You’d have to be living in a voiceover-proof invisible dome not to hear about the goings-on with VoiceJockeys and atty Robert Sciglimpaglia. I’ve been blogging about it myself relentlessly for the last three days, and this will be an addendum, then I promise to let it go until the “next big thing”.
Why?
The world continues to turn, the sun comes up in the East, and Muamar Q’adaffi is still the dictator of Libya.
Read this comment sent by Mike Elmore in response to yesterday’s blog:
“I know this is a heated issue. I personally think VO people spend WAYY too much time worrying about this. Yes it is a bee in the bonnet…but this market will more than likely always exist (as clients will always exist that either can’t afford our rates OR know they don’t have to pay them because there IS this market of VO people as well. Of course there is the argument that you get what you pay for. But if the client is satisfied and they paid 50.00 instead of 300.00…then I guess they got a good deal and fueled this new arm of the market even more.
I too find it almost shocking that VO people have so much friggin’ time on their hands. So much time to gossip and complain and judge and say LOOK AND ME, LOOK AT ME…lol …on these boards and things. Why not spend this time marketing? Anyway…I just think it’s something that is there/here….and why waste so much time talking about it? I personally feel like I have typed enough about it in the last 5 minutes to last me a lifetime. But to each his own. I must admit I do enjoy READING thru these things from time to time…but I certainly don’t have enough time to create them…so…guess I’m glad someone does~~”
Just another opinion, I know, but one that hilites a struggle I have every day. Priorities. VO has an extremely high level of attention in my life right now. Personally, I love following the trends, working the Social Media, attending the forums, and contributing with my blog. But at the end of the day, I have to audition, market, invoice, and seek coaching ,just as relentlessly.
I will support Rob Sciglimpaglia in every way. I think his tack has merit. In fact, I want to mention his new blog designed to expose online P2P sites like VoiceJockeys (and you know who you are). It’s called TREAT VOICE OVER ACTORS FAIRLY. Let Rob know of every unscrupulous site you think undercuts our industry with mercenary pricing and policies.
Also, be sure to visit John Florian’s VoiceOverXtra site for the latest installment of this stand-off. HERE.
CourVO
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Greetings Dave!
I am one who can truly associate with the issues talked about in your articles, even though my direction has been in Sound Effects generation and Soundtrack development. The same issues apply to me, and yes, they are very frustrating, ESP when an entity isn’t immediately forth coming with a contract, but needs sounds now.
I’ve been ripped off by entities such as that, because I chose to trust them instead of demand a contract negotiation first, because I was overly eager to please, instead of mindful of the eagerness, and willingness, of these establishments for ways to cut costs, by cutting corners and/ or ripping off whoever the can during production.
Anyway, I’d like to make a statement on part of the comment Mike made above pertaining to, quote: “…but this market will more than likely always exist (as clients will always exist that either can’t afford our rates OR know they don’t have to pay them because there IS this market of VO people as well.”
This statement is flawed, and unfortunately doesn’t have much to recommend it. It lacks forward thinking, which in order to stay on top of your game one MUST contemplate on what’s approaching in the future, by examining the facts that relate to it, that will affect it…
Does anyone here remember back when Hollywood made movies accompanied with a full symphonic orchestra that made the soundtracks for those movies? The case today pertaining to this practice has diminished drastically… ask established composers such as Bill Brown, and Don Davis about this. Their award winning compositions were, all of them, created on a computer, from concept to final cut.
What that has done is effectively cut out the entire human element in the manufacturing of cinematic symphonic orchestration production… because programs like Final Cut Pro, Pro Tools, Gigastudio, and Sony Studios’ SoundForge and Vegas, combined with sound libraries like Vienna Symphonic Library have made it possible to create multi track compositions just as good as if by a real life orchestra. Now those orchesta musicians who would have instead been employed for such are sitting at home, replaced by the almighty computer.
In comparison, I can tell you that you can take it to the bank that inevitably, and probably sometime real soon, some developer is going to create a viable voice engine that will operate on vocal plugins to convert text to speech, in any style, cultural format, pitch format, accentual format, speed, and even language.
This is what I mean by forward thinking…
We have programs like Dragon Naturally Speaking that have championed this arena, and will most likely become one of the text to voice giants in the near future, offering synthetically manufactured voice over needs that sound just as good as the real deal.
It would probably behoove some crafty think tank to begin recording words now… lol, as the manufacturer who creates this voice engine is going to be very hungry for plugin input, and will offer their Software Development Kit to anyone willing to encode it with the needed accents, wording, languages, and other human foley effects.
This way, once the application makes it’s debut all you’d have to do is insert your already existing VO libraries into the program SDK to create the needed plugin application the manufacturer will need, who most likely will reward their plugin developers quite handsomely at the application’s initial release…
I challenge anyone who reads this to provide reasonable conjecture to prove that my forward thinking is flawed… otherwise, given that this is indeed sound logic, that leads this community into another, all together different issue…
How can the Vocal community prevent themselves from getting axed by such a future as the one I proposed here? All I can say is this community better find a way, and act fast on it… or face the T.V. at home while sitting at home on the couch!