Voice-Over Jobs

axshon · May 26, 2015

My wife works the inner city of Baltimore and keeps tabs on the PD via their twitter feed. After 20 years of working as a pediatric therapist she's worried for the first time. She has never heard of so many shootings during daylight hours than in the last few weeks. Normally when she starts work she's dealing with taped-off streets or buildings, not active shooters. So she's looking at her options.

One option suggested to her many times by many people over the last few years is voice-over work. She has a great, clear speaking voice with no discernible accent (unless she's tipsy and the Boston comes out :rolleyes:

) and is able to speak clearly at variable speeds. She's looking for professional gigs like messaging, campaigns and commercials, not character work like audio books or cartoons. I intend to use her in the training videos for a site I'm working on but I doubt that limited exposure will amount to a resume for her.

We've looked into various places we could find online but have not found anything that looks legitimate. Most seem to want you to pay for their classes before they will "represent" you.

Does anyone have any experience with this or know of agencies in the Baltimore/Washington corridor that specialize in this kind of work? Appreciate any advice or pointers.

mopar92 · May 26, 2015

I'd PM DC-W. IIRC he works for an advertising agency.

slybarman · May 26, 2015

I took a voice over class some years back from A lady (Susan something I think - she was the voice of AT&T on their networks among other things). It was a whole lot tougher than I expected. Having a good voice is one thing, but you have to be an actor - which it turns out I am not. Great gig though if you can do it.

slybarman · May 26, 2015

slybarman said:
I took a voice over class some years back from A lady (Susan something I think - she was the voice of AT&T on their networks among other things). It was a whole lot tougher than I expected. Having a good voice is one thing, but you have to be an actor - which it turns out I am not. Great gig though if you can do it.

Edit: this is the lady:

http://www.greatvoice.com/

Sent from my note 4 using Tapatalk.

DC-W · May 26, 2015

Just seeing this thread. I'll ask our producer tomorrow. I honestly don't know the way in myself, haha.

I do know that many people who do this stuff for a living have their own equipment at home and dial in to the studios doing the record. Occasionally talent does come in for a record, but more often than not, they're somewhere else.

And yes, many voice talents do work through a representative agency of some sort.

axshon · May 26, 2015

Appreciate the pointers. Regarding equipment, I have some decent quality mics and use camtasia for editing. I did a load of podcasts and training sessions after a software book I wrote came out a couple of years ago. I assumed it would be mostly a work from home and own your own deal. We just don't know who to go to to even figure out how to set up a demo. My wife is pretty motivated to learn though.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

DC-W · May 26, 2015

Very good! I'll try and get some answers for ya tomorrow.

Topher · May 26, 2015

My company uses talent from voices.com.
She will need professional recording equipment.

PM me and I will send my contacts name. She is basically a sales exec but she could connect her with the voice talent recruiters.

Access the site and listen to some of the demos.

jpo183 · May 26, 2015

if she is good you could test it out by doing gigs on fivver

TTMD · May 30, 2015

There's actually a fairly entertaining movie about voice-over talent "actors". Check out "In A World" - https://youtu.be/bZHBjLFu5is

axshon · May 30, 2015

Thanks, we'll take a look.

Mr H · May 30, 2015

I hope she at least gives it a shot.

One of my very few regrets is not sending in a tape when I could have.

DC-W · May 30, 2015

Didn't have a good chance to touch base with our producer. Sorry about that. I'll try again next week.

axshon · May 30, 2015

No problem. Appreciate the follow up. Pulled out the yeti mic and getting her accustomed.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

DC-W · May 30, 2015

I know we do get a lot of our talent from www.soundscapes.com, but I don't know how folks get into their talent pool.

Mdeng · May 30, 2015

Mr H said:
I hope she at least gives it a shot.

One of my very few regrets is not sending in a tape when I could have.

Ya your to old to work as a porn star now. :lol2:

wrc · May 30, 2015

Another resource: voice123.com

I used them years ago for some very small jobs.

GoGoGadget · May 30, 2015

My buddy, Joe, is professional voice talent. Super nice guy too. I'm sure he'd give your wife some pointers if you reach out to him. If you watch TV, you've probably heard his vioce a thousand times. His info is here:

http://www.fabulousvoices.com/joe.html

I know he records at home. He does work for me once on a while and provides uncompressed AiFF files that we load into our editing projects.

madchestermonkey · May 31, 2015

Not got any advice for you on who to talk to as most of my work is live events but will say do not use camtasia, it's really not great for audio, I use it to capture power point so I'm very familiar with it. Have look at studio one by presonous. It's pretty good for a free software ( they bought a renowned audio software company) and you can pay to upgrade if you want to. It's much easier if you start with a good quality file. Good luck!

DC-W · Jun 3, 2015

I shot ya a PM

Voice-Over Jobs

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