agents

Finding Voice Over Work on CastVoices

August 1, 2021 by Laura Schreiber

Clubhouse Round 2

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/u39kitauzpzpzig/AADC1By9qOM1pBTJ6eJ-E6gRa?dl=0&fbclid=IwAR3sYhpM9uYnETOPUWcohM3HdIPwVYqMut_Ng8XcN3Z6AXpCOmvqZFXN_08

Put simply, our first Clubhouse with the Liz Atherton and Nick Krause of CastVoices left us wanting more! So many guests in our room “Ask the VO Coaches” had questions, that Diana Birdsall and I did not even get through half of ours. So we were lucky enough to have Liz and Nick back again. If you are not yet in the CastVoices user group, the timing could not have been more perfect. This week some paying members were getting a little antsy about when more bookings would roll out and the tone of the chatter was somewhat impolite, so having Liz available to answer questions meant a lot. The funny thing is that as some were raising questions, I myself booked two roles on a video game that I auditioned on only through the site. It will be an ongoing role with work that will likely last years. So, for these of you who are worried, I urge you to sit back and relax. The work is coming. Now, for my re-cap:

There Are Some Features Unique to Cast Voices

On this platform, if a casting director choses, they can give you feedback on your audition. This is not typical and is extremely valuable! There is a sound-byte feature in your profile. This is meant to give voice actors an opportunity to stand out regardless of your level of experience. This is where you can show the human side of you and reveal a glimpse of your personality. Nick is extremely proud of the code that he has built, he has worked hard to create a platform to highlight voice actor’s talents. I shared that I love the resume feature, and Liz commented that ultimately this will be interactive.

CastVoices has a Social Mission

Liz was thrilled to share that the entire CastVoices team is likeminded in their focus on service to others. When they did an Indiegogo campaign to launch CastVoices, they ended up donating 50% of what they brought in. Of those funds, 50% went to feeding America, and 50% went to Tim Friedlander and Jay Preston’s financial assistance program for all actors in need. This money was given not with the question of “should we” but a “how can we” from a place of “spirit and love.” This team is truly amazing.

A Lot of SEO has been Put into the Site

Nick explained that the goal is that if someone searches for your name, they want your CastVoices profile to pop up. If someone searches for a project you’ve done and it’s on your resume, your CastVoices profile should come up. Through dynamic site maps, you are indexed in google right away.

Differences in Membership Levels on CastVoices

Liz made it clear they are very transparent: the only way they make money on the site is through subscriptions, not through casting. The differences in membership levels include the amount of samples shown, logos posted, and booked work you can show. On all levels of membership, clients can reach you directly.

Getting Buyers to the Platform

Their entire team is working hard to create strategic partnerships every day. They are connecting with creative directors, advertising agencies, gaming companies, and more. They go at it as a project enhancement platform. Every single day they reach out to clients, just as we do as small business owners, and encourage them to use the platform. As of Friday they have 36 creative directors and 61 agents on CastVoices.

Some Questions That Came Up

Bev Standing asked for tips to set up her profile. Liz advised to look at the categories on her demos and to create a custom URL. Liz also offered that if people don’t have a website up yet they can use this custom URL. Liz also pointed out that we should specify the age ranges we can work in. Others asked if the CastVoices team will go over their profile and resume and Liz said she’ll do so as time permits. They also revealed that they have a huge client who needs translations, and already have business in 50 countries, so if you are able to provide translation please list that. Another topic that came up was etiquette. If you are contacted within the platform, it is appropriate to stay within the platform, not to track the casting director down outside of the platform. Another guest asked if they are looking for trends. Nick explained the ultimately they will, but at this juncture while they are doing certain analytics they do not have trends that will help voice actors yet. It was also asked if a profile can go stale. The answer is no. If you update it with new samples of booked work, so should be fine. If you are inactive, you can mark yourself inactive.

Conclusions

CastVoices is good for the voice over community. Their heart is in the right place and they have set us all up for success. How can we, as talent, help them take off? If you have clients who need to cast you can point them toward cast voices.

