How to Hire a Voice Over
Review the Results and Fulfill the Agreement
After your session and/or delivery of your project you will want to review it carefully and make sure you are satisfied with the result. Stay in contact with the hired talent and let them know if there is anything you are unhappy with. Most voice talent work hard to maintain their reputation with their clients and will be happy to respond to any reasonable requests you might have.
Remember to pay the talent on time! You may have a wonderfully crafted masterpiece but you do not have permission to use it until the terms you laid out in the hiring process are fulfilled. Fulfilling those requirements is the final step in the process.
Summary
While this is not a definitive list it can be viewed as a suggested template for creating your own worksheet based on your project and goals. You may find it necessary at times to move a step up or down in the list to best fit your project, personal management style and process you choose to search for voice over talent.
Hiring a voice over talent may seem like a daunting task at first but if you follow these steps you will streamline the process and end up with a professional result you will be proud to add to your project. Assess your needs, define your target, develop a voice profile and determine additional requirements. Then audition and cast your voiceover talent, review and finalize the VO segment of your project. Casting can be a fun process if you are prepared and know what to expect. So have fun with it and do not let it overwhelm you. Casting voiceovers takes some time and effort but, like most worthwhile tasks, it gets easier the more often you do it.
About the Author: In addition to being a professional voice actor, Brian Hart has cast voiceovers for marketing campaigns, multimedia projects and radio station imaging. Reach out to Brian at http://www.HartVoiceOvers.com
©2010 Hart Voice Overs
Tags: actor, audition, Bob Souer, Brian Hart, Brian Mishkin, Caryn Clark, casting, DB Cooper, hire, professional, Stephanie Ciccarelli, talent, Todd Ellis, VO, voice, voiceover
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 2:20 pm and is filed under General, Voice Over. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 19th, 2010 at 2:00 am
How to hire a professional voice | Voices Of Advertising says:[...] friend Brian Hart has prepared a superb article covering all the bases of hiring professional voice talent for your project. If you’d rather, you can download his article as a [...]
February 19th, 2010 at 9:26 am
Brian, thank you for this terrific reference. It answers all the important questions and makes the process of finding us and hiring us very doable.
I am sure I will be quoting you and sending this forward.
Jane Ingalls
February 19th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Jane, thank you very much for taking the time to read it and to post a comment.
February 19th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
uberVU - social comments says:Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by DavidHoustonVO: RT @HartVoiceOvers How To Hire a Voice Over article is live. A must read if you have never cast VO talent… http://bit.ly/bEcxWw...
March 10th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
This was a great read even for a beginner who is looking to get into the industry on how the atual working-recording, marketing, getting hired, getting paid-works. Thanks for taking the time to write this comprehensive piece Mr. Hart!
March 10th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
uh wordpress thinks i’m spam. i didn’t even figure the comments or this site was built on wp, but now that i look around i can see the anti spam WP protection. seems like they got their back end secured. anyways i came over from the vo-bb where this piece was linked and i read through all 7 pages and felt like i had learned a lot just by taking the time to focus and read through your words of advice. thanks! i will be following the site
March 10th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Lae, thank you very much for taking the time to comment. I’m glad you found the article helpful. Let me know if there’s every anything I can do for you.
September 4th, 2010 at 9:48 pm
My Blog Title says:Another Title…
I wish more folks would use professional VOs….
February 9th, 2011 at 3:02 pm
Hi Brian!
This should be mandatory reading for all those looking to hire a voice over talent.
Kudos for this awesome post!!!
February 11th, 2011 at 7:17 pm
Morgan, thanks very much for taking the time to read it.
February 23rd, 2011 at 2:50 am
This is indeed the best article I’ve ever read on voice over hiring. It will save me lots of time and money. Thanks Brian!