What Do Producers REALLY Want From Commercial Voice Actors?

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as a producer the voice actor we we’re actors we’re creatives we are the main character but in the process of the big picture like you guys are creating literally the picture um where do we fit into that what does that process look like well for me um and again I run my sets very differently um it is not an autonomous you know I’m in charge and this is the way or I’m directing and this is the only way i run a very open set if somebody has an idea on the set I want to hear that i want it to be fed up and you know just like blurt it out well let’s move the car over here in front of the client when the sun’s going down i start always started the voice over auditioning process fairly early on you know with whatever script we had at the moment i guess having the the control side of me you know is I I I wanted to shape the project and not let it go the wrong direction and sometimes that can happen and particularly when you’re dealing with a big multinational corporation you know you have four people together and you’ve got this great script and you’ve got an idea and it’s beautiful and it’s colorful and then you know you get 10 people in the room and the whole thing becomes beige that’s what I call it it just gets Yeah it does so uh for me I always have a voice in mind uh but also I would call casting agents and I would ask what kind of person what do you think and I will tell you one thing right now back 30 years ago nobody ever said authentic or nobody ever said conversation the specs you know the the specs were just they wanted just a you know a natural read authentic and conversational wasn’t back then and if you pardon my language um hey man we you know me yeah I do have problems all over the So it’s um it wasn’t that way so I would generally narrow it down to about five or six people i sort of knew who I wanted and so I might kind of shape it in that direction you know so here’s the guy I think is the best or the the the lady that I think is best but here’s my other three selections so there is like a kind of a from the producer side you kind of have your guy or gal and you mix it in with the bunch and let the client make the decision or Right it’s it’s not necessarily I already have a person predisposed like oh I want to hire my my friend Tom or I want to hire my friend DJ it’s like this is where I think it needs to be to tell the story and yeah and so I would start running some auditions by the clients way before we were done with the edit okay okay so so that means to say that you actually will get like a rough cut and then adjust that to match whatever voice we didn’t plug in rough voices like you know as a scratch track there wasn’t something already in there i mean sometimes I would do it but god I can’t even imagine how nasty that sounded back then but yet it’s just like a scratch track right I mean my job is to keep the project moving right so there’s one thing selling the job but there’s one thing keeping that project moving keeping it on track keeping it on budget you know because it’s got to be delivered next Friday and in 46 years we’ve never missed a deadline and I’m not going to let somebody else indecision make me miss a deadline by somebody else you mean like the client like kind of waffling on anybody okay yeah editors clients voice actors voice actors no we never had a problem with voice actors and so like most of the the productions that you do uh these days is it like commercial is it like corporate narrations brand videos how is it like uh split out it’s a mix of uh commercials and then corporate sales or marketing um there’s not a lot of pure narration sorts of things so almost everything is with some sort of end goal of sales or marketing or growing the brand in mind yeah like a commercial basically yeah long commercial it’s it’s pretty much I would say it is that’s you know what that’s what I relate to very well is commercials like say you’ve got a short list of uh talent and the client says hey we like this this person so you bring them in you hear them on the read does the client ever get to the point where there’s like huh you know it’s just not working in the middle of a session like you’re in the it’s part of the production process so I mean like has it ever got happen where you just like that voice actor just doesn’t work so no I’ve never had a client boot somebody mid session if I’m doing my job right that should never happen so when I would present five people 10 people 20 people whatever they wanted to see when I would present them to um the client I knew I could live with any 20 of those and I knew I could work with any of those people but I did always say well you know I’m kind of thinking this this lady right here she’s got the right voice or she’s this guy’s got the right voice and that’s curious you bring that up when you’re like casting what kind of things are important to you is it the quality the sound of the voice or is it like what are you looking for that really sells an audition to you no that’s a very good question i think most voice actors have no idea how that’s really done an enemy you could talk about it all day but when you’ve sat there with a client and you’ve played them 20 auditions number one is the voice of the tonal range or the sound that they’re expecting okay and if it’s not there you’re done in 3 seconds i mean it’s literally