Production companies, media and creative agencies select voice over artists from the VoiceBox website and sometimes ask us to arrange for the voice over artist to go to a Central London studio for the recording session. This can be a costly exercise as our artists will often need to charge for a day’s work, travel and the client also has to book a recording studio.
So what’s my advice?
Each project is different and if you need to book a top experienced voice over artist for a commercial, I would agree that a high-end recording studio in the UK with a professional sound engineer and director who knows his onions will give you what you need to keep the client’s marketing strategy on the brand. In most other sectors, I would book top voice over artists with their own studios as it saves the end client around 70% off the bottom line. So let’s consider the following examples.
Spanish Latin American example
VoiceBox has a Spanish Latin American voice over artist living in Santiago who a number of our clients request as their 1st preference for mining and offshore corporate projects. To send an artist of this calibre to London would cost thousands of pounds compared to a few hundred for him to use his own Santiago studio.
Broadcast and commercials voice over example
Peter B, one of our best Broadcast and Commercials voice over artist has a bespoke recording studio at his home office in Cheshire. If we ask Peter to go to London, he would need a day off, £200 return train journey and he might also miss out on his regular work from his other clients. All in all he will need a £1,000 fee to make it worth his time. Yet we can book Peter for a £200 session at his home studio via Skype and the client will be blown away with the audio file which will be with you anywhere in the world within an hour.
The voice over business is changing
With fast broadband services where we can now transfer and download high resolution video and audio files in seconds from and to anywhere in the world, it doesn’t really matter where you work from. Therefore we prefer to book our artists from a pool of in-country professionals who work out of local recording studios and have excellent communications skills. Not only are the cost savings for our clients immense, but we can also offer a much larger selection of experienced artists.
Get your instructions agreed in advance
The secret to recording multilingual voice overs in-country is getting the correct instructions conveyed to the artist so that before any recording takes place, the scripts have been read and all the vocal descriptors in terms of tone, style, pace and pronunciations have been communicated and agreed in advance. Often this is backed up with the artist watching a client’s video to really get a feel for the project.
Why did we create VoiceBox?
It’s simple. We wanted to create multilingual voice over and translation workflows that would not only be seamless for clients, producers and editors but also to provide top quality artists at a fraction of the costs that London or UK based studios have traditionally charged. So we have built in these instructions and workflows to assist our global clients who need to commission competitive in-country voice over recordings which provide excellent content and outstanding value for money.