Laura Schreiber

Do I make faces when I record? Heck yeah!!

May 9, 2018 by Laura Schreiber

My kids will often say, “Mom, stop making that face!!!” or “Mom, will you make that other face?” Recently someone asked me if I make faces when I work, especially when I do character work. I don’t have a mirror in my recording studio, but as I make faces all the time, I am positive that I must!

The only professional who ever commented on my faces is Dave Walsh. While what happens in a Dave Walsh coaching session stays in a Dave Walsh coaching session, I think I am allowed to say that when I would scrunch up my face too much he was not pleased and we had to work on that!! The effects of the facials scrunch were coming through in my reads and it was something to work on. When I learned to relax my face, my read was better.

I do a lot of character work. Yes, even when I am doing a telephony or eLearning job I am assuming a character, but when I am actually playing a character like a mermaid in a mobile app or a candy princess in a video game, that is actual character work. When doing that type of acting, especially for toys, my entire body is used and it is really animated. If you don’t move all around and gesture and put physicality into it, then frankly it does not sound great.

I also think the reason I make a lot of faces is that is part of my personality and I cannot hide what I am thinking. That trait, which I think a lot of creatives have, helps very much in voiceover. This does not, however, make me a very good poker player.

What Do You Do Until You Can Afford Private Voiceover Coaching?

May 2, 2018 by Laura Schreiber

So you’re a newbie. You’ve found your passion! Wonderful. The problem is, the pursuit of your dream doesn’t come easy and you want to work with the best in the business to get your foot in the door. Here are some ideas until you earn or save enough money to finance your private voiceover coaching sessions:

Listen to podcasts of known coaches.
Watch youtube videos.
Organize a group of talents and create a class with a coach.
Look for actual voiceover classes- there are so many of them and they are outstanding!
Find a practice partner who is at least at your level or slightly better and work with them often.

Making Voiceover Coaching a Priority

Ultimately, if voiceover is the only thing in the entire world that you can imagine spending your life doing, than you will not let anything prevent you from achieving these goals. If having a coach and doing a demo is essential, then you will come up with the money. If your dream had been to buy a franchise of Dunkin Donuts and you wanted to make donuts, you would have found a way to invest. Well, in voiceover we need to invest in ourselves. There is no better way to build a strong foundation than with good coaching, and if you do any of the above suggestions as preparation, any coach will appreciate that.

5 Things to Consider Before Hiring a Voiceover Actor

April 25, 2018 by Laura Schreiber

Did your voiceover talent have coaching?
Do they pursue on-going professional development?
What is their studio setup/equipment?
What it their policy on revisions/pickups?
What is their turnaround time?

Put simply, the answers to these questions will tell you a lot about a potential voice over actor! If you take the time to answer these questions before hiring a voice over talent for your next project, you will avoid a good deal of stress and uncertainty!

Why does it matter whether or not a voice over talent ever worked with a coach? Just as teachers have on-going professional development workshops, doctors go to medical conferences, lawyers must take CLCs, voiceover actors must continually work on their craft. This is in part because the needs and expectations of our industry are constantly changing and in part because we can always improve on our skills. Professional feedback and working with others is the only way to bring out the best in our performances. Voiceover talents who are willing to invest in their training are worth your investment. Voiceover actors who have not committed to their own practice are likely not worth your time either.

Does this voiceover talent pursue ongoing professional development? In a fast-paced, evolving industry that has so many new niches, it is so important for a voiceover coach to take advantage of professional development opportunities. In addition to coaching, there are on-line webinars, accountability partners, voiceover conferences, professional groups, podcasts… the list goes on and on. There are also professional organizations like the eLearning Guild and the Children’s Media Association that voiceover talents often belong to in order to enrich their learning and their networking opportunities. All of this matters very much!

The studio set up of your voiceover talent matters A LOT! While there is not one right microphone or or one go to interface, there are some guidelines that are important. It does matter that your talent have a microphone with an interface and not a USB mic. This all pre-supposes that the voiceover artist has their own studio in the first place which is, of course, essential. Rule out and talent who does not have their own studio. The easiest criteria is to look for WoVo approval of the studio. WoVo is the professional association for voice actors. If the voiceover actor or voice over actress has gone to the trouble of getting WoVo certified, then audio engineers have vetted that talent and their booth is ok to use for your project.

All talents have a policy on pickups and revisions. There is not an industry wide policy, so if it is not made clear in your initial email or phone exchange, simply ask them what their policy is. It is very important that the voice over actress or actor be accessible if you have a last minute script change or if you need a pickup and you need to find out in advance what is included in your initial price and what is not. I cover all performance errors. The cost for revisions varies depending on how much was paid for the job upfront and the size of the revision. It is also always only considered a revision BEFORE the work has aired. Once the work has aired it is a new job. Still, all of this needs to be fleshed out at the start of the job so that you know whether or not you are within budget. The GVAA rate guide is a great way to understand industry standard rates, and from there the talents’ policy should make more sense.