like and today boom it’s gone it’s just next next next that’s not even a performance thing it’s just uh the sound it has nothing to do with performance because nobody would be in that group if they were not able to perform what we wanted them to perform i see i see so that’s my job as the producer director uh and the writer if I was the writer for it so um and then we get into performance and with a performance you might get another 10 or 15 seconds or you might go «Hey roll that back or play me the next take.» You know you might get a little bit of that but it’s a pretty quick process we would sort of narrow it down like you know you’d get all your notes and so all the notes go into this bin over here right and then whatever you had left you would listen back through those and then that’s where it goes beige right you have to be very careful and I mean by that is the project gets too many opinions what color should that wall be right or what what should that sound like and so you can have like I could have DJ’s doing man he’s on it he’s my guy know who who’s going to do it and then all of a sudden and like somebody in the back room well I’m not sure if I like the way he sits there’s always that one and you’re like and um Exactly so and so you know I’m I’m like well well let’s just put that aside we can work with him on that but let’s keep going you know because he’s got 99% of the script right you don’t like the way he says Chicago or something i don’t know and I think that’s really important to hear especially for um voice actors who maybe are um newer to this industry um there’s so many things that can lead to a no i mean you’ve highlighted so many just in this little we haven’t even got to the live session yet and it’s like you you have to get through so many hurdles to say you know what DJ you’re brought in for the job that it kind of should highlight to you guys if you don’t get shortlisted or you don’t get picked up for this job it’s not the end of the world there’s so many things ahead of you to get there and Robert’s kind of pointing those out to you right now like I said if I brought 10 people to the to the read uh for the audition or to that the client would hear any 10 of those people I would be fine with because you brought them in you’ve already kind of um like vetted them essentially 100% I’ve vetted them and uh which is traditionally now a little bit more of a um casting agents job right you know they’re vetting and um they have slip in like a a wild card in your in your uh batch for the client sometimes I would mix in a female voice uh or so and uh I would try and you know you know this might sound pretty good as a female and we and you know you’d either get a yay or that’s great or or no not really but I tried to bring enough variety to the table that again I felt like we could keep it on track and it wouldn’t go off track now you’ve mentioned two things one is there’s a take one and a take two and you mentioned that if the tone doesn’t match you’re not even listening any further or the client’s not listening for this pass if everything is starting to you know the pallet isn’t being cleansed everything starts to run together are there any things that we can do as voice actors to kind of you know catch the ear when you start playing our audition should we be taking risks on that take one or put the risky take take two how do we make sure we’re being heard essentially there’s there’s not that much v variety right like a take one and a take two isn’t widely spread out to me there’s definitely definitely a differentiation between them but it’s not like you know there would be a whole vocal tenor or some sort of different sound to the person’s voice but it might be a little faster maybe a little livelier what do you call like this the frosting on the donuts right put a little bit more frosting on that DJ yeah that’s what we’re looking for in a take one take two i don’t need something widely different but I would love to have more energy so let’s say it’s a a hospitality or a theme park commercial i want to hear kind of that fun family sort of vibe right you know I’m not looking for a commercial read i’m looking for a fun family vibe it’s upbeat you know it’s it’s good it sounds like a good time right and and it’s okay i think it’s really good when people can put in a little bit of the adlib in it you know Jack because you’re really good at that um and you’re very very good at that when I listen to you reading and and teaching and things you’re very good with adding things into there that make it more natural and conversational and so unless it is a a big a big corporate like a big theme park or something or a big kind of a Marriott you know they they want it to be exactly the words that were written but sometimes I’m selling extra legal and all that stuff to get to you yeah i’m selling that too though you know like well this is really that far off and I love that i want to get the job finished and I want to make the client happy and I want to keep the vision that’s my thing because I have I have a couple of things to do as the producer okay number one is I have I am the guardian of the client’s budget when a client gives me 50,000$100,000 $500,000 whatever they give me that is my budget and so they may say «Oh let’s get a helicopter we need to fly a helicopter around the backside of the resort and you know do all these things and that might be a great idea but I just have to say I would