This Episode:
Navigating the world of voiceover as an introvert may seem daunting, but with the right guidance and insights, it can be an enriching experience. In the latest episode of our podcast, we dive into the intricacies of freelance voice acting, especially for those just starting out or feeling overwhelmed by the industry.
“I just love that the English language can be used in so many different ways.” -Louise
Hosts Louise Porter and Brad Grahowski share their personal journeys as voice actors, discussing the challenges they face as introverts in a field that often requires putting oneself out there. They explore the fundamental question: how do you promote yourself when your natural inclination is to retreat? This episode aims to answer that while providing practical tips for beginners.
One of the highlights of the episode is the discussion around common misconceptions about voiceover work. Many people assume that voice acting is limited to animation or video games, but Louise and Brad shed light on the diverse niches within the industry, such as eLearning, corporate narration, and audiobook narration. They emphasize that understanding these categories is crucial for anyone looking to break into voiceover.
Louise also shares her experience with a friend, Jackie Blackmore, who inspired this episode by expressing her confusion about voiceover terminology. This leads to a valuable segment where the hosts clarify essential terms and acronyms that beginners often encounter. From “punch and roll” to “royalty share,” they demystify the jargon that can be intimidating for newcomers.
“You can make $100,000 a year doing voiceover and many do.” – Brad
As they discuss the importance of building a solid foundation, Louise and Brad encourage aspiring voice actors to focus on honing their skills before investing in expensive equipment. They stress the significance of a well-treated recording space over high-end microphones, emphasizing that a good sound environment is key to producing quality audio.
Throughout the episode, the hosts share personal anecdotes and insights that make the content relatable and engaging. They reflect on the ebb and flow of freelance work, the importance of community, and how to stay motivated in a competitive industry.
Whether you’re an experienced voice actor or just curious about the field, this episode offers valuable insights and encouragement. Tune in to gain a better understanding of the voiceover world and learn how to navigate it as an introvert. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to explore your potential in voice acting—listen now!
Transcript:
00:00:01.38
Louise: Well, hey Brad. I’m
00:00:03.76
Brad Grochowski: Louise, how are you? It’s so good to talk to you.
00:00:06.60
Louise: doing pretty good. How are you?
00:00:08.60
Brad: Good. I am doing good too. um I feel like the super, it’s been a cold winter here in the mid-Atlantic and I feel it’s it’s finally starting to turn the corner and get a little warmer and it’s nice.
00:00:24.46
Louise: Right.
00:00:26.22
Brad: I really like it.
00:00:26.71
Louise: Oh, that’s good. Well, here in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, spring has absolutely sprung. So we’ve got crocuses and snowdrops and daffodils and our cherry blossoms are starting to come out and ah it’s very nice.
00:00:40.68
Brad: Nice. See, we’re not even that far yet. Excuse me. And we’re much further south. I guess you have…
00:00:46.54
Louise: Actually, don’t… Yeah, I know you are further south. That’s right. We are further north, but we’re in the Pacific Northwest.
00:00:49.73
Brad: Yeah.
00:00:52.34
Louise: So totally different climate.
00:00:52.55
Brad: Yeah.
00:00:54.90
Louise: We’re, I mean, um ah very unusual climate for our country as a whole, even, so…
00:00:55.03
Brad: Yeah.
00:01:00.30
Brad: yeah Well, and you know, growing up we in Michigan, we would always say March is, you know, in like a lion, out like a lamb. In Maryland, i usually it’s in like a lamb, out like a nicer lamb.
00:01:15.75
Brad: March is usually pretty nice here.
00:01:16.43
Louise: I’ve never heard that.
00:01:17.85
Brad: Really? Oh.
00:01:18.56
Louise: Excuse my raspiness, etc. I have had a cold all week and it is still ah lingering.
00:01:22.05
Brad: Sure. ah I’ll excuse it.
00:01:28.61
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:29.49
Louise: Well, I hope it warms up a bit more. I remember growing up out east that March was like, March and April were like the brown months.
00:01:32.02
Brad: Yeah.
00:01:36.61
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:01:37.29
Louise: Unless you got snow.
00:01:37.91
Brad: Yeah.
00:01:38.18
Louise: It’s just like everything’s brown and yellow.
00:01:40.34
Brad: Yeah. yeah
00:01:41.11
Louise: It’s so nice to be here where it’s just like green all the time. I feel really lucky.
00:01:44.46
Brad: Yeah. All right. Well, I know we’re all here to talk about the weather, so. But maybe we should move on to other topics.
00:01:53.21
Louise: Whatever.
00:01:53.68
Brad: Welcome, everybody, to Inside Voices episode 13, a.k.a. season 2, episode 3. don’t know how important it is to track both of those counting methods, but I don’t know.
00:02:06.27
Brad: They’re both important to me.
00:02:06.79
Louise: I don’t know, but I’m just going to correct you. I’m pretty sure you said inside voices.
00:02:10.34
Brad: i Yeah, I did say that.
00:02:11.63
Louise: That’s not correct. No, that is not correct.
00:02:13.60
Brad: Inside Voice, episode 13, also known as season two, episode three. And um you can find out more about us at theinsidevoicepodcast.com. And if you want to reach out to us, you can email us at connect at theinsidevoicepodcast.com.
00:02:28.50
Brad: My name is Brad and my amazing co-host is
00:02:33.54
Louise: Louise. Louise.
00:02:34.99
Brad: Eloise.
00:02:36.06
Louise: Eloise,
00:02:37.91
Brad: Not Eloise, even though I said it like that.
00:02:37.96
Louise: Louise. Yeah. louis
00:02:40.74
Brad: Louise.
00:02:41.72
Louise: yeah
00:02:42.57
Brad: um and we’re super happy to be with you again. ah um
00:02:46.54
Louise: Yeah. And I just want to say thanks again to Aaron Bradley for joining us on the last episode, which I think we put out a couple weeks ago.
00:02:48.53
Brad: you Yeah.
00:02:55.18
Louise: um he was just so amazing and and had, yeah, what a lovely, lovely guy.
00:02:57.93
Brad: I really enjoyed that conversation.
00:03:01.90
Louise: Thanks again, Aaron. I’m sure so many people are getting so much out of all the information that you so generously shared.
00:03:06.75
Brad: Yeah. And I want to say, yeah even outside of and after we recorded that, he’s been fantastic, he’s just just a really sweet, nice guy that um we’ve continued to communicate with.
00:03:09.83
Louise: Yes.
00:03:17.34
Louise: Yes. Agreed. Yeah.
00:03:20.10
Brad: Yeah. Thank you, sir.
00:03:22.14
Louise: So today’s episode, so this is going to be geared more towards beginners or folks who and maybe haven’t even started and they’re just curious about the world of voiceover.
00:03:25.54
Brad: I’m excited.
00:03:29.46
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:03:35.73
Louise: And this was inspired basically a very front of mind, Jackie Blackmore. Shout out to Jackie, who I also call sis because we met, we were cast in the same play years and years ago as sisters.
00:03:44.33
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:03:48.11
Louise: Um, and she’s been a good friend ever since. And she, uh, started listening to the podcast a few weeks ago and I was asking her for some feedback. And one of the things that she mentioned, so she’s an actress, actor, and, um, comedian and in the performing arts.
00:04:07.23
Louise: um and has done film and TV and has done a little bit of voiceover through her agents, but is unfamiliar with the world outside of sort of the agency representation factor. So a lot of the terminology we were using, she said, was was foreign to her. And although there are times we where we will catch ourselves and kind of um explain, you know, for those who don’t know, this means this, she did feel that some of it tell went totally over her head.
00:04:35.92
Louise: And obviously, we can’t over we don’t really want to over-explain everything in every episode because it could become redundant for folks who already know.
00:04:36.53
Brad: That’s fair. Yeah. I
00:04:46.61
Louise: So I wanted to just exclusively do an episode for beginners, and I and i think we can we can revisit that um you know maybe every few episodes and build on it so that that part of the audience or audience, one person, audience of one,
00:04:48.05
Brad: yeah
00:04:59.00
Brad: um like that
00:05:05.80
Louise: has ah maybe a ah better resource or has this as a ah bit of a resource, if that makes sense.
00:05:11.72
Brad: Yeah, I like that. Or for you Americans, resource, just to translate from the Canadian.
00:05:15.20
Louise: Resource. Yes. Yes. I’ve had that come up in scripts, actually.
00:05:17.58
Brad: and Oh, yeah.
00:05:19.78
Louise: Yeah. Yeah.
00:05:21.20
Brad: I don’t want to get into this too deeply, but I love the Canadian accent. I love resource. I love the just the just the little changes that get made.
00:05:30.68
Louise: Yeah, and it’s it’s not until it’s not until you’re doing voiceover and you get a lot of U.S.
00:05:31.01
Brad: it’s It’s variety. Yeah.
00:05:36.82
Louise: clients, like as a Canadian, and that you realize that it’s so much it’s so much further beyond just the vowel sounds.
00:05:44.95
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:05:45.66
Louise: And that things like rui resource and resource are a thing.
00:05:46.07
Brad: It is. Mm-hmm.
00:05:50.86
Louise: Like, I never would have thought that. Yeah.
00:05:53.51
Brad: For a little while, I was keeping a list of words like resource. Right now, I can’t remember off- ah
00:06:00.22
Louise: That every time we had a conversation you were like, there it is There’s the Canadian.
00:06:01.93
Brad: No, no. Just when I hear when i hear a Canadian who sounds… Like many Canadians, especially voice actors, obviously, really have their American accent nailed. But every once in a while will slip on something.
00:06:12.30
Louise: Yeah.
00:06:15.43
Brad: ah and And there are certain words that that seem to trigger that more than others. um And i I can’t think of any right now.
00:06:22.62
Louise: Right.
00:06:26.43
Louise: I know, as it always goes right out my head.
00:06:26.68
Brad: But they’re they’re fun.
00:06:28.43
Louise: But, some I mean, there’s the obvious.
00:06:28.61
Brad: Yeah, but i just love I just love variety, and I just love hearing the different ways that English language can be used.
00:06:30.80
Louise: go ahead.
00:06:35.35
Brad: And even though Canadian and American dialects are so similar, like 99% time, to Mm-hmm.
00:06:35.92
Louise: Yeah.
00:06:42.13
Brad: that one percent is really fascinating to me
00:06:44.38
Louise: It is. And it’s, I mean, it there’s also a lot of generalizations I find like, I mean, depending on where you live in Canada and, and you know, whether you’ve moved around or not, you’re the, can the accents are, they differ quite a lot.
00:06:59.02
Louise: And then the same, the same goes for the U S like, you know, if you listen to a lot of podcasts or if you just pay attention when you’re watching films or television or listening to podcasts or whatever,
00:07:02.10
Brad: Yeah, oh, for sure.
00:07:08.19
Brad: Yeah.
00:07:09.83
Louise: and A lot of people would be really um kind of, what’s the word, pedantic, I guess, about things like data or data.
00:07:16.17
Brad: Yeah.
00:07:18.62
Brad: Yeah.
