Karen Commins

Repeat after me: I AM ENOUGH

14 January 2010

My blog is configured so that I moderate the comments. Otherwise, it would be overloaded with spam comments too ridiculous to repost here. As I was approving comments tonight, I saw this legitimate one attached to the entry titled A Plan to break into voice-over. Even though I usually don’t provide career advice on an individual basis, I felt inspired to answer this question as its own entry.

Hi Karen, I took Paul Armbruster’s Intro to Voiceover class, been through the various levels of classes with Della Cole and also produced a demo. I met with one agent who told me I needed to get rid of my NY State accent, so I sent to two different “accent reduction” coaches and am now at a standstill. I know I need to market myself but should I redo the entire demo or just have one produced with a couple commercials in my “neutral” voice? Your website and blogs are very informational. (BTW, I am now reading Secrets of Voice-Over Success…) Thanks again! D. J.

Several things came to mind as I read this question, and none of them is a short — or even direct — answer to the question. First, I can’t really answer the question about the demo since I haven’t heard it, don’t know how old it is, and don’t critique demos for other voice talent. In the post I just referenced, I concluded with these comments that definitely apply to D. J.’s situation:

“Much of your work in a voice-over career is going to be in managing the business aspects of the job, which starts with your good demo. I recommend that you consult only a few trusted advisors in whom you have confidence; otherwise, you can get too much input and spend too much time perfecting your demo and not enough time marketing it.”

Before asking about re-doing her demo, she wrote: I know I need to market myself but… Here again, I don’t know how much marketing she has actually done to know whether her current demo is effective. I refer her back to these entries for some ideas and questions to help her analyze her marketing plan and her demo promotion efforts:

Persistence will keep the voice-over dream alive

Persistence is especially needed in marketing

25 ways to get publicity and traffic to your web site

Need help in creating a marketing plan?

Last week, I read an article by C. J. Hayden, author of my favorite and most highly recommended marketing book GET CLIENTS NOW!, titled What’s the Missing Ingredient in Your Marketing? that also may be helpful to D. J. or anyone else struggling with their next step.

Reading between the lines of her message, though, I had a sense that D. J. might feel on some level that her efforts are in the category of “not good enough”. That’s the point that I really wanted to address today.

I actively listen to both radio and TV commercials, and I encourage you to do the same thing. I often hear commercials with females who have a speech pattern that I find especially irritating to hear. It’s that flat, back of the throat kind of sound with words ending on a higher pitch — it’s a dialect I call “upspeak”. It reminds me of California Valley Girls of the 80s, especially the way they pronounce words ending in -ER.

It seems that many women in the under-25 crowd have adopted this sound as their own. I suspect they are emulating someone they heard on a TV show because I hear that upspeak dialect even when in the mall or at restaurants. I felt that if I didn’t sound like those women, I couldn’t be marketable for national ads. Also, the majority call of national ads call for younger voices, so I could think that’s 2 strikes against me before I start.

The other big trend I hear is in the 25-35 year old age bracket. These women always seem to have that “crinkle” in their voice — that little trace of gravel on certain key words. I don’t know if it’s done intentionally to meet specs calling for “quirky” voices or these women speak that way all of the time.

Whether it’s the upspeak dialect or the quirky crinkle texture that a producer wants to hear, I would never book that job. I decided to embrace my own speech patterns after my coach Nancy Wolfson gave me these pearls of wisdom:

You have to trust that you are ENOUGH. After undergoing voiceover training, you deserve to be there — at the audition, in the session, on the finished product.
Don’t apologize for anything that you bring to the table.
If you have an agent who is sending scripts to you, your agent thinks you meet the specs.

If you’re concerned about an accent, you can do one of 2 things:

Work with a speech/dialect coach to reduce it
Embrace it

Option 1 is certainly viable, and you should be unashamed to pursue it. However, there’s also no shame in embracing an accent. In fact, you may be able to garner a lot of work in a regional market.

Training, a great demo, and a marketing plan will only take you so far. To achieve your voice-over dreams, you’ll need to set aside the self-doubt and know that you are ENOUGH!

