Karen@KarenCommins.com

Karen Commins

Award Winning

Atlanta Audiobook Share-rator™

Karen Commins

Considering a WhisperRoom for your voiceover studio?

After recording voiceover scripts for years while standing in dark, unventilated, small closets, building a soundproof studio was a dream come true! As you can see in the picture below, my WhisperRoom is large component of the studio, both in size and function. I LOVE it and feel that it is a key selling point for potential clients.

Voice talent Karen Commins records in her 6’x8′ WhisperRoom

 
Last week, I received another inquiry from a voice talent who is considering the purchase of a WhisperRoom. Like others who have contacted me with the same questions, this person wrote that he couldn’t see a WhisperRoom in person and wanted to get an opinion from someone who has one. I decided to re-purpose my answer to him to help other voiceover talent who are faced with the same decision. Everything that follows below is my opinion, and I have received no compensation from WhisperRoom for my sound endorsement.

In 2005, we built a room onto the house and employed special soundproofing techniques in its construction, including 2 layers of ceilings and 2 layers of 5/8″ sheetrock on the walls. I had to go to extreme lengths to soundproof my house and studio due to the frequent and varied types of external noise at my house, especially from cars and planes.

I considered building a “room within a room” for my booth by adding an interior wall. Building an interior room might have been a cheaper option, but I chose to buy a WhisperRoom because of its portability. If I ever move to another house, I can disassemble my booth and take it with me. Furthermore, the resale value of this house would be greater without an interior wall in my spacious (16’x19′) studio to confuse home buyers. As a bonus, the WhisperRoom is a capital expense in your voice-over business that can be depreciated on your tax return over several years; check with your tax advisor for details.

You can get practically any size and configuration of WhisperRoom to meet your needs. I bought a 6’x8′ booth because I thought I might want to record my harp in there, which hasn’t happened in the almost 5 years I’ve had the WhisperRoom. However, I have had 2 people sharing the same mic in it, and it was roomy enough for that purpose. Since it’s modular, I could expand it to a larger size if I ever had the need, and I suppose I could contract it as well.

I bought the optional ventilation system but don’t recommend it to other voice talent. The hum of the fan is too noisy when I’m recording. I occasionally run the ventilating fan on a break just for air circulation, but I usually tend to open the door and step out of the booth. Due to the additional insulation in my studio, I’m usually pretty comfortable in the booth.

Assembly and Delivery Considerations

Once you’ve decided on the size of the booth that you want, the delivery and assembly parts of the transaction will require some planning. The WhisperRoom is made of Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF), which is a great sound barrier because it is denser than plywood. It’s also incredibly HEAVY!

I always warn people that my booth actually weighs OVER 1 TON (2200 pounds) and is sitting on a concrete slab. Be sure that your floor can accommodate the weight of the booth that you purchase. The WhisperRoom floor is raised on wheels, which gives you additional sound isolation, as well as flexibility in moving the booth.

Also, the booth is shipped completely unassembled in multiple boxes; mine arrived in 41 boxes. Even though we had specified inside delivery, the guy driving the truck would not bring in the boxes. I was thankful for a sunny day because he left them on the driveway.

We were finishing construction on the room for the studio, so some contractors happened to be on-site that day. My husband Drew tipped 2 of them to help him carry all of the boxes into the studio. You may also need similar help available on delivery day.

WhisperRoom provided clear assembly instructions, and Drew and I were able to assemble the booth over Labor Day weekend. Our biggest problem was lifting the door onto the hinges. The glass in the door made it even heavier than the other panels, and keeping it steady until the hinges met and the hinge screw could be turned was incredibly frustrating.

After numerous unsuccessful attempts, Drew had the brilliant idea to use a car jack as a lift for the door! Drew held the door on the jack while I cranked it up. It was relatively easy for him to slide the door into the hinge with the weight of the door supported by the car jack.

The Sound of Silence

I can tell a tremendous difference in the level of quiet once I step into the booth. If you don’t live on a quiet street and/or have your studio in your basement, I highly recommend the purchase of a WhisperRoom if your budget allows it.

