Voice Acting: Are You The E-Learning Client’s Go-To VO Talent For More Work? Three Tips, by Rick Gordon
VOICE ACTING
Are You The E-Learning Client’s Go-To
VO Talent For More Work? Three Tips …
June 21, 2016
By Rick Gordon
Voice Talent & Owner
e-LearningVoices.com & CommercialVoices.com
The e-Learning business keeps humming along,
and savvy clients are looking for ways to trim budgets and get the most value
possible from VO talents.
And it’s well known that e-learning clients like to re-hire VO talents who they have
worked with. They are becoming quite
friendly and most are pleasantly surprised about the stretch they can go with
their golden voice choices.
Here are three ways you can help them stick with you …
1. LET ‘EM LISTEN AS YOU RECORD
If you can establish
direct connections with clients, as talent do at e-LearningVoices.com, you might find the relationships graduate to more than just a buy and sell arrangement.
Clients are increasing asking talents for permission to listen-in
while auditions and projects are recorded. They love
the phone patch, Skype or other online connection – or just a portable phone planted near the
microphone – which lets them add their two bits to the production.
And this is a great problem solver when
Instructional Designers (ID) need to bring their clients in to participate in the
production.
More and more ID’s are
also having problems with their end user clients when hiring voice talents. The real-time connection during auditions can ease problems arising from
tone-deaf clients who think they are Producers.
Of course, selecting VO talents by committee is never
a good idea, but due to production costs it seems there are more cooks wanting
to get into the kitchen even if they can only boil water.
The solution? Listen in and approve the talent and read style at the same time. Brilliant! The onus is now on the end user client. Whew! This is a relief for both the voice talent and
the creative e-learning production people.
2. VOICE-ONLY ON DEMOS
One of our larger clients recently slapped
me on the knuckles for letting VO talents put music and sfx on their
demos. OUCH!
She said, “I ruled out any demos with music or
sfx. We do not use these accoutrements
in our productions, so why would we need them in a demo?”
After explaining to her that all of our member
talents run their own business according to their own protocols (I gotta find a
way out of this, right?), I agreed that it might be difficult for some
producers (little shot here) to visualize the tone of voice without the music
– but yes, it is not necessary.
She added that she found music and sound effects annoying and made it difficult to hear the real voices, tonal qualities etc.
3. PLUG YOUR MULTI-VOICES
As I said, clients are becoming
clever and creative in their use of VO talents. And some are asking talents to voice scripts as two or more different
people. (See my earlier article on this, Do You Do Character
Voices? We’re Not Just Talkin’ Cartoons.)
The main reason for this is that the second
and/or third voice in a script may only have a few words, or two lines at the
most.
The Instructional Designers want
to cut down on the time to search for additional talent, so they throw out this
request just to see if they can get a bite.
It’s a great idea. The more character lines you can record, the
more moola for your stash!
When you can
make direct contact with a client, take advantage of the many
opportunities that might be available. For instance, you might say,
“The script for my character is great. I am looking forward to giving it my all, but
tell me – do you have any small bit parts that are only a few words or a sentence
or two that I might audition for? How
about titles or introductions? Any of
those required? Would you consider me to play more than one character in this
production?”
Establishing an “I want to help” relationship
with your client can never hurt. Just by
offering to assist in the production, you will be a more memorable professional and you might even
give the ID some ideas for the next project he is working on.
And the point? You are the go-to guy/girl for that!