4 Reasons to Join the Voiceover Business and Use Voices.com
Courtesy of Backstage Briana Rodriguez: http://www.backstage.com/advice-for-actors/inside-job/4-reasons-join-voiceover-business-and-use-voicescom/?utm_campaign=Expert%20Posts&utm_content=6844798&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
Stephanie Ciccarelli started the online voiceover talent marketplace a decade ago with her husband, David Ciccarelli. She currently shapes brand interaction and manages content to reach the Voices.com audience.
What should actors know about the voiceover business?
You don’t have to go the traditional route. [Voices.com] is a great opportunity for actors to get in front of a new audience, especially if they don’t have agency representation. There’s a huge variety of work with us—you can be doing readings for audio books or telephone or national radio and television. And every job that’s posted has to pay a minimum of $100.
Why should actors use Voices.com?
They can be their own agent; they can go after opportunities that they feel are best for them. So if a client posts a job and [the actor’s] profile matches the criteria, they’re invited to audition for the job. It’s the talent’s discretion to decide whether or not they feel they’re the right fit by doing a little bit of self-analysis; in that way, we train them to think like their own agent.
What do voiceover actors need to succeed?
To be artistically talented, understand your instrument, and have [your voice] trained. Next is understanding the technology. You have to have a home recording studio and [start] using the latest software—have a good microphone and studio setup. Build a brand and market yourself and understand the ecosystem. The greatest challenge is not understanding who works with whom.
What else should actors know?
The whole purpose of the site is to listen to someone’s voice, so if you do not have an audio sample uploaded on your profile, you will not be found in the search engine. If you can’t be heard, there’s really no reason for us to present you as a result. We also have a way for the talent—and this is internal information so we know how to communicate with them—to say whether they perceive themselves to be beginners or someone who’s a professional so we can help them with resources and know to speak to them in different ways to meet their needs.
What’s been the biggest recent addition to Voices.com?
Launching of our Spanish website, so now all of our customers who speak Latin American Spanish can access the website in their own language, which has been huge. We do the majority of our business with the United States, and being based in Canada, we knew that Spanish was our priority. The next language we’d be going into is French, and then after that, going into a series of other languages. We’re basically setting up a multilingual platform so it’ll be easier from here on out.
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