'Top 5: Requests From Voice Talents'

Understanding what the voice over community of Voice123 is thinking is important, so that each voice professional, be it a job poster or talent, has a great experience! So, last week, Voice123 shared an article with all voice over talents on the 'Top 5 Feedbacks' from you, the job poster, as to what you would like to see more of from voice talents. The article went over really well! In an effort to build understanding between all users of Voice123, we would like to share with you the Top 5 Requests given to us from Voice123 voice over talents. We hope you will find this interesting!

1. 'The ranking system is not used all that often.'

Voice123 has a ranking system in place for you to organize your decisions, as to who you will likely hire, consider, maybe hire, not likely hire, or wish to never hear from again. Such usage of the ranking system, simply put, helps you hear from your favorite talents more often, but can also help you avoid voice talents you wish to not hear from in the future. Voice talents request this because the more it is used, the better it affects their chances of being invited by those they have had positive results with in the past. It also gives them ideas on how well decisions they make are working out.

2. 'I wish I knew who they hired, or at least a thank you note for auditioning.'

Well, this is Voice123's responsibility. In fact, those doing the hiring have kindly asked us to have that option in place, as well. We will look to take care of this in the future. We appreciate everyone's patience until then.

3. 'My auditions were never opened.'

Right now, close to 80% of all auditions are opened when a project is posted on Voice123, yet 100% would always love to know that they have been heard, mainly because they had spent time to record something, and they know not everyone will be hired.

4. 'Project descriptions come across as too vague, sometimes.'

The interface on Voice123 allows for you to describe exactly what you need. However, many times only one or two words have been used to describe those needs. We have seen that those posting jobs get better results, when more details are given in the Project Description area. Post a voice over job, and see how well this works.

5. ' I lost contact with the client.'

It is important for all users to know that when replying to private messages or direct invites, DO NOT use the reply button in your email. Please use the link at the bottom of the email underneath 'How To Reply'. If you ever experience a situation in which you have lost contact with a voice over talent, contact us, and let us know! If the problem is Voice123's, we will be able to help you!

Voice123 wants all voice over industry professionals, from clients to talents, to enjoy using our system! If you ever have any questions while posting a project, or would like some advice on ways to get great results for your project, please contact us via Live Chat, phone or email.

We will always do our best to update our technology to fit the voice over community's ever-changing needs!

Thank you always!

Steven Lowell
Public Relations Manager
My Blog
Twitter: @stevenNYC123

'Top 5 Feedbacks: From Voice Seekers'

Voice123 receives thousands of feedback emails, phone calls, and Live Chats a month, all from users of online casting. There are many, who post jobs to find voice over talents, many who audition, and many who do both. This week, we would like to share the top 5 feedbacks we read from voice seekers to fill in communication gaps in the Voice123 voice over community.

We hope you will find this helpful!

1. 'The voice talent did not respond to my email, or direct invitation.'

Regretfully, if there is more than one obvious choice, a simple thing like not responding to a personal invitation can cost someone a job; sometimes you or another voice talent. Voice123 is aware of this, and has policies in place to assist both voice talents and voice seekers to avoid these problems.

2. 'The voice talent agreed on a price, but could not perform the payment method required.'

One of the reasons Voice123 has a profile parameter for Payment Methods is because there are certain types of methods voice seekers or voice talents will simply not use. The best way to avoid any negative situation is to make sure you know you can perform the required payment method before auditioning.

3. 'The person did not follow instructions.'

Actually, this feedback is related to events that have happened AFTER someone was hired. Online voice over casting is new to everyone! One's perception of how much instruction is needed ahead of time can vary from user to user. At Voice123, we work to build technology to fill communication gaps in the voice over community, but it still may happen. The important thing to do is always keep track of what is exactly being asked for. An example would be, if the seeker asks for audio not to be compressed, or the MP3 file to be named a certain way.

4. 'The audition was great! So, what happened to the voice talent?'

The best thing to do, if you are going to audition, is make sure that you have contact info in your profile and remarks section that reaches you quickly. In addition, if you audition, always make sure you are indeed willing to do the job.

5. 'I wish there was some flexibility and understanding. We are all in the same boat.'