Thanks to all of you who read my voiceover blog and write meaningful comments! I’m always pleased to find real comments from aspiring and professional voice talent sprinkled among the inane drivel like this, which is only posted to be a link to a site unrelated to voice-over:

A few days ago I found your blog and have been reading along quietly. I decided I could leave my opening comment. Im not sure exactly what to write except that Ive loved reading it. Nice site. I shall carry on coming back to this site now and again. I have also grabbed the RSS feed for updates.

Evolution of my web sites, commercial demo, and USPs

9 January 2010

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
For knowledge is limited,
whereas imagination embraces the entire world,
stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
— Albert Einstein

Web sites depict a small corner of one’s imagination, especially when branding yourself as a voice talent. As a voiceover artist and a person, I continue to evolve, gaining knowledge and skills to be of service to clients, family, and friends, as well as those who are interested in becoming voice actors. My web site and changes in my unique selling proposition (USP) reflect the progress in my evolution. I’m reviewing them here with you in hopes that this post will spark your imagination in your own evolution as a voice talent.

After starting my business in 1999, I quickly realized that a web site would be a necessary means of attracting clients. I designed and maintained the first version of my site. Yes, it is quite colorful, but at least I used a consistent font throughout my web site and on all of my printed materials.

Karen Commins’ voiceover web site version 1 (circa 2000-2005) — snapshot from 12/14/2002

As my voice-over business grew, so did the functionality and information that I wanted to include on my web site. I decided an upgrade was order but didn’t have the time to personally develop the site. However, its design was still a production of my imagination. When you rolled your mouse over the microphones next to each menu choice, a little ON AIR graphic appeared above the menu option.<

Note that I still use that graphic as the little, custom picture that appears on the address line in your web browser. This picture is generated from a file on my site named favicon.ico. The advantage of the favicon.ico is that it helps your site stand out among your clients’ many bookmarks. Creative Sound Concepts provides a good explanation of the favicon.ico and how you can create one for your site.

Karen Commins’ voiceover web site version 2 (circa 2005-2009) – snapshot from 10/18/2009

Like you, I’ve read all kinds of advice about not including a picture of a microphone on my web site. People in creative industries, especially in advertising, consider microphone pictures on voice talent web sites to be tacky and outdated. While I’m sure that’s true, no one ever said that they didn’t want to hire me because I had a microphone on my site. Of course, I don’t know whether it actually drove people away.

One thing that I do know is that you should choose your USP wisely. My original USP was STAR quality voiceovers performed within your budget! The good news is that this USP attracted clients. The bad news for me was that the USP generally attracted clients who were shopping for voice talent solely on the basis of price. As I wrote in a previous entry, I have so much to offer my clients that competing only on price is not an option.

When I moved to my second web site, I changed my USP as well. At times, I used the line on my site: People don’t have time to read. That’s why you need me.

However, a USP or tag really needs to be a short, memorable phrase. I later promoted myself with the tag Eloquent voice to enlighten and entertain. (I admit it; I love alliteration!) This tag took the focus off of price and emphasized something about my thought process and speech patterns, but does it really describe my voice? Probably not. Does the tag really need to describe my voice?

I thought about the answer to that question during intense coursework spanning over 2 years with my wonderful coach and branding expert Nancy Wolfson at BrainTracksAudio. I concentrated on learning to analyze patterns in advertising copy so that I could provide bookable and consistent interpretations. Through my lessons with Nancy and her delightful associate, acting coach Jeff Freeman, I also learned once again that other people don’t hear us or think of us the way we think of ourselves. My voice is only one part of me, and my branding efforts need to encompass the whole person.

Finally, I finished my coursework and was ready to create a new commercial demo. I stopped marketing my previous commercial demo in September 2007, so reaching this point was particularly exciting to me. On 10 April 2009, I was very excited to walk through the doors at Creative Sound Concepts here in Atlanta. Although I had talked with owner Spencer Herzog through the years, I had not had the opportunity to visit his fabulous studio or work with his great team. I was there in April to record my long-anticipated — and, might I add, AWESOME! — new commercial demo under Nancy’s direction.

