Unresolved questions on voiceovers? I’ll see what I can do!

Why are voiceover classes so insanely expensive compared to regular acting classes of similar length?

Voiceover classes require a lot of personal attention. The best classes have fewer than ten students, and due to the fact that your coach is being paid for his or her time as well as the use of that equipment (and perhaps the additional technician or rental of studio facilities altogether), this sets the bar higher for tuition than a “regular acting class.” Additionally, the Los Angeles voiceover market is extremely competitive. The SAG Rate Handbook shows a rate of $614 per ten-minute film segment for voiceover! Due to the fact that voiceover artists are potentially earning tens of thousands of dollars a month in their line of work, the classes for ongoing training (and private sessions) can be very expensive. The market will bear it! This is part of the reason many people seek out shortcuts into the voiceover market. They want to try and make money at it first and then invest in classes and a demo. Quite simply, in this market, that ain’t gonna happen!

Which books are the best, out of all the voiceover books out there?

(Click on any author’s name to see the recommended books.) Most frequently recommended (again, by working voiceover artists) were books by Teri Apple, James Alburger, Elaine A. Clark, Alice Whitfield, Molly Ann Mullin, and Susan Blu. Additionally, a new book (due out in June, 2005) by Joan Baker looks really exciting to me, simply because it is the same premise as a book my partner and I have coming out in June, 2005, except this particular book is focused on the voiceover market! Joan interviewed working voiceover artists to learn how they “made it,” get tips on the business of voiceover, and removing obstacles from a voiceover career.

Now, these book recommendations aside, you should note that, consistently, my sources told me books are “fine,” but training is where the real lessons happen. Bottom line: buy a book to learn about this part of the industry, but don’t think of it as a replacement for tuition.

I have a noisy mouth. A sound technician pointed this out during playback for me. It’s as if the moisture in my mouth makes a “smacking” sound when I speak. Is there anything I could use to “dry up” my mouth or are there techniques I could use to control this sort of thing?

The most-frequently mentioned “technique” for fixing such things was, of course, training (and lots of it). Also, voiceover artists recommend eating apple slices before recording, drinking warm tea with lemon during the session, and drinking plenty of water every day. If moisture or dryness comes from nerves, simply increasing confidence will help with that. Note that sometimes it’s impossible to eliminate all mouth noises. As busy voiceover artist Julie O’Malley told me, “The best preparation is practice. Record yourself and pay close attention to where and when your mouth makes noises. It takes time to retrain yourself out of speaking habits that you’ve had your whole life. Once you can figure out how the noises happen, it’s a matter of total self-awareness all the time when you’re recording.”

What is the industry standard format for voiceover demos? CD? Cassette? Mp3? DAT?

Without question, you must have a CD version of a voiceover demo. An Mp3 (or .wav, or .aiff) copy on your computer is also valuable when you are asked to email a copy (or, better yet, an Mp3 copy on your website is wonderful, since you can then simply email a link to the file, rather than sending a large audio file around). Many studios are “totally digital” now and, while they’ll have decks that can play material provided on cassettes or DAT, they certainly won’t record to those media anymore.

Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!

Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/000212.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.