love to do that i think it’s a wonderful idea but we’re going to have to adjust the budget like when the voice actors coming in and they’re in in the session either in like on Zoom like we are now or in the in the booth um do you have any tips do or don’ts for that voice talent that’s in that live session i expect people to be polite professional friendly i mean it’s great if they have a little bit of a sense of humor but they just and you don’t really run into this very often but they just need to know like keep your mouth shut when this is happening like a lot of times it’s Donna wants it one way and John wants it another way and they’ve been clashing on this for three months and now’s their time to assert their dominance dominance prowess whatever the what you want to call it but you know I know as a producer since I have the background on it I don’t solve that for them you know you stick your head in between two people who are dueling and you’re going to get shot right and so you’re saying that the voice actor should also be like «Be quiet.» Just be polite friendly it’s okay to you know laugh and and have a good time and enjoy it cut up once in a while if you’re making a mistake or something but um when the clients start sort of going back and forth you don’t say anything nothing because I may have a way that I want to direct it as the producer right you don’t say anything between the clients and I never get in between the clients i said «Well you know I’ll let them kind of go their way and they get to a stalemate and go «Well why don’t we try this?» Hey DJ what do you think we ought to do you have any ideas dj being the voice actor right yeah that’s when I want ideas i don’t necessarily want talent offering up an idea unless we’re struggling or something’s not going right should be solicited advice don’t just start chiming in randomly with Yeah definitely don’t do that when talent want to add direct marketing or like prospecting to their marketing wheel um when they’re reaching out to you I’m sure many talents have reached out to you over the years uh what are you looking for like what stands out to you in an email from a voice talent if you’re a voice talent or your crew you’re anybody listening to this right now I want you to think about that producers’s world and let’s say somebody has a a goodsized production company and over the course of years they over the course of a year they’ll do three to six keystone landmark commercial jobs right so that’s three to six projects they might could use you one maybe some do 10 right the bigger companies but uh that was for us we would do four to eight big projects in a year and then everything else is your bread and butter work that you fill in in between so I might only need a voice actor 15 times in a year that just means that you may email you can email me every day but if I don’t have a project for you right then made no sense of me even considering you right so I mean you can have a wonderful reel you could be a nice guy you can have the most charming email in the world which isn’t necessary but it it’s all about keeping in touch and I think you and I talked about this in a conversation i know starting about 10 years ago I don’t know if everybody went to like a Bill Dise workshop or something like that and my email box got flooded with voice actors i mean so much to the point I was like «God damn it another voice actor.» It’s not that I didn’t want people to reach out but people were reaching out a lot the thing is though is I would listen to your demo and if I listen to your demo I will send you a notebook say «Hey that sounds really good keep in touch.» You don’t have to keep in touch with me every week you need to keep in touch with me every four to eight weeks six to eight weeks that sort of thing i don’t need your email to be you know fluffy i don’t need it to be a whole lot about you i just need to to hear your real i need to know that oh you’re approachable person you’re available you do a lot of commercial or you do a lot of narrative or whatever it happens to be you don’t have to give me you know compliments on my website i mean you know that’s interesting because I was I was always taught early on like you got to research their work and point out one of the projects they worked on oh well that that’s not bad it’s like «Hey DJ you know what i saw that um I saw that banana commercial you did and I’ve done a ton of banana stuff so here’s my demo reel if you see something in there I’d love to call.» It’s so random i’ve done a Here’s my reel nice segue well that’s that’s what it is i I need a formal I don’t need a formal email but the number one thing if I have told a hundred crew members who want to be a PA they want to be a camera operator they want to be hair and makeup they want to be whatever if I’ve told a hundred of each of those categories and voice actors to keep in touch I would dare say less than two out of the hundred keep in touch and before I ask more about that is keep in touch and I’ll be in touch are those different like I’ll be in touch well I’ve actually received responses like well great reel uh we’ll be in touch if something comes up is that the same as like too but it’s still it still means you need to stay top of mind okay because what I’m going to remember is somebody’s name I’ve seen 10 times five times four times dj that guy yeah that’s the guy you know he’s the guy where’s he at he’s like in he’s in Korea or something