Voice Casting

Voice Casting Episode 1 Show Notes

Hi, this is your host, Stephanie Ciccarelli. Welcome to the first episode of Voice Casting, a show designed to help you pick the perfect voice for your project.

You might be wondering what Voice Casting means, so let’s address that right away. Voice Casting is entertainment industry jargon for selecting a voice. The word “cast” in entertainment circles refers to a group of actors assigned to play certain character roles, and for our purposes, these people are called voice actors. A voice actor is a person who uses their voice to breathe life into a character, an audio book, a commercial, a telephone message and more. A voice actor is cast -- or chosen, to express everything you want to share with your audience using the persuasive power of the human voice.

Voice Casting is not just about finding and hiring a voice actor – that would be insubstantial for what you need.

No, I daresay that the mission of this podcast is to help you not only find and hire a voice actor, but to do it in such a way that you are selecting the best possible professional to meet all of your needs, requirements and most importantly, to effectively communicate your objectives and embody your brand.

You could say that Voice Casting is a bit of a marketing podcast. You’ll be learning how to brand your business with voice overs. Some of the words you’ll hear in this podcast are very specific to voice over. I’ll explain those as we go along. All you need to know right now though is that voice overs are recorded by voice actors. Therefore, a voice over could be recorded for literally anything or used for any purpose.

Many of you are hiring a voice actor for the first time, and for some of you, it’s the first time that you’ve ever used the Internet to aid you in this task. Let me be your guide as you navigate through some unfamiliar territory in the new era of voice over online.

The first thing you’ll need to do is jump on your favorite web browser and head for Voices.com. After you’ve arrived, you’ll quickly notice that there are several ways to go about finding a voice actor who is capable of working for you.

We’ve made it easy for you to locate voice actors who meet your needs. There are three ways you can go about finding a voice actor, and you can do so directly from our homepage.

The three ways to find a voice actor are:

1. Searching by keyword
2. Browsing by Category
3. Posting a Voice Over Job

Searching By Keyword

Just as you would do a keyword search at Google or Yahoo!, you can type in words that describe what you are looking for in a voice by using the Voices.com search bar. If you like, you can conduct a more specified search by using the Advanced search option that allows you to indicate what language you are looking for, gender, age group, location, and even union status in addition to keywords.

You can find the search bar at the top of every page on the Voices.com website.

Browsing by Category

Now, maybe you’d prefer to find a voice by browsing one of our Featured Talent Categories. If you’re hiring a voice actor to record for a Radio Commercial, for instance, you can click on the Radio Commercials category to listen to an assortment of radio commercial demos, which are further subdivided by gender.

There are sixteen categories linked directly from the homepage including categories related to Broadcast Commercials, Station Imaging and Identification, Videogames, Podcasting, Business and Corporate Presentations, eLearning, Narration, Audio books, Jingles, Music Production, Movie Trailers, Telephony, and Foreign Language voice over services.

Sound good so far?

Posting a Voice Over Job

One of the easiest ways to get everything you want with little time or effort is the option to Post a Job. This is the way to go for those of you who are short on time and need to hear from people who can work within your parameters, including your artistic needs, deadline and your budget. Posting a job also opens the doors to hear from a variety of talent, and if requested, you can even hear a sampling of what the voice actor sounds like reading from your script. Your samples will be ready and waiting for you in your Voices.com account, organized in such a way that you can quickly and easily compare proposals, price quotes and voice over demos. After reviewing the talent responses, the next step is to select the voice that you think will best represent the vision of the project and personify your brand.

So there you have it: searching, browsing and posting a job – three easy ways to find the right voice for your project.

In future episodes of Voice Casting, we’ll explore how to select the best voice actor for the job and the many ways you can use voice over to brand and promote your organization.

I’m Stephanie Ciccarelli. Thank you for listening and we’ll chat again next week.

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