00:07:19.14
Louise: Like, it used to be a thing that, like, oh, Canadians say data, but Americans say data. And actually, i hear it all the time from Americans saying it both ways.
00:07:28.70
Brad: Yeah, for sure.
00:07:29.34
Louise: So,
00:07:29.68
Brad: I’ll use it and interchangeably in ah in the same sentence without even thinking about it.
00:07:33.12
Louise: yeah. Yeah, or route versus route. Like, that seems interchangeable.
00:07:36.89
Brad: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just, and, and I just love that the English and not just the English language.
00:07:38.22
Louise: yeah
00:07:41.84
Brad: I love that languages are living entities that are constantly evolving and changing.
00:07:46.52
Louise: They are constantly evolving.
00:07:46.84
Brad: And yeah, yeah.
00:07:47.84
Louise: Exactly. Yeah.
00:07:49.47
Brad: I’m working a lot with, some I’m, I’m producing the Spanish version of a children’s chapter book that I narrated. And so i did casting, for Spanish narrators and just and the the the author what is Dominican so she really was hoping for someone that could understand the Dominican angle of her Spanish and we found a Dominican narrator who’s doing ah an amazing job But even between them, they’re, you know, the narrator’s like, how do you want me to handle this, the pronunciation of this word and that word?
00:08:18.45
Louise: Yeah.
00:08:27.08
Brad: And it’s really fascinating. To me, i don’t, I don’t speak Spanish. So it’s, it’s, it’s kind of all over my head, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s just really fascinating seeing how they’re having to navigate through the same way we would have to navigate through, you know,
00:08:37.91
Louise: h
00:08:44.49
Brad: How would I, you want me to say data or data or, you know, is it produce or yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:08:47.63
Louise: yeah
00:08:50.22
Louise: Produce. Yeah. Processor process. Yeah.
00:08:53.32
Brad: Process or process that.
00:08:53.32
Louise: Things like that.
00:08:54.38
Brad: Yeah, that exactly.
00:08:54.41
Louise: Yeah.
00:08:55.50
Brad: So it’s very fascinating.
00:08:55.61
Louise: No, produce is another one. Produce or produce. Yeah.
00:08:58.20
Brad: Mm hmm. Mm
00:08:59.03
Louise: And I find that a lot of the time, because I’ve been doing this for a good few years now, and, and ah you know, i would say the bulk of my clients tend to be from the States, like if it’s North American,
00:09:13.56
Louise: um
00:09:13.71
Brad: hmm.
00:09:14.60
Louise: because I do have British clients as well, but the bulk of them are North American. and and And because of the sort of ah repeated common pronunciations that you need to give the American clients, I’ve almost switched a lot of what I say sort of just by default um from the more Canadian to maybe more American.
00:09:38.01
Louise: and Yeah.
00:09:38.82
Brad: Interesting. You mean in your day-to-day life?
00:09:40.74
Louise: Yeah, my day-to-day life. Yeah.
00:09:41.96
Brad: Yeah.
00:09:42.87
Louise: Yeah.
00:09:43.65
Brad: It’s an interesting process.
00:09:45.69
Louise: Right? i Well, the thing is, you’re in a booth all day by yourself.
00:09:48.96
Brad: Yeah.
00:09:49.26
Louise: Who are you talking to?
00:09:49.49
Brad: Yeah. yeah yeah
00:09:50.53
Louise: Nobody.
00:09:50.63
Brad: Yeah. Right.
00:09:53.37
Louise: All right. Well, let’s get back on topic for Jackie Blackmore.
00:09:55.44
Brad: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. but That was interesting by the way.
00:09:57.38
Louise: um
00:09:58.73
Brad: I, I, like I said, I just, i love language and I love, I love how organic and and alive it is. So yeah. Thanks for indulging me in that for a few minutes.
00:10:07.29
Louise: Hey, it’s super fun to talk about.
00:10:09.82
Brad: Yeah.
00:10:10.69
Louise: ah About.
00:10:11.88
Brad: A boot. Let’s talk about our process.
00:10:15.77
Louise: All right. Okay. So I think we want to start off with talking about sort of like the questions that we often get asked by people who don’t know anything about VO.
00:10:23.16
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:26.14
Louise: So um I know you had a few good pointers and we’re having a bit of a chat yesterday about this.
00:10:30.88
Brad: Yeah. I just want to say that, you know, it’s always it’s always interesting. when When I first started doing voiceover, i and I think this is kind of typical, I don’t know.
00:10:41.89
Brad: I wanted people to know that that’s what I do because it’s interesting and it’s different. and But in time, you start to realize that it’s just going to… it’s just going to lead to a bunch of questions and I love engaging with people about it. But sometimes I just, sometimes I’m like, don’t ask me what I don’t do and ask me what I do. Cause I know I’m going to have to have a big conversation with them. I don’t know if you experienced that or not, but
00:11:03.27
Louise: Well, yeah, I ah do. And I think there’ is there’s sort of the, you sort of know what’s coming, right?
00:11:10.34
Brad: yeah.
00:11:10.32
Louise: There’s the common misconceptions.
00:11:10.77
Brad: Yeah.
00:11:12.90
Louise: Most people are thinking, when they think voiceover, they’re thinking animation um or video games.
00:11:19.07
Brad: Yeah, and video games.
00:11:20.51
Louise: Some people don’t even really think commercials even.
00:11:23.62
Brad: Yeah.
00:11:24.24
Louise: um
00:11:25.48
Brad: You know, one of the…
00:11:25.42
Louise: or they think Or they think you’re talking about dubbing, which is just its own genre.
00:11:28.18
Brad: Yeah. Like, one of the first comments I always get is, oh, I didn’t even know that was a job you could do.
00:11:34.58
Louise: Yes, exactly.
00:11:34.69
Brad: Well, somebody’s… Like, you go… you Maybe you don’t realize it, but as you go through your day, you hear so much voiceover, but you don’t even think about it.
00:11:42.24
Louise: Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:44.16
Brad: Hopefully, because it’s well done. ah
00:11:45.57
Louise: ah Exactly. And I think until until I really dove into what this would be, I was totally the same.
00:11:46.86
Brad: But…
00:11:52.09
Louise: I had no idea.
00:11:52.35
Brad: Sure. Yeah.
00:11:54.23
Louise: i mean, I knew certain things. I mean, even things like Walla, I kind of knew about through because I’ve got a lot of friends in in the film and television business anyway.
00:12:02.61
Brad: Yeah.
00:12:02.58
Louise: But a Walla is like when you get a group of people together around a microphone and they they’re just making background noise.
00:12:08.57
Brad: Mm hmm.
00:12:09.05
Louise: and like kind of talking nonsense. so So that’s a thing.
00:12:11.53
Brad: Yep.
00:12:12.50
Louise: um But yeah, so go ahead.
00:12:18.46
Brad: Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I was just going to say that the next question I always get is, aren’t you afraid ai is going to take over your job?
00:12:30.23
Louise: Oh, right. Which I feel like is its own complete conversation.
00:12:31.15
Brad: i mean, we could get into a whole conversation about AI, but yeah.
00:12:33.63
Louise: But I think just to sort of give an overview to folks who maybe are unfamiliar, the genres are there are so many.
00:12:44.31
Louise: And um I would say… of If you look at like the um the State of VoiceOver survey um that NAVA puts out every year, that which is the National Association of Voice Actors, which you can Google, I think it’s navavoices.org,
00:13:00.30
Brad: And if I can interject, the the state of voiceover survey is a survey they put out every year where we answer questions about our careers.
00:13:00.66
Louise: um
00:13:04.87
Louise: Yeah. Yeah. and And they know it’s accurate because they say basically the the stats stay the same after they’ve got, you know, whatever it is, a few hundred responses for every for every hundred after that. It’s like very similar data slash data.
00:13:20.72
Louise: So it’s a very, very fascinating survey. So if you are in the beginning stages of your career or you’re just curious about voiceover, check that survey out. um So in terms of genre, there’s so many different things that you can do as a voice actor, because even though animation and gaming is obviously those are two very legitimate and amazing genres to work in.
00:13:47.24
Louise: There are very few people who are doing those things, those genres, as like making their full time living at it. So then you start to look into things like e-learning.
00:13:59.52
Louise: And then people are like, well, what’s e-learning? So e-learning would be anything where you’re learning online or like, let’s say you work for a company and you’re having to go through a course and there’s somebody voicing that course. It’s usually a professional voice actor.
00:14:13.35
Louise: So they’ll be, you know…
00:14:14.13
Brad: Though sometimes not, I will say.
00:14:16.06
Louise: Sometimes not. They’re better off hiring someone professional, though. Just saying.
00:14:20.95
Brad: um Your receptionist, Susan, has a great voice, but that’s not…
00:14:20.97
Louise: um To make… Yeah, I mean, you need that… You need learning materials to be engaging. And a professional is going to be the best person to facilitate that.
00:14:34.29
Louise: And I know some people are… Or some companies have moved to to AI for the longer form stuff to save money. But… People disengage really quickly when they cop on that it’s not a human.
00:14:45.72
Brad: Yeah.
00:14:45.70
Louise: So let’s add that as a caveat, my opinion. um So e-learning and then there’s also corporate narration. So I know you do quite a bit of industrial corporate narration, right, Brad?
00:14:58.42
Brad: A lot of industrial e-learning, actually.
00:15:00.53
Louise: Industrial e-learning. So just quickly explain what that means.
00:15:01.83
Brad: Yeah.
00:15:04.26
Brad: Sure. Yeah. So like we have genres or I’ve started calling them niches instead of a genre because genre is a word that has a specific meaning.
00:15:12.00
Louise: Oh, okay, sure.
00:15:12.24
Brad: And I think it’s kind of malappropriism, even though in the industry genre is broadly is widely used to mean the different niches.
00:15:12.78
Louise: Nisha’s is great.
00:15:19.92
Brad: But I i don’t know. I’ve started to try to use the word niche because it makes a little more sense. ah to me, I don’t know.
00:15:26.96
Louise: Okay.
00:15:27.10
Brad: um Yeah. So within niches like e-learning can have niche niches, right? So you could have K-12 e-learning that I also really enjoy doing that. ah You can have um ah corporate e-learning.
00:15:40.37
Brad: You can have job training e-learning. And what I do a lot of industrial e-learning, actually, ah you can have medical e-learning it is a huge field in itself. But the industrial e-learning I do is a lot of trainings for masons, bricklayers, I guess they are masons, ah construction workers, concrete mixers and pourers, yeah, and and inspectors also of those industries as well.
00:16:00.93
Louise: Concrete pourers, mixers, yeah.
00:16:06.53
Brad: So steel, concrete, construction,
00:16:07.15
Louise: Yeah.
00:16:10.34
Brad: um pretty much anything like fasten like fasteners, which is fascinating to do a whole…
00:16:15.58
Louise: Right.
00:16:18.30
Brad: hour-long module hour-long course on fasteners, which are screws, bolts, nuts, washers, clips, all that kind of stuff.
00:16:25.44
Louise: Mm-hmm.
00:16:26.44
Brad: um
00:16:26.46
Louise: Mm-hmm.
