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.
I’ve been doing voice over work for about 6 years now. Since I started, the industry has done a 180. You really don’t need to live in Los Angeles anymore to do it and you can do a lot of work via websites to pay the bills while waiting to book that big campaign via your agent.
After some great encouragement from friends and family I’m going to teach a class in Seattle about this stuff. An all day workshop that really covers the business side of voice over because that’s what has changed so much in the recent past.
Check out the details here:
Posted in The Business of Voice Over, Voice Over
Tagged business of voice over, voice over class, voice over work
Shame on me. This happened on Tuesday and, here I am not getting it down until Friday. I don’t really know if anyone cares about when and how I write stuff but this topic felt worthy anyway.
The day before I was to report to the studio, I was told I needed to have my crap in good standing with SAG. I’ve taken a few SAG jobs in the past but never joined for many reasons, the biggest of which was that the initiation fee was up to nearly $2400. Screw that – the job only pays $1600! But after you take two SAG jobs you become classified as a “must-join” and cannot accept another job until you’ve paid your initiation and dues.
I was told that if they are contacted by the production company saying that they want to hire me, I would be “station 12′d” and qualify for a payment plan. So I called SAG but they had no record of anyone Station 12ing me. And yet, my agent called saying the casting people tried to Station 12 me but it came up that I’m not in good standing with the union so I need to have it taken care of!! What the hell?!
So, the evening before the job my agent calls the producer at Electronic Arts and finds out it’s an AFTRA job. Sweet. I’ve done tons of AFTRA jobs and just needed to pay my dues that were like $50 bucks. So the night before I went from thinking that I had to pay $2400 to finding out that I only had to pay around $50=)
The session time was at 9am and I wanted to have plenty of time to wake up so I was out the door by 8am. I walked through my new hood down to the Panini Garden for a cup of coffee. Four dollars for that small mocha and I could not choke down one sip. It was nasty. I took the lid off and it actually looked a lot like mud. Water, coffee grinds and scalded milk – gross. And it must’ve been over 180 degrees….blech. I was so irritated about the idea of wasting that money and throwing it away a minute later. I tried to feel out the vibe of the guy behind the counter and well, he felt reeeeal crabby. I could tell right away he wasn’t about to make me another. Without taking one more sip I threw it in the garbage.
Not ten minutes later I walked in the door of POP Sound. Two gorgeous, 15 pound female receptionists whisked around the counter and came to my side.
“Can I get you anything? Coffee, water, fresh squeezed juice or any espresso drink?”
and then the other one chimed in,
“Would you like some breakfast? Help yourself to anything in the kitchen here.” I peeked in the kitchen and was all of a sudden so happy I didn’t have anything before I came. The first girl went to work on my mocha while I made myself a toasted bagel with lox and cream cheese and fresh tomato. Then I saw the fruit bowl. Is that not magnificent?!
Man oh man was I happy, especially once I had a yummy mocha in my hand to boot. I finished my breakfast while they got ready for me and then was shown to the studio where I’d be recording.
The session was great and my character, the Baroness, is a super fun and deliciously sexy, yet evil character. The best news of all was when they said they’d scheduled too much work to do for the session and that we’d need to schedule another. Holla!
Posted in My Life, Voice Over
Tagged Electronic Arts, G.I. Joe, Mercer, Naomi, naomi mercer, POP Sound, recording, Voice Over, voice over work
