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Beat the Noise

March 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Michael Minetree is churnin’ out the videos these days.  I meant to get this particular video posted on my blog before I left for FaffCon. (this is why people ask me “When do you sleep?”).

Believe me, a week later it still offers plenty about how to eliminate noise in noisy environments as you use Sony’s Sound Forge!

Check it out, or any of the many other “Tips-Tricks-Advice” videos MineWurx studio is making available today.  When you view this video on his YouTube channel, simply look to the right column for related videos.

CourVO

The Voice Over Coach – Sound Forge – Advanced 1 – Noise Reduction in Noisy Environments

Filed Under: Advice, Software, Techniques, Training/Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Overflow

February 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Not sure if it’s just that there’s that much going on in VO-land right now, or if my contacts in the business are just bringing so much to my doorstep…but my voice over cup runneth over!

There would just be no sense in trying to write a separate blog article for each of the tidbits I have, so please peruse the list of links below for some incredible goings-on in our business right now, and if you feel so moved, contribute to the dialogue.  My job is to try to keep the information flowing so you can be in the know!

DEFINING YOUR PLACE

Lots of discussions seem to be popping right now concerning the VO marketplace.  The conversations are verging into also sorts of issues:  rates, your perceived value in the market, unions, freelancing, certification, agencies…all revolving around what is fair compensation in today’s world of VO, and your place in it.

To that end, top VO Pro Joe Cipriano inserted an incredibly erudite article into the conversation we have going on in the VO Friends FaceBook Group.  If you are not a member, just do a search for the Voice-Over Friends group, and request access.  I’ll approve you in a snap.  When you go to the site, scroll down to the thread that starts with me saying:  “Friends: The threads calling out…”.  There are 45+ comments here, and Joe’s is among them.  These are incredibly pertinent discussions.  Be a part.

Also, the discussion about fair pay in the LinkedIn Group:  “Setting VO Rates” is still raging, and if you take the time to read…the give ‘n’ take will open your eyes to many points of view…all worth considering.  The discussion about “Insulting Rates” has more than 180 entries!

SEEKING EXCELLENCE

My voice-over friend in Social Media, Terry Daniel, has written a wonderful article on how you should “Surround Yourself with the Extraordinary“.  Terry addresses the negativity that can grip a community, especially in terrible economic times.  Well worth a read.

THE BASICS

Cairo-based voice-actor Mahmoud Taji reminds us of the incredible security, normality, and abundance we all have here in the US (UK and elsewhere) that we take for granted.  Although he and his family are surviving an extremely volatile situation on the outskirts of Cairo, he’s dealing with shortages and a lot of uncertainty.  I’m not sure we would all be so sanguine as he is.  Read Mahmoud’s travails in an article on VoiceOverXtra.com.

PROFILING

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of research online.  Particularly FaceBook and LinkedIn.  My travels bring me in contact with a lot of your VO websites and FaceBook profiles.  Frankly, I’m astonished at how many accomplished VO pros neglect their profiles.

I’m no SEO wizard, but I understand the value of clearly stating your title in high-profile areas where you have an online presence.  In a number of cases, I’ve had to drill down quite deep to see if a certain person is even a VO talent.  Almost nothing on their FB or LinkedIn profile tipped me off.  Only when I’ve done a Google search or followed a few links have I been able to find out that.

Please visit the profile you configured when you first joined FaceBook, LinkedIn, Voices.com, V123, Twitter….ANYWHERE that you have an online presence.  Somewhere in that profile, you should be clearly stating that you are a VOICE OVER, a VO talent, a voice-over actor, a voice-actor…something like that should be a given in your profile.

The sum total of your online presence will raise you to a threshold at some point where you start getting noticed consistently.  Over the weekend, I was emailed an offer from an overseas production company, seeking more English-speaking VO talent.  They just wanted to know if they could add my name to their database.  Uh…YEAH!

LOOKING AT YOU

Finally, I invite you to check out my CourVO FaceBook Page.  I’ve configured the photos at the top to appear as though it’s one big “Dave” peering at you when you see the homepage.  I think it brings a very personal feel to the page, and if you want to know how it’s done,  just email me, and I’ll walk you through it.

Have a great week!

CourVO

Filed Under: Advice, Pricing, Social Media/Networking, Unions, VO Community Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Take 10 Mins…

January 1, 2011 By 7 Comments

…and watch (listen) to the YouTube Video below.  “The Troublesome Truth About a Voice Over Career”

It’s written and performed by VO’s answer to Seth Godin:  Paul Strikwerda.  Paul doesn’t agree with me about the Godin thing, but he’s one of our great VO thinkers, and he’s put together a wonderful piece about why you should’nt become a professional VO….yet.