00:16:27.89
Brad: Yeah. So that’s just an example of sort of a niche within it a niche, right? And how how you kind of really focus down.
00:16:32.35
Louise: Yeah. And I think for yeah for me, and I guess maybe um je gender may play a role in and this in terms of who may most likely be hired for certain niches.
00:16:39.93
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:16:44.60
Louise: um I’ve never done any industrial, I don’t think, to my recollection, if I have maybe just short explainer videos, but not e-learning.
00:16:50.70
Brad: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:16:54.23
Louise: But for e-learning, I mostly am hired for things like um sexual harassment policies, mental health, stuff in the workplace, stuff like that. So um that’s another kind of niche niche of e-learning.
00:17:09.67
Louise: um Okay, let’s cover a couple other niches, as you said. So IVR, which is um interactive voice recording. So that’s basically when you call a business, like you call your bank and and they’re welcome to TD Canada Trust um for service in English.
00:17:26.62
Brad: Hello, thank you for calling Inside Voice.
00:17:28.75
Louise: Yeah, for service in English, press one, you know, that kind of thing. So that is, yeah.
00:17:33.09
Brad: For Brad, press 2. For Louise, press 3. Yeah.
00:17:35.82
Louise: And again, some companies are using automated voices for that, but most people really like to hear a human voice when they… call up if they’re if they’re not going to actually be dealing with a living live person at least have it be a human recording um and then okay so we’ve covered we’ve got e-learning ivr explainers i kind of mentioned which are just those like short videos
00:18:00.90
Brad: Yeah. Meet Steve. Steve has a problem.
00:18:03.77
Louise: yeah yeah exactly
00:18:04.28
Brad: Our company has a solution for the problem. Be like Steve. Hire us to fix your problem. Yeah.
00:18:09.61
Louise: Perfect. Um, okay. What else we got? Audiobooks, obviously. That’s a huge, huge industry.
00:18:15.05
Brad: Uh-huh.
00:18:17.83
Brad: Yeah.
00:18:18.01
Louise: Um,
00:18:18.82
Brad: Children’s books, which is, again, a niche within a niche, but it’s very different than the parent niche. Right. And I do a lot of kids books.
00:18:25.06
Louise: yes.
00:18:26.75
Brad: I I’m hoping we can do an episode sometime on.
00:18:27.01
Louise: Yep. I’ve done a handful. Yeah, we should do that. Yeah, yeah.
00:18:31.02
Brad: Yeah.
00:18:31.70
Louise: Yeah. You’re kind of the, the guy, the go-to guy for that stuff.
00:18:35.12
Brad: I’m trying to trying to work that angle.
00:18:35.33
Louise: Um,
00:18:37.00
Brad: Yeah.
00:18:38.96
Louise: Yeah, and if you want to know more about kids book narration, go to kidsbooknarration.com to find out more.
00:18:45.16
Brad: Yeah.
00:18:45.69
Louise: ah
00:18:46.48
Brad: And you’ll see some familiar-looking people there on the roster.
00:18:50.03
Louise: Yeah, and here are some familiar voices, I think, too.
00:18:50.61
Brad: and Yeah.
00:18:54.00
Louise: um What a shmarmy plug that was.
00:18:57.18
Brad: Yeah. I like it, though.
00:18:59.06
Louise: Thanks.
00:18:59.60
Brad: It works for me.
00:19:00.16
Louise: Okay, what else have we got? um So when we’re talking about video games, like there’s obviously there’s AAA games and there’s also, ah which are the, you know, the the big name games. And then there’s also tons of indie developers that hire voice actors.
00:19:12.86
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:19:13.91
Louise: So that’s a great niche to be in if you, especially if you have an acting background. Because video games are really, they look for, for the most part, um very believable characters, right? So you’re kind of tapping into your to your acting stuff with those.
00:19:30.81
Louise: um Obviously animation. What else? What am I missing?
00:19:35.27
Brad: um I mean, I don’t i don’t think we we need to give an exhaustive list, right? like I mean, that gives a really good sense, I think, of the the sort of breadth of different…
00:19:40.13
Louise: Oh, come on. Let’s give the exhaustive list for the beginners. They don’t know.
00:19:45.65
Louise: Yeah. I feel like we’ve missed something. Well, we’ve missed commercial commercials, obviously.
00:19:49.26
Brad: Oh, yeah, commercial. Yeah.
00:19:50.83
Louise: And commercials can really be like, you know, you’re doing an ad for the… the the um body shop down the road on a local radio, or it could be a national ad for McDonald’s.
00:20:00.99
Brad: Yeah. Yeah. Or. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:07.11
Louise: um So those are, those vary too. They vary in rate. They, they vary in how easy it is to get them versus how difficult. um Yeah.
00:20:18.06
Brad: So to circle back around to the questions often asked or the frequently asked questions, that is also one of the questions that I get is, so what kind of voiceover do you do?
00:20:22.15
Louise: Yeah.
00:20:27.31
Brad: And I’m curious to hear what you, what you taught people.
00:20:27.49
Louise: Right.
00:20:29.43
Brad: Like if somebody says, Hey, what kind of voiceover do you do? What do you, how do you, what do you sort of explain?
00:20:34.17
Louise: Like anything someone wants to pay me for.
00:20:38.32
Louise: um
00:20:38.81
Brad: Fair enough.
00:20:39.39
Louise: im i mean, I’ve got my favorites, but i’m i’m I don’t turn down much work.
00:20:41.92
Brad: Yeah.
00:20:44.91
Louise: If it’s um not in line with my values, I will not do it.
00:20:46.97
Brad: Yeah. Well, of course, for sure.
00:20:49.87
Louise: but um But, you know, I will pretty much have worked in every niche, I think, that we have mentioned.
00:20:56.71
Brad: Yeah, yeah.
00:20:59.29
Louise: um So, you know, you, yeah, you’re running a business. So I don’t know.
00:21:04.60
Brad: Yeah.
00:21:05.07
Louise: There aren’t too many people, I think, that are just exclusively doing commercials. I know in Canada, there are a lot of voice actors are crossed over with them in their careers with onscreen.
00:21:10.03
Brad: Yeah.
00:21:17.29
Louise: So, so they may not be doing like when you’re talking a home-based voiceover business where you’re a freelancer and you’re maybe not doing any on-screen work, then I think you’re really trying to expand into as many niches as you can get good at.
00:21:17.95
Brad: Yeah.
00:21:34.08
Brad: Yeah. But do you explain all of that to somebody if they ask you, or do you just say, yeah.
00:21:34.73
Louise: Um,
00:21:37.65
Louise: Like, I’ll just run the list. um I start with the most boring thing because then generally they’ll stop asking questions.
00:21:44.75
Brad: I usually do the opposite. I usually say, here’s what I say. I say, oh, I do, I do a lot of kids books. That’s what I’ll start with. And then I’ll say, I also do a lot of, you know, e-learning like industrial e-learning stuff.
00:21:51.50
Louise: Yeah.
00:21:55.53
Brad: And I said, but I also, you know, I really do a bunch of audio books. I i do commercial and I’ve done some indie ah video games and animation, you know, and I’ll just try and like, just to give them some, I, some idea.
00:22:09.34
Louise: Yeah.
00:22:14.70
Brad: Yeah.
00:22:14.68
Louise: Yeah, because usually people like, would I have heard you in anything?
00:22:17.32
Brad: Yeah, that’s that’s in the top three questions.
00:22:17.40
Louise: And you’re like, yeah.
00:22:20.45
Brad: Yeah, what have heard you in?
00:22:21.17
Louise: yeah How many e-learning things if you don’t work?
00:22:22.24
Brad: And when they ask me that, i usually say, well, have you um have you set in on any early e-learning courses about um the rules of masonry?
00:22:30.97
Louise: Bricklaying.
00:22:33.17
Brad: Yeah, the the the mason masonry, like ah ah ah what do you call it? uh, about, uh, masonry permitting, you know, and they’ll be like, Oh, ha but it it gets the idea across, you know, like we’re the we, and I think the, the term blue collar voiceover or, or journeyman voiceover is, is those are pretty, I think this is a pretty apt, uh,
00:22:47.39
Louise: yeah ah Well, I’ve done flashy AAA video games.
00:23:03.18
Brad: sort of descriptions of of what we do. We’re like, we’re just getting the job done We’re not out there doing flashy AAA video games. And it’s, it’s, well, yes, you have, you have, you’re, that’s true.
00:23:17.53
Brad: ah That’s true. And you’ve done some pretty, pretty,
00:23:23.56
Brad: pretty remarkable commercial.
00:23:23.60
Louise: I have a really great agent who um comes out with some amazing opportunities for me, and I’ve got some really great bookings through her, so I’m really lucky that way.
00:23:25.37
Brad: Yeah.
00:23:34.79
Louise: And then also, um I don’t really know how they found me, but I got to to narrate a ah pretty big documentary last year, and I’m doing another one this year, which I can’t talk about yet.
00:23:48.62
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:49.53
Louise: So I have done some stuff, but i I don’t necessarily lead with those because it’s yeah, I mean, I’ve done them, but it’s not I’m not at the point in my career yet where that’s like the bulk of what I do.
00:23:54.38
Brad: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:23:58.55
Brad: I guess…
00:24:03.12
Brad: Yeah. And I guess what I’m trying to to explain is we we can make a living without doing big, fancy, flashy stuff, right?
00:24:13.27
Brad: In fact, even the people who are doing the big, fancy, flashy stuff are also doing e-learning and medical narration and commercial. Like, you’re it’s really hard to make a living doing…
00:24:20.33
Louise: Yeah.
00:24:23.72
Louise: i see yeah I think it’s like any business you you need to diversify. and
00:24:27.57
Brad: Yeah.
00:24:27.85
Louise: And so that’s part of that.
00:24:30.85
Brad: Yeah.
00:24:31.47
Louise: All right.
00:24:32.21
Brad: right, cool.
00:24:32.78
Louise: I think we covered those.
00:24:33.92
Brad: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about, can we move on to the next? um
00:24:37.89
Louise: Go ahead. Yeah, please.
00:24:38.76
Brad: Yeah. So what, so um what does a day in the life of Louise looking like as you’re, as you’re, you know, doing your work, you’re building your business, your, your, what what does it look like? Yeah.
00:24:52.57
Louise: Well, um it’s like the most unglamorous thing. You’re sitting in a dark room by yourself. Well, my room’s dark. um But a lot of it’s like you’re a freelancer, right? So there’s there’s maybe you’re auditioning. Maybe you’re…
00:25:08.92
Louise: um doing like client acquisition is the going to be the biggest component.
00:25:12.95
Brad: Yeah, yeah.
00:25:13.66
Louise: Your relationship building um or you’re doing professional development in in, you know, either sort of like webinars or or coaching or
00:25:15.04
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:25:23.23
Louise: um community, like online community groups that you might be part of where you’re trying to garner more um information.