Working online as a voice talent, in many ways, requires that the talent can offer his/her own brand of customer service for voice seekers. There are indeed times when someone asks for a great amount of work, for very little. Before the decision to say 'No, I cannot help you.' is made, fully analyze the bigger picture! Will this person be a long-term client? Can I afford what is being asked of me? Above all... Will the effort eventually lead to a higher return of investment.

Perhaps the toughest part of being an online voice over talent is mastering the art of being a self-agent, business entrepreneur, marketer, and equally skilled at copy reading, while having sound recording skills.

The first step to all success...

Maintain a positive attitude, and work hard. Success will eventually find you!

Thank you always!

Steven Lowell
Public Relations Manager
My Blog
Twitter: @stevenNYC123

Voice123 Turns Six!

Voice123 will celebrate its sixth birthday this Saturday, June 13th. It left us thinking, "My my... These darn websites just grow up so darn fast!".

In six short years, online casting for voice overs has changed from 'something you might want to look into if you do voice overs or need voice talent' into a 'necessary & cost-effective way to market, audition, and/or find professional voice over talents'.

There have been changes in web technology, ways 'business is done', and new ways to communicate in 'real-time'. All of this has contributed to the growth of the online voice over community, and in a few short years, made it truly a professional and respectable way to find voice over work, or voice over talents.

The growth of Voice123 is evident in our Project Directory. Our first March in 2004, 81 voice over projects were posted. This year, over 1500 projects were posted, SmartCast & Private Jobs combined!

This could never have happened without the help of you, our Voice123 community of voice talents and job posters, and the drive of those who chose to dedicate themselves to making a better website, and voice over industry.

Our staff here celebrates a sixth birthday for Voice123, with all of you, our Voice123 community.

We thank you so much for making Voice123 special, and hope to be around for many years to come! Voice123 staff is now and forever, a hard working, dedicated staff on a mission to create, maintain, and innovate the best voice casting website with the goal of connecting members of the voice over industry, seven days a week!

All of you in the Voice123 community have made the past six years very special for all of us at Voice123!

Cheers!


Juan Salcedo
General Manager

Voice123 Facts About Posting a Voice Over Project

Voice123 is the fastest, most efficient way to connect job posters (the voice seeker) with professional voice over talent.

Did you know?
After a project is posted on Voice123 during our regular business hours (yes, we also work on weekends), your project is approved within 15 minutes and it can then take as little as 60 minutes for auditions to start arriving. Also, studies done in March 2009, show that voice talents audition for projects 24 hours a day, with the slowest time of day being between 3AM & 5AM EST.

Did you know?
In 2009, we have seen more and more jobs coming to Voice123 than ever before. Just take a look at our Voice123 voice over Project Directory for SmartCast projects, and that directory does not include the 500 to 750 jobs posted in which voice talents were contacted directly for SmartCast Disabled projects.

Did you know?
Voice123 has a shared inbox feature that allows you to easily email your clients a link to your audition inbox. This is a great time-saver!

Did you know?
Voice123 upgraded its servers last weekend to make sure that all in the Voice123 community, enjoy a smoother, faster experience!

Our site has such features to encourage you to post more work on Voice123, the largest & most professional community of voice talents in online casting.

Give Voice123 a try and see for yourself! We know you will enjoy it!


Thank you always!

Steven Lowell
Public Relations Manager
My Blog
Twitter: @stevenNYC123

Server Upgrade Means Planned Outage This Weekend!

This weekend, Voice123 will be making a much needed server upgrade to meet the growing demands of its user community.

This does mean the site will have to come down for Sunday, May 31st, 2009, between the hours of 3:00 am and 7:00 am (USA ET).

Some of you may have experienced a slow response time from the web server recently. We thank you so much for your feedback and patience in recent weeks. We hope this upgrade will serve our Voice123 Community by having faster site speed, which makes for a much more pleasant experience.

If you are a Voice Seeker planning to post a project this coming Sunday, we suggest that you do so after 7:00 am (USA ET), or send us the details of the project via email to help@voice123.com, so we can process them for you.

If you are a Voice Over Talent-Producer, please schedule yourself to send your pending auditions and proposals before or after the planned outage.

Cheers,


Juan Salcedo
General Manager

Talent Finds 'Terminator: Salvation' on Voice123!