5 Top Questions Your Should Ask a Demo Producer

March 22, 2021 by Laura Schreiber

Getting Started

For us voice over professionals, few things are more exciting than doing a new demo! It’s up there with booking a huge commercial campaign, getting signed by an agent, and seeing an old friend. Why is a new demo so exciting? A voice over demo means opportunity. It is a new moment for us to say here I am, listen to this. This is what I can do for you! As a full-time, professional voice over talent, there are plenty of other female voice over actors booking lots of commercials. How do I make myself get noticed? The demo. So who you do your demo with, the coach and producer you choose to spend your time and money with matters, a lot. I have worked with some of the top coaches in the field, and I can tell you that I have had outstanding experiences and I have had experiences hat should have been better. Now that I am work as a voiceover coach and am on a demo production team myself, I am trying to educate my students along the way, so that they understand what to look for and how to advocate for themselves. Here are some questions you should ask every single time you do a new demo, whether it is a commercial demo or another genre:

What is your script selection process like?

In my mind, the demo script selection process should be collaborative. The coach should work with you to find scripts that show both your range and are appropriate for your brand. If you have dream VO clients, this is the time to include those scripts. So for example, if you are doing an automotive demos, and you love Audi, you would include an Audi script. If you are doing a commercial demo and you love shopping at target, why not include a target spot? The scripts should not simply descend from above on demo day, be handed to you, and recorded. They should be meaningful to you and they should show both your range and what matters to you. They can be an interesting glimpse into your interests too! So, it is very important that you can easily talk to your voice over coach or demo producer about the scripts that you have.I find it to be the ultimate irony that we use our voice to speak for others, but often, even when we are making investments in our own business, if can be so hard to advocate for what makes the right sense for us. The strength of your demo very much depends on your scripts and you should love them!

2. How will the Demo Session Go?

Whether you are recording in person in a recording studio or remotely via Source Connect, ipDTL, or Zoom, the Demo Session is extremely important. It is your day to shine. Put frankly, you should be the star and by put on a pedestal on demo day. Nothing else matters except your ability to rock every spot. Since you have likely worked with your coach before, by the time you get to the demo, they should be able to bring out your best. There should not be any drama. I have worked with some coaches who move very quickly from script to script and some who spend a lot of time going through each script so they have lots of options, but at the end of the day you should feel amazing about your session. Anything short of that is not ideal.

3. Where do the video clips come from?

The world of video demos presents voice actors with an exciting opportunity to market yourself. Whether you are new to VO or new to a genre, having a video demo either gives you an instant bod of work in voice over or it immediately enhances your existing body of work. The catch, though, is that you cannot simply take an existing video or commercials and dub over it. That is not legal and violates all sorts of copy write laws. Instead, video producers, like the team that I work with at All Systems Go AV, need to pay to belong to a content library where they are legally and lawfully accessing the content. A video demo by any other means can get you into trouble.

The exception to using branded content is if you are putting together a video reel of actual work that you yourself have done. If you are the actual voice in the video, and were part of the team, you can then have a reel produced using the branded content! Those are amazing marketing tools and are legitimately yours to use.

Take a look at this demo. Ever single clip here is legitimately used from a content library my team pays to have a membership from. These logos, while they may seem familiar to you, have been altered more than 30% from the original, and are also legitimate to use. Every video demo should be done this way so that you are never at risk of having to remove it.

https://youtu.be/qBE2CK8h0D0

Laura Schreiber Commercial Demo 2021 Produced by All Systems Go AV (https://youtu.be/qBE2CK8h0D0)

4. Deliverables: What is part of the package?

Different coaches price demos differently, so you are often not comparing apples to apples. Some coaches include some sessions, a video demo, and an MP3, others are charging for an MP3 only. You need to be very clear about what you are getting from the coach for their fee. When my team does a video demo, it includes necessary prep, script selection, the video demo as a whole and in parts, and the MP3 as a whole and in parts.

5. Is the demo producer flexible with the order of the spots?

This is really important. Demo producers typically send you their preferred order, but at the end of the day the demo is yours to live with and their preferred order matters less than your preferred order. I personally have had demo producers make changes without any fuss, and I worked with others who refuse to make any changes at all and insist that it must stay the way it is.

Be Careful Who Represents You In VO

January 24, 2021 by Laura Schreiber

Common Beliefs or Misconceptions in Voice Over

When I started in voice over years ago, I remember thinking that when I had an agent I will have “made it.” I remember Screwing Up is Part of Success”one of my coaches telling me that she worked for five years before she had her first agent, so that I could align my expectations. At that point, I did not even know about managers. I was lucky, I was able to get on quite a few agents rosters pretty early in my voiceover career. As a working professional, I would hear a lot of chatter on social media about various agents and managers and how to get signed, as if somehow getting on the roster would lead to the ultimate success.