You may ask whether Harlan Hogan’s Porta-Booth Pro would serve the same purpose as it does isolate the sound recorded with the microphone. Although I’ve never tried one, I think the Porta-Booth Pro is aimed more as a solution for mobile recordings. It doesn’t have room for a copy stand, and you can pack it away.

In addition, I like the WhisperRoom for my own concentration. While the mic may not pick up the whir from the refrigerator or other people in the house when placed inside a Porta-Booth Pro, I would hear and be distracted by those sounds. A WhisperRoom would give you all of the quiet space that you need for your recordings.

As a side note, I think a voiceover studio should be both functional and enjoyable. Why have plain walls and a booth when you can design a beautiful area that expresses your personality and beckons you to go to work? Not only do I love my studio, but the WhisperRoom folks liked my picture so much that they put it on their sales brochure. 🙂

If you have any other questions about my booth or studio, please leave a comment on the blog!

edited 8/2/10 to add a missing word

Thinking about starting a voiceover career?

The following message was left as a comment to my post The feel-good voiceover blog of the summer! I copied the message exactly as I received it because I felt the answers to the questions deserved to be their own entry.

I’ve been considering launching into this field—and really want to know what it takes and what to expect. The best way to find out the pros and cons of any occupation is to talk to others who actually do it…..So, I’m open to whatever info you think would help me so I don’t invest a lot of money and energy needlessly. My first question is, “Do you like voiceover work?” and “How difficult is it to break into this business?” I’m thinking it may take a few years…Is there really that much work out there for new talent?
— Elizabeth

Do I like voiceover work?

I don’t know of any person who would say they didn’t like the voiceover part of the job.

Voiceover is like any career in that you like some parts of it better than others. Of course, I love the actual act of reading the words on the page, interpreting the author’s meaning, and recording the author’s words with my voice. I love employing all sorts of marketing tactics that do not require me to make cold calls. I love writing articles on my blog and responding to reader comments (hint, hint!). I love connecting with other voice talent and clients in person and on-line. I love the immense satisfaction of hearing my voice at work in different media for various companies, and, yes, the coolness factor of this occupation is pretty hard to beat.

Perhaps a better question is: “Are there things that you don’t like about being a voice talent?”

Editing the recordings is not my favorite task, especially since editing takes far more of my time than recording. Auditioning for countless projects and not even getting a response can be very depressing. Chasing down payment from clients who are at least a month late in paying for completed work is downright annoying. The situation with late-paying clients is even more stressful when that money is needed to pay one’s own obligations.

Also, you’ve probably read about voice actors who brag about recording in their pajamas. What they didn’t tell you is that they are wearing their pajamas because they are working early or late hours or on the weekend in order to meet a client deadline. If you want a structured, 40-hour-a-week job, you will want some other career choice than being a voiceover talent.

How difficult is it to break into this business?

How difficult is it to start any career that inherently means you are a self-employed business person? Becoming a voice talent necessarily demands that you will spend time, energy, and money as part of the start-up and continuing operational costs of your business. There are NO shortcuts!

I actually have a couple of mathematical formulas for figuring the method to become a voice-over success story. I wrote about the first one here, and the second one is below.

Take your age
Add to it the number of car payments you have left
Subtract the number of pillows on your bed
Divide by the square root of Pi
The answer is the number of seconds you’ll spend figuring out any logic in this formula.

My feeble attempt at humor merely illustrates that the question can’t be answered because every person’s path into and through a voiceover career is different.

So, how does any start-up business become a thriving enterprise? Obviously, the business’ chance for survival — much less prosperity — depends on the people who work there and the product they are selling. The time, energy, and money you invest in developing your technique, demo(s), web site, and marketing plan will be the deciding factors in your chances for success in starting and maintaining your voiceover business.

My questions for you

Anyone contemplating any career — whether as a voice talent, computer programmer, or Sherpa on the mountainside — should ask themselves as many or more questions than they ask other people. Whatever career you pick will require substantial amounts of time and energy; chunks of money are also required when you are considering starting a business. Spend some introspective time determining your answers to the kinds of questions I list below, and your answers will help you decide if voiceover is a good career choice for you.

