What To Do When You're Not Booking Voiceover Jobs?

by Chris Tester - British Male Voiceover Artist

So you're auditioning as much as you can. You're marketing; you're connecting with the right people. But you're just not booking the jobs. Apart from panicking, what else can you do? Let's talk about that! 

So much time can be spent fighting for the opportunity to audition for new projects, building relationships, increasing the quantity and quality of the opportunities that we have, and so once we have that opportunity to actually audition for a project after being shortlisted. It can be quite destabilizing if we don't book once, then twice, and then and again, and again, and again, and this is when imposter syndrome can really kick in. You start to question your skills, your ability whether or not all the stuff that you're putting out there to everyone is actually true of yourself. 

You start to doubt yourself, and that, in turn, will start to affect your motivation in actually reaching out in the first place and creating more opportunities. So acknowledging that this cycle is not a good thing for your business and also something that we could all be susceptible to, certainly, in my scenario, I've gone through periods of this. I wanted to go through a checklist of things that we can actionably do to be mindful of when we get stuck in this rut of not being able to book to make sure that we're focusing on the right things. 

Let’s move ahead without further ado!

Tip #1:

My first tip is to let go of needing the job. Obviously, you need to work. Otherwise, you can't call it a business. But you need to be mindful of this process—especially when starting out, making that big jump full-time as a freelancer can be incredibly daunting. Especially if you have no structure or backup when possible, balancing the beginnings of your freelance life with either some form of savings that you've accrued or some type of part-time work means that not so much weight is kind of resting purely on your success ratio in your freelance stuff and this will serve as a buffer during the inevitable fallow periods that plague the beginning of a freelance career.

Tip #2:

Number two is to limit destructive self-talk; as a freelancer, you are your own employee, and you need to treat yourself as such. Suppose you tour strips off another employee every time that they fail to convert or they fail to book a job. Then you'd think that that person was an absolute idiot and certainly not a good boss. You need to apply that same criterion to yourself. Constantly chastising yourself for not being good enough isn't going to help. That doesn't mean that you can't reassess the situation or be self-critical but always make sure that the criticism that you do give yourself is constructive. 

Tip #3:

Number three is don't perpetuate a negative narrative. If you're constantly telling, not just yourself. But also your peers or your existing clients or prospects that you're not booking, then that becomes part of your identity. You're hardwiring a negative narrative that will only disempower. You all this will do are motivating you and also make you less attractive to collaborate with existing leads and clients. 

Tip #4:

My fourth tip is to hold an action audit keep a diary of daily actions that you were taking to further your career. Is there anything missing? Are there areas that you are neglecting, and if so, why? The sooner that you can get into the habit of adopting an objective perspective on your business, the sooner you can start taking reasoned action. So if you're failing to proceed with essential tasks in your business, you need to identify that and address that as soon as possible.

Tip #5:

Tip 5 is holding a motivation audit. If you find that there are tasks that you know that you should be doing, but you are failing to do them, then you need to ask yourself. Why? What is making you not do the thing, and what can you adjust to solve these problems? If it's simply down to a lack of time, then you need to prioritize, adjust your time scale, or you need to outsource some things. Maybe if you're constantly feeling overwhelmed, then focus on just the one important thing that you can do that day. 

Tip #6:

Tip six is to lean on trusted peers now. This is not your mum, and hello, mum, but people who are going through a similar journey with you. So that you can talk to them frankly about problems, you have to reassure yourself that you're not alone in this. As long as these peers are people you respect, then it's great to be able to hear what other people's solutions might be, whether or not they have any constructive criticism or thoughts or hints or hacks about things that have worked for them and if you don't have any trusted peers yet. Then I think this is a good time to probably get some people who are in a similar stage in their journey. But who is doing good work who is trying to do things in the right way? People whose opinions you can trust and get a proper objective point of view from. 

Tip #7:

Tip 7 is to control the controllable. If you have more time because you're not booking this work, then use that time to update your websites, to make sure that showreels are updated, make sure that your profiles are on casting websites are all up to date that your cv, if you have a voice-over cv or equivalent is also updated how are your social and marketing channels looking are the things that you can update there or refresh there are you still consistently marking to new leads and prospects to make sure that more opportunities are coming in.

