Voice Actors, Reasons You Need to Be at V.O. North If you’re a voice actor, and live within driving distance of Toronto, you are in for a treat. The reasons you need to be at V.O. North are more than a chance to learn and grow at an industry specific conference in your own backyard; that you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck of any VO conference out there; that you’ll forge and cement friendships with voice over colleagues close by; and that you’ll get a better than bingo chan...
Archive for category: Voiceover Business
Voiceover Read Rate, and How Improving It Increases Your Bottom Line What the heck is a read rate? As a voiceover artist, your read rate is the difference between the length of your raw voiceover file and the length of your finished, edited one. And if you do any long form narration, it’s something to strive to ever improve. For example, if it takes you three hours to read one hour of finished text, your read rate is 3:1. Chatting with several colleagues recently – professional VO...
Why Voice Over is the Key to a Successful PSA Your craft, profession or career, presents opportunities to be of service. To give back. For a voice over artist, performing the VO on public service announcements (better known as PSAs) hits that sweet spot for me. I’m currently sitting in a friend’s living room in LA, here this week nominated for an Award for my narration on a PSA, I’m also struck by the plights they serve. Top of mind now are the horrible wildfires devastating ...
Voice Over, An Insider Take on the Exploding iGaming Industry Aside from buying the odd lottery ticket (’cause a gal can dream!), I wouldn’t say I’m much of a gambler. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be part of the ever-growing iGaming industry. I work as a voice-over talent for many clients in the online gambling industry. This photo is actually of me backstage for a on-cam lottery commercial I worked on recently. As you can see, I totally milked it 😉 As a voice-over artist for m...
Determining Rates: A Formula for a Simple Voice Over Pricing Guide While eating cake in Uncle Roy Yokelson’s Jersey living room this past weekend at the 13th Annual VO Barbecue, I tossed out this blog idea to Dan Leonard, George Whitham, Brad Newman, and a few others and got a thumbs up. So here goes. I am about to stir the pot. Having been a full-time voiceover artist for over 25 years, I am very passionate about voiceover rates, have heaps of experience in what constitutes industry-standard ...
How to Shoot Your Voiceover Career in the Foot – Worst Practices If you ever get a chance to help out in any casting project, take it. Whether you sign up as a reader for a day, get an summer internship at a casting house or even volunteer to answer phones, being on the other side of the proverbial casting couch gives you an unparalleled vantage point and insight into what separates the bookable from the floundering. As a voice over artist with a long, successful career, I’ve tracked my ...
3 Ways Storytelling is King in Voiceover for Ads and Business So…what’s your story? Or rather what is your relationship with story? Chances are it’s tight. We humans love story. We swim in it, soak in it, eat it up daily. Hourly, even. But have you stopped to consider your relationship with story as a voiceover artist? Levar Burton, (Reading Rainbow guy, Geordie from Star Trek:Next Generation, Kunta Kinte in Roots) as the key note speaker at DevLearn 2017, stated that st...
Is the Seth Rogan Controversy Good or Bad for Voiceover Industry? A reporter from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) called me yesterday to ask me (a female voice over artist) how I felt about Seth Rogan voicing prompts for the Vancouver Transit Authority. Matthew ____ (I don’t remember his last name) asked if I felt any animosity toward Seth for infringing on the territory of a regular voiceover artist. While I understand Matthew was doing his due diligence as a good reporter trying...
How Copywriters and VoiceOver People Triumph over Disruption Sipping nectar of the bean and browsing my groups this morning, I was inspired by copywriter chieftain Steve Roller and how many similar cliffs of insanity people in the copywriting and voiceover narration fields have to scale to triumph lately. All because of the (anti) buzzword of the decade “disruption.” That concept we all rallied around. Even got excited about. At first. Kind of like the frog, happy in a pot of wate...
To the average Jane or Joe, voice overs are ubiquitous. We hear them on the radio, on TV and in movies. We hear them in ads on YouTube or Spotify. Yet, how many of us stop to think about whether the voice artist is a man or a woman and whether it matters to us as consumers. A lot that can be said based on what type of voice you choose in your voice over and that includes whether you choose to go with a male or female voice. Sometimes gender matters a lot and sometimes it doesn’t. It all depend...