When people approach you and say “I’ve been told over and over that I have a great voice…can you help me break into voice-overs?”…drag them to a computer, and have them watch this….or better yet, send them the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHWMHJVnSMs&feature=player_embedded#at=601

CourVO

Filed Under: Advice Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Looking Forward by Looking Back

November 9, 2010 By 4 Comments

Today is my birthday, and that’s not a selfish statement designed to bring in more well-wishers.

My birthday reminds me that in November of 2005 I decided to turn the corner on voice-acting and get serious about it.  Like many who begin in broadcasting, I figured:  ”How hard can this be?!”  The ensuing 5 years provided me a detailed, vivid answer to that question.  VERY.

…but also quite enjoyable, and there is  no question the landscape of voice overs is populated with some of the most talented, engaging, savvy, friendly, helpful and supportive people on the face of the planet (and you know who you are!).

Later, with all of two years experience under my belt…and regular calls from VO wannabe’s…I authored a concise list of what I thought were the essentials for succeeding in VO (…and the first was: you don’t necessarily need a great voice).

I’m reprinting it below, because surprisingly it’s still on-the-money, and I remain convinced of all the points I had the prescience to compose back then.

The list is also noted in my “Popular Articles” tab above, under “Advice for Newbies“.

Please take a moment to read it and comment back to  me if you think it has merit.  Feel free to copy, re-purpose, link, or otherwise refer to it when you get that question:  ”How do I get started in VO”?

Thanks to all of you who have helped me along the way.  YOU are my lasting birthday present.

CourVO [Read more...]

Filed Under: Advice Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

FeedBack Gold

October 26, 2010 By 1 Comment

Have you ever had a chance to take a Marc Cashman class?…or even work with him on a demo?  You should.  He’s one of the true seasoned pros in the business of VO.

The other day he did something ALL voice actors yearn for, but almost never get.  As the producer of a spot that went out for audition, he took the time to write a long, informational response to all the people who auditioned.

I don’t know if it was altruistic, or out of frustration for all the sloppy things VO’s do when they respond.  It doesn’t matter.  The entire email was feedback GOLD.

I’m excerpting-out the irrelevant stuff, and leaving the tips.  Promise me you’ll read through this…even though you may not have auditioned for this spot.

This is an abject lesson in:

1) listening
2) following directions to the letter
3) watching the details

Click “read the rest of this entry” to see his comments.

CourVO

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Advice, Auditions Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Avoid Mouth Clicks – Drink Water

October 17, 2010 By 1 Comment

My father got  kidneystones.  I occasionally do too.  Yeah, they hurt.

But I’ve managed to reduce their frequency by learning to drink water like a fish.  Not cranberry juice, not soda, tea, coffee, milk, or energy drinks.

Water.

Lucky for me, the upside is I rarely get mouth clicks on my recordings.

See, the magic is not drinking a lot of water while you’re in the studio recording (it kinda helps, but….).  The magic is drinking a lot of water.  Always.  In other words: be hydrated.

There are generally accepted health benefits for this daily ritual anyway, so why not just adopt this advice and begin today?  I keep a 2-and-a-half gallon spigotted dispenser of distilled water on a shelf in my studio all the time.  It’s one of the smartest things I ever did.

CourVO

Filed Under: Advice Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Filling the VO Void

September 23, 2010 By 2 Comments

5 TIPS FOR TAKING ADVANTAGE OF DOWNTIME

What happened?

Every freelancer hits that wall.  The work…just…stops.  Nothing’s coming in.  Leads are long gone, and clients are clamming up.  Hopefully it’s just a day or two…a week or two at the most.

You’d go crazy trying to figure out why.  Sure, there may be some legitimate reasons: you’ve been slacking in your marketing, lead-generation, or referral “asks”…but sometimes you’re doing all that stuff – diligently – and still the work stops.

These moments are actually opportunities.  Remember all the things you put on the back burner when you were crazy-busy with that big narration project and six auditions/day?  Well, now’s the time to drag it out…now you have the time.

Since 80% of your VO business is marketing, and 20% is voicing anyway, this should not be a big surprise.  In fact this may be one of the reasons the work stopped coming in – while you were busy voicing projects, the lead-generating activity stopped.  It’s a nice predicament to be in, but the key is to be able to find the time to do both.