  • What are your values? Values are different than goals. For instance, if you value security as highly as I do, you’ll probably want to have a day job with healthcare benefits and a 401K plan at least until your voiceover income consistently exceeds that of the day job and you’re able to insure yourself and plan your retirement.
  • What is your passion? If you don’t know, what activities make you happy? When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? (If you want to see some great books that will help you find your passion, check out these books by Barbara Sher .)
  • What about voiceover work is appealing to you? Do you think it’s an easy and glamorous way to make money? Do you love to read? Do you love to learn things? Is technology your friend? Do you have a desire to help people? Do you work well in isolation? Do you work well on multiple projects at one time and under multiple deadlines? Do you have an inner calling to do a certain kind of voiceover work? Have you ever actually recorded your voice and listened to it?

For an excellent reality check about starting a voiceover business, I highly encourage you to read Peter O’Connell’s Voiceover Entrance Exam. Peter is a veteran voice talent and savvy marketer who gives you the straight scoop on this business in a free e-book.

A final question on my list

Whatever happened to saying “thank you”?

People frequently fire off questions to me without including the simplest acknowledgement that my valuable time will be needed to answer them. I don’t expect compensation — not that any is offered in most inquiries I receive. I supply my advice as a service out of a true desire to help others. However, I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who overlook the small courtesy of saying “thank you”.

Therefore, my parting advice is to develop an attitude of gratitude, starting with every communication you have with another person about your career choices.

The feel-good voiceover blog post of the summer!

In a world….

 
When the legendary voice talent Don LaFontaine uttered those famous words on a movie trailer, you would be ready to go to a quiet, dark theater to escape — escape the weather, escape obligations, and escape the chattering voice in your head. That inner voice can be especially critical to a voice artist who is feeling discouraged with her progress. Since my brain has come up with numerous scripts having that kind of negative inner dialogue, I thought it might be helpful if I shared 3 techniques for keeping a feel-good mentality about your voiceover career as you direct the movie of your life.

Stop the Comparisons

 
I’m a lot better about this one than I used to be, but even I occasionally still fall in the trap of negatively comparing myself to other voice talent. For instance, I recently read a review of an audiobook voiced by a talent whom I know. While I truly am thrilled for that person’s success, I admit that I also had the thought of wishing for both the recent audiobook narration gig and the favorable review.

It’s one thing to make comparisons as part of a learning process. We all can improve in a variety of ways, and analyzing others’ success is a good way to start. I’m talking about the kind of comparisons when you think envious or discouraging thoughts like, “I just can’t get a break-through. I never win any auditions. I’m not good enough. It will never happen for me.” These kinds of thoughts can be debilitating and will actually slow or completely stop your progress.

If you have these kinds of thoughts, the first one may appear on its own. You may not have been in control of that first thought, but you ARE in control of the second one. Remind yourself of the steps you have taken toward your dream. If you feel frustrated, find some action that you can do that will propel you forward. In all cases, think/write/speak what you WANT into being.

Ask For and Review Your Testimonials

 
When other people comment about the great voice-over work that you have performed for them, I hope that you ask them for a testimonial that can be included on your web site. Not only do these comments from past clients serve to convince potential prospects to hire you as a voice talent, but they can bolster your self-esteem if you feel down on yourself.

In addition, I notate my accomplishments and review them as my own evidence about the manifestation of my dreams. If I feel a hint of discouragement because the level of success I envision in voiceover is taking a while to appear, I only need to take a quick look at things I’ve done in just over a year — recorded a new commercial demo, launched a new web site with new branding elements, and gained several wonderful new clients, all while mourning the loss of my mother and dealing with my parents’ estate. When I stop to review all that I’ve done, I feel pretty darn good about my place in the voice-over world!

Maintain NOW Thinking

 
This morning, as I walked Yogi, our adorable miniature schnauzer, I was thinking about the message that I wanted to write in this blog entry. I also was thinking how Yogi lives completely in the moment. He sleeps, eats, and plays without dwelling on the past or fretting about the future.

Once we returned home, I turned on the TV and scrolled through the program guide. For some unknown reason, I felt compelled to watch Joel Osteen’s oration today for the first time. This choice is all the more unusual since I’m not a religious person and normally would steer clear of televised church services.