We are very happy to announce that Voice123 talent, September Day Leach, booked a great job through Voice123, doing promotional materials for the movie, 'Terminator: Salvation', which premiered last Thursday! We thank her for letting us know about this great job, and she agreed to answer some questions about how this came to be.

Q. First, tell us about the job!
A. I was hired for promotional work for the film. I'm on www.skynetresearch.com, and all the cool viral stuff they did including infomercials for the SciFi Channel! It was just really, really cool!

Q. What exact project did you find this work through?
A. This one: http://voice123.com/lv/Corporate_Site_2.html

Q. When did you realize exactly how big the job was going to be?
A. When the production company told me who the real client was, I think I giggled like a schoolgirl for a good half hour! I was thrilled that my sexy, monotone voice was chosen as the most iconic antagonist, Skynet!

Q. How many auditions did you go through to get the job?
A. Just the one SmartCast audition. It was weird because the client hid the real name of the company in the script. I actually thought it was a security firm of some sort.

Q. They hid their name, so how did you know who it was, and what is the process of signing an NDA? Did you negotiate anything ahead of time?
A. I got a phone call while I was in a cab on my way to the NYC voice over mixer that Erik Sheppard, and I held in early December 2008. The production house e-mailed me a copy of the NDA the day before I got the phone call. The name of "Warner Brothers" was on it, so I had an inkling it was going to be a big deal! All it said was that once I found out who the client was, I would not tell anyone in detail about the scripts I would be recording. I had signed it and faxed it back the day before I left for the New York City VO Mixer, and didn't think I would hear back until Monday. They called me on Friday while I was in my cab from La Guardia, going to meet Erik at the NYC (34th St.) Macy's to see Santa. I was all calm and cool on the phone, but freaked my cabbie out a bit when I started doing the victory dance (which looks an awful lot like the "Snoopy dance") in his back seat! When we finally got to sit on Santa's lap (and we have picture proof of Erik sitting on Santa's knee!) I told him that I had already gotten my Christmas present! :) I knew the general price range for the initial recording, but I did negotiate prices as we recorded more scripts. The people with the production house were very nice and professional. All of the sessions were recorded via phone patch from my home studio.

Q. How about other jobs you have booked on Voice123?
A. Voice123 allows me to book the bread and butter jobs that makes it possible for me to be a full-time VO, while at the same time granting me access to career-changing jobs for clients like MTV, Subaru, IKEA, and now, Warner Brothers! The return on investment is incredible! No matter how successful I am able to be in this industry, Voice123 will always be in my marketing arsenal.

Voice123 thanks September Day Leach for sharing her success story with us, and we wish her all the best in future auditions! Nothing makes us happier than to hear people are working in a voice over career they love!

We thank you for reading!

If you have a voice over casting success story of your own you would like to share with us for the future, please let us know by writing us, or in our Voice123 Premium Forums!

Thank you always!

Steven Lowell
Public Relations Manager
My Blog
Twitter: @stevenNYC123

'My Voice Tags' in Your Profile!

Demo tags are finally here! The work put in by you, the professional Voice123 talent, has helped us create a great new feature for helping all Voice123 voice over talents to be found much easier than ever before!

When the new Voice123 Search Feature comes out soon, the very tags you choose to keep in your new 'My Voice Tags' section of your profile, can assist you in being found quicker and easier. Simply put, these are keywords that have been anonymously left on your profile demos by other professional talents throughout the last year.

Demo tagging is a very complex web development feature, which makes it faster & easier for people to connect in order to be hired. Bottom line, you can only benefit from it!

You may check at any time what tags your voice has received in the 'My Voice Tags' option of the 'My Profile' section (you can remove tags you don't agree with). And if you want to tag other talents, you can do so here.

You can never connect if a tag does not match what you are, and because you can remove these tags, while leaving some for others, you now have a voice in shaping the professionalism of Voice123!

This feature works because the Voice123 community made it so, and we thank you so much for being a part of Voice123.

Read more about it in our Resource Center article about Demo Tagging, if you have questions.

Cheers,


Juan Salcedo
General Manager

Demo Tagging Winners Announced!

The demo tagging promotion to give away five premium subscriptions ended last week. Over the weekend, Voice123 spent many hours looking through them to see just who tagged the most demos. We are happy to announce the following five winners of Voice123 Premium Subscriptions!