Tip #8:

Tip 8 is to adjust the end goal. If your target is not something directly under your control, then make sure that you're focusing on the things that you can aim for relationship building rather than the number of jobs that you converted in a particular month. Yes! An audition ratio over a period of time is a useful metric to measure your level of success and proficiency. But sometimes, you just have a duff run of auditions, and that's nothing to do with you. That's just part of the game. 

Tip #9:

Tip nine is coaching and skill-building. Take this opportunity to check in with the coach to make sure that you're comfortable with your reads and approaches and that you're sensitive to any new trends that might have entered the market. Feel relatively secure in your existing skill base, then look about extending it into other genres to have more opportunities coming in. 

Tip #10:

Finally, number 10, check the market. Double-check that you're targeting the right genre of voice over for your voice, not just the one that you would like to work intake stock of where current trends are where you sit in the market as a comparison and maybe double down on your strengths if there's one particular genre that you always do consistently well in then maybe this is the time to do the opposite of the. Last point and actually narrow down and focus on what your core strength is first and foremost so that you can worry less about putting money on the table and more about just getting a consistent level of work a bit of a chain going.

Wrap Up

So hopefully, I've provided with you a few different tactics to implement if you start to doubt yourself if you start to feel demotivated about the fact that things aren't working for you this month. It's the nature of the business, to a certain degree as a freelancer, that your booking ratio is going to go up and down up and down to a certain degree, so although it's always important to keep an eye on the metrics to see how much better that you are getting. 

But resist the temptation to read too much into it and always be mindful of what action you're taking as ever. Thanks so much for watching. Please do like, subscribe, and spread the word about this channel. I look forward to seeing you next time!

How To Cast Voice Actors For Games

By British Male Voiceover Artist Chris Tester

Whether your game is part of a huge Triple A billion franchise, or it's just you as a single developer, getting the right voice actors to be part of your game is particularly crucial. Especially with gamers expecting more believable, authentic performances as standard. In this video, I'm going to talk about how to cast voice actors. The when, the where, the how, and the what. This will be the first of three videos on the subject, with a second looking at how you actually work with the voice actor during a directed session itself. And the third looking at your relationship with the voice actor after the game is released. How they can help with marketing and promotion, and expand your broader network. So let's get started with the where. Where you cast your voice actors will depend on what you're looking for, your budget, and how many roles you need to fill. Recommendations and referrals from other game developers, voice actors or voice directors is a great way to start. It's a way of being introduced to a whole variety of talent that you might not be familiar with, but which has been vetted, been proven in some way. Of course, a pretty standard route is to contact agents, either voice agents and acting agents and ask them about the talent on their books. 

If you have a particular talent in mind, then just google their name and an agency and it'll probably pop up. Or alternatively, just google any major city name and voice agent or acting agent and lots of options will come up to. You could collaborate with specialist audio production companies who have their own talent database. You can look on social media, and especially Twitter, where a lot of voice actors are particularly active. And either put a casting call out there directly yourself, or alternatively, reach out to a company or an individual that specializes in casting indie games. You can google search voice actors and find out more about them from their website, which might be quite a long winded way if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. But if you like an actor's previous work, then you may be able to reach out directly. Or of course, you could put a casting call out on a pay to play site or voiceover casting site, inviting lots of voice actors that you may not be familiar with at all to audition for your roles and seeing what the results are. Now there is no best or worst source of where you can actually get hold of the actors that you want to audition in the first place. 

But I would say be wary of making your casting call too broad or open. Some of these avenues will result in you receiving hundreds of applications which you'll have to trawl through in order to find what you want, which can be exhausting. So the more selective you are at the front end, the more seamless the whole process will be afterwards. When do you cast your voice actors? Again, it depends on a project by project basis. But typically, if it's a more character based game than the earlier, the better. If you cast early, then it allows your writers to become more familiar with the voice that they're actually writing for, which will result in a greater degree of authenticity. It means you can have less time sensitive meetings with your actors to discuss the role and you can be a sounding board for each other's ideas. These sorts of creative discussions in the early stages could mean that your time actually in the booth recording with the voice actor is much lower as a result. But if the role is more functional than that's not necessary. 

[Voiceover: Now, you will suffer our wrath.]