00:25:35.42
Louise: um building community you’re doing it you’re doing your own admin unless you’re doing i guess unless you’re doing well enough to just hire that out like i just do all my own admin and bookkeeping other than i have an accountant to do my taxes but um and then you know sort of the probably the smaller part of the day unless i’ve got like a big audiobook going or something long form the the
00:25:46.98
Brad: Yeah.
00:25:52.34
Brad: Yeah. Admin for Americans.
00:26:00.36
Brad: Yeah.
00:26:03.29
Louise: the smallest portion component of the day is the actual voiceover.
00:26:08.03
Brad: Yeah.
00:26:08.23
Louise: it
00:26:08.74
Brad: I would agree with that.
00:26:08.71
Louise: And add to that, that if you’re doing this, you need to to become proficient at editing all of your work. And that includes not just like,
00:26:17.16
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:26:19.62
Louise: editing it for mistakes if you’re not doing punch and roll, which we could get into what that means in a bit. But um you’re editing out your mistakes.
00:26:26.20
Brad: we shall yeah
00:26:28.30
Louise: you you’re You’re learning how to get rid of mouth noise if if some has made it into the recording, which it usually does. um your You have to know how to mix and master properly because not every producer that hires you is maybe going to have that capability.
00:26:48.70
Louise: um You may need to know how to mix in music because your client might want music. You’re going to have to maybe time it to a video and how to pull it into your software to do that.
00:27:01.98
Louise: Um, So there’s a lot involved. Like you you might, you know, record something might take you ah few minutes, but then what you have to do the to the recording after is going to take longer than that.
00:27:15.59
Brad: Yeah.
00:27:15.56
Louise: Obviously, as you progress, it will take less and less time and you’ll learn how to become more efficient.
00:27:15.71
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:18.63
Brad: yeah
00:27:21.25
Louise: i don’t know. Do you think i covered it there? i mean…
00:27:24.37
Brad: Yeah, no, I agree with all of that. And I would, I would say that, you know, if I spend 20% of my time in the the booth actually recording and the rest of the, you know, the other, you know, 80, 75 to 80% of the time, whatever is marketing is admin or admin is, I guess ah you your Canadians would say, uh,
00:27:46.15
Louise: I don’t know. I think I say admin, but okay.
00:27:48.28
Brad: Okay. um ah But the the catch is if I end up with more production work or I’m working on longer form stuff or I get a nice size audio book that I’m working on, I can’t ah then you have to make difficult decisions, right? Like you either, then you spend 50% of your time recording in the booth, which only leaves you 50% of the time to do the other stuff.
00:28:14.90
Brad: And so it ends up creating this sort of cycle. When you get busy, you do less marketing. So less work comes in. And once you finish the product project, you’re busy with the, projects you’re busy with, then you find there’s no work coming in and then you panic and then you start marketing like crazy. know And then, ah and you just sort of end up riding this, this loop that kind of continues over and over again. If you’re smart, if you’re really good at this, you kind of start to learn how to balance that out. Right.
00:28:42.72
Louise: Yeah.
00:28:43.11
Brad: um But when I know when I get into a slow time, I start to panic and then I really start running around, shaking all the trees. Like, reaching out to past clients or regular clients who i haven’t heard from for a little while.
00:28:52.64
Louise: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s definitely, there’s an ebb and flow to it, right? So it’s not like you’re you’re getting, it’s not like you’re recording for people every single day all the time.
00:28:57.89
Brad: Yeah.
00:29:03.84
Brad: Yeah.
00:29:05.35
Louise: Pardon me.
00:29:06.69
Brad: Yeah. I think that that all makes sense.
00:29:09.24
Louise: All right.
00:29:09.40
Brad: All right.
00:29:09.76
Louise: So, um, and I guess we kind of covered the genres that we typically work in or no, we just kind of talked about all genres, but I guess like for me, I do, I do a handful of audio books in a year and then quite a bit of e-learning and quite a bit of indie, indie video game stuff, um, and corporate video.
00:29:14.29
Brad: Yeah. Yeah. And I think we covered…
00:29:29.18
Brad: Yeah. Yeah. You’ve done some really cool stuff. Now you do a lot more video games than I do, but can I, can I, can I share a weird, kind of a weird flex?
00:29:31.89
Louise: So those are like the
00:29:38.38
Brad: Like it’s a, it’s a brag. I’ll admit it, but it’s a weird brag.
00:29:43.26
Louise: ah Sure.
00:29:43.34
Brad: I, on TikTok, on my TikTok account, which is the voice of Brad, for anybody who’s interested, ah on one of my videos, somebody commented, yo are you Mr. Mix?
00:29:59.69
Brad: And I thought… What? Am I Mr. Mix? What does that even mean? And then below, someone commented on that comment and said, yeah, he’s, I came here to say the exact same thing. Yeah, he’s Mr. Mix.
00:30:14.28
Brad: I’m like, what the heck are they talking about? Is there like a radio DJ or somebody they’re mistaking me for? And then on my Instagram account, somebody said, yo, yo, are you the voice of Mr. Mix? and I’m like, what is this Mr. Mix thing everybody’s coming at me for?
00:30:28.53
Brad: Then I remembered a like months and months and months ago, i got booked to do this little thing for a Roblox game. It was really small.
00:30:39.51
Brad: It was like, I don’t know, eight lines or something like that. And then all I knew about it was it was a chef that was like a homicidal maniac. And I had small number of lines and I just did a kind of voice. Right.
00:30:54.92
Brad: didn’t i Maybe I knew that it was the name of it was Mr. Mix, but you know how you get these jobs and you can’t you can’t remember everything. Turns out that I am the feature character of a Roblox game.
00:31:08.78
Brad: And so I Googled it. There are hundreds of um of of actual play YouTube videos of people playing this game. Yeah.
00:31:17.24
Louise: Yeah, that’s amazing.
00:31:20.25
Brad: it’s, it’s not much of a brag because i mean, yeah, it was pretty exciting.
00:31:22.94
Louise: It’s pretty cool, though, when someone recognizes your voice like that. Yeah.
00:31:26.64
Brad: And just how funny it was that I, I was so confused at what they were even talking about, but that they’re then going out and finding me.
00:31:27.09
Louise: Yeah.
00:31:33.17
Brad: So, you know, I think as a voice actor, we spend so much time by ourselves in our little booth. So we have to like take these moments and cherish them.
00:31:41.14
Louise: Well, and it also brings up an interesting point of like ah finding your finding your work in the wild. So a lot of the time you’re not getting, most of the time, no one is circling back to you with your stuff for the purposes of your portfolio or for you to see it.
00:31:47.86
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:31:53.02
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
00:31:57.27
Louise: like you You often are just trying to search through the jobs that you’ve done and you’re just kind of looking on YouTube or wherever to see if you can find what you did six months ago or a year ago.
00:32:04.93
Brad: yeah
00:32:09.66
Brad: Yeah. And that’s not a vanity thing. Like we’re looking for it because if I’ve, if I, if I voiced a commercial or a web ad or something, i I want, I need to be able to find that so I can add that to my portfolio. Or if somebody asks what kind of work I’ve done, I can link it to them.
00:32:24.76
Brad: Maybe it’s a little bit of vanity, but yeah.
00:32:24.84
Louise: Yeah, or if it’s an ad and it’s still running and they’re not they haven’t paid you for that length of time, you need to know that too.
00:32:28.66
Brad: yeah very Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:32:31.51
Louise: But some yeah, people aren’t great. Like, you’re the last cog in that kind of wheel for a lot of um production.
00:32:38.80
Brad: yeah
00:32:41.47
Brad: Yeah.
00:32:41.81
Louise: So they’re not thinking about the voiceover when it’s all done. They’re like, get it done, get it out.
00:32:45.59
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:47.77
Louise: Yeah, so… um
00:32:49.11
Brad: I’ll often ask, you know, if it’s a project that I think is cool. I’ll explicitly say, hey, I’d love to see the final project if it’s…
00:32:55.75
Louise: Oh, I always ask, but rarely, rarely hear back.
00:32:56.74
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:59.75
Brad: Yeah.
00:33:00.18
Louise: Yeah, they’re just people are busy.
00:33:02.34
Brad: yeah
00:33:03.15
Louise: But yeah, it’s hunting them down is like, oh my goodness, so much work. um Okay, so I guess we can move on to our next thing, which was how much does a voiceover typically earn?
00:33:15.75
Louise: Which again, if you want to take a closer look at that, you can look at the the NAVA ah website, which is navavoices.org and the state of voiceover survey.
00:33:23.80
Brad: I’ve yeah.
00:33:27.44
Louise: But Brad, why don’t you just take, give us like a sort of ah overview?
00:33:29.84
Brad: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got some numbers that I, that I pulled out just to give an idea.
00:33:32.40
Louise: Yeah. Yeah.
00:33:34.07
Brad: And this is pulled from the 2024 survey. nava survey
00:33:37.42
Louise: And this is obviously going to be in USD.
00:33:40.30
Brad: Yes, that’s right. ah So um because I would have pulled from the 2025, but that’s still actually out being surveyed. sort of Like we’re still, people are still filling it out.
00:33:51.60
Brad: So they haven’t closed the the um the process and started doing the tabulations yet.
00:33:51.94
Louise: Yeah, exactly.
00:33:57.61
Brad: So as of as of the survey in 2024, don’t know. I just find this very interesting. 12.5% of voice actors make over year.
00:34:11.11
Brad: So know the U.S. anyways, at this point, like $100,000 a year is kind of a watermark. Like if you’re over that, you’re kind of, don’t know, you’re kind of successful in your career. I mean, in general, not just in voiceover. You’re kind of, you know, like we know teachers don’t make $100,000 a year, you know, it’s you know Or, you know, if the the police in your town, if they make $80,000 or if they make $120,000, that’s just sort of a nice round figure that we kind of use culturally.
00:34:43.89
Brad: In the U.S. anyway, I don’t know if it’s the same in Canada.
00:34:45.11
Louise: Yeah, it is the same in Canada. i But I think obviously, depending on where you live, that can mean vastly different things.
00:34:50.58
Brad: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
00:34:53.08
Louise: And the cost of living is very high um in, say, Vancouver and Toronto and some of these are rising everywhere.
00:34:53.35
Brad: For sure. for
00:34:59.67
Louise: But 100,000 here is isn’t going to be the same as it is in Winnipeg.
00:35:00.32
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:05.31
Brad: Yeah.
00:35:05.91
Louise: But yeah.
00:35:06.56
Brad: So I would say, you know, from this statistic, you you can make $100,000 a year doing voiceover and many do. and But 12.5% of all voice actors do. So that gives you some idea of how many people in the voiceover industry are actually hitting that sort of emotional watermark.
00:35:26.44
Brad: Right.
00:35:26.67
Louise: Yep. Right.
00:35:28.10
Brad: 23.4% make over 50k a year. So only only a quarter of all voice actors are making 50k a year or more.
00:35:39.02
Louise: right
00:35:39.71
Brad: um So if you’re looking at, and I’m telling you, and and for a while there, I don’t see it as much, but for a while we were seeing a lot of ads like, It’s easy to get rich. All you need is a microphone. You know, you can you can make hundreds of thousand dollars a year with your voice alone by talking into a mic. And that’s just not true. You can see here.