Front door at Creative Sound Concepts, Atlanta — “Sound starts here and goes everywhere”

My commercial demo was produced by Rick Santizo at Santisound in Los Angeles. Bill Morrell was my gracious and very capable engineer in Atlanta.

As a technical side note, SourceConnect, rather than ISDN, was used to connect both studios. I had unplugged my ISDN line almost 2 years ago due to lack of use. I haven’t had any requests for SourceConnect other than in my demo session. However, I may acquire an account as it seems to be an affordable alternative to ISDN, and it is gaining a larger presence.

With my new demo in hand, the next step was to create an image that would match my voice, style, and personality. Nancy recommended that I work with the very talented Jason Sikes, graphic designer and owner of Village Green Studios in Los Angeles.

Nancy played my demo for Jason and discussed her views of my brand. Leaving my branding image to Nancy’s and Jason’s imaginations allowed these 2 creative geniuses to develop an amazing new image that represents me on multiple levels!

Karen Commins’ current voiceover web site — version 3 now on-line as of 10/18/2009

This new image is better than I could have imagined! I have not met Nancy or Jason in person, so I was thrilled that they proposed this image. Even more gratifying, some friends had the instant reaction of “Oh, that’s so YOU!” 🙂

In the last year, I’ve contracted my brand and web domains to my name. The best part of this entire process is that now my commercial demo, my web site, my printed materials, my slate on auditions, my salutations, and my USP work in conjunction with each other and allow me to fully promote myself with consistent branding elements:

My printed materials like note cards and business cards have the same luscious image. With this design, you know that I’m also planning postcard mailings!
I slate my auditions with “Greetings from Karen Commins”.
My salutations on e-mails, forum posts, cards and letters is “Greetings” rather than “hello”, “hi”, etc.
My USP is now A Vacation for Your Ears.

Being a professional voice talent means that I’m opposed to static, whether it’s on the airwaves or in my career. And Einstein was right — imagining something better in my branding efforts has always stimulated greater progress and my continual evolution, not to mention more clients!

5-time volunteer at HearTheBill.org

12 December 2009

Have you read the Health Care Reform legislation that is currently pending in Congress? I haven’t read all of the bills. However, I have narrated 5 segments of the various bills as part of the monumental, volunteer effort by professional voice talent to create audio versions of all of the House and Senate bills on health care reform at HearTheBill.org.

In addition to narrating the bills, I have listened to much of them. Anyone can download the various bills and listen to them like an audiobook. The voice talent who donated time, energy, and talent to this project did so without any political agenda. The aim of the site is enable Americans to make informed decisions about the health care proposals.

As I stated in my profile at HearTheBill.org:

A lecturer once stated that civilization is built with the arts as the foundation.
As a voice artist, it’s always my goal
to create lasting work that means something to people.
Since this bill has lasting impact to every American,
I am thrilled to join with my fellow voice talent
to create this recording and make
the proposed legislation accessible to all citizens.

HearTheBill founders Kathleen (Kat) Keesling and Diane Havens worked incredible hours on this increasingly massive project to build and maintain the web site, coordinate the activities of dozens of voice talent, develop and update the recording style guide, blitz the press and obtain top-tier national coverage, and narrate multiple segments, all while continuing to perform voiceover work in their own busy professional lives. Since the Senate is still working on a compromise bill, I’m sure Kat and Diane will call on the HearTheBill.org volunteers to quickly narrate the new bill once it is available.

If you’re a professional voice talent, you can answer that call with me by volunteering to record a segment of the next bill. Not only is the HearTheBill narration important work that serves a vital community need, but the bills are excellent material for a legal demo reel. Think about it — only a voice artist could start with dry, legislative copy and breathe life into it so that it actually sounds interesting!

The preparation time needed for these recordings can be significant depending on the number of pages you undertake, as well as the number and type of references to legislation within those pages. The copy is overflowing with abbreviations for other legislation. In order to make my narration sound flowing, I mark my script each time to spell out all of the legal terms according to the Style Guide.

When the next bill is ready, I’ll be ready to volunteer again. What about you?

