Rates – What should you charge?

What you charge is not about how long it takes or how easy it is to do. It’s about what it’s worth to the client and what you consider you yourself are worth.

And don’t forget, the job might take 10 minutes to record and edit, but what about the electricity you’re using to power your computer? The software you’re recording on? Your microphone? These things cost YOU money. How are you going to pay for them when they need replacing or updating if you’re not charging a respectable rate for your voiceover services?

By all means, offer a lower rate or work for free while building up your demos. But make sure the person/company you’re working for KNOWS this is an exception, you’ve balanced the value of the experience you’ll gain against what you’re willing to do it for and that one day – you’ll be asking to be paid standard rates.

Resources

Equity members have access to a ratecard for commercials and other documents. There are also a number of other resources online. The aforementioned directory sites have help sections which include guides to average rates. Gravy For The Brain has an excellent ratecard to use as a guide.

It’s a minefield and only with time and practice will you learn to balance what the job is worth, what YOU are worth and how to measure it against what your competitors are charging. Don’t lowball. Be honest. If you asked for several quotes from a professional, would you REALLY go with the cheapest? Why are they so cheap? Are they that desperate for the work? If so, why?

And finally...

Don’t forget – If you’re choosing to make this a career, time is money. It’s a business. Here’s the plumber analogy again – You wouldn’t ask him/her a few questions about washers and boilers then tell people you’re a professional installer, would you? When you call out a plumber, you’re paying for their time, skills and specialist equipment – Skills and equipment that will have taken them years and significant financial investment to acquire. This is no different.

Don’t get me wrong. You can do this solely part-time or even casually to make a bit of extra money. But do it properly. Invest as much time and money as you can afford. Practice. Experiment. Listen to the good, and the bad. Record yourself. Be critical. Don’t be one of the bad examples.

If you don’t, you’re devaluing not just yourself and the skills you’ve acquired, but everyone else’s too.

Got the kit, let’s record!

You’re ready to go now right? Got recording kit, got microphone, got headphones… Oh no, Grasshopper, you are still not ready….

Record some silence (at the same levels you would use if you were recording yourself) in your recording space and play it back. This is your “noise floor” and is the background level while you’re recording your voice. Look at your levels. How much noise does your room “silence” make? Assuming you haven’t done any work on this space yet, chances are you’ve got a LOT of noise. Is there humming, rumbling, hissing, a clock ticking, cars, tweety birds?

Recording levels

It should be at least -50dB, or ideally, lower. A medium sized, quiet living room will have a noise floor of about -30db. That doesn’t make it a suitable recording space however. This is where the difference between soundproof and acoustically treated comes in.

A soundproof room does not let any outside noise in, or any inside noise out, whether that’s birds or traffic outside, or a teenager with a drumkit on the inside.

My own current space is not soundproof. It IS acoustically treated however, and the smaller the space, the easier it is to treat.

So, now you need to work on treating that space and reducing any background noise. Ideally, purchasing or building a soundbooth is the best option, but not cheap.

Treating the space

A few spare duvets can work very well and acoustic tiles can be bought individually from eBay. Don’t forget this is a massive learning curve. I’m still on it myself. Fiddle, adjust and rearrange as much as possible. You’ll probably never be 100% happy, but constantly tinkering with your setup is one of the joys of this job. Echo is your worst enemy, but kill the “space” completely and the recording will sound dead. No two pro studios will sound alike, but they will ALL have low noise floors and little or no echo.

Let’s now assume you’ve driven yourself to distraction deadening and reducing noise in your recording space. I’ve spent literally HOURS doing this, mainly on my hands and knees following wires and vibrations around the house in order to pinpoint a persistent hum.) Now you can start recording yourself. Each person’s approach and style varies, so this is best done one to one and I won’t go into it here.

Recording

• Microphone technique: This something that comes with practice and knowing your mic, so difficult to cover here, however, some basics:
• Your mouth should be a least a handspan from the mic. Do not talk directly into it; you should be offset about 45 degrees.
• If you are getting “popping”, hold a pencil an inch or two in front of your lips. This breaks the flow of air and minimises the pop.
• Stand still! Drifting side to side or back to front will result in inconsistent levels.
• Pay attention to your breaths. They should be clean, and allow a small pause before you start to speak. This makes editing much easier, whether you self-edit or an engineer does the work.

Share your recordings for feedback wherever you can get it. Listen to them on different devices. If you think your recordings and your performance are up to scratch then maybe it’s time to take a look at some of the online listings directories. There are thousands of people on these sites and unless, just for starters, your sound is as pro as you can get it, you’ll get lost in the dross (and there’s a LOT of dross.) For that reason a newbie sticks out a mile regardless of how good their voice is, especially if their audio quality isn’t great. Sign up for a free profile to get started. Make sure your sound is as top-notch as you can get it before you start forking out for their expensive subscription packages. Use the free listing to practice writing up the best possible profile you can at this point. Bodalgo is a good place to start. Voices.com used to be popular but has fallen out of favour with voice professionals after making a change to their business practices. Voiceovers.com is a new platform and currently invitation only.