Lastly, you should find out what the voiceover talent’s turn around time is. Some voice over actors accommodate RUSH jobs. That means you will have your finished audio delivered within four hours. Typically, unless you are doing a large eLearning module, a 24 hour turn-around is standard. Still, you should never assume anything. When sending out a job, it is best to tell the talent what you need and ask the talent specifically if they can accommodate that.

The best recipe for success is open communications! While there are no guarantees, voiceover actors are typically friendly, outgoing folks, so the more specific you are from the start, the better your project will be!

Did you just wake up Knowing how to do Voiceover?

April 20, 2018 by Laura Schreiber

While some of us for sure have more comfort in front of the mic than others right from the get go, and some people for sure have natural abilities that come out in one genre of voiceover or another, coaching- or professional lessons in the technique of voiceover, are essential to becoming a professional working voiceover talent.

Professional coaching covers many aspects of voiceover. First, coaching covers acting and performance technique. While the hot buzzword in voiceover right now seems to be the conversational read, a lot goes into the perfect conversational read. From understanding subtext to highlighting the right words, these are all skills that we work on as we build characters for each scrip. Whether practicing for commercial, eLearning, character work, etc… we need to learn how to mark up a script and self- direct.

Mic technique is also taught by our coaches. Learning how to stand in relation to our equipment, how to record, and how to edit properly is all part of what is learned when working with a good coach. Particularly for new talent, the coach should critique all recorded homework assignments and give feedback on all aspects of the recording, from the read itself to the EQ, compression, breaths, mouth clicks, etc. Sending out pristine recordings has to start somewhere.

Coaches should also set the standard for voiceover best practices. From teaching you how to use programs like ipDTL and source connect to talking about client/talent relations, coaches should cover all of this. While many best practices can be learned by some of the industry books, when you are working with the pros you can learn so many tips first hand from their years in the business. From policies on revisions and pickups to basic etiquette, working with a top notch coach is an essential foundation for a voiceover business.

My Tech Twilight Zone of VoiceOver

April 11, 2018 by Laura Schreiber

Perhaps one of the only forms of mental and emotional torture worse than taking my teenage daughter bathing suit shopping is when I enter, quite unknowingly, a technology twilight zone of sorts. Imagine that one minute I am blissfully on the end of an ISDN session and everything is working perfectly, and the next my wave form has shrunk to a quarter of its size, the audio sounds tinny, and the worst part is I did not, in my mind, change a single setting. So, forget going down the rabbit hole of “how did this happen” and let me share some real world strategies to get through this because it will inevitably happen to you so you might as well be prepared.

First and foremost, have a really strong back up. I use both a seagate hard drive and Time Machine on my Mac. There are so many things that you can use, but purchasing them is not enough. You need to actually attach them and run them so that should you need to wipe your computer clean, you are backed up.

Next, you need support. You need to surround yourself with two types of support. You need go to tech savvy experts who you can pay to fix this and you need emotional support as this is extremely stressful. The two are kind of linked so I will start with the latter. Your voiceover friends or “VO Family” as we often call each other are really important and they will understand this like no one else. They are there for you to vent to. They may have had the problem you are having. And if your list of go to experts falls short, they will very likely have excellent suggestions for you of who to reach out to next. When in my twilight zone I don’t know what I would have done without these folks. Remember, it’s not who’s there on your best days, you need people by your side when everything goes to sh** too!

Now, you also need legitimate tech people. There are so many talented folks in our industry, but here are some go tos to help you the next time the rug is pulled out from under you:

Uncle Roy Yokelson- Antland Productions www.antlandproductions.com/
George Whittam www.georgethe.tech
Dan Leonard www.homevoiceoverstudio.com
Tim Tippets https://timtippets.com/

Depending on what your issue is, whether you are a Mac or a PC user, and what program you are running, one of these folks can help you and if they can’t they will point you to the right person for sure!

At the end of the day, I jinxed myself. Someone had literally just asked me if I ever had technological issues and I swore that I did not and that was not a challenging part of the job. Huh. Go figure.

Why should you choose a millennial voice for your voiceover project?

April 2, 2018 by Laura Schreiber

It’s one of those new buzz words like snap chat and LOL, you hear the term “millennial” everywhere – but just who are we talking about? According to the Pew Center for Research, millennials are defined as people born between 1981-1996, so they are presently between the ages of 22-37.Typically, when advertisers think of this core age group, they think of young, fresh, hip- everything that is au courant. So, what better way to describe my vocal sense than millennial and conversational?

Whether we’re talking about commercials on tv or radio, eLearning, or a YouTube narration, what better way to establish your product or company as relevant than to use the millennial sound? Consumers are looking for lots of qualities in advertising, but a huge piece of the puzzle is when it is relatable. Millennials relate quite well to other millennials, so across the board it works well to cast a millennial sounding voiceover actor or actress.

According to a Forbes article from September 2017, there are over 80 million millennials in the United States alone with a combined purchasing power of over $200 billion per year. People like relate to voices that represent them, so with the millennials comprising such a huge market force, it makes good business sense to cast millennials in projects, from 6 second YouYube bumpers to 30 second tv spots- the conversational read epitomizes this trend.