In which case casting closer to the actual recording time may be more suitable, because it ensures an actor's availability. How do you cast your voice actors? The wisest thing to do to start off with is to delegate if you can afford to. Voice directors will often already be familiar with talent, how to direct talent, and it will allow you to pick up experience along the way through observation. Each actor may need a slightly different approach depending on the material. A professional director can save you time and get creative results that you never might have expected.

Voice over[Troy Baker on Director Neil Druckmann]: We start shooting the scene action and I go straight into it. And it feels weird and it feels false. And we do it three or four times and Neil walks up to me in between takes and I'll never forget this and he says I'm picking up on some resistance. And I said yeah, you're damn right, you're picking up on some resistance because we've got it. It's in the can it was take one. And he said let me tell you what I have. I have a man broken, I said guy his fucking daughter just died. He goes, No, I have a man broken what I don't have is what's happening, this is happening. I can fix it. It's not working. She's going she's gone, I’m broken. And that is when I realized that Neil Druckmann was the greatest director I've ever worked with.

It can be argued that not all voice directors are created equal. But the majority may provide a level of expertise that can prove invaluable. But if it is only you and you can't afford a voice director, then I do suggest that you check out a couple of acting books. 

Something like Stanislavski’s, An Actor Prepares and David Mamet's True And False. A crucial part of the casting process is creating an actual character breakdown with imagery of the character, their age, their physicality, their accent, their voice description and biography, ideally. When casting you'll be asking actors to read lines for the character that you might want to actually cast them as. These lines are typically called sides, audition sides. And when you write them, it's important to provide as much context as possible. An actor will say a line completely differently depending on who they're speaking to, why they're speaking to them, and where they're speaking to them as well. Try to resist the temptation to copy and paste some of your actual script for the audition sides. You want to hear as many different facets of the character as possible as quickly as possible. So if that's possible in existing lines from the actual game itself, that's great. But if not, then write a scene or an exchange that actually serves that purpose, so that every single different part of the audition is actually helping you to make a choice. 

Depending on how in depth you want the process to be, I would recommend having a first and then a second round of auditions. In the first round, have them a sample based auditions, where you provide direction the actor records them, and then you review them. And then you could have a second round, which would be a live directed session. So either you or the voice director would be working with the actor through a set script, and you could see what your relationship is like and how free and open they are to actual direction. If you have reference points to the type of game that you want to make, then share them. If you tell a voice actor that the game is in the style of The Last of Us or in the style of Zelda or in the style of Doom, then we immediately get an impression of what that world is like and how those characters would interact. Even if we don't, if we're not gamers, then we can go on to YouTube, see some of that game footage and get an impression very quickly as well. Above all else, look for people who are voice actors as opposed to voiceovers. If that makes sense. Many voiceovers may have a beautiful voice and it does also require acting, but it's a different kind of skill set. Appreciate that Screen Actors might give very detailed realistic performances, but they also might struggle in being able to communicate verbally what they would normally Express physically, facially.

Voice over: It has been amusing watching your sea-wracked corpses stumble and doddder as you tracked the prey

Some stage actors may be particularly good at bigger characterizations or multi character parts, but some of them could be a little bit too big or performative. And again, depending on experience, some might have quite a lot of mic technique, and others may have none. All of these things will have a greater or lesser importance depending on the type of game that you want to make. So for example, if you put a filmic Actor in a performance capture context, where they're also going to have their face mapped as well, then all of those issues might not be an issue at all. And similarly, if your voice actor is working with an audio engineer during the session, then then being on or off mic is going to be less of a practical concern rather than if they're recording from a home studio and are responsible themselves for gauging their distance from a mic. 

If your project is going to involve home studio talent, then ensure that all of their auditions take place using the setup that they'd actually use. Have the recordings vetted by an audio engineer. Because even if something sounds possible, there may be issues with it. Also bear in mind that you're looking for acoustic continuity, you want to ensure that all these voices sound as if they've come from the same place with a minimum of fuss. And also cast as authentically as possible. It's 2020 and there's enough talent out there. It's not an excuse to say that you can't find it. And finally, for what, how much would you actually pay your voice actors. Actors fees typically break down into two things; a per hour fee, called the basic studio fee, which covers their actual recording time. And a buyout that actually licenses their voice for your game, which is normally the basic studio fee again, or a multiple of it. Obviously, as the demands of a project expands, so will the fee.