The reason was clear to me from the first moment I heard Osteen speak. He was talking about living in this moment with the constant expectation of receiving the good that is on its way to you, no matter how long it takes to arrive. He encouraged his audience to awake every day with the thought that “THIS could be the day!” 

Osteen used Mel Fisher as an example of this type of positive thinking. I, too, have drawn inspiration from Mel Fisher and can’t believe that I haven’t written about him previously.

You see, Mel Fisher was absolutely convinced that a Spanish ship laden with treasure had sunk off the coast of Florida in the 1600s, and he was determined to find it. Each day, he told his crew, “THIS will be the day!” Every night, after they didn’t find the ship, Fisher would tell the crew, “Tomorrow will be the day!”.

Fisher maintained his positive outlook and searched for the ship for an incredible 16 years. He faced innumerable odds, including an array of critics and doubters. I read once that his son died during the search efforts. Still, Fisher pressed on, doing things each day toward his dream and feeling perpetually confident of the good that would come to him.

Like so many people, the realization of his dream was far bigger than Fisher could have imagined. He found the Spanish Atocha, with treasures of gold, silver, and gems worth over $500 million!

Fisher proves that patience and persistence are the keys to realizing your dream. People expect instant gratification and are disappointed when nothing seems to happen. However, you have to maintain the hope and expectation each day since the manifestation of dreams rarely occurs on our timetable! Whether it takes a day, a month, a year, a decade, or longer, you need to have the unshakable inner KNOWING that the fruition of your dream is on its way to you.

Osteen said you should ask for things now and live life today, knowing that your desires may not be fulfilled immediately. He pointed out that things can suddenly change for the better. Finances can suddenly change. Relationships can suddenly blossom. Dreams can suddenly materialize.

For a voice talent, a new client could suddenly book you. You could suddenly have extra money to get that fancy microphone. Your latest blog article could suddenly capture the interest of the media and catapult you into the recording booths at Disney, Pixar, and other animation houses. (It could happen!)

By using these 3 techniques, I hope you will be able to silence the inner critic. As the star and director of your life’s movie, consistently feeling good about your voice-over career will enable you to live happily ever after!

Movie clapboard photo credit: TPopova/iStockPhoto.com
 

Using my iPad in my voiceover recording studio

Recently, the talented voice actor Paul Strikwerda asked a question on the highly active discussion board of the LinkedIn Working Voice Actor group about using an e-reader in his recording booth. I decided to re-purpose my answers to Paul’s question into this post.

My iMac computer is outside of my WhisperRoom recording booth. I have longed to have a paperless studio and perform my scripts straight off a computer. I can’t place a computer in my booth because my microphone would pick up the sound of even the quietest computer fan. My MacBook Pro laptop is very quiet but not quiet enough, and any computer fan could rev up at unexpected times.

I originally wanted a second monitor in my booth. I could either stretch cable 10′ or more across the center of the studio floor or wind it a greater distance around the baseboards and corners to reach my computer desk. Due to the size of my WhisperRoom and the door placement in my studio, reconfiguring the studio isn’t really an option. I don’t like seeing cables everywhere, especially when my stunning soundproof studio is so incredibly beautiful that WhisperRoom features it on their brochure. Therefore, a second monitor is not an option. Wireless monitors seem to be on the horizon, so maybe a second monitor will be workable for me in the future.

The Apple iPad has solved the problem for me. I use the Wi-Fi on it to connect to my wireless LAN in my house. I’ve been able to read scripts from agents’ and clients’ web sites, as well as long e-learning Word files sent in e-mail.

My view of the world when I’m recording voiceover scripts and audiobooks —
my Neumann TLM 103 mic and Apple iPad

 
I had an Amazon Kindle, but it didn’t work well for me in the studio. It was cumbersome to load a Word or PDF document to it. Scrolling the screen required a click, which could be audible and/or disrupt my flow of narration. I can endlessly and quietly scroll the screen on the iPad while continuing to perform.

I typed my original response to Paul on my iPad, which reminded me of another advantage to it. I was recording a job, and the client sent me some changes in e-mail. I was able to read the e-mail and record the changes without leaving the booth.

My husband is my director, and he also has an iPad. He can keep the script in front of him while maintaining full-screen view and control of Pro Tools on the iMac. When Drew isn’t available to help me, I use a Frontier Design Tranzport to control Pro Tools from within the booth, so that’s another reason the iPad is a good solution for me.

