Paul Stefano

You know that axiom about Sales? The one that says, it takes 5-10 touches in order to close a sale? What that means is in order to get a client to buy in on something, you need to “touch” them 5-10 times. That can mean a meeting, an email, a phone call, or just a casual conversation. The same holds true for networking.

I was reminded of this today while attending a local Baltimore Networking group meeting I belong to. In this particular group each business person has a chance to introduce themselves and ask for referrals. That can mean an industry or market they are hoping to reach, or a specific company. I asked the group for referrals to any authors who may be interested in doing an audiobook. Either with me as the narrator, or with them narrating while I engineer and record.

Now here’s the thing…I have been asking this same question to this group for weeks. I think 4 previous times to be exact. Today, the colleague next to me said “Oh yeah, I have a client who is an author, here’s his information”.

This same colleague has been at all the same previous meetings where I asked for this referral before. In a few cases he was sitting next to me, as he was today!

So I contacted the author today and he said he HAS thought about doing an audiobook and would love to learn more!

Was my colleague holding back on me? Mad at me? Didn’t trust me enough with the referral? Probably none of those things. There was probably just something small that had this client jump to top of mind when I asked for the referral to authors today. Maybe he just paid an invoice, or sent a Holiday gift. Whatever the reason, today was the day persistence paid off.

Sometimes it really is that simple.

Oh, boy has something crazy happened in my voice over career. I have heard of this happening to other voice actors, but this is the first time it has happened to me.

So…I get an email from a VO colleague. They tell me I they received an email from their voice acting agent that included a voice reference. This is pretty common in audition listings. Usually it’s a clip of a famous Hollywood actor that matches the specs they are looking for. The idea is the casting company, or agent sends auditions only to the actors on their roster who sound like that person. In my case, I get Ryan Reynolds, John Hamm, or Sam Elliot.

In this case the reference sounds like me. So, my friend asks, “Is that you?” I take a listen and IT IS ME! It’s my narration demo done by Terry Daniel at Universal Voice Talent. It’s gotten me a lot of work over the years and landed me with several VO agents. Except…Not THIS agent.

So I ask my friend if they wouldn’t mind referring me to their agent. After all, if they are sending out auditions with MY voice, maybe they’d like to work together? Seems reasonable right? My friend says SURE!, reaches out to said agent who agrees to take a call (really email what is this 1992?) from me. I contact the agent and they said they’d love to take a listen to me, and to please read this audition copy they included. I do that, and 10 minutes later I get a reply saying that while my voice sounds competitive they already have too many voices that sounds like me. Not uncommon in the industry. Especially in a competitive market like New York, where this agent happens to be.

I accepted that…for a bit. Then I got to thinking. How did the agent get my demo to begin with? Also, if a company is sending my demo around, maybe they’d like to work with me? I then emailed the agent asking those questions; basically the equivalent of WTF?

The agent said, you know? You are right, send me and audition of that same script I sent out to my roster and I’ll be happy to submit you to the client. Then guess what…crickets

So, not only can I not get hired on 9 out of 10 auditions that are looking for Ryan Reynolds, John Hamm or Sam Elliot, I can’t get hired when they are looking for PAUL STEFANO! I was sitting in my Studiobricks soundproof booth, at the microphone, coaching myself on how to sound like ME!

Again, this is not uncommon in the voice over industry, and my podcast partner from The VO Meter, Sean Daeley says this in fact a career milestone, but boy is this frustrating!

Can you relate?

So Today’s Facebook query about voiceover comes from the Gardner Collective Group and it came in the form of a poll. The options were.

Computer Outside booth, Monitors Inside

Computer + Monitor in booth

Fanless/Silent Laptop in booth + Extra Monitors

Now, I’m not sure why those were the only available options. There are any number of ways you can configure your voice acting booth. Personally, I wrote “none of the above”.

Firstly, are we talking Computer monitor or Speakers? That can change some things.

In my opinion there is no reason to have your computer inside the vocal booth. All that is really needed is a couple of longer cables and a Computer monitor inside the booth. I use a wireless keyboard with mouse buttons to control my PC when I’m doing voice work. As for speakers? I find those not necessary in the booth either. I have headphones, but I don’t even wear those most of the time. On a directed session, sure. Everyday though, I just leave the volume up loud enough to hear the playback, just barely, and that is all I need to pull off punch and roll recording.

There are simply too many reasons NOT to keep a computer in your booth when doing voice recording.

1. They are noisy. There are some fanless models, but they are few and far between. Also, you sacrifice power for that silence in most cases.
2. They get hot! You definitely don’t want anything generating MORE heat inside your booth.
3. You need your computer accessible outside your booth more than inside. At least I do. I do all editing and production outside the booth, so if the computer needs to be restarted, have extra peripherals plugged in like USB drives, webcams or interfaces, I want to be able to get to it quickly and easily

As always YMMV but for me the computer and speakers need to be OUTSIDE the booth.

Here I am, back with another FB inspired rant. A relatively newcomer to the business posted, saying they were offered $250 Canadian for 30 minutes of elearning voiceover work. I can barely keep up with my son’s 4th grade math, but that equals $500 for 1 hour. Now, the conversion rate for CAD to USD right now is such that for the US dollar equivalent that means $400 per finished hour. I jumped in and said “That sounds pretty good to me, actually that’s pretty fantastic!” My comment was then followed by post after post about how terrible those rates were and how the actor should walk away.

My question is this. Are the people commenting working in e-learning right now? I am. Every day. What I’m noticing is rates much lower across the board than they were even a few years ago. Would I love to work for $1 a word? Sure I would. I have found, however, working with some of the biggest producers out there, that the rates for this type of work just are not there.

