up, and help ensure you have a fighting chance to book projects from home.

Of course, some folks require more extensive assistance to setting up (and/or sorting out) their home recording in order to offer quality audio that’s considered truly ‘road worthy’. Nevertheless, it’s far simpler than you might think. Click HERE to learn more!

3. ‘Practice Auditioning’ To Support Your Professional Reputation
It takes practice to deliver technically seamless auditions. If you intend to score work, you need to instill confidence with your auditions, and, while it’s incredibly important, this isn’t achieved solely with your performance. It will be too great a challenge to hire you if you are submitting poorly recorded auditions. That will only serve to undermine your performance.

Practice Auditions is a service offered exclusively here at Actors’ SOUND ADVICE to help voice talent practice and develop an effective recording process in order to record, edit and submit quality auditions quickly from home.

The whole objective with Practice Auditions is to make your home recording become second nature. During this 8-week course, we randomly e-mail you scripts throughout the week, just as you’d receive from your talent agents for actual auditions, most with pending deadlines (albeit ‘faux’).

Every Practice ‘Audition’ you’re sent allows you the chance to practice your home-recording skills. The idea is to recreate the experience of actual auditions for real voiceover jobs (and you should treat them as such). This service allows you to put your performance training to good use, while allowing you to make and correct various home recording mistakes you’re bound to face.

It’s important to note we don’t coach your performance during this specific course. Coaching is a separate service, but our seasoned recording engineer will let you know if you need technical changes or suggest adjustments to recording, editing and your audition submissions. He’ll tell you if you’re off mic, recorded to low or too loud, if there’s a buzz on your recordings, if you sent a WAV file instead of an MP3, forgot to add a slate, or maybe you simply sent it in too late and missed your submission window entirely.

The goal of this service is to master the learning curve of recording and editing your auditions from home and allow you to establish a routine for yourself, so you aren’t fumbling around trying to fix something that should have been thought out well in advance.

4. Competitive Voiceover Demos That Define You
You can’t work in this field without professionally produced demos.

We produce voiceover demos to service the people most likely to hire us: producers, casting, and talent agents. The objective is to demonstrate what you do best and what sort of work you intend to book more of, in the most professional, elevated context. To be effective, your voice-over demos must successfully meet, if not surpass, industry standards. That means they should sound as good (if not better) than nationally broadcast projects.

To get a better idea of just how well produced your demos can sound, CLICK HERE

Provided your demos are competitive and well crafted by experts like us (Actors’ SOUND ADVICE), they will continue to serve you and your career for many years to come.

 

Copyright © 2020 by Kate McClanaghan. All Rights Reserved.