While I understood early on that being represented by these wonderful regional agents meant that I had more opportunities available to audition for, I was in no way guaranteed success. I did not understand that having a manager was not the same thing. I had hoped, quite naively, that as the manager took both a monthly retainer and a percentage of booked work, they would work harder to make deals happen. Boy, was I wrong. More than a year after I severed ties with my manager, I am still undoing the damage that was done. Here is just a glimpse of the reality of what choosing the wrong person to represent you can end up like.

The Email…

Like most successful female voice talents, I do a lot of direct emails. One of the groups of people I target are radio station managers and program directors to grow my radio imaging business. This week I reached out to a station manager again who had wanted to sign me for a monthly retainer in 2019. In 2019 “Mike” called me. We chatted and he was ready to move forward. I handed him off to my manager and never heard from him again. This week, in response to my friendly email check in, I received this message:

Hi Laura,

Sorry, I did not. Last year when I was interested in working with you, I was told that our station was not big enough for your services. That’s why I have not followed up.

This email got me very upset for several reasons. First, I was ready to move forward, my manager who was supposed to represent me, acted in a way that did not represent me. Next, I lost this station which would have been a monthly retainer. Third, this was not only a loss of revenue, it reflected badly on my business and my brand. Fourth, and perhaps most upsetting, this was one of six stations in a six week period that my manager blew deals with. Six stations, that would have ranged between $150 and $500 in monthly retainers, yet I was contractually obligated to pay him his monthly retainer for the remainder of the year. So, let’s dive deeper.

If I Had Leads, Why Sign With A Manager in the First Place?

There were two main reasons I signed with this manager. First, as a working creative and small business owner, one of the hardest aspects of the job is negotiating rates. I have always worked to maintain industry standard rates, often siting both the GVAA Rate Guide and the GFTB Rate Guide to clients. I had felt that I was low-balled on the the last few imaging retainers I had negotiated prior to my talks with the manager. I did not feel that it was related to my ability or experience, it just seemed that I kept getting the same sob story from every single station. None of them had any money. They all wanted so much for so little. It was crazy. I had hoped that with the manager negotiating the rates, each station would be in the ball park of the rates cards, even if the manager now got a cut.

My other hope was that if I was able to seal the deal with more lucrative stations because of the manager, then some of the top agencies like Atlas or CESD would take notice of me and would sign me. I have felt so close to making this step, and just needed something to push me over the edge. I saw other very well known and amazingly talented voice actors post that they were booking stations with the help of this manager. They were then getting repped by these agencies. I also knew some talents at these agencies who were on this mangers roster. It was not hard to connect the dots and in truth did not even seem like a leap of faith. It seemed like a common sense, savvy move. Well, sometimes the evidence can be very misleading.

the Damage

I signed with this manager specifically for the Radio Imaging part of my business in January 2019. Within the first week, I sent him 5 leads of stations who wanted to sign me and wanted to negotiate retainers. The email above was a call I got a week later. Of these leads, my manager destroyed every single one of them. I was not on the calls. I had empowered him to speak on my behalf. The email above “I was told that our station was not big enough for your services.” is a glimpse of how these prospects were treated in my name. Was this the road to the big agencies? No. Worse, when he tried to renegotiate the stations I had, I lost them. There were other odd quirks about the manager. He wanted any auditions to be professionally mastered, which was an added expense. He also sent Sound and Fury auditions, but I get those from other agents, so now I was paying him to get auditions I was already getting. It was terrible. I realized early on and I was stuck. I basically had to stop soliciting all Radio Imaging business or it would be tied to him. Years of hard work and planning came to a screeching halt. Be careful who you pick to represent you.

Undoing the Damage

First I had to wait until I could give him notice as per my contract. As soon as I legally could, I did. Then, as soon as I was legally out of contract, on 1/20/2020. I began reaching out to stations to tell them I was no longer with the manager and that if they were so inclined they could negotiate directly with me to learn my market availability. It was too soon, there were no bites. No one would even reply. I continue to circle back to the stations that were interested. Now I have updated my demo, and my hope is that with some time, and fresh branding, I can rebuild.

https://youtu.be/nrobFDWQVmI

Lessons Learned

THE BEST PERSON TO SPEAK FOR ME IS ME. If you want clients to get to know you and how great you are, then you have to be the one to work with them. If you really feel that you need someone to negotiate on your behalf, you had better make sure you know the tone and tenor of what they are saying

Can’t Win Em’ All

April 29, 2019 by Laura Schreiber

How a Night in NYC Reading for 5 Top Voice Over Agents Went South Real Fast

The Potential for Life Changing Awesomeness

You have to understand that I am a huge optimist. I always think everything will be great and that every single thing I do has the potential to not just succeed but to be life changing. I mean, it’s worked out pretty well, right? I have two ivy league diplomas, married the man of my dreams, I have pretty fantastic kids, and the cutest dog on the planet, so this attitude of hope and optimism has worked out thus far. How could it not? If you’re super smart and you work hard and you try your best what could possibly go wrong?? You see where this is headed….

