THE REAL WORK OF A VOICEOVER PRO

Excerpted from Voiceover Career Secrets by Harlan Hogan & Dan O”Day

Dan O’Day: Voiceover auditions used to be almost exclusively cattle call style, a bunch of voice actors showing up to read for the same part. With the advent of the Internet, and also something people don’t think about — the ability to compress audio into manageable file sizes — that’s changed.

So Harlan, what percentage of your auditions is done at an outside location determined by the client and what percentage is done by you from your studio?

Harlan Hogan:  Well, it has been a quantum shift, Dan, and at this point I’m doing about two percent away from the house and that would leave 98 percent from here. That’s a little different in different markets.

New York still has a lot of casting directors and a lot of voiceover people there actually go into Manhattan and run around from place to place. Which is a good thing in many ways because you get to meet people face to face.

Some of that goes on in L.A. and a little bit here in Chicago, but in my case the vast majority of the auditioning is done right from here.

Dan:  So that’s really a quantum shift. You are at the very top of the field; do you have to audition?

Harlan:  I’m just basking in the glow of that compliment. Yeah, see that’s the work of voiceover work: auditioning. You are right, it has changed a lot, there are still personal relationships and there’s still some reputation and promotion, obviously.

But a lot of things changed, including the people hiring us. I’m talking at this point mainly about commercial work. You have new people coming in, young people, they’re busy, they don’t have time to learn the talent pools.

At the same time we have now, because of the Internet, a huge talent pool. And so the tendency is for producers to take the copy in a Word file and zip it over as an email to the agent of their choice, or even at times directly to a performer.

Shortly thereafter a little mp3 file comes back to that creator or that writer or that producer. And they can sit there in their office cubicle and in a matter of a very short time listen to hundreds of people.

People don’t realize that many, many times that’s really how we spend the big chunk of our day: running a business and auditioning. The time spent just talking into the microphone is minuscule compared to the time we spend getting the work.

One of the things that has happened because of recording techniques and technology and sort of a burgeoning industry of people creating demos is that most people hiring talent have learned that they cannot rely on listening only to the demo. They need to hear you do what they wrote. And those of us in the business, if we’re smart, are happy.

Dan:  You pointed out the immense amount of time that is spent actually doing the work to get the work. The top voiceover people I know all are in agreement that most of their time is spent on the work of getting the work. And you might have seen some kinds of inflated claims that some people have made about how profitable the voiceover industry is.

Harlan:  Yes, and that’s been another one of those quantum shifts. It used to be that most people didn’t even know what a voiceover was. It was a small group of people, and this change saddens me to some degree.

There are legitimate, worthwhile people who are coaches and people who can help put demo reels together, but we also have sort of a subculture that’s rapidly developed of over-inflated claims and get rich quick schemes and bait & switch techniques that you can make just huge amounts of money.

In fact there was one, I think it’s no longer on the Web, but for a while they were making a claim that voiceover was one of the top three earners in the United States of America: a CEO, an astronaut and a voiceover performer.

Dan:  And the voiceover performer, that’s the third highest profession?

Harlan:  That was the third highest profession. I took that down to the bank and tried to get a larger mortgage but they didn’t buy it.

Dan:   Ironically there were probably 25 other voiceover people waiting to make the same pitch to the banker.

Harlan:  Exactly.

Dan:  Maybe one of them got the loan.

Harlan:  Exactly. So, I hate to see that because that really isn’t true. Yes, I’m blessed myself to be able to make a nice living doing this for a long time, and you have ups and you have downs. But it’s a big mistake for people to go into it thinking, “Oh, all I do is talk into that metal tube, maybe for 20 minutes, and I get a lot of money.”

And I think that’s what they were basing it on, the time performing. But unlike, say radio, where you actually are being paid for the time on the air, in this business, as you pointed out, that’s the treat, that performance.

That’s like the actor who auditions for a play. The auditioning is no fun and after the 12th audition they land a role in a play. Well, the play — hence the name “play” — is fun. So I love nothing better than recording a session but the real work, most of the time, is getting the work.

Excerpted from Voiceover Career Secrets