00:35:59.37
Brad: And I’m not shaking a stick at 50K a year either. Like, you know, if if you’re doing something you love and you’re making over 50,000 year. that’s amazing. Or if you’re making whatever you’re making in it and it’s enough for you to maintain your your the standard of living you prefer, that’s fantastic.
00:36:16.08
Brad: But just to give you an idea that only a quarter of all voice actors are making over 50K a year. About 70% make a minimum wage or less.
00:36:28.14
Brad: um So that’s going to give you some idea.
00:36:28.94
Louise: Can you define what that means, minimum wage? Because here minimum wage is probably different than there.
00:36:33.77
Brad: Yeah.
00:36:33.76
Louise: Our minimum wage is like 17-something an hour Canadian.
00:36:36.55
Brad: i i I think generally in the U S even though we don’t have a national minimum wage, most States have moved to a $15 minimum wage, which was the recommended minimum wage like 15 years ago or something like that.
00:36:49.37
Brad: So it’s still not a living wage.
00:36:50.09
Louise: Can we translate that? Do you know what that is in terms of a yearly salary-ish?
00:36:56.70
Brad: Um, I don’t,
00:36:57.19
Louise: Or does it not say on the thing?
00:36:59.19
Brad: It doesn’t say it.
00:37:00.07
Louise: Oh, okay.
00:37:00.24
Brad: Yeah.
00:37:00.70
Louise: That’s fine.
00:37:01.31
Brad: Yeah. I don’t know what, what, what, what I’m sure are many of our math minded listeners are way ahead of us, but you know, 15,000 or $15 an hour times is what it would be.
00:37:14.27
Louise: I think it’ll be around $30,000, something like that.
00:37:16.50
Brad: yeah
00:37:16.52
Louise: Yeah. yeah
00:37:18.53
Brad: And then 18% make $0. Now, this isn’t breaking out. You know, some voice actors are hobbyists. They’re not trying to make any money. They do it. They do, I guess, audio dramas or audio books for, for, um for the hearing or the visually impaired audio books for the hearing impaired for the visually impaired and and whatnot. So, you know, but,
00:37:40.54
Brad: these numbers are what they are. And I think it’s super interesting um to see where, how it sort of shakes out.
00:37:49.61
Louise: Yeah, does it say, do you have it in front of you for, um ah like, what the percentage of full time full-time voiceover people?
00:37:58.62
Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s um yeah. It’s 7% pursue voice acting as a hobby, 45% pursue it part-time, and 48% pursue it full-time.
00:38:13.08
Brad: So it breaks down to pretty half and half.
00:38:14.03
Louise: Okay. That’s interesting, yeah.
00:38:16.25
Brad: Half of the people who call themselves voice actors are full-time, and and half are either part-time or just hobbyists.
00:38:19.86
Louise: aren’t are not full-time
00:38:25.20
Brad: I shouldn’t say just hobbyists, because that’s valid.
00:38:25.32
Louise: right yeah no I think we know what you mean by just that nobody’s knocking doing it as a hobby um okay so hopefully that um gives people an overview and uh
00:38:29.97
Brad: you know, if if that’s the level. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:38:43.40
Louise: Our next thing is, what are the basics in getting started? So Jackie kind of mentioned that.
00:38:50.21
Brad: yeah
00:38:50.82
Louise: She’s like, you know, people might be listening and just really not have any idea where to start.
00:38:52.59
Brad: yeah
00:38:56.74
Brad: yeah
00:38:56.89
Louise: And it’s a tricky one to answer. I’m going to and just say that up front because… everybody’s journey is different. um People come into it from all kinds of different angles.
00:39:04.76
Brad: Yeah.
00:39:07.45
Louise: Like I said, here, there are a lot of people in voiceover in, in you know, major centers like Vancouver, where I am, and Toronto, where they are screen actors who also do voiceover.
00:39:20.41
Louise: So this is, you know, probably not Um, that’s, not that’s not of the angle that, you know, ah most people who are a freelance voiceover actors from home are taking.
00:39:31.51
Brad: yeah
00:39:33.01
Louise: So we’re just kind of giving an overview and there really isn’t any right or wrong. Some people can honestly just fall into it. Like it that does happen. they People just fall in and they never get any coaching and they do great.
00:39:49.18
Louise: It’s extremely rare.
00:39:50.82
Brad: Yeah.
00:39:50.94
Louise: But we know at least one person who is doing amazingly. And um that’s been their journey. So um I don’t know. Why don’t you um kind of give an overview of how what you would say in the basics of getting started doing this freelance from home?
00:40:04.13
Brad: Yeah. and
00:40:07.20
Brad: Yeah. And I, there’s, yeah, like you said, there’s a lot of different ways to go about it and we can’t cover all of them. And some of them I think are more effective than others. Some of them I’d recommend more than others.
00:40:17.77
Brad: Some people have taken the paths that I would be like, why would you do that? And then they’re just killing it out there. So who knows? um But I’m going to assume you’re coming at this with no real experience, no real training as actor.
00:40:33.77
Brad: ah you know, Louise and I both came to this with a lot of theater training, but um maybe not the same technical training. And maybe, you know, I know I had to unlearn a lot to sort of back myself up to start moving forward again.
00:40:50.27
Brad: um But I’m going to sort of, if you’re coming at this and you’ve you’ve never done much theater and or on camera acting, and you just kind of want to get into it. I would, the tendency is to go out and buy the equipment first and then start to, you know, you go out and but you buy an expensive microphone and a good computer and an interface. We’re going to talk about these different things shortly.
00:41:15.41
Brad: I would take a step way back from all that and I would start working on your own skills and knowledge first. And the first thing I would do, I wouldn’t spend a nickel on a microphone or buy a super cheap USB microphone just to get started.
00:41:31.42
Brad: And I’m not saying to get started in your career. I’m saying to get started in learning what you know and what you don’t know. And I would recommend you print up some scripts. There’s tons of places for free scripts and, and stand by your mic or sit by your mic and just try it, right? Just start reading and recording and listening, practicing, thinking about what sounds right.
00:41:53.85
Brad: What doesn’t sound right to you, compare it to what you hear on the radio or are on pre-roll ads or whatever. ah until you start to get a feel for it before you even go to work with a coach, right?
00:42:06.80
Brad: Then once you have a little bit of comfort with your mic and you’ve experimented and you’ve practiced and you’ve tried things out, then maybe book a session with a coach. And that’s your first time to to see… to have someone objectively work with you and say, Hey, this is how I feel you sound where you are.
00:42:25.02
Brad: These are the things I think you should start working on. And then you can go and go through a period or process of addressing those things. Then come back to the coach again for, to reevaluate and then go back to practicing.
00:42:33.83
Louise: Thank you.
00:42:38.34
Brad: And then after doing that for a certain amount of, ah not for a certain, for an undetermined amount of time determined by how you do, ah then you’re going to start thinking about how do I actually start leveraging things to get working? How do you make that decision?
00:42:53.91
Brad: Again, working with your coach, your coach is going to tell you, Hey, I think you’re ready to, to start thinking about putting a demo together. And, or, Hey, I had this audition come across my desk. I think you’d be great for it. why don’t you try out?
00:43:06.87
Brad: but That’s, that’s how, if I were starting over from the beginning, that’s how I, that’s how I would do it. Um,
00:43:13.07
Louise: Yeah, I think that’s great. And can I just build on that?
00:43:16.95
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:17.11
Louise: um I don’t want to, you know, rehash what you said because I think you really covered it there.
00:43:17.20
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:43:21.96
Louise: I think um audiobooks have a fairly low barrier to entry um for various reasons because there’s a lot of independent… um um like publishers, like, and you know, authors that are just publishing self-published, is I guess how it’s worded.
00:43:34.11
Brad: yeah
00:43:39.60
Louise: Self-published authors who are looking for um narrators. And ACX, which is the audiobook creation exchange, um many people will start on ACX.
00:43:55.14
Louise: And now I’m not advocating this, but there is something called a royalty share thing where
00:44:00.92
Brad: you
00:44:02.23
Louise: you will narrate something and instead of getting paid, you just share any royalties that might ah come about, which is kind of a raw deal Again, I’ve never done it, but tons of people do it. And this is entirely up to you. You can also volunteer for reading um through various organizations, for like voiceover recordings of of um public domain books.
00:44:27.95
Louise: So if you just want to get your feet wet, um I feel like that’s a viable way to figure out whether you’re comfortable sitting in a dark, quiet…
00:44:40.27
Louise: I mean, I say dark because usually if you’ve got a lot of um acoustic treatment, generally a studio is is relatively dark, but it could be bright.
00:44:45.39
Brad: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:44:49.86
Louise: But sitting in a room by yourself and just reading aloud for long periods of time… And see how that feels for you. It might not suit your personality. You don’t really know until you get in there.
00:45:04.38
Louise: um and so And there’s also always going to be, for a long time, for me at least, and it still happens, is there there’s always sort of a psychological barrier between you and your microphone.
00:45:18.91
Louise: And you have to be able to get over that and break through that.
00:45:20.84
Brad: Yeah.
00:45:21.39
Louise: So practicing, like Brad said, is ah is a great way to do that. But if you were volunteering even, event um that can kind of get you one step closer to that level of comfort.
00:45:32.61
Louise: So I’m not telling people to work for free at all, but there are volunteer things you can do, or you can help out, um you know, self-published authors who just might not have a huge budget.
00:45:45.18
Louise: So I don’t know how you feel about what I just said.
00:45:45.60
Brad: yeah i don’t want to Yeah, I don’t want to dig too deeply into it.
00:45:47.72
Louise: You’re probably going to know.
00:45:50.73
Brad: i i um What you say is true. However, audiobooks, and you and I both know this, there’s so much work, and it it can be a really rough way to get started too. So just be aware.
00:46:05.14
Louise: Yeah.
00:46:05.90
Brad: Do a lot of research.
00:46:05.97
Louise: Like I said, I’m not i’m i not saying go in and just work for free.
00:46:08.80
Brad: Yep.
00:46:10.57
Louise: you You have to figure out what’s going to be best for you in those situations.
00:46:10.90
Brad: Yep.
00:46:13.97
Louise: But, I mean, it’s just, it seems to be an accepted thing in the industry. I’ve never done royalty share, Yeah,
00:46:20.66
Brad: I have, but I got absolutely hosed. I know some people make decent money and they get a you know the hundreds of dollars a month passive income in their bank accounts, but that was hasn’t been my experience.
00:46:32.11
Brad: so yeah i only do
00:46:32.66
Louise: yeah. yeah
00:46:33.98
Brad: and and i We should care clarify for audiobooks, there’s royalty share and then there’s PFH or per finished hour. Royalty share means you get half of the royalties when a book sells the author basically gives you gives up half of the royalty so that you can get them but they pay They pay you nothing up front to narrate their audiobooks So you’re really taking a chance if the book sells well You can do well if it doesn’t sell any copies at all you did all of that work for free Yeah Yeah and
00:46:59.37
Louise: Thank you for clarifying that because I didn’t catch myself saying something that people who are just starting out might not understand what royalty share means.
