Kristy Wagner

Female Voice Actor in South Portland Maine

kristy@kristywagnervo.com
207 712 9466

With A Little Help From My (VO) Friends

voiceover

Mastering the art of the fast turnaround proves difficult for those of us new to recording and editing for clients.

I landed my first job during the holiday season. The client contacted me two hours before I had to go in to my day job. I auditioned for them on a pay-to-play site weeks before and was surprised to be hearing from them at all. They requested I deliver a file in an hour. An hour! I stood there in my bathrobe fresh out of the shower and felt the tension creep up my neck.

I couldn’t even be excited about the job because I felt immense pressure. Full disclosure, this was for a TV spot. I now know that the nature of TV gigs is usually fly-by-the-seat-of-your-VO-pants.

So, I cut my fast turnaround teeth on this first job. Boy was I sweating big-ass bullets while struggling through editing (I had JUST started using Adobe Audition and was still feeling my way around it).

Luckily, I slogged through it. When they revised the script the next day I re-recorded and took another stab at the editing process. They liked it and paid me.

Now, I edit like a champ – thanks in large part to Tim Tippets and his Audition Ready course on votechguru.com. Also, I built a better studio decked out with professional-grade materials. And because I properly sound-treated my recording space I cut my editing time in half and I now get the most out of my mic.

But going to someone and learning about my editing software helped me tremendously improve my speed and audio quality. Yes, I paid for that help. But, a lot of the help I received to get me through that first job I found on YouTube.

Fact: people are online giving away information every day. You just have to know enough to separate the good stuff from the garbage (and there’s A LOT of garbage info out there on audio editing).

Not only do I edit faster and deliver better quality for my clients, but I carry loads more confidence behind the mic because I know my recording space is awesome and how to use my DAWS effectively.

Confidence is key in voice-over. But more importantly, getting help is a bigger key that opens many more doors. And there is no industry like the VO industry in providing helpful peers who care. So just reach out and get some help. If you are more experienced, offer help to a fellow VO who may be struggling.

Remember, we’re all in this together and the journey is what we make of it!

You better workout!

Commercial, Marketing, Narration, voiceover

Last week was a great voice-over week for me! This week is a slow VO week for me. And so goes my journey as a professional voice actor.

It seems that there are fits and spurts in any performing career and I am okay with that. The thing that I am finding keeps my momentum going is doing voice over things in the background when I am not recording for a paying gig or auditioning for a paying gig.

What are these magical and mysterious background tasks? Marketing (and everything I do publicly or online regarding my VO is marketing my voice), writing this blog, participating in webinars and/or coaching, or straight up taking an acting class.

I am doing three of those background items today (go me!). I am: starting yet another acting class tonight (and should be working on my monologue for said class, but am not…naughty girl.); about to jump onto a webinar about auditioning immediately after finishing this blog post; and, most obviously, writing this blog to promote my VO services via sharing my VO journey with the world.

Webinars are awesome and there are plenty of free ones through Gravy for the Brain, especially if you are a member (which I am!). There are also workouts voice-over artists can pay to take part in with other VOs and coaches through entities such as GVAA (again, if you’re a member). And some coaches, like Gabrielle Nistico (whom I have not worked with yet, but I am counting the days until I get the chance), offer low cost webinar-like/workout-like live sessions that offer some awesome information and help build your VO craft.

These have proven to all be great resources and productive ways to spend my time professionally and constructively when not actually working on a paid VO job.

What do you like to do when you’re not working? How do you workout your voiceover muscles between gigs?

Marketing Me

Commercial, Marketing, Narration, voiceover

Hello VO world! Allow me to introduce myself: Kristy Wagner, trained and invested voice-over artist, auditioning constantly, but could do a lot more to get work. That’s me…today. Tomorrow…I hope to have another client and another job.

How do I get to tomorrow? So far in my journey, I have learned that marketing is one thing, but delivering the goods is another. I have marketed to the point where I get auditions from entities other than pay-to-play and after submitting my audition…nothing. “They really like your sound so just be you.” This is real direction I received and while I understand what this person was getting at, I also find it to be flawed. In voice-over and acting in general, people tell you all the time to “be you.” I definitely am “me” in my auditions, but the reason I do not get the jobs might be because listeners don’t know me or who I am; so how can they tell if what they are hearing is me or not? I’ll tell you how: marketing.

If you’re like me, marketing is an ugly word that makes you want to vomit out of your earballs, but bear with me when I say marketing, like anything else, is more than meets the eye. Marketing is this blog, marketing is a YouTube video, marketing is an email or a phone call to a producer at a local production company; but, most importantly, marketing a full time frickin’ job.

Voice-over auditioning and recording for clients is a full-time job. So where do you fit in your marketing? After some research on marketing and how to work smarter and not harder, I believe I am all for marketing tactics that work for me while I am working on other things, like recording. Now, I haven’t tried this yet, but I am starting on this journey.

What kind of marketing works in the background while you’re working? Social media posts (I know, gross, but social media marketing is where it’s at so get on board); networking on social media so the right people see your posts; blogging and vlogging…and promoting the blog and vlog on social media.

Marketing in these ways might help me get to where I want to be and when I audition and a potential client researches me online they will see blogs, vlogs, social media posts…they will see “me.” And, hopefully, hear me in my voice and deem me authentic and pay me to voice their project. Because let’s be real, we’re all in this to get paid. I can act for free in community theater, but I prefer to get paid for doing what I love so I voice act and I will keep trying to market myself and stick with what works to get me paid.

On a side note, please think twice before buying eBooks, programs, etc. online by people who swear their marketing techniques will get you work in one day to a week. These people want hundreds of dollars for one eBook and it is crap. Marketing is easy once it is understood and to understand marketing for you and your business simply think about whom you want to notice you and how to get the attention of those people. Don’t give someone a buttload of money to teach you how to market—if you want to go that route, enroll in a marketing class at your local college or university or simply pay a professional marketing company to market your business (probably get more for the same or less amount of money).