The only downside I have discovered is that I can’t mark the text while recording, like when I want to take notes on direction. I could mark text in Word on my computer before recording. The method is not perfect, but it’s superior to printing.

The iPad doesn’t have a built-in app that lets you edit text in Word. However, as you might guess, “there’s an app for that”. Apple’s Pages app is the most popular. It can be purchased in the App Store for $9.99 and gives you functionality similar to the MS Office suite. This PC World article has more info about viewing and editing Word docs on an iPad.

Your PC can already talk to the iPad with email. If you’re using Outlook, you could set up a Gmail or other web e-mail account. You could then send your edited file to yourself and read the attachment in the booth.

I’m recording an audiobook of a public domain book. I was able to find the book in iBooks by searching on the title, and it loaded in that app. Just like on the Kindle, the on-line dictionary is handy. I can also change the font size and highlight characters’ lines within the iBooks app.

I saw a note on the Yahoo Voiceovers list that someone did an audition with an app called PureAudio ($2.99 in the Apps Store) and thought it came out well. When I originally posted about it, I saw only a handful of reviews were available for that app, and most were reporting various problems. Since the iPad is in its infancy, I know that more and better apps will be available over time.

Oh, and BTW — Drew and I have given up our Kindles. I’m a voracious reader, and I loved my Kindle. After getting the iPad, I didn’t use the Kindle. I can read my Kindle books on my iPad with an app. The fact that the iPad allows me to carry around a library of videos, books, and music is an added bonus to its tremendous functionality in my studio.

If you’re not a member of the Linkedin Working Voice Actor group, you’re missing a lot of fantastic and lively discussions that will help your voiceover career! Another talented voice artist and group owner Ed Victor always “whacks the hornet’s nest” with a new and interesting topic each week. Just as Paul asked the question about e-readers, you can post your own questions about any topic related to voiceovers. As always, I’d love to have your questions or comments about this post, so please share them on the blog.

7 voiceover lessons from my surfing instructor

VOICE2010, the international conference for voiceover talent held in Los Angeles, has ended, and the participants have gone home. I appreciated reading blog updates from other voice talent all the more since I wasn’t there. My travel budget this spring was spent instead on a trip with Drew to Hawaii. However, I was reminded of 7 great lessons that apply to a voice-over career, all courtesy of my surfing instructor.

SURFING? As in the water sport known for “hanging 10”? If you’re wondering what my surfing instructor could possibly teach about voiceover, read on!

Voiceover talent and recent surfing student Karen Commins 
offers the universal greetings of surfers.

 
Drew and I went to Honolulu to celebrate his birthday. We make it a point to travel each year for one of our birthdays, and it was his turn to pick the destination this year. He picked Hawaii so he could later say that he had a surfing lesson on Waikiki Beach on his birthday. 🙂

Drew found our instructor Erik Lillmars at DCX Surfing School by doing a Google search for surfing lessons on Oahu. Since Drew is also a photographer, he liked the fact that Erik’s site included photography services. In fact, Drew selected this particular instructor because photography was listed.

Two things are important from this part of the story:

1. Get your own web site, preferably with your own domain. Also, make sure that search engines can you based on your geographic area. People often prefer to deal with someone locally. While it’s a global economy, I want to be the voice actor of choice for anyone in the Atlanta area!

2. If you offer extra services outside of voice-over (copywriting, audio editing, marketing consultation, etc.) or have some specialized subject knowledge, be sure to include that information on your site. Lots of people are voice talent. Your value-added services or subject expertise may be the reason you are hired.

Erik taught the lesson in his office on Koa Avenue, a block off of Waikiki Beach. He talked to us a long time before ever getting to the actual mechanics of the lesson. Some of his topics centered around Zen and meditation; he indicated the best surfers practice meditation to quiet their minds and visualize their success.

Erik also repeatedly told us to relax. If you’re aren’t relaxed on a surfboard, you’ll be unsteady on the board and could fall off the side before you ever get to a wave. (Trust me on this one.) If you actually get to the point of being ready to ride a wave, tension in your body could cause you to lose your balance and injure yourself in falling off the surfboard.