00:47:06.10
Brad: yeah and Yeah, and PFH means put per finished hour. um We calculate an hour as being 9,300 words. So we determine how much we ask for per 9,300 words, basically. So you can kind of round it off to 10,000 for simplicity’s sake. So let’s say you somebody has an 80,000-word book.
00:47:27.50
Brad: You figure that’s probably 8.8%. finished hours. So if I’m charging $300 per finished hour, it’s 8.8 times 300. Yeah.
00:47:36.63
Louise: Well, if you’re doing it by 10,000 and it’s 80,000, it’s eight finished hours, isn’t it?
00:47:40.27
Brad: yeah Right. i I was, I just know.
00:47:41.20
Louise: Yeah. If it’s 9,300, it’s 10,000. Yeah. I would say it’s around nine, but yeah, then it’s nine times whatever your finished rate is.
00:47:44.41
Brad: yeah I just know from experience. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah
00:47:49.80
Louise: And when you were starting, your finished hour is going to take you a really long time.
00:47:50.14
Brad: Yeah.
00:47:54.39
Louise: Like when I first started, i was about 10 to one production for audiobooks.
00:47:58.01
Brad: Yep. That’s about right.
00:47:59.56
Louise: So for every finished hour, it would take me 10 hours. So you need to be aware of what your time is worth as well. um that’s no longer how long it takes me. And I think you’re pretty fast now too, but um these are all things you learn with experience in terms of your workflow, your confidence reading, being able to read ahead, understanding how to use punch and roll, which is I’m not going to get into exactly what it is, but you’re basically editing on the fly.
00:48:09.85
Brad: Yeah.
00:48:24.91
Brad: Yeah.
00:48:26.12
Louise: Okay.
00:48:26.40
Brad: Yeah. I added it to the list of terms here too.
00:48:28.74
Louise: Okay, yeah.
00:48:29.74
Brad: Yeah.
00:48:29.78
Louise: Okay, so I think we’ve kind of covered ideas of how to get started. um
00:48:39.86
Brad: And notice it…
00:48:40.01
Louise: Oh, and no, we haven’t covered it because we, yeah, we’ve got a couple other things.
00:48:40.38
Brad: anyway
00:48:43.95
Brad: I was going to say, note that in our how you get started, we said nothing about auditioning.
00:48:44.09
Louise: Go ahead.
00:48:49.32
Brad: We said nothing about reaching out to agents. We said nothing about emailing video game companies. Those things aren’t included in getting started. That’s not getting started.
00:48:57.57
Louise: No.
00:48:58.74
Brad: that’s like That’s like five or six steps down the road from getting started. So note clue explicitly that we did not mention any of those things when we talked about how do you get started.
00:49:04.64
Louise: Exactly.
00:49:12.06
Brad: and
00:49:13.15
Louise: Exactly. Yeah. And then, um, just to expand on what you were saying about equipment and people sort of diving in and being like, I’m gonna get this amazing microphone and la da da da da.
00:49:22.87
Brad: Yeah.
00:49:24.18
Louise: Um, yeah, definitely don’t do that. And also understand that the treatment of your recording space is far more important than the equipment you’re using.
00:49:35.91
Louise: You can have, well, the treatment means your acoustic treatment.
00:49:36.56
Brad: What does that mean, treatment?
00:49:41.00
Louise: So, um,
00:49:41.82
Brad: is that Is that soundproofing? Is that the same thing as soundproofing, Louise?
00:49:44.15
Louise: it is Thank you for asking, Brad. It is not the same thing. um Soundproofing is actually very, very hard to achieve. So if you’re living in a loud area, and you might be looking at only recording at night or something.
00:50:00.05
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:00.30
Louise: But um yeah, soundproofing involves like decoupling your walls and your ceiling and your and your floor. And like if you’re trying to find a quiet space, you just got to find the quietest space you can within your house or your apartment.
00:50:11.25
Brad: yeah
00:50:13.76
Louise: um Unless you want to do like permanent structure kind of stuff or buy a whisper room, but that’s like way down the road.
00:50:20.13
Brad: And even that, even ah you know, even that, you know, yeah, you’re going to spend, if you’re trying to get soundproof, you’re looking at tens and tens of thousands of dollars just to, yeah.
00:50:20.31
Louise: So yeah, I don’t have a soundproof room. It’s quiet.
00:50:29.23
Louise: Yeah. Yeah. so um So treatment, when we talk acoustic treatment, we are talking things like um sound blankets or um like the acoustic foam treatment.
00:50:46.47
Louise: now And they’re not all created equal.
00:50:47.04
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:50:48.81
Louise: There’s the really cheap sort of shallow ones that actually will create more.
00:50:53.43
Brad: can make it worse.
00:50:53.68
Louise: ah They can still create reflection, which is basically like um when your voice bounces off a surface.
00:50:54.15
Brad: Yeah.
00:50:59.69
Brad: And that’s primarily what you’re trying to address with sound treatment, right?
00:50:59.69
Louise: You’re trying to… Yeah.
00:51:02.37
Brad: You’re trying to you want your you’re booth or your space, your recording space to be as as as acoustically dead as possible, right? You want no reverb at all bouncing off the walls or computer monitor, that sort of thing.
00:51:15.22
Louise: That’s right. And people often will think, well, you know, I’ll get in this small space and I’ll dampen it down with these um these um acoustic panels, but and then and then their sound is super boxy.
00:51:16.58
Brad: Yeah.
00:51:27.79
Brad: Yeah.
00:51:27.95
Louise: So it’s actually kind of tricky. And some of the best places to do this as a beginner are like in your closet where it’s full of clothes.
00:51:36.55
Brad: yeah
00:51:37.21
Louise: And even or even if you have a full sort of ah bookshelves around you, the books act as observ um sound absorbers. So there’s different ways to address it without spending a ton of money.
00:51:48.72
Louise: um So but yeah, you want to get that sorted out before you even worry about expensive equipment. You can have a great, like a really expensive, like Neumann mic and and a badly treated room and it will not sound good.
00:52:04.53
Louise: And the inverse is true.
00:52:04.65
Brad: Yeah.
00:52:05.85
Louise: So, you know, really, really well treated room um with a, with, with still a decent microphone, but some it’ll sound better.
00:52:08.26
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
00:52:13.32
Brad: yeah
00:52:15.35
Louise: So.
00:52:15.79
Brad: like a cheap mic in a well-treated space will sound a billion times better than an expensive mic in a poorly treated space, right?
00:52:23.02
Louise: Exactly.
00:52:23.87
Brad: If anything, though the nice mic is going to sound even worse because it’s going to be so sensitive that it’s picking up all of the the environmental noise and reverb.
00:52:30.83
Louise: Yeah.
00:52:33.41
Brad: Yeah.
00:52:33.61
Louise: Yeah. And obviously, if you you know, there’s so much information available on YouTube for this kind of stuff. Like um Mike DelGaudio, Booth Junkie, he’s great for that kind of thing.
00:52:39.88
Brad: Yeah.
00:52:42.83
Brad: Yeah, he’s amazing. Yeah. I spent so much time when I was starting watching his videos.
00:52:45.14
Louise: Yeah.
00:52:48.55
Louise: He’s really, really good. He gives a lot of information about, you know, you know, editing and sound treatments and all that stuff. Yeah. Love that guy.
00:52:58.37
Brad: Yep.
00:52:58.52
Louise: That’s booth the booth junkie on YouTube, Mike DelGaudio.
00:53:01.97
Brad: Yep.
00:53:03.04
Louise: Okay. We’ve covered that. And so now we’re getting into terms and acronyms that ah Jackie was just sort of saying, you know, we, we don’t know as beginners necessarily what a lot of these means.
00:53:04.60
Brad: Yeah.
00:53:10.02
Brad: That we, yeah.
00:53:14.81
Louise: So
00:53:15.19
Brad: Yeah, words that we sort of throw around between each other and maybe even on the podcast here. And we wanted to kind of circle back around and share what some of these things really are for people who may may not know.
00:53:26.71
Brad: um And maybe we can kind of speed around this a little bit.
00:53:26.90
Louise: Yeah.
00:53:29.01
Brad: I think some of these we’ve already talked to a little bit, but you want to just kind of take turns.
00:53:33.32
Louise: Yeah, you go ahead.
00:53:34.37
Brad: Okay, cool. The first one is genre, ah which I misspelled in the notes. Genre or niche, you’ve heard us talking about both of those, using those words. Genre is sort of the typical word that we use to describe the different the different types of voiceover that are. Audiobook versus commercial versus e-learning versus commercial versus video games.
00:53:57.71
Brad: ah I’ve started, some people do, and I’ve started to try and use the word niche. I just think that’s a more accurate word to describe that. So when we you hear us say genre or niche, that’s what we’re talking about.
00:54:09.80
Louise: Great. um So NAVA and CAVA. and This is the National Association of Voice Actors, if you’re in the United States. And CAVA is the Canadian version, the Canadian Association of Voice Actors. Those are both great associations to join. They have yearly memberships.
00:54:30.93
Louise: And if you are not in the place right now to afford that membership, they also offer a lot of free resources. However, do encourage joining because it’s not that expensive.
00:54:41.71
Louise: Although um if you’re at the very beginning of your ah career, they do vet um members.
00:54:48.27
Brad: Yeah.
00:54:48.34
Louise: So you do have to be at a certain point to actually join.
00:54:48.88
Brad: Yeah.
00:54:51.18
Louise: So I retract my previous statement, but you can check them out.
00:54:53.30
Brad: Yeah. they They do want you to be a professional.
00:54:54.46
Louise: They’re really amazing advocates for voice actors.
00:54:54.94
Brad: Yeah. they They also…
00:54:57.60
Louise: Yes, go ahead.
00:54:58.23
Brad: Yeah, they also do a lot of work advocating for voice actors in specifically in the context of AI competition and making sure we’re fairly paid and that AI use of our voice is consensual and whatnot.
00:55:05.67
Louise: Yes. Yep.
00:55:12.44
Brad: I’m a member. um Next we have GVAA, which is the Global Voice Acting Academy, which is fine. ah They’re a place to go to learn more about ah Voice acting, we probably wouldn’t have brought them up here, except GVAA has established what they call the GVAA Rate Guide, ah which is a list of rates for all the different niches, genres, or subgenres, what what we as an industry sort of agree that we’re going to charge.
00:55:44.71
Brad: And so in general, when you’re doing your pricing, you can refer to the GVAA rate guide. If you run into somebody who’s like, oh, that sounds expensive. You can say, well, I hear you. I i know it’s not a trivial investment, but ah you know i I try to maintain my pricing in line with the GVAA great line so great ah price guide.
00:56:03.92
Louise: Great guide.
00:56:04.58
Brad: So it’s it’s basically set a pricing standard for our industry.
00:56:08.13
Louise: Sure. Yeah.
00:56:08.84
Brad: Does everybody follow it? No, but that’s the intention.
00:56:10.84
Louise: So the caveat to that is that it is American.