Take Advantage of the “Free” Time

Here’s a quick list of suggestions that will keep you “working” while you prepare for the next wave of paid gigs:

1)   Practice. In VO terms: audition.  Pick up what leads you can from pay-to-play sites, your agents, and web-searches.  That’s right, do a Google search for “VO jobs” or “voiceover needed”.  You’ll be surprised what comes up.  When those sources dry up, just read.  Practice on copy from Voices.com or Edge Studio.  They have reams of legitimate copy for practicing.  Record it.  Edit it.  Listen to it.  Send it to someone for a critique.  Play like it’s real, ‘cause it is.

2)   Listen to ads. I’m serious.  You’re already watching TV or driving your car with the radio on.  Don’t skip past the commercial spots!  Somebody voiced that spot.  Why wasn’t’ it you?  Listen to the nuances of the spot.  The writing.  The author’s intent.  How the talent handled the juxtaposition of the video and the copy.  Sometimes it even helps to transcribe the copy, and voice it yourself in your studio.  Can you approximate the read that got someone the job?  So you don’t have HIS/HER pipes…fine, play to your strengths.  How would you read it?  Record it.  Send it to a friend for an honest opinion.

3)   Visit VoiceBank.net and listen to all the demos you can stand.  These are people represented by agents.  They got on VoiceBank by no mistake.  The demos you hear there are representative of the talent who are getting work today.  How long is the demo?  What was the first thing you heard?  How many elements did the demo have?  How many different reads did you hear in the demo?  Does your current demo stack up?  If not, (3) could just as well be Redo your demo (the subject of a whole ‘nother blog!)

4)   Spruce up your marketing activity. Maybe you like to send postcards to prospects or regular clients to let them know you’re still alive. Maybe you’re an email maven.  Maybe your approach is to camp out on the social networks.  How’s your FaceBook profile looking?  Does it have lots of trigger words that the bots will find?  When’s the last time you tweeted ANYTHING, or contributed to a discussion on LinkedIn?  All those seemingly mundane actions spread your name out on the internet. Maybe you’ve forgotten your promise to make at least 10 calls/week to prospects.  WHATEVER your marketing duties are – get going!  The stuff you do today will bring work tomorrow or next week.

5)   Re-examine your audio chain and your studio.  This could be the time to make that re-arrangement in your physical space that will absolutely remove a mental roadblock to recording.  That strange crackling that pops up in your recordings?  Track it down.  When’s the last time you checked for an update on your software…or for that matter, this may be an opportunity to finally dig into the manual and find out what is the software keyboard shortcut you need for long-format narrations that will save you hours in the booth.

Get the drift?

There’s actually more…much more.  Like prospecting for a good agent…asking your steady clients for a referral to another possible client… doing good research on the internet to find your next “warm”-call target.

See? These are things that get lost in the shuffle when you’ve got your head in a big voice project.  ‘LOVE to have work.  But that job was not a “gimme”.  You did something right somewhere sometime to earn that job.  Now’s the time – when you have the time – to get back to the basics and make it happen again.

CourVO

Filed Under: Advice Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Post-Tax Planning

April 19, 2010 By 2 Comments

Hopefully SOMETIME before last Thursday, you met your obligation to the US Government in the form of taxes.

For many, the day is dreaded, and quickly/conveniently forgotten till sometime early next year.  For the more organized among us, that won’t/can’t/shouldn’t  be the case, because as we all know, paying attention to tax matters ALL YEAR ‘ROUND saves the heartache on April 15th.

That subject came up in a thread on the wonderful VO-BB online VO community the other day during a discussion on forming your business under an LLC or S-Corp.

As independent freelancers, often accepting full pay without submitting a W-9 to the client, Voice Actors are then expected to nonetheless pay a portion of that to Uncle Sam according to the tax code.  No W-2, or form 1099, and no withholding doesn’t mean you should withhold information about your gross pay to the IRS.

Rather, most freelance contractors voluntarily & grudgingly set aside a certain amount out of each of their compensation checks to offset the tax bill in April.  This requires a supreme amount of self-control and realistic planning.

So…how much to hold back?  Variables that determine the level of tax you’re required to pay are sometimes undetermined until many months later…maybe even as you’re doing your taxes.

You can hold back too little, and have to raid savings come April 15th…or you can hold back a surplus as a pad, and maybe even have enough left to buy that new mic you’ve been wanting…but in theory, you want to hit it on the mark as best you can.