right but he’s got a great voice he’s got that read i may not need your type of voice tone for two years you know i just don’t need you every day even if I was doing a commercial every week I don’t need you every day you guys really got to pay attention to this point here um I I’m not the only person many people have said this but like you can go on LinkedIn on any given Sunday and see somebody posting that they just got an audition or booked a job through somebody they prospected years ago or a year ago what you’re saying kind of proves that point that 15 commercials a year thousands of voice actors Robin doesn’t need you this year he might need you next year though and if you stay top of mind when that spot does come up can he shoot you audition it could be two or three years or four years down the line but he will remember you that’s that’s powerful advice there once in a while man every six eight weeks kind of an interval there you want to see in that in that the followup it’s like «Hey I thought about you today parts XOXO or like you want to see like recent work or Well yeah if you got a new demo it’s like «Hey Robert you know I’m just keeping in touch touch with you but hey I’ve got a new demo reel or I just did a new commercial for you know apples not just bananas i do apples too.» Dragon fruit well you know that’s true i had a terrible dragon fruit milkshake last week anyway it’s not like a marriage proposal right it is a little bit like dating but you got to keep in touch and if you don’t keep in touch you’re not going to be top of mind because if you think I’m going to sit here and go who is that guy Korea you know where was he from you know what was he but who is he you know I’ve got emails from 18,000 emails stored on my I wait for the number i was like here you go oh yeah it’s ridiculous and I try to edit them out once in a while so I’m just not going to go back through and I’m not going to save you in a special file now if if I think you’re good I will put you on my informal roster and what does that look like it looks like a roster in my contact list and under the notes there I just put names in and contact information i’m going to cut and paste your name contact information maybe put a little note in there of like you know what I thought about it so that’s how it is it’s not like an official spreadsheet or anything like that but if I need to find you know uh a Native American female I know how to find that i see so just keeping in touch but if if Native American female hasn’t kept up in touch with me in four years maybe her emails changed maybe her phone numbers change maybe I just forget about her altogether many of us don’t have that entrepreneurial background the business background most of us are employees and I’ve talked about this at length of you got to kind of change your mindset you should always be looking for work um and I admit I get lazy sometimes like I don’t feel like sending emails i don’t feel like finding new people like but if you can see what he what Robert is saying Robert is just one agency that you’re reaching out to right and there’s countless across the United States and across the world and you just building up that pipeline you know if he only needs you once every two years but you have a hundred agencies in your pipeline I mean the chances of you getting auditions or getting direct bookings just goes up dramatically so it is a numbers game and it’s a patience game it’s a longevity game could I share one more story with you back in the day um before there was this internet thing and email and it was so easy uh we used to send out uh different kinds of mailings in a year to clients so we had a quarterly newsletter that we sent out and it just had stories about what we were doing but it had cities we were expecting to be in you know so it was kind of it was our travel itinerary at the time um and then we would print up these really nice like um you know 6 by9 glossy laminated sexy fullcolor postcards and stuff and we would print 12 of those at a time on one big piece of paper and have them cut down and then we would stack them in our closet we say «Okay well this one’s kind of like February this is March this April May.» And we turned it back to eight a year but um either way so you might get our newsletter and then you might get a postcard you might get a newsletter you might get a postcard and you know of course we would reach out to people we got involved in the industry we would be at the resort conventions that’s where I met my wife actually i got my best uh client right there um and so I got a call from a guy and I knew his name because I’d seen him on the on the list you know forever and he called he says «Hey man listen you know we’ve been we’ve been wanting to use you but we never had a project that we you know thought was worthy of your company and the budget.» That so many times i was like «Well man I’m so glad you reached out.» I said «We’ve been mailing to you for a while right?» And he goes he says «I have everything you’ve ever sent me.» Wow and he had like 14 or 15 pieces that he kept in a folder because he wanted to hire us one day and was like you know we do smaller jobs too he goes no no he says you guys are special and I was saving this for that job and I was like wow and that was years for him to finally reach out and uh I had in-house uh sales and marketing person too that made outbound calls but he wasn’t really responsive at all um until