• Sabrina Sterling
• Robin Rowan
• Ron Reid
• Matilda Novak
• Eluv Eluv

We received over 25,000 tags throughout the past year. Over 9,600 voice demos were tagged, belonging to 8,500 voice talents. The tags left were very professional, and it was a pleasure to see such high community participation!

We thank all who took part in this promotion. You may continue tagging demos as you wish. The ability to see and remove the tags given to you will be available very shortly as part of a new feature to help you increase your online exposure!

If you have any questions about Demo Tagging, and how it will be used, please ask us here on the Voice123 Premium Forums.


Thank you always!

Steven Lowell
Public Relations Manager
My Blog
Twitter: @stevenNYC123

Copy Reading - Some Tips and Thoughts

In a creative industry, there are no 'absolutes', yet the one thing that seems to have changed very little over the last 20 years is 'how to read copy', even with all the technology out there, which changed the way business is done.

Back in the 90's, I read the book 'Word of Mouth', by Susan Blu & Molly Ann Mullin. When it comes to copy reading, I still refer to tips in this book. Of course, the way we do business has changed with online casting, in that it is now more 'do-it-yourself'. So, as someone, who listens day to day to demos and auditions on Voice123, I would like to share some thoughts and tips about copy reading, a main component of booking voice over work.

• Know who you are talking to, always, while you read copy
  Each script has an audience. It is important to sound as if you are addressing someone while you speak. I have always believed that 'if you talk to someone specifically, you talk to everyone at the same time', and if you are listening to a voice over, the voice that stops the audience in their tracks is one that sounds as if it was directed at one person.

• Do not try to sound like anyone else. Be yourself
  In a business with so many talents, you have to sell a product, that being your voice, and there is no other person out there like you. Trying to sound like what you perceive voice over artists to sound like, actually makes you sound inexperienced.
  

• Creativity & originality is a must, BUT know the basic rules first
  I live by the motto, 'You can only break rules, once you know the rules.' That said, true creativity and originality can be implemented when you know what is being done, and should not be done. For example... Announcing in an audition that you are 'Trying something new here...', actually scares people into thinking you do not know what you are doing. Why? Because true creativity and originality that holds the listener's attention requires no explanation, before or after. Just do what you think is best, based on what you know. If you are having a creative block, just change up the cadence, and try inflections on words, even if they make no sense. Remember though... do this when you practice, so that when you audition, it is second nature to you. On this point as well, all creativity you have may be lost if your recording quality is poor.
  

• Repetition and practice is key
  The best way to learn a new skill is through repetition of educated steps. The best way to learn how to read copy is to practice reading it consistently. Doing this in classes and with coaches is better than trying it for the first time when auditioning. You want scripts and copy to become a new language for you. Practice also helps your diction, and also gets you 'out of your head', almost so that you are not thinking so much about how you sound, but more so whether or not you are accomplishing the goal that the script has set before you.
  

I still remember the day I felt like something clicked inside me while reading copy... I was reading something, and I knew while I was reading it, that I was not getting the point across, I was speaking too fast, and that my NYC accent slipped in there by mistake, and it was out of place and not asked for in the script. It was very much an 'in the zone' feeling that came after many months of working diligently with a coach, and classes on what types of voice overs I sell best. I also remember that when I auditioned on Voice123 as a talent, I read the script almost 20 times before recording, just to make sure I knew what the script was really trying to do, backwards forwards.

I hope this insight helps. You can always share your opinions or ask for Demo Advice on Voice123's Premium Forums. Opinions may vary, but you can never forget practice, and dedication.



Steven Lowell
Public Relations Manager
My Blog
Twitter: @stevenNYC123

Demo Tagging Coming to a Close Next Week

Many of you have already taken part in the demo tagging on Voice123. Thank you!

As this comes to a close before the release of our new search feature, we wanted to send one last reminder that the five people, who have tagged the most demos by May 8th, will receive a free Premium Subscription to Voice123.

Tagging demos takes place after an audition has been submitted on Voice123, a function of those with Premium subscriptions. Please remember that tagging is anonymous, and all tags will be available for removal, if you disagree with them once they have been released. If you would like details, read more here.

If you are curious, and maybe would like to know more about this, you can always ask me on Voice123 Premium forums.

Thank you so much!


Steven Lowell
Public Relations Manager
My Blog
twitter.com/stevenNYC123