Equipment list and Recording Space

Before you’ve even opened your mouth you have a lot of preparation work to do. You need recording software; the audio editing program Twisted Wave is excellent for about $80. Audacity is free, but has a few quirks will probably cause you more issues that that’s worth. Despite having used audio monsters Pro Tools and Adobe Audition, it still does a good job for basic recording. A pair of reasonable headphones for monitoring wouldn’t go amiss either. Beyer Dynamic and Sennheiser headphones are well thought of.

Your microphone

Really, we could be here for hours. Don’t ever get more than two voiceovers in a room and ask them about mics – you’ll never leave and when you do, you’ll be thoroughly confused and will have probably bashed heads together.

Obviously the best thing to do is to test them, but as you’re new, how do you know what you’re listening for? Do some reading. Find a good all round, well-reviewed condenser. Other microphone types are available, including USB powered mics, but if you want to a) sound professional and b) be taken seriously it’s the condenser microphone that is most suitable and most commonly used for voice recording. Nothing flags up a newbie who hasn’t done their research like a USB microphone. They’re fine for podcasting, but for quality voiceovers: just don’t.

My first microphone, a Rode NT1A is still a great starter mic (in fact, any of the Rode condensers are worth a look.) Don’t tell my Neumann TLM193, but for some jobs it can sound better. At the time, £140 was a lot of money for me to spend speculatively on a mic, but it was the right thing to do and despite having upgraded since, I still use it. (BTW, Studiospares.com is an excellent site for your studio equipment.) You will also need XLR cables to connect your microphone to your computer/soundcard, but don’t just buy any old XLR cable. You need balanced cables.

Get a pop shield if you don’t have one already. You can buy them online or from music stores or you can make your own with a pair of tights and a wire coathanger. I bought mine, as I’m rubbish at Blue Peter make and do. One thing that really flags up a poor recording is “popping” on P and B sounds.

Your Audio Interface

Your average PC or laptop’s on-board soundcard will not be good enough for recording professional voiceovers. They’re situated too close to the fan and/or other circuits. For regular audio use (games, TV, playing CDs), this is absolutely fine. But with professional monitoring, you’ll soon notice interference.

Regular PC/Mac soundcards are also useless with condenser microphones such as the Neumann and Rode which need phantom power; they need an extra electrical 48v “kick” to work correctly. Without it, you can speak into it, but nothing will be picked up by the software. This power is not available with off-the-shelf computers and laptops. This is best achieved with a powered external audio interface which replaces your computer’s soundcard. (You make the changes in the computer’s settings.) This replaces your onboard soundcard and supplies phantom power to your mic.  Focusrite’s Scarlett 2i2  is an excellent piece of kit and a perfect first purchase if you’re starting out.  The mic plugs into the interface, which then plugs into your computer via USB.

Editing skills

This is far too in depth an area to cover here, but knowing basic editing a must – as is the ability to LISTEN. Every breath, pop, click will be recorded. A good microphone that suits your voice will work wonders and help you make your fortune, but it can also be your worst enemy. It will record EVERYTHING. Some clients will demand a finished recording, so it will also need to be processed, normalised and/or compressed and there are thousands of ways to do this. Get it right, and your recording will be greatly enhanced. Get it wrong, and you will have a very unhappy client.

So you’ve got your shiny new kit. It looks lovely. Next you need to know how to use it…

This will not be easy.

I’m sure it sounds like I’m trying to put you off. In a way, I am. Voiceover is a very crowded marketplace – becoming more so – and those who want to do it on the side with little investment for a few extra pounds income will probably fail.

However. There’s room for everyone and it is possible to make it a career and a full-time job. It took me 2-3 years from the point I focussed on VO as a business full-time to make a living from it and I had been acquiring and honing the skills that would allow me to do so for more than ten years.

Being a working VO with a home studio is not a job you can do if you’re starting from scratch and have no other source of income. I promise you, unless you’re very, VERY lucky, in the first year you will not make back the money you had to invest just to get started. It’s both a business and a skill and it only becomes easy once you’ve invested the time, effort and finances to make it that way.

So, caveats over. Still want to do this? Okay then…

DEMO REELS

You’re going nowhere without one of these. This part is a bit chicken and egg. You need a voice reel, but you have nowhere to record. So you could skip the demo and set up your home studio, then you can start recording to your heart’s content. But if you’re a complete newbie to the technical side, then your first recordings are unlikely to be anywhere near the standard of a pro recording. So, take EVERY opportunity to record something, anything, in as professional an environment as possible. Try hospital radio stations, or other local studios. Record in as many places as possible to get different sounds.

 There is nothing worse than a demo recorded entirely in a pro studio using the same scripts, the same music, the same microphone on the same day. Despite your best efforts, the whole reel will sound exactly that – “samey”! However, mixed with other recordings on different days and in different places it demonstrates the variety of recordings you have. I’ve heard good things about The Showreel They also do workshops.

If some of your recordings are not as good quality as you’d like but the read/performance is good (it’s a fine line, be careful!) then it may also be worth including. Duration: Short. Seriously. 60-75 seconds is perfect. You may eventually need different, even shorter demos for different styles, but to start with, use a mixture of your best stuff.

In Part 4, it’s get scary. You’re going to need to get techie.