00:56:13.84
Brad: Yes, I’m sorry.
00:56:14.45
Louise: So if you are in any other country, it actually will not apply to you.
00:56:14.84
Brad: That’s right.
00:56:19.38
Louise: So the better thing to look at, because the state the States is its own animal, and Canada is similar in terms of rates, but Europe and Great Britain, for example, are it’s completely different.
00:56:19.47
Brad: Yeah.
00:56:34.62
Louise: um Broadcast rates are way different. So, so in that case, you can go to gravy for the brain and they have their own rate guard guide that you can look at by country.
00:56:42.44
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:56:45.87
Louise: Now, obviously they can’t include every single country, but those are really, really good.
00:56:50.72
Brad: It’s pretty extensive, though.
00:56:52.37
Louise: What’s that?
00:56:53.20
Brad: It’s pretty extensive, though.
00:56:54.54
Louise: It’s extensive. Yes. I thought you said expensive. um
00:56:57.44
Brad: No.
00:56:58.55
Louise: So those are two really great resources, resources for rates and keeping in mind their guides. So, you know, you’re running your own business. So you, you get to sort of set um rates and, and depending on your client’s budget, how much flexibility you might have with that is up to you.
00:57:19.99
Brad: Yeah.
00:57:21.08
Louise: Okay, so DAW or DAW.
00:57:23.14
Brad: Cool. Yeah, so you’re…
00:57:25.34
Louise: This is your digital audio workstation. So this is the recording software and editing software that you would be using. And there are many different accepted, really great DAWs out there. I personally love Adobe Audition, and I have tried others, and it is my favorite.
00:57:49.27
Louise: And Brad, you use Reaper. I could not get the hang of Reaper.
00:57:51.48
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:57:52.88
Louise: It was like a foreign language to me.
00:57:54.42
Brad: However, I absolutely love Reaper. Like, it just, the trick is to figure out which dot works the way your brain works.
00:58:00.01
Louise: The way that your brain works. Now, these are paid DAWs.
00:58:01.77
Brad: Yeah.
00:58:03.61
Louise: Most of them are There was one free DAW that I started with, which is um Audacity.
00:58:03.99
Brad: Mm-hmm.
00:58:11.07
Louise: And I know of people who are… bringing in good incomes from voiceover who are still using audacity so a lot of people poo poo it but it’s still fine i think the the issue that that some people take with it is that it is what they would call destructive so my understanding of that is just that your your raw like your original recordings can disappear if you don’t save them properly or something is that right oh is it
00:58:40.39
Brad: it’s It’s a little more, it’s a little deeper than that. It means when you make a change to something, to a piece of audio, you’re literally changing the recording of the audio itself.
00:58:51.55
Brad: And so if you change the pitch of something, you’ve changed the pitch of it and you can change it back, but you’re, you’re, You’re not undoing what you did. You’re doing more to it.
00:59:02.15
Brad: So, you know, you can make the pitch higher, but then if you want to make it lower, you got to take that higher pitch and make it lower again. If you trim clip something, it’s clipped.
00:59:10.28
Louise: Right. So but basically with Audacity, you have be very sure that you’re saving every single step in your editing process or you’re going to.
00:59:15.48
Brad: Yeah. Whereas non-destructive editing, any and any any audio clip in my timeline is, it’s sort of like it’s a copy of the original.
00:59:18.62
Louise: Yeah.
00:59:25.55
Brad: So I can do whatever I want to it, but the original still exists. So I can undo it.
00:59:29.69
Louise: Yes. Yeah.
00:59:30.73
Brad: I can just drag it back and start all over. um So I don’t want to get into it too deeply, but
00:59:36.66
Louise: Yeah, and it’s just, I mean, Audacity’s fine. it’s It’s not quite as robust, right? So there’s going to be way more things that you can do in the the um the paid DAWs.
00:59:48.99
Brad: And the page paid options.
00:59:50.10
Louise: Like, one of the things I love about Audacity is you get, you get and I know it’s the same with Reaper, um the option to view things with a, like, spectral view, which kind of gives you more than just the waveform.
00:59:50.70
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
01:00:00.20
Brad: yeah
01:00:02.15
Louise: I don’t know if that’s something that
01:00:04.28
Brad: i that’s I don’t know. Some people love that. I don’t know. You can do that on Reaper, but maybe Reaper’s implementation of it isn’t as helpful, but I i i find no value in it whatsoever.
01:00:09.20
Louise: you don’t do You don’t use that? No.
01:00:13.37
Brad: But that’s, yeah.
01:00:13.45
Louise: Oh, interesting. I love spectral view. Okay.
01:00:15.62
Brad: i
01:00:16.02
Louise: Anyways, moving on.
01:00:17.16
Brad: Yeah, I think maybe I just haven’t seen the value in it. It’s not that it doesn’t have value.
01:00:20.99
Louise: Okay.
01:00:22.28
Brad: All right, let’s move on. The next term we have on our list is P2P, which means pay to play. coming from ah or spent Having spent a little bit of time in the music industry, pay the idea of paying to play is something you normally avoid, like the plague, but in the voiceover industry, that’s not the case.
01:00:40.83
Brad: All that means is you’re on a platform that gets you access to… auditions and to um potential clients or buyers, but you have to pay a little bit to participate in it.
01:00:53.09
Brad: um
01:00:53.11
Louise: Yeah.
01:00:53.77
Brad: Some examples of this would be voice.com, Voices123, Bodalgo. um Basically, you pay x amount of money, and ideally you’ll make X times 10 back in your bookings, um but but it’s a way to get access to auditions that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
01:01:11.91
Louise: Right. and And you’ll usually hear it said quickly as just P2P.
01:01:16.57
Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:01:17.72
Louise: So that’s what that is. Okay, next we have agent slash manager. so what is an agent and what is a manager? So an agent is somebody that represents you and um finds opportunities in the form of auditions. You audition, and then if you get the part…
01:01:40.77
Louise: um you’re giving the agents a cut. Usually it’s 15 to 20%. You’re never paying them upfront. So any agent or agency who wants you to give them money for them to represent you upfront is a scam um that that never, ever, ever, ever happens.
01:01:59.01
Louise: If they’re telling you that you need a demo, like a voiceover demo, and they make them and you have to pay them 500 a thousand bucks or whatever the thing is, also a scam. um agents and and demo producers are two different entities.
01:02:14.43
Louise: So, and then within the sort of agent world, you can have multiple agents representing you in different countries, in different regions of your own country, etc.
01:02:28.11
Louise: um Whereas a manager is more of a person who manages your career and they of course they get you access to auditions that’s part of it too but they’re going to be taking a cut of all of your earnings whether it’s self-sourced or not um so so that’s you know just a decision you have to make for your own career um many many people do this without an agent or a manager so it’s definitely not a necessary part of the puzzle it’s just
01:02:56.65
Brad: Yeah.
01:03:00.22
Brad: Absolutely.
01:03:01.26
Louise: Yeah, just kind of depends what you want out of your career. um
01:03:05.80
Brad: In fact, um and it’s different than like, if you’re a Hollywood actor, right? That’s a whole different situation. And I think a lot of times people think of having an agent is that like, it’s one person that you show up in their office when you’re, you know, grumpy and they like,
01:03:22.56
Brad: I don’t know, buy you lunch and then get you work. I don’t know. Like, it’s not like that. Like you can have eight agents.
01:03:27.70
Louise: It’s not a hand-holding. No, no.
01:03:29.13
Brad: They’re just, they’re just another, it’s kind of like a P2P, except it’s a little bit, it’s one degree more personal. Right.
01:03:34.77
Louise: Yeah. And if you’re lucky, like I’m really lucky with my agent, we do have a very good, we have an actual relationship, which I think think is ideal with any agent’s talent relationship, um where the the agent understands where you’re at in your career.
01:03:35.69
Brad: Um,
01:03:50.97
Louise: They understand what your strengths are, and they’re going to kind of play to those strengths when they’re um sending you things. So they know that there’s a chance that you can get what they’re sending as opposed to some agencies agencies or or agents where they might just have tons of people on the roster and everything’s a cattle call.
01:04:10.13
Louise: So they’re not really discerning between talent, what they send to whom.
01:04:10.55
Brad: Yeah.
01:04:15.13
Brad: Yeah, that’s right.
01:06:21.52
Brad: All right. Next, we have ACX, which I know we mentioned earlier, is the audiobook Creators exchanged Exchange. it’s opened It’s owned by Audible, which is owned by Amazon. So I don’t know, man. Depending how you feel about Amazon these days, you may or may not want to get involved.
01:06:36.87
Brad: But it is a place that Audible has set up so that Authors, most primarily self-published or very small indie presses, can find narrators on an exchange where they’ll post there um you know they’ll post auditions, and then you go to ACX and you audition, and if they like you, they’ll hire you too.
01:06:59.47
Brad: ah narrate their book. And it’s a whole platform where you do all of your communication and and everything on that platform. It’s not the only way to get audiobooks, to get audiobook work, ah of your but work um but that’s sort of like the industry standard. And we already talked about royalty share versus per finished hour, but that’s kind of where that model kind of was invented.
01:07:23.63
Brad: There are several um alternatives, I’ll say. Authors Republic, um is very similar to ACX. You can go there as ah as a narrator and create a profile and auditions show up there.
01:07:35.75
Brad: you can it’s The distribution there will go, if you upload your audiobook there, it will be distributed to hundreds of audiobook retailers, including Amazon.
01:07:47.66
Brad: ah So that’s often a good option too, as opposed to ACX.
01:07:52.51
Louise: Okay. And then the next one… Oh, you’re going have to take this because i don’t I don’t actually know what they are, so
01:07:58.04
Brad: Okay, sure. Okay, XLR versus USB. These are two different ways of plugging in a microphone, basically. um USB is probably what you’re most familiar with. They used to be the little the little rectangular plugs, and now they’re little oval, like pill-shaped plugs that you plug in.
01:08:16.25
Brad: ah versus XLR, which looks like if you’ve ever been to you know ah an open mic or a staged with music performance, it’s like the the white the cable ends in kind of a tube with three little pins on the inside.
01:08:31.74
Brad: That’s xlr
01:08:31.91
Louise: Right. Got it.
01:08:33.39
Brad: A USB mic is going to have the audio processor, the the converter inside the microphone itself. ah Generally, there are a few exceptions now, but generally they’re really low quality um converters to convert it from analog to digital signal to send it into your computer.
01:08:54.14
Brad: ah They use cheaper chips. they you know they they just They’re just not made as well as a um a um interface ah standalone interface. And with an XLR mic, chances are so chances are, not necessarily, often will be a higher quality mic.
01:09:13.20
Brad: And there’s no sort of processing that happens in the mic itself. ah Instead, it plugs into an interface, which is a box that does all of the processing that your USB mic did inside the mic. So they use nicer ah chips.
01:09:28.13
Brad: They have better software, better firmware. You’re going to get a much better sound than that plugs into your computer. so USB is fine for consumer level stuff or maybe podcasting, I guess, or if you’re just recording for fun.