he just like that was that day and so you have to think of it as a as a voice actor or a camera operator or whatever you are is got to keep in touch top of mind i’ve tried both like scouring for that one email address to send out this beautifully crafted not using chat GBT written by human email and I’ve also sent out a thousand emails at one time and got my email on the global spam list oh yeah yeah you can’t do that so do you receive not not like physically receive but do you look at those emails differently when you know that it’s a canned message versus somebody actually takes time to I don’t really care i mean I I don’t need anybody to be falsely friendly i’m running a business and in my business I need I need tools crew and talent and clients i need number one so um that’s that’s just how it works i don’t need a flowery email now some people want might want to you know be buttered up but I have no interest in that i mean you know just hey my name’s DJ you know and I don’t know how you phrase your how you are but you you’ve got a very neutral voice for a black man i would say a black uh voice actor with a neutral American accent yeah there you go so that that’s really good and that’s what you have you know that’s all I need to know and something like that to me you know oh this is he goes in my black eye file you know but you see what I’m saying that sticks out so all I really need to know is hey I’m DJ i’m a voice actor i’m a professional you know I do apples and bananas sometimes just like you do i loved your banana commercial and I’m out of this that’s it cuz I I am reading your email DJ while I’m in line at Chick-fil-A while I’m pumping gas while I’m sitting here talking to you now I’m not taking emails right now but you know I’ve got auditions going on i’ve got a client meeting and I’m just going to skim it for just a second and it doesn’t mean it’s disrespectful to you as a potential vendor but it just means that I don’t have a lot of time you know i just need I I’ve got nuts and bolts well if I don’t need nuts and bolts that day I don’t really care you know i need bananas damn it you guys got to order your dragon fruit you guys got to pay attention to the what he’s giving you guys is literally you don’t have to pay for a course man like I be trying to tell people like if you want to pay for a course do you do you boo boo i’m not going to tell you spend your money but that’s literally all it is just don’t be a dick don’t be weird and follow up that’s it cuz like you said he’s not pining over your crafted email at 2:00 in the morning laying under the bed with under the covers he’s really not but I might check it at 2 o’clock in the morning you might yeah because I can’t I can never sleep i can’t sleep at all well when you’re in the space station you know the time your body clocks all off and stuff you know yeah it is that’s true as you’ve been as industry for years oh was it 30 over 35 years now 46 years 40 Jesus Christ i apologize for shaving off an extra 11 started at 19 and have just been doing it everything that Yeah but I’ve made I’ve been willing to make mistakes and as a voice actor or any kind of a business person you’re going to make a mistake and I’ve made some terrible mistakes in terms of um financial decisions or client decisions you know you take a job that you know you’re going «Ah man this one I don’t know you know I don’t know but okay I’m going to make this work.» And you get to get connected with somebody who um is disrespectful and um a lot of them out there i didn’t know anything when I started i mean you know I I told you I had no business experience nobody in our family um had business experience and my parents were bluecollar mom and dad lived in a little I don’t know 12 or,400 square foot ranchstyle home in Jacksonville Florida and um man I don’t know why I did this i mean I just I was going to school i had some opportunities to get further education and I’m like you know I want my I want my I want my own rowboat damn it and um and so a lot of those people very good i said «Oh man you don’t have any experience you don’t have the money what do you know about running your own business?» Right and um and I didn’t have much to say about that but all it did was make me more determined and um and I told you this this story and I used this as one of my leadins is you know people would say you’re you know you’ll be back in six months and you know under my breath I knew they weren’t being mean but I knew all they were doing was making me more determined and and I’m sitting there the hell hell I am right and so my revenge on all those people was not to say oh I’m you know making it big now but every time I would travel to a great place Hawaii by the Caribbean Mexico i would buy a stack of postcards because that’s what we did back then right we didn’t send emails we didn’t have a a Facebook page stack of postcards a bunch of stamps and I would sit by the pool drinking my coffee in the morning hey man wow it’s really beautiful here in the in in Cancun i wish you were here with us you know and I sent those postcards out to every single one of those right yeah man and what not being mean just like «Yeah I didn’t make it.» And there’s been times I should have quit there’s been times I probably should have you know filed bankruptcy DJ um cuz sometimes financial things don’t work out clients don’t pay you for big jobs or something but you know I’m not a quitter and you know you