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    How To Move from Radio To Voice Overs
    How To Move from Radio To Voice Overs
    How To Move from Radio To Voice Overs
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    How To Move from Radio To Voice Overs

    By Kate McClanaghan

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    About this ebook

    There’s a dramatic difference between having a successful career in radio and attaining a successful career in the voice-over industry. There’s a terrific difference in what you can make as well. The voice over business and achieving a comfortable level of success is a more attainable goal today than ever before—provided you understand the differences between these two fields, what’s truly required of you to be successful, and how to establish and run your small business as a professional voice actor.

    Discover the industry standards spelled out in detail in How To Move From Radio To Voice Overs. Discover trade secrets to securing voice acting jobs through the use of today’s most common and widely-used technology.

    Most seasoned, successful business owners will tell you that it generally takes three to five years to establish any small business. The same is true for the voiceover and acting business provided you are utilizing the tools necessary to running your voiceover and acting career.

    This remarkably dynamic industry is dependent on multiple media, promotions, communications, and the technologies that drive them. However, in order for art to meet commerce, you need to know How To Move From Radio To Voice Overs to establish and further your career as a professional talent. Learn the essentials required to offer you the greatest opportunities in promoting yourself and maintaining your voice acting career regardless of where you live or experience level to land voice overs and on-camera jobs.

    Discover what no voice acting classes will teach you from the author of The SOUND ADVICE Encyclopedia of Voice-over & the Business of Being a Working Talent and one of the most astute experts in the voice acting and entertainment field to allow you the best chance to secure voice acting jobs as well as on-camera work alike.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateNov 25, 2013
    ISBN9781483512822
    How To Move from Radio To Voice Overs

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      Book preview

      How To Move from Radio To Voice Overs - Kate McClanaghan

      Advice

      Chapter 1

      Radio Vs. Voice Over

      It’s a common misconception that if you’re in radio then you must be in voice overs, when in fact, they are two separate and very different worlds. The truth is if you are in radio—it’s very likely you wish you were in voice overs. Precious few successfully discover how to move from radio to voice overs because, much like theater, people in radio will starve for their art.

      Most of the yearly graduates from various universities and trade schools for broadcasting and production often find themselves becoming one of the great nomadic populace that dedicate themselves to radio: in part because they love the medium and also due to their initial aspirations to becoming a voice actor. Radio seems a logical enough route at the onset should you want to get into voice overs.

      However, after dedicating years to small and medium market radio, requiring these committed individuals do five to eight shows a week (typically six to eight hours long a piece), as well as write, voice, and produce no less than 150 station promos a week (to keep the station afloat with endorsement and advertising money), and all for a meager paycheck that is typically $5,000 to $8,500 below poverty level. The main thing driving these people is their love for the medium and the fact that radio has become the devil they know. There’s comfort in what’s familiar.

      To add to this, people in radio find themselves out of work every six to eighteen months and not for any fault of their own. These are extremely dedicated people by and large, but due to the fact that the small- or medium-market station they found employment with in Baton Rouge, for instance, changed formats from adult contemporary to all talk, or the station was bought by Cirrus, or perhaps they simply hit the pay limit at that station and they are now being replaced with people who are $2 less an hour. (Can I get a Grapes of Wrath reference here, please?)

      As pitiful a picture as I may be painting here, the plot thickens when you discover many bad performance habits are generated with all those years in the radio trenches. Hard-sell deliveries don’t translate well to commercial or narrative voice-over. Unfortunately, radio talent tend to develop a very sell-y sounding delivery that becomes ingrained in every read and is very hard to break. Even though you might think all that experience in front of a mic would add to their value as a voice-over, these talent typically address the mic the same way for everything they do, regardless of what the script requires of them. So their deliveries aren’t exactly natural or versatile, which can be a real deal killer in voice-over.

      To make matters worse (yes, there’s more) these talent are used to delivering one take and one take ONLY. Now, as a novice, you might think being One-Take-Jake to be some sort of selling point. Instead, it’s the polar opposite: To be a successful voice-over you’re expected to offer options with each take, rather than offering the same inflection again and again with little or no variation from one take to the next. The reason being: you’re trying to satisfy the production demands of a number of people, and to take direction (if and when it’s given) and apply it immediately. This isn’t done in a single take and serves only to make a radio talent feel as if they failed in some way, simply because they aren’t used to this standard commercial process in which most voice overs are professionally produced.

      There are literally masses of radio talent roaming the country, attempting to suss out a living in the industry they know and love: radio. So, it stands to reason, these are the folks who populate and drive pay-to-play (P2P) sites such as voice123.com and voices.com, both popular voice-over job sites among radio talent that offers nonunion talent paying voice-over opportunities from all over the country and Canada.

      What’s Your Rate?

      Professional voiceovers have only recently had to ponder the question, What’s your rate? Historically that’s a question a producers, casting directors, and talent agents answer, not talent. Yet in radio circles, where they are used to writing, voicing, and producing hundreds of spots a week for local station vendors, professional recording engineers are replaced with hurried edits off a radio talent’s laptop; seasoned producers, casting directors, and talent agents are replaced with anxiety-driven, bargain-basement rates to vendors that would probably rise to the occasion if they were given a realistic estimate.

      Instead, radio talent, so worried they will not get the job unless they dramatically low-ball the rate, act on this dreadful misconception: I’ll give them the first one for $5, and charge a higher rate later on. To that I say, Good luck!

      The problem is you set a precedent with the first job you do with a new production client. And if you tell a new client your rate is $5, for instance, they will expect that same rate again on the next job. In fact they’ll base their next budget on the original quote you offered. So, why would they use you again if your rate suddenly inflates to $250 on the next booking? ($250 is the average rate for a voice-over on a basic nonunion small-market radio spot.) You can’t very well charge 50 times what you initially charged and expect to hang on to that client for continued business, even if you did forewarn them. They probably won’t remember and will only have canceled checks in their past accounts to go by with the original devalued rate. The point is, this won’t make your client happy, and rightfully so. Would you be okay with that if you were in their shoes? Charging below-basement rates to new clients serves only to devalue your work and the work of others in the profession, as well as devaluing the worth of talent agents and recording engineers alike, whose skills and expertise are completely overlooked in this scenario.

      Low-balling your rate

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