Top Tips for Getting a Voice Acting Agent

How and where do you find a voice over agent? What steps do you need to take to gain representation? In this video we explore …

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[Music] I do get people contacting me on occasion who say do you know any good voiceover agents uh to which I reply yeah there are loads of them the the big issue is them taking you on and you getting representation it’s tough so a good voiceover agent is someone who will take you on you won’t have the choice really you’ll find it very difficult to get an agent but that’s not to say you shouldn’t try when you’re starting out one of the things you’ve got to do yourself is to be very clear about what you’re offering in terms of your voiceover capabilities in case in the case of your your voice acting skills and what you sound like so don’t say oh my voice isn’t distinctive enough because every single voice in the world is distinctive it’ll sound Maybe be like somebody else’s a little bit but it will be distinctively you that’ll be in the Cadence in the way you speak the pace the accent the tonality of your voice and so on make sure you identify what the distinctive features of your voice are and by that I mean note down any accent you have if you’ve got a valley girl accent for example in California or if you’ve got a Jordy accent in Britain or a London accent or a Scottish accent what whatever it happens to be note that down if it’s standard RP British English note that down it’s part of who you are but for goodness sake don’t say oh my voice sounds exactly the same as everybody else’s it doesn’t and we know it doesn’t because if you were to phone somebody up and say to them hello haven’t spoken to you for 15 years do you know who this is chances are they’ll go I know exactly who that is because I I recognize your voice and that’s because all of our voices are distinctive so put that out of your mind don’t don’t even feature that on on in any any of your thought processes what you have to do is identify your strengths and what makes you a little bit different from the next person so like I say could be an accent uh it could be the tonality of your voice maybe you’ve got a very deep voice maybe you’ve got a very high voice um maybe You’ got a bit of a Husky voice uh maybe it’s very smooth and light maybe it’s youthful maybe you sound quite old that doesn’t matter you might sound like a um a senior even though you’re not but you may be a senior and put that down don’t shy away from how you sound because it’s very very important that a a potential agent knows exactly what they’re getting if they were to listen to you or if they were to invite you in for a chat or chat to you on on the phone or Zoom or whatever so it’s really about finding something that is distinctive and different about your voice just sit down go through all the elements of your voice and ask friends and family to give their opinions too they might say oh you’re a fast speaker which case put down you know Pacey speaker or I speak very slowly or whatever you know these are these are things that are important you sound very happy or Lively or you know loads and loads of stuff that goes in to make all of our voices distinctive if you put them down note them down then a potential agent will go hm okay we’re missing a voice like that perhaps we can take a voice like that on and represent this person the next thing is to send the agent your demo reel and this should be no more than 90 seconds in length and it should show your voice off in its best light and what the agent wants to hear is you doing various genres that they cover so you want to do a commercial of course you want to do something like a bit of an audiobook excert corporate material um business type things you know educational straight narration U maybe an onh hold phone message something like that diversity is key with this I would recommend that you do some fast things some something that’s very pacy and energetic for example an upbeat commercial do something slow mellow do something straight straight down the line straight piece of narration and chop it all up like I say make put your first put your your most um impressive read first so it really captures the attention of the agent you don’t want them to flick through or get bored after the first 5 seconds and remember they will probably make up their minds in the first 10 seconds if you’re lucky so the rest of it that you put the rest of the stuff you put on your showreel may never get heard so make sure you start with your strongest material first and the whole thing should be no more than 90 seconds it’s important to send them a good covering note these days that tends to be email you may want to be terribly oldfashioned and send them a letter with a CD but the chances are they might not have a CD player to listen to your stuff so you want to send your show real as an MP3 so it’s easily playable but of course you need a covering note with that covering email and what I would do is introduce yourself mention a little bit about your background keep keep it nice and short and sweet just like your your demo you want to be as Punchy as possible and but without going over the top you want to stick to the Salient points you want to mention your background and anything you you can put in to do with the voice preferably so if you’re a teacher for example you can say you know I’ve been teaching for many years reading to the kids reading stuff out you know even if you have no direct voiceover experience you can bring stuff from The Real World into the into your voiceover career and clients are often impressed with that agencies are often impressed with that because it shows you haven’t just been a voiceover artist all your life you weren’t born one but you’d like to be one but you bring something from The Real World and you bring that to the party and I’d also where you live your location and if you have a home studio or not hopefully you have got one um but I if you haven’t well you can leave that out but if you have got a home studio make sure you say that you have and it’s a professional setup and so on and then it’s all ready to send off but where do you find these agents well good old Google you know you can just Google away for voice acting agents near me here in the UK they tend to be based largely in the big cities particularly London but also Birmingham Manchester uh Edinburgh might might find well in Belfast or Dublin whatever um but here in the UK tends to be London in the states the big agencies tend to be located along the coasts so particularly uh LA on the on the west coast and New York of course in on the East but there’ll be lots of other agencies around too sometimes going for a smaller agency is better because you may end up as a big fish in a in a small pond or an agency that’s just starting out however there are some important points to bear in mind firstly if you get offered a contract read through it if you’ve got a a legal friend or you can access some legal advice sometimes it’s important or just a good idea uh to get them to check it over uh but make sure it’s beneficial to you and for both sides so one of the big things is exclusivity are you going to be exclusive to that agent or can you go off and do other things the other thing to remember is will they take a commission uh chances are they will um and what sort of commission I would say 15 to 20% is the industry average any more than that and you want to be saying well what do I get for that money are you going to really promote me and also check that the agency doesn’t want a percentage of what you’re earning already or what you get yourself so with some agents they say look we’ll take you on you you’re being taken on by a big agency here but we want 5% a token gesture 5% of what you get yourself so say you got some work through Mandy or voice1 123 or whatever they might say we want 5% of of that too now you might go no way there’s no way I’m giving that away or you might think well if I give them that token gesture they hopefully will get me the bigger gigs and that’s when they’ll shave off their their 15 to 20% so it’s really up to you so I would say check exclusivity you know are you going to be exclusive to that that agency and also check the percentages that commission and the number one rule is never pay an agent any money upfront legitimate agents work purely on commission they do not charge you a fee they will just take the commission as and when they get you the work and finally I would say be patient these agencies get lots of submissions every week you’re going to be another one coming through the uh through the system and it takes time but feel free to follow up so if you haven’t heard anything within a couple of months or so you may just want to gently follow it up maybe with a phone call and just say hey hey I sent you an email hope it didn’t get lost in in spam and I sent you my demo is there any chance uh you can review it if not I’ll resend it no harm at all in doing that that’s what agents are for they they’re looking for new Talent all the time they’re looking for something that is going to be the next big thing and that could be you all right thanks very much for watching today look after your voice and I’ll see you next time [Music]

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