Five thoughts for the start of your voiceover week.
1.) Beware siloed advice in the voiceover business. When trying to figure out what advice and expertise is actionable for your VO business, consume a broad sample of opinions. It can be attention grabbing for an industry service provider or expert to espouse opinions that are disruptive or challenge the status quo. Sometimes those perspectives are indeed valuable new insights, but just as often they are outliers and could do your business more harm than good. What worked for one marketing superstar may not apply to you. What one production company executive took into consideration when hiring talent doesn’t necessarily apply to other buyers. What one agent looks for in a roster prospect may be completely different than the majority. Conventional wisdom needs shaking up from time to time, but it didn’t become conventional wisdom by accident.
2.) Give yourself a break. With the exception of certain commercial accounts and standard golden-handcuffs stuff like network promo, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year is also often the slowest time of the year for voiceover. If you’re feeling burned out, now’s a great time to consider giving yourself a break.
3.) Give agents a break. Got shiny new demos or a recent high-profile booking that you want to leverage into new agency representation? Great! Just keep in mind that agents take holiday breaks, too, and just like the rest of us they tend to be logy with seasonal overindulgence this time of year. Hold fire until late January for best results if you’re thinking of submitting for rep.
4.) Prepping for 2023. Now, however, is a good time to be prepping your VO action plan for 2023. What worked for your business this year? What didn’t? Take stock, and begin creating a roadmap to improve upon what worked and pivot from what didn’t in the New Year, so you can hit the ground running when things start heating up in January.
5.) The robots can’t even draw fingers. In case you’re still freaking out about AI in voiceover, check out the Lensa AI portrait craze that has swept social media recently. Controversy over how it appropriates art from the internet aside, my takeaway? The thing can’t even render hands correctly. When it tries they look like the aftermath of an industrial accident. Lensa AI strikes me as a preview of where artificial intelligence VO and synthetic voices will land: Ooh, that’s fun! Now let’s go hire a pro to do it right.