01:09:41.67
Brad: But anytime you want to do any sort of professional level recording, either as a voice actor or a musician or as a podcaster, chances you’re going to look for an XLR type connector on your mic.
01:09:53.15
Brad: So that’s XLR versus USB.
01:09:53.46
Louise: Right. Well, that’s great.
01:09:56.87
Brad: Can I just take the next one? Cause it kind of goes, and I just kind of did is your interface. And we, you’ll hear us talk about interface from time to time.
01:10:00.87
Louise: Yeah, absolutely.
01:10:04.64
Brad: That’s just a box that converts our, the analog, our analog voice goes into the microphone, gets turned into, you know, electrical waves. that then need to get turned into ones and zeros that our computers can understand. The interface is just a little box that does that, but that little box is super important.
01:10:23.16
Brad: You can buy them for $99. You can buy them for $8,000. A good professional interface is going to be anywhere from probably $300 to $1,000, $1,500.
01:10:35.95
Brad: fifteen hundred dollars
01:10:37.51
Louise: Right. Okay, and then we’ve got… ah studio monitor headphones cans. I don’t know how much detail we really want to go into. People call… So basically headphones, a lot of people in the industry just call them cans, and not everybody uses them for recording. i I don’t always use them.
01:11:01.24
Louise: Excuse me. I’ll only use them if I’m using punch and roll, which we’ll talk about in a minute, but you have to be able to hear when you’re using punch and roll.
01:11:06.89
Brad: Mm-hmm.
01:11:09.53
Louise: So I’ll have one on kind of half my ear and one off. I do find recording with cans on… um I get a bit more self-conscious. And once you’re kind of used to mic placement and mic technique and you understand, um you know, your volume and and stuff like that of of your voice and how to adjust your gain and everything, um then you don’t really need headphones.
01:11:35.44
Louise: But some people have a preference to have them on. So that’s fair.
01:11:38.50
Brad: I prefer to have them on one ear.
01:11:40.14
Louise: You do.
01:11:40.27
Brad: But I use punch and roll for everything.
01:11:40.74
Louise: Okay. Oh, just one ear. Yeah.
01:11:42.96
Brad: So to me, I always need to you hear my cue coming in.
01:11:43.60
Louise: Right.
01:11:47.21
Brad: And I will also say, when we’re talking about headphones, we’re talking about studio monitor headphones, which are not your consumer headphones like Beats or your’re your’re um ah you know your video game headphones or regular consumer headphones.
01:12:02.51
Brad: Those consumer headphones tend to ah like they boost the bass because we really like to hear bass when we’re listening to music or playing video games. But you don’t want that when you’re when you’re monitoring your voiceover. You want a very smooth ah signal.
01:12:20.30
Brad: You don’t want a but any extra bass or any extra treble added in there. You just want the nice, natural, clean sound.
01:12:27.83
Louise: Right. And when we talk about studio monitors, so some people have just, um I used to have studio monitors like like speakers. that That’s what you mean when you wrote monitors, right?
01:12:38.11
Brad: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And it’s the same thing. Like you would not, you’re not going to use commercial speakers for this. You bought, you want to look for specifically studio monitors that are little speakers and you you set them up. So they’re sort of balanced left and right. So your head is in the middle basically.
01:12:57.83
Brad: Yeah.
01:12:58.43
Louise: Got it. Okay, then we’re talking microphones. um So kind we’ll do this real quick. I’m just going to pull up a quick definition. Condenser shotgun dynamic microphones.
01:13:09.69
Louise: So um most commonly used would be, I guess, probably condenser.
01:13:10.65
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
01:13:16.28
Louise: They’re known for high sensitivity, detailed sound, and the ability to capture a wide frequency range.
01:13:16.38
Brad: yeah
01:13:22.12
Louise: um And then dynamic microphones. Are those the ones that people use mostly for podcasts, right?
01:13:27.83
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
01:13:28.97
Louise: Yeah.
01:13:30.09
Brad: 99% of the time when you see ah podcaster with like this sort of the big, it’s, it’s almost the size of a tin can, but a little longer and it’s black.
01:13:37.87
Louise: Yeah, so those are not voiceover microphones.
01:13:38.08
Brad: Right. Like exactly.
01:13:40.90
Louise: um So really you’re going to be choosing between a condenser and a shotgun, or you might have both. um Brad and I both use shotgun, and that’s it is a type of condenser microphone with a highly directional pickup pattern.
01:13:53.53
Louise: So um it says, ah you know, it’s ideal for capturing sound from a distance or in noisy environments. It has kind of become for a lot of people to go to mic for home based voiceover businesses.
01:14:05.97
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
01:14:07.80
Louise: um That doesn’t mean you don’t need a treated space or anything like that.
01:14:11.14
Brad: Right.
01:14:11.82
Louise: um Obviously, you still do, but it’s not, it’s just not quite as, it’s it’s it’s almost helps cancel out some external noise um in ways that a condenser won’t necessarily.
01:14:24.63
Brad: Yeah. You basically get a lot of the detail of a condenser mic, but it’s a lot more forgiving in environmental sound.
01:14:30.32
Louise: Yeah, so Brad and I both use the Sennheiser MKH 416, or people just call it the 416 or the 416, I guess, usually.
01:14:39.07
Brad: Yeah. yeah, yeah.
01:14:40.39
Louise: um And like I said, become a go-to, but um I don’t know really what else I can say about it.
01:14:47.85
Brad: Yeah, no, that’s about right. Yeah, I think that’s good.
01:14:49.08
Louise: That’s about right.
01:14:50.73
Brad: ah Next is Walla. You kind of already described this. It’s basically when you have a group of people in a room around a microphone and they’re like, watermelon, watermelon. You know what I mean? Like, um yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:15:00.45
Louise: and Exactly. Or laughing or, yeah. And they they’ll, yeah.
01:15:03.51
Brad: and To get crowd noise or party noise or background noise. Yeah.
01:15:08.39
Louise: Yeah. and punch and roll so we were we’ve talked about this a few times so brad you say you use it all the time i i mostly will use it for long form just because i feel like well let me tell everybody what it is so it’s when you’re recording and you say you make a mistake so i’m like you know hi brad how are you doing and then i have a flub
01:15:14.67
Brad: Yeah. Yeah.
01:15:32.30
Louise: So I stop the recording, I track back to where I made the mistake, I hit record again, and in punch and roll, I can choose how far it will pick up from. So so it might be right from the beginning of the line, hi Brad, how are you?
01:15:47.82
Louise: And then it starts recording again. So I can hear the preceding line or part of the line, depending on what I choose, because you can set this to whatever you want in your DAW.
01:15:59.14
Louise: um and then you just pick it up kind of seamlessly so it’s sort of in that way it’s editing on the fly you make a mistake you stop you put put your cursor back to where you want to pick it up from and you hear yourself back and i often when i’m using punchable i don’t know about you brad but i will um actually speak along with myself to make sure that i’ve got the right tone and everything and um
01:16:19.47
Brad: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:16:22.81
Brad: Yeah.
01:16:24.96
Louise: Yeah, so that pretty much covers it. But the reason that I won’t always use it in short form, like especially for auditions, is because I do feel like there’s a bit of an interruption to flow.
01:16:37.35
Louise: And um that’s just my own personal thing. Like if I just want to keep going, and in that case, I use…
01:16:41.22
Brad: Yeah, and that’s fair. Hmm.
01:16:45.56
Louise: A dog clicker. And that just gives on my you on my um on my waveform and my DAW, it gives me two distinct long lines so I know where the mistake is and I can just easily edit out everything that doesn’t need to be there.
01:17:00.00
Brad: Yeah. Yeah. Whereas I, I just punch and roll everything. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t feel, i don’t feel it causes a, ah for me, a hiccup in, in the performance. I i just know. Cause I, like if it’s a single line, but well, if it’s a single line, I’ll probably just rerecord it, but anything longer than what I would just, you know, rerecord, I’ll, I’ll stop, I’ll roll back and I’ll, I’ll pick up from before. or even if I just didn’t like the second half of the read, you know what I mean? Like, i don’t, I went down instead of up on that.
01:17:30.52
Brad: And I didn’t land the end of the sentence the way I wanted to. I can cut back to the middle and then just do the part that I wanted to redo.
01:17:35.05
Louise: Right. Hmm.
01:17:41.01
Brad: Yeah. i I mean, that’s just, my brain just works that way. And I’ve just gotten pretty efficient with it that I’m happy to work that way.
01:17:47.51
Louise: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I think we’ve covered everything we want to cover. And we’re we’re almost at an hour and 20. So we should probably wrap it up.
01:17:54.83
Brad: Yeah, this is… Although there’s a little cutout, I think. Yeah, let’s let’s let’s bring this home here. I think this is a longer episode, but and there was a lot to get covered here. I hope this was helpful to people.
01:18:06.62
Brad: Either you are just getting started or you’re curious and and hopefully we like shed some light on some things for you. Or you’re experienced voice actor and you’re jumping and you’re bouncing in your seat because we got something wrong.
01:18:19.57
Brad: Hey man, contact us. We’d love to hear what we got wrong at the inside, uh, contact at the inside voice podcast.com. Um,
01:18:30.68
Brad: cause you know, we know what we’ve learned, what we’ve learned, but maybe you’ve learned something different and we’d love to hear about it.
01:18:37.97
Louise: Yeah, exactly. um Thanks to Jackie Blackmore for the idea, for the the feedback for this.
01:18:44.40
Brad: Yay, Jackie, Jackie Blackmore. That’s my Jackie Blackmore song.
01:18:47.02
Louise: i hope I hope it helped Jackie as well.
01:18:48.22
Brad: That’s her theme song. but I’ve been working on that.
01:18:51.03
Louise: And yeah, just write in if there’s anything we missed or messed up or whatever.
01:18:55.87
Brad: Yeah, thanks.
01:18:57.99
Louise: Okay.
01:18:58.06
Brad: All right, Luis. It was awesome hanging out with you again, as always.
01:19:01.07
Louise: You too, Brad.
01:19:02.35
Brad: Yeah.
01:19:03.74
Louise: Right, and I think we’ll just, um I’ll just ah edit in the the outro and we’ll skip saying a thing because we don’t have one written and we’re running out of time.
01:19:03.89
Brad: Well…
01:19:11.60
Brad: oh yeah, we forgot to do that this time. Oh, man.
01:19:13.77
Louise: Yeah, that’s okay.
01:19:15.82
Brad: Yeah.
01:19:16.10
Louise: All right, well, thanks again.
01:19:17.65
Brad: Yeah. Great hanging out.
01:19:19.73
Louise: You too.
01:19:19.88
Brad: And thank you, everybody, for listening in. It was awesome hanging out with you guys as well for a little while.
01:19:25.23
Louise: Yeah, totally. Thanks, everybody.
01:19:27.07
Brad: maybe there’s Maybe there’s music playing right now.
01:19:29.51
Louise: There definitely is, or will be.
01:19:32.68
Brad: All right. Talk to you later, Louise.
01:19:34.35
Louise: Okay, bye, Brad.
01:19:35.76
Brad: Bye.