On the VO-BB thread, some VO’s subscribe to the rule of holding back 1/4th of each paycheck…others, 1/3rd.   One person uses  a general rule of thumb in the area of 25-30%.

NYC-based bilingual voice-actor, and friend Liz de Nesnera, has a wonderful formula that she’s given me permission to reprint here.  Maybe in the midst of all these suggestions, you will find a formula that works for you in tax year 2010.  (BTW, Liz is a scheduled presenter at VOICE2010 in June for “Talking Telephony”.)

Here’s Liz’s worksheet:

In terms of setting $ aside, whenever I get paid I always do the following:
- Deposit said payment into my Biz checking account
- transfer 30% of said amount in my Biz savings account – this is what I pay taxes from (& sometimes for extraordinary expenses, but is not touched otherwise)
- transfer 25% of said amount into my “Wealth” account, a money market account I use as what I “pay” myself. – this is used for personal bills (I transfer money out of this account into a personal account to pay household bills), and is in effect my “salary”
- transfer 5% of said amount to a “giving” account that I use for charitable contributions.

So lets say I get $1000:
- $1000 is deposited into checking
- $300 gets transfered out from checking to Savings
- $250 gets transfered out from checking to “Wealth”
- $50 gets transfered out from checking to “Giving”
This leaves $400 of that payment in my Biz checking for business expenses

I do this every time I make a deposit.
(Yes the tellers at my credit union know the drill when I show up! Smile )

By doing things this way I have always been able to keep enough aside for Taxes and Bills and it keeps things clear for me.

Thanks for sharing, Liz!

CourVO

Filed Under: Advice, Business-end-of-things Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

VO Checklist for Q2

April 11, 2010 By 2 Comments

My fervent hope is that something in the list below will spark a self-helpful action for your VO business.

Honestly…I compose it for me as much as anyone.

Whatever the consistent time-suck is in your life, like me, I’m sure it draws attention away from the important things.
[Remember our talk about urgent v. important? Click HERE and HERE]

Voice acting is a business, and I offer the following as a proverbial wrench for the nuts ‘n’ bolts (sometimes the overlooked obvious) of YOUR business.

1)  Any left-over upaid invoices from 2009 (God Forbid!). We know you’re a nice person, but enough is enough.  Call them today and assertively ask for payment or prepare too write it off your records.
2)  Did you download the .qpb file for your QuickBooks from your bank and credit-card companies?  Some of those institutions only keep records around for 90-days, and come tax-time, entering records manually is a pain!
3)  When’s the last time you backed-up your audition files, documents, financial records, etc. to the “cloud” or to an external HD?
4)  How current are your demos on your website?…V123?…Voices?…VOPlanet…?
5)   For that matter, should some of those demos be replaced with stuff you recently did?
6)  Are you really taking advantage of the maximum number of demos those sites let you upload?…in all genres?
7)  When is the last time you followed-up on the lead that sounded sure-fire in February, but has gone strangely silent?
8}  Not to be a pest, but when’s the last time you made a cold call to ANYONE?
9)  From whom have you recently solicited an objective critique of your voice-work?…the quality of your audio chain?
10)  What are your plans for seeking solid paid coaching, instruction, phone consults or face-to-face mentoring in the 8.5 months left to the year?
11)   Registered for VOICE2010 yet?  Why not?
12) Are you tapping into a wave of helpful webinars being posted practically everywhere these days?
13)  When’s the last time you posted a question or answer on a VO forum.  You have much to offer.
14)  Is your office paperless yet?  Computer monitors are extremely cheap now.  Save your printer, go with 2 screens!
15)  Dust off your business plan, and see if you’re being true to your dream.  No business plan?  See #16.
16)  Make a business plan.  Stick to it.

There’s more….much more.  Not to overload.  Do one thing this week, another next week.

What have I missed?  Please offer a helpful TO-DO tip of your own by commenting below.

CourVO

Filed Under: Advice Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

R U Covered?

March 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Taking the time to read an article about  insurance ranks right up there with wisdom tooth extraction for me, but when my friend John Florian at VoiceOverXtra pointed out an insurance article ESPECIALLY written for voice-actors, I took a gander.

You should too.

Keith Michaels, former broadcaster, voice actor, and insurance underwriter makes some important points about the coverage you may need to think about to protect that new $2100 pre-amp you just bought.

Check it out HERE.

CourVO

Filed Under: Advice Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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