3. Relax. If you aren’t relaxed in front of a microphone, your throat muscles will constrict, and the tension will be heard in your voice and on the recording. What’s worse, people can hear that tension and will want to shy away from your work. You may not think you could get injured doing voiceover work, but the long-term effects of strained vocal cords can lead to damage.

Most surfing instructors probably show you something about standing up on the surfboard using the actual board while on the beach. In our lesson, though, Erik spread a mat on the floor of his office and showed us the moves there.

The surfers you’ve seen on TV make it look so easy; they get to a standing position as if by magic. (If you want the magic formula to make your voiceover work look easy, skip ahead to lesson number 6.) Erik stressed safety and showed us how to get to our knees, put one foot in front of you, and finally rise to a standing position while turning to a sideways stance for balance. He had us practice this move several times in the office. Erik showed us how to dip down while twisting our body to maintain balance.

Birthday boy Drew Commins demonstrates the first step in standing up on a surfboard:
raise up from lying flat to balancing on your knees.
 
4) Stand up in stages. Just because you have done something briefly in a class setting doesn’t necessarily make you ready and qualified to perform the actual work. I especially worry about those aspiring voice talent who take a 2-hour group class and then jump into making a demo. It’s akin to the same level of preparation and expertise you have after practicing a move 3 times on a floor mat and then thinking you can surf in deep water.

Drew and I had to carry a 9-foot surfboards under each of our arms when walking from the office to the beach, which was maybe a fifth of a mile. After toting that load in the Hawaii heat, I was TIRED by the time we got to the spot on the beach!

Once we finally got in the water and on our surfboards, I felt very shaky on the hard, wood surfboard. As I started paddling out to the waves, my neck hurt immensely, and I kept feeling like I would fall off the board. Erik encouraged me to get off the board and float in the water rather than risking injury. I told Erik that it was more important for him to spend his time with Drew, and I would be happy just hanging out in the water for the duration of the lesson.

During the office part of the lesson, our instructor also told us that he had studied the pattern of the waves. Using a traffic analogy, he said that the incoming and outgoing surfers should be in separate lanes. We were impressed that Erik had created a chart that showed us how to use a particular balcony of a hotel and a structure near Diamond Head as a visual guide to our proper lane.

Like the sun over the Hawaiian beach, Erik’s research was golden. Waikiki Beach is the world’s most famous beach and probably has the greatest concentration of surfers at any given moment. Since Erik had spent hours and hours in studying the patterns and rhythms of the ocean, he knew the best position in the water to catch the wave. He also knew the best place to be if you wanted to hang out in the outgoing surfing “lane” while staying safely out of the way of dozens of incoming surfers. I greatly appreciated that insight since that’s where I was while Eric was working with Drew.

Aloha! Drew was a natural surfer, standing up several times during his only surf lesson.
Diamond Head is in the background.

 
As Drew was riding a wave toward the beach, Erik came back to me. He commented several times about inexperienced surfers who were going out to a spot where no one else was. He said the waves didn’t break in those locations, so the stray surfers were wasting their time.

5) Know where the waves are. Once you have decided to pursue a voice-over career, you need to analyze your strengths and gifts to know where your voice fits in the market. With that information, you can define a target market and niche within that market. You then need to study the habits of your target market in order to position yourself and gain work.

Drew made several attempts to ride a wave using the techniques Erik showed us in the office. As you can see in the above picture, Drew was successful in standing up and riding the waves several times! His hang time might not have been very long, but it was great he could stand up and surf!

As soon as the surfers fall off the board, what do they do? They paddle back out and wait for the next wave!

6) Practice! In any creative endeavor, whether it’s surfing or voiceover, you have to practice if you ever expect to improve your skills and advance to the next level. Erik was an awesome surfing coach who helped us achieve our goals for the lesson. Consistent practice on your own and lessons under the direction of a good voiceover coach will do the same for your career.

While the surfers are indeed practicing their skills each time they ride a wave, they also do it for another reason — the sheer joy of the experience. In fact, Erik told us in his office that he had previously worked in the music industry with Neil Diamond but decided to give up that hectic lifestyle to pursue his true calling and passion to teach others about surfing.