So like many voice over actors I am in tons of facebook groups. Honestly I can’t even count them all but I really enjoy them both for the useful information and the meaningful social interaction. One night, I think in the Actors in NYC group or something to that effect, someone mentioned the Actors’ Connection. I was excited to see the variety of programs they offered and was super excited to see one that had big agents from top agencies coming to the program. My perception, or rather mis-perception, of the event that I rather enthusiastically signed up for was that it was like speed dating with agents. They were there. We were there. We would schmooze.

My hope was to chat it up. I just got new business cards so I gathered a ton of those. I also printed a list of my top 10 clients of all time followed by my top 5 clients of the month, both of which I am rather proud of. We had to send in our head shots and resume in advance and I was really proud of that as well. I felt prepared and hopeful on the big night.

The working mom in me planned ahead on the home front too. I had my mom coming to give the twins dinner and my mother-in-law was coming to do Latin homework with Jack, so I had all the bases covered. I was prepared for greatness. All I had to do was show up, right?

The Great Debacle: A Fantastic Event For Which I was not Prepared

Did I mention in addition to being an optimist that I am also very type A? I have read for top agents in LA before. Both times I was extremely well prepared and I thought I nailed it. I got very positive feedback and left feeling like a did my best. Was I signed? No. Did my life change in any way from those events other than feeling relieved that I did not f—- up? No. But the key thing is that I showed up prepared.

So last Thursday I also thought I showed up prepared. The thing is, the Actors’ Connection sends A LOT of emails. I do not mean this as a criticism. But I happen to have had a lot of bookings last week, and as a full-time working mom, I do not always read all of my emails. Well, I realized pretty quickly that this was a huge problem. This was NOT speed dating with agents. Not at all. I showed up prepared for an event that was not happening and was totally unprepared for the actual event. You have to understand that I am never, ever unprepared and I was having a silent stroke in my seat.

Every one else had scripts prepared as we were going to read for the agents. Which makes sense, after all, because why would they care just to chat with us? I did not have a script in hand. I pulled one up on my phone but I did this as the agents were speaking

and of course I was in the front row so I was not at all subtle. I felt like an ass. I found a script for a Culligan Water spot I booked months ago and I thought it was cute and showed my range.

The Epic Fail

As if I had never read live before, and in part because I did not have a paper script and was reading from my tiny phone which I never ever would have done, I began my first read. I raced through. Everything I have been trained to do went out the window. I will not recount all the ways in which I sucked, but let’s say that any charm, finesse, and charisma that my actual audition may have had to book the read was entirely missing on Thursday night. I was both petrified and horrified at once.

On the director’s cue I came out from the booth and got feedback from the agents before the second take. The agent from CESD spoke for the group. I held it together and went back in. The second take was not beyond horrible and at least I was not ashamed to make eye contact when I left. Before I departed the building, I was giving “report cards” with scores and comments from each agent. They showed a range of opinions and feedback from good to excellent and I took everything in me not to cry from the stress of it all. Oh how I longed to be in the security of my own booth!

The Aftermath

I walked in the pouring rain back to Penn Station. I felt both crushed and defeated. I left my children on a school night to go into the city and instead of doing something to benefit my family I crashed and burned in front of an audience of folks I wished I had dazzled and charmed.

What did I learn from all of this? First, I need to read ALL of my emails! Next, even though it felt like disaster to me, the comments were actually somewhat encouraging and they were all pleased with my second read, so I suppose I was able to show flexibility and resilience even though I did not enjoy it. Lastly, even if I had been signed by any of those agents, which I would have loved, it likely would have opened more doors but would not have lead to some sort of instant and dramatic change in the trajectory if my life or career.

So what now? I just get up every day and keep plugging. I have a lot of auditions this morning and a live session for radio commercial at 1:30 so I just keep doing my thing. I am thankful that I get to work full-time in the field I am passionate about.