Here’s a picture of me in my recording session yesterday! It was an ISDN session at Dave and Dave’s. It was one of the most fun spots I’ve ever done. I had to sing super fast in the tune of “99 Bottle of Beer on the Wall” but use different lyrics about Sonic’s yummy drinks, like Cherry Limeade.
Booked this one through Nancy Wolfson (who taught me how to read commercial copy in the first place) and the Stars Agency in San Francisco.
Posted in Voice Over
Tagged Dave & Dave, Nancy Wolfson, Stars Agency, Voice Over, voice over agents, voice over job, voice over work
In the last year I’ve been teaching classes about the business of voice over where I’ve said you don’t have to have an agent to do voice over work. Let me clarify: you don’t have to have an agent to get started in voice over work. You also don’t need an agent if you just want to do smaller, local jobs and you don’t want to progress beyond that. Like maybe you’re on payroll to do the voice over at a company for all of their vo needs. That’s a great job, and you certainly don’t need an agent for it.
So some people say, “why do even need an agent anymore?”
Between my big jobs that I get via my agent, I make my money every day doing voice over work for clients I gathered via Voice123.com and a few other places. The website that handles the big jobs (voicebank.net) can only be used by SAG agents and you can only get your voice listed on there if you are on the roster of one of these agencies. The difference between voicebank.net and voice123.com is like the difference between an entire Home Depot Campaign and a an E-Learning job for a small community college. In order to access those big jobs, you need an agent that uses voicebank.net.
The second reason agents are awesome is equally important: they negotiate for you. I’ve gotten pretty good at negotiating my own rates for small jobs but I wouldn’t know the first thing about the bigger ones. I booked a national EA Sports commercial the other day and I only had like two lines. But each line was in a separate commercial so I got paid two session fees. Then my agent asked me about any alternates. Alternates or an “alternate line” is another option – reading the line again only a little bit differently. Maybe with one word added or removed. My agent took a look at my script notes from the session and negotiated ANOTHER session fee from my ALT line. We’re talking about like 4-6 words in a line and she negotiated another entire SESSION rate!
In conclusion, if you are just starting out, you don’t have to have an agent to get your first job. In fact, you should get as many jobs as possible first so you can look desirable when you go after an agent. But once it’s time to go for the big jobs, you really can’t thrive without the right agent on your team.
