From Harlan Hogan’s Voiceover Career Secrets:
One mistake that a lot of people with a broadcasting background make — I was guilty of this for a long time — is expending great effort to deliver the audition “in time.” Unless they are very specific and say we really, really, really have to hear you bring this in in 25 seconds…Don’t worry about the time.
As broadcast pros we think, “Oh, it’ll be impressive that I bring it in at :30.” But they are not timing. They don’t care. Take the luxury of time.
Recently I did a spot that I got off an audition and when I read it, I knew it was a minute and a half or longer. They wanted a nice, relaxed reading. When I actually did the job, they had realized on their own, “Oh my God, we have to cut half of this.”
Many more voiceover career tips at Voiceover Career Secrets.
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Excellent advice.
No problem there. I’m the original king of run-on! 😀
hmm….good advice, especially after having read the entire article. YOU do YOUR job, and saves the trouble of sounding like the know it all talent when they figure out that the read that was PERFECT took it past the warning track…
Good Stuff Dan…keep it comin
My favorite experience in this was dealing with an agency that didn’t have a clue. They also wanted a nice relaxing read but gave me over 90 seconds of copy for a sixty second spot. I did it with their nice relaxing read and it went to 90 seconds.
They asked me to speed up but still be nice and relaxing.
I said, “perhaps you could cut some lines?”
“Oh NO!” came the reply, “This copy is approved exactly as is. YOU’RE the TALENT. YOU have to find a way to make it work.”
Needless to say I didn’t. They finally got the read done from someone else but it was so fast nobody who heard it could understand it.
Of course, what did the agency do? Blame the radio station.