Now, I’m not saying anybody should be working for peanuts. This type of work can be difficult. However, for anyone that does it frequently, there are ways to set yourself up to be efficient enough to get almost to a 1:1 labor to finished product ratio. What do I mean by that? Typically, in order to record 1 hour of finished audio, it takes a voice actor about 2.5 to 3 hours. That’s because you need to stop and correct any mistakes, re-read if necessary. Accidentally cough? Need to go back and re-do again. Don’t know how to pronounce a word? You need to stop and figure it out first, you are not allowed to guess. However, there are tricks to make this work much faster.

One such trick is to punch and roll. This is where when a mistake is made, you stop the recording, your computer plays back the previous 5 seconds, then you start reading where the audio stops and the computer keeps recording. By the time you are done, you have a clean copy. If you can get your client to sign off on proofing, then at this point you are done! I have my voice over booth setup in such a way that I can punch and roll and do 1 hour of audio in almost exactly 1 hour! It’s an industry standard practice in audiobook recording. Where the “acceptable” rates, by the way are even less than what was quoted in the FB post. $250 per finished hour is good. $400 is great!

There are additional tasks sometimes. If you agree to proof yourself you need to listen through and do that. You may be asked to split your recording into additional files, and you should ABSOLUTELY charge for that.

Still, for my money, if I can get $400 per finished hour, I’m going to do that all day long and twice on Saturdays and be a very happy camper. Guess what people, it’s only going to go down from here. It won’t be long until an AI voice can produce most of the elearning voiceover work out there, for even less. Better Get, while the Gettin is good.

Here we are with another response to a Facebook post. This time from the Indie (ACX And Others) Audiobook Narrators and Producers Group. Someone said they were working out of their double walled vocal booth and was still hearing sounds from neighbors. Particularly washing machines and loud footsteps. “Do I need to adjust my expectations?”

Unfortunately the short answer is yes. Can you build a totally soundproof room that will keep out washing machines, loud trucks, even planes and helicopters? Sure you can. In order to do so, however, you need HEAVY, HEAVY materials like concrete, steel, an in some cases, lead.

I’ve struggled with this for years, as you may have heard on my voice over podcast The VO Meter, www.vometer.com. I have now been through 5 pre-fab booths by the big manufactures in the voice industry. Five, if you count my simple blanket booth. In EVERY case, there were still sounds bleeding through that I couldn’t control. Finally, after trying the different booths in different locations, I settled on a Studiobricks One booth. It is a double walled booth that will keep out 90% of the sound in my house. Kids yelling, check, dog barking, check. Lawnmower in the neighbors yard, check. Traffic from the 8 lane highway in my backyard…mostly check.

Here’s the thing. Sounds STILL creep in. When an 18 wheeler downshifts too quickly on the road behind me, or a trash truck bounces too hard on the speed hump in front of my house, I AND my microphone will hear it. I have found in those cases, I just need to take break, or do a re-take and all will be well.

The good news is, producers and directors know this! Especially after 2020 when the entire world was at home, people are pretty accepting when it comes to the occasional noise interruption. After all, those ALWAYS happened, even during in person sessions. Do you think a recording session was never interrupted by a cough, a chair bump or even a fart from inside the booth? Sure it was. That’s why your dog barking 1 time at the mailman outside your booth is also going to be okay.

So yes, adjust your expectations about what a home recording booth can do, and RELAX!

Greetings,

It’s been a minute…Ick, I hate that phrase. I never understood it. A minute is supposed to be a small parcel of time right? So why use it to describe a long period between to occurrences of something? Being “meta” I guess? Nevermind. Anyway, its been a LONG frickin’ time!

I’ve decided to get back at this blogging thing, albeit in small pieces. My friend and tech genius George Whittam mentioned on facebook recently that he was going to stop responding on that platform to requests from new voice actors for information and instead take the answers to his own website. Why give free publicity to one specific platform when you can do it within a space you control? Brilliant right?

Well, never one to shy away from, let’s say “appropriating” a good idea, I’m doing the same thing. From here on out, if I have a good answer to the millions of questions from new voice actors I see on social media every…darn…day, I’m going to post it here.

So here goes. Today on FB, in a group called Voice Over Camp, run by Terry Daniel, an apparently brand new voice over person said “I’m just starting off with being a Voice actor, please be gentle”.

I, of course, wanted to post something incredibly snarky like “Don’t” or “Too Late”. It got me thinking, however, if I were just starting out now, would it be a good idea?

We seem to be almost at a crossroads for the industry. AI threats are EVERYWHERE. It seems like just about each day there is a new company trying to use speech synthesis to put voice actors out of business. Then there is the continuing lowering of cost for equipment. Even some USB mics are passable for pro work IMO. The Blue Yeti X is REALLY good. You may have seen the test I did comparing it to a Sennheiser 415.  I fooled some people! At $199 from Best Buy, you can be up and recording the same day! Finally, there are more casting sites than ever. You can literally setup shop the same day and be auditioning for work.

Now the question remains, should you? All that competition and threats to technology make the voice over business more risky than ever in my opinion. When I started 7 years ago, there was no doubt in my mind this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life, come hell or high water. I dove straight in, worked my butt off and eventually became a full time voice actor. Could I still do that now? I’m honestly, not so sure.

I do think that over the long haul there will always be a place for good actors doing good HUMAN voice work. I’d like to think that after 7 years of hard work I fall into that “good” category. Can someone start today, take that same path and come out on in 2029? For the sake of our “just starting off” friend on FB, I certainly hope so.