7) Do it for the joy, not the money. I often see newspaper articles about introductory voiceover classes that leave the reader with the impression that anyone can take the class and quickly start making megabucks just by “talking”. Just know that if it were that easy, everybody would be doing it. The best and most monetarily successful voiceover talent are those who have the passion and true calling for the work. Even professionals with years of experience continue to practice and improve their skills. Since the vast majority of your time in voiceover may be spent in gaining work rather than actually performing it, you will definitely want to feel as much joy as possible!

I’m sure many people are already planning their trips to VOICE2011. As for me, I’m already planning my birthday trip next year! If you can think of a cool idea for me or have thoughts about my surfing story, I hope you’ll leave some comments on the blog.
 

3Cs? Make that *4Cs* of Branding Illustrated by Barry Manilow

Success leaves clues.

Yesterday, I analyzed Barry Manilow as a brand to offer clues to voice talent about marketing your personal brand to your clients. He has defined his core product, offers consistent results, and embraces constant improvement.

Today, I realized I forgot the last and most defining C in the branding process. As you can hear toward the end of this clip (1:07), Barry Manilow has a secret weapon that has made him a legend in the music industry and which savvy voiceover folks will want to adopt.

Barry Manilow performs with his back-up singers (Keely Vasquez, foreground)
at Paris Las Vegas, 3/21/10

The 4th C of Branding — Create Your Own Stuff

Every day, I see questions on various voice-over boards like:

  • How do I get an agent? (I wrote a little about agents on this page.)
  • Should I join one of the voiceover casting — commonly referred to as pay-to-play (P2P) — sites, and if so, which one is better? (If you’re interested, my answer to that question is here.)
  • Who actually wins all these auditions? (You do have more on your marketing plan than waiting for auditions, don’t you? If you need help in creating a marketing plan, check out this post. Also, this post contains 25+ marketing and publicity ideas to attract clients to you. You’ll find other marketing articles in the archives.)

To me, the approaches above cause you to give away your power. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do them as part of your marketing mix. However, you’ll have far greater power to move your voiceover career in the direction you want it to go by casting yourself in your own projects.

Our friends who act on camera or in the theatre will write a play or show for the web, create the set, design costumes, get their friends to act with them, star in the show, direct it, and publicize their effort — all WITHOUT pay. Either we professional voiceover people aren’t creating our own stuff, or we’re not publicizing it too well.

I also think many people resist investing time in such projects when they aren’t being paid. Our society tends to attach monetary value to everything, which can make us feel that it’s not worth doing something simply for the pleasure of doing it. Creating our own work allows us to develop skills and make us more competitive for those paying jobs. You might consider your own project to be a specialized form of practice. In addition, we can use our own projects in our publicity efforts. If you keep working at it, who knows? Someone may even pay you someday for your creation.

What to Create?

I think the question could be answered by looking at what you like and the category of voice work that you want to obtain. Below are some ideas that may inspire you.

Promos? How about creating your own video with your voice as the promo? If you can’t create a video, perhaps you could work with the public access cable channel to develop one. You could post the finished product on your site and others like YouTube.

Audiobooks? How about recording short stories and books for the blind, reading at your library, or recording for Learning Ally?

Commercials? How about writing your own copy and setting it to music?

Video games? How about voicing some projects on one of the fan sites?

Podcasts? How about turning an organization’s newsletter into a podcast or Internet radio show?

Narrations? How about narrating feature stories from magazines? You could scan pictures or buy stock images and add them to PowerPoint or a video to create a finished presentation. As another idea, you could create audio or video podcasts based on scripts that you write.

I cannot express to you the power and importance of creating your own work in building your personal brand and attaining the level of success you want in voiceover. But — don’t take my word for it.

For years, actor/producer/director Bob Fraser has been advising actors to cast themselves and create their own work.

Author/producer/casting director Bonnie Gillespie is such a strong advocate of self-produced work that she includes someone’s self-produced work each week in her popular column The Actor’s Voice.

And now, you’ve heard it directly from Barry Manilow.

Success does leave clues, and 3 famous and highly successful people have all left the same one. Now that you have it, what are you going to do about it? I’d love to get your comments and see examples of your creations on this blog!