Voice actors on line?

Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson

The Dude Abides
I'm working on a completely animated short that I want to finish by next Spring and I'm interested in obtaining high quality voice talent on a shoestring budget. Given that I am not under time pressure and the talent could record the lines at their leisure, I'm hoping that doing this on-line might be a good way to go. Anybody work with any online resources to find voice talent? I have the ability to synch my digital actors to the recorded lines so I want to get the voice performances down first before I work on lip synch and facial expressions.

Thanks as always for the help. This place is awesome as a resource for indie filmmakers.
 
Vislaw,

I see you're in San Jose (at least part time). I'm just up the road in Sunnyvale.

When I'm not doing production work, I also work on the other side of the camera as an actor. I've picked up a couple of VO gigs on Craig's List, but lately it has gotten hard for the low budget folks to post VO opportunities on CL because there is someone out there that keeps quoting the AFTRA VO rates to discourange low budget VO work.

There are some really good VO folks out there that are fully set up to record on their own (I am, obviously...I have a mic or two and a recorder... ;-). But, these are generally the real pros that do work at a high price point. If you are going to have to work on a low budget, I would recommend you bring them in to record them - you will get good, lower priced actors this way, and you can provide them more direction during the recording session.

This is something I can help with - on both sides. ;-)

Phil
 
You'd be surprised at how many people are good voice actors and don't even know. Then again, you'd be surprised how many people think they are good voice actors and don't realize they suck.
 
vislaw said:
I'm working on a completely animated short that I want to finish by next Spring and I'm interested in obtaining high quality voice talent on a shoestring budget.
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Well you get what you pay for..Finding good Animation voiceover actors is not as abundant as commericial V.O talent. Not to mention doing animation V.O. is one of the hardest types of acting since there is no camera to catch all nuances of a scene. That is why they ask for a pretty penny. The way I would go about it is to go to you're local SAG office and register your short as a deferred pay SAG Agreement Short and abide by the rules. Then you can get Union Actors work for deferred pay and get professionals to do the work. The difference is amazing. You will not find Union actors do non-union because it will jeopardize their membership for which it is not an open membership as it is in AFTRA. Now if you want to hear some real demos go to www.voicebank.net go to house reels and click on any of the agencies demos.
 
Smithy,

I wrote one reply to your message and then deleted it because I felt I was being too strong.

I do have to respond, though, to your comment about SAG actors being professional. This is SAG's wording, and unfortunately, it is very misleading. There are many professional actors that are not members of the union (myself being one). Let's remember that the way that many actors get their eligibility to join the union is through getting vouchers as a background performer. This says nothing about their acting skills. (And, lest you think this is jealousy talking, I am actually SAG eligible via a principle role in a commercial, not through vouchers).

Vislaw, my recommendation to you is to hold auditions and hire the actors that do the best job, regardless of union status. If you find you want/need to hire union actors, then go ahead and look into the indie contracts with SAG, which, btw, will let you hire both union and non-union.

Phil
 
ptalsky said:
Smithy,

(And, lest you think this is jealousy talking, I am actually SAG eligible via a principle role in a commercial, not through vouchers).

Phil
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No Jealousy here...I just wanted to let Vislaw have some options to go to for VO talent.

PS I'm a proud member or SAG, AFTRA and IATSE and not Fi-Core.. And I didn't join using vouchers.
 
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