Using Twitter for marketing voiceover services

30 November 2009

Since I recently began including my Twitter entries in my blog, I thought you might enjoy reading this interesting article in the Nashville Business Journal. It highlights the success stories of several businesses in using Twitter to build their brand and their business. Voice talent will find some ideas for implementation in your own marketing plan.

Time required to narrate and produce audiobooks

28 November 2009

Two weeks ago, the following ad appeared on one of the freelance work sites. While it wasn’t on a site aimed solely at voiceover talent, it prompted me to write about the time required for audiobook production.

Hello. I am looking to turn 14000 word e-books into audio and or video format, this will be ongoing work i know it is a simple process to do and can be done free with max and or various softwares, if you have the knowledge and have done this before please reply this will be ongoing work i will pay $40 per e-book converted into audio. If you have a sample of your work please provide it this will help me make my dicission. [sic]

In reading this ad, I’m not clear what kind of work is actually requested. I’m not even sure the ad’s author knows what s/he wants. However, 2 things are immediately evident to me:

a 14,000-word book is about 1.5 hours of finished audio narration
$40 is entirely too little pay to even consider narrating this e-book

Paul Strikwerda, a Pennsylvania voice talent and thought-provoking blogger, wrote a most excellent and thorough analysis of the recording aspect of audiobook work titled Breaking down an audio book rate. He outlines the process for estimating the finished run time and consequently a recording rate based on the pages and words in a book. It’s a terrific article that I wish I had written, and I highly encourage you to read it and his other articles about setting rates.

But Paul’s article only tells half the story. What about the editing and production aspects of audiobook work?

Since I usually work alone in my stunning soundproof studio, I have to consider my total time commitment when submitting a bid on audiobook work. My rule-of-thumb is that each finished hour of audio requires 4 hours of real time to create: 1.5-2 hours to record and 2 hours to edit. While editing, you must consider the overall story flow when determining tracks, as well as editing pauses for dramatic effect.

If the person who wrote the ad above is expecting a voice talent to narrate his e-book, I can easily estimate that I might need 6 hours in my studio to complete the process. If I divide 6 into 40, I get an hourly rate of $6.66. If that rate looks like a devilish number, consider this point: At this moment, the US federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour.

Do you really want to do voiceover or audiobook work so much that you’re willing to make less than minimum wage?

The example Paul used in his blog is a book that would run about 8.33 hours of finished time. I don’t think even the world’s most accomplished narrator could record an 8-hour book in 10 hours. Not only might the narrator stumble on words, but other influences can stop the recording, like growling stomachs, external noise, and calls of nature. In addition, the vocal chords grow tired after hours of recording. Furthermore, errors like mispronunciations and incorrect inflections are caught during the editing process that must re-recorded and inserted into the edited material. Using my time commitment formula with Paul’s sample book, I would actually expect to spend over 33 hours in my studio to complete the assignment!

Establishing rates is always a concern for voice talent and all freelance professionals. Whether you’re quoting rates for audiobooks or some other kind of long-form narration, don’t be afraid to set a rate that truly compensates you for your time spent on the project.

PS. Speaking of time commitments, I wrote this article on 15 November but haven’t made time to record it. I decided I’d rather post it for you now without the accompanying narration than continue to delay its publication.

A short letter to my loyal readers

7 November 2009

Dear loyal readers of my blog,

You may be surprised to see Twitter updates appearing instead of my normal essays about the topics of voice-over, marketing, and audiobooks. I have not abandoned my style or intention in maintaining this blog for voice talent. However, three life-altering events during the past 6 months — primarily the loss of my mother — have left me with little time to write anything of length.

I also realized that many of the links I have posted on Twitter are often excellent resources for voice talent and audiobook narrators. Even if you’re following me on Twitter (and if you’re not, it’s always a good time to start!), you may have missed some of this useful information.

Therefore, I am including my tweets as a supplement — not a replacement — to my usual writing on this blog. I have more feature-length articles in the works. I also plan to expand my content to include more short entries like this one since I know it can be difficult to make time to read a longer article.

I thank you for your continued interest in and support of this blog, and I hope you are living the life of your dreams!

Cordially,
Karen Commins

Photo credit: Akirastock/iStockPhoto