could punch me in the face all day long and I’ve been punched a lot i’ve been knocked down and kicked down and um but you just got to get back up and say them and move forward is that the advice you would give to new voice actors because it is a tumultuous uh career it can be it can beat you down it It’s brutal it’s brutal cuz it’s personal you’re not selling cars right oh they didn’t like the red car well you have to think of yourself a little bit like a red car right you know that client’s not going to buy red no matter what they like blue cars and that’s all they’re going to buy you have to have tenacity to succeed in life how many times did all of these different very successful people if you deem that they’re successful people how many times did they fail you just have to say you know what I don’t feel like doing that today but I’m going to do it anyway 46 years sitting in this chair every every weekday if I’m not on a job and I’m not out producing I am in this chair 8 or 9:00 in the morning checking my emails oh good another voice actor um Put him in this folder no there no but you know I’m in this chair every day and I’m in this chair until 6 o’clock at night this is my job and I’m going to tell you guys something this is something I teach in my workshops and my my business courses your job isn’t to be a voice actor your job is to run a small business that offers that service there you go you may think it’s different than shoes or hardware stores or you know Walmart or whatever it’s the same except Walmart has a broader category but you have to run the business disney is not going to hire your company to produce a commercial for them if you don’t have all of your together but you have to be willing to fail and if you’re not willing to fail it’s not going to be fun and I don’t like failing i know nobody likes failing but you know what it bruises sometimes it leaves a mark but you just got to get back up man and go every day Monday through Friday I’m at this desk and I’m probably here a lot more on the weekends than I should be 46 years this is who I am it is not what I do one of my mentors here in South Korea told me like how he became successful was to fail and fail often like you got to the more you fail the more you learn if you’re not failing you’re not trying man many people are scar so scared to fail that they won’t move but this industry guys like in voice acting as a as any actor or as any creative if you don’t put yourself out there to fail aka not get the job not get shortlisted not get your audition list to avoices.com um not send that email if you’re not willing to put yourself out there to fail you will get left behind well do the numbers let’s say you reach out to 100 people right 100 production companies so out of that 100 production companies there’s an average of 15 jobs we’ll just use that number whatever that happens to be 15 jobs that could use voiceover right so now you got 1500 jobs right that you could potentially be in but you have to be in touch with all of those people and now you’ve still got the competition side is your voice right you know you’ve talked about having not having that urban male uh black male voice right and you get that and they want you to be that you’re like «Well that’s not it.» But you know if I’m listening to it I might give you a chance to be that but um you’re not quite close enough for that urban read there’s just so many rungs on that ladder for you to fall down but you still got to get on the ladder first there’s more ways than just getting um emails right get involved with the community all right wherever it is you live go to those Chamber of Commerce meetings smoo around hand out your cards you know when you go to your doctor’s office go «Man you got a sucky voicemail system why don’t you let me redo that for you?» Right i did that i shamed my dentist and my dermatologist into it but you know you got to be involved in your community so people think about you i’m sure people that watching this maybe want to stretch those direct marketing email muscles do you accept submissions or uh emails for people voice talent looking to connect with you or you want to share yeah I’ll just send them all to djdikes.com yeah look if y’all send me these damn emails I swear to God I’m deleting this YouTube channel yeah um so uh anyway first thing you ought to do is just take a look at our production company website and that is starlingproductions.com s t a r l i n gproductions.com and um my email address that you can submit to is robstar1 and that’s the number one r O B S T A R1 atstarlingproductions.com that’s awesome and then my VO site is robertstarling.com you gave all the information that voice actors need to hear from the other side instead of just living in their bubble as a voice actor they need to see the bigger picture how they fit and I think you did a great job of breaking that down for us well man this is awesome you know it’s hard to stop me when I get on my business apple box right banana box and um But you know I I do uh and I’m not here pitching consulting but I do private workshops and um I could do them in person or online and um you know they’re expensive but um you know when somebody comes out of my two-day workshop they’ve got a business plan to work with thank you so much and I really appreciate this opportunity i’ve never done this before so my job is not front of camera sort of guy

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