Dave Courvoisier is the man to follow if you want to be up to date on relevant information for the English speaking VO community. On his blog Voice Acting in Vegas Dave provides a wealth of useful resources for voice talents from technical stuff, tips and tools on how to improve voice delivery or increase the chances of winning an audition. His five year quest on digging up everything that is newsy and inspiring regarding voice acting is certainly paying off. His blog has a large audience and thanks to social media Dave has built up a network he should be proud of.
I share with Dave the fact of being a journalist as much as a voice talent, so it was very stimulating for me to know how he handles both skills, which in fact build into each other.
It’s my pleasure to share with you this engaging interview that’s more than worth listening to.
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Here some highlights of our talk:
ON BLOGGING
« I have a lot of things to say like most journalists do. I committed 5 years ago to blogging every day with fresh content all the time to draw the kind of readers I want »
« To write the blog I had to do a lot of digging for the facts. In that process I learned a tremendous amount. To me the blog is also a repository of resources that I can use and have at my fingertips »
« The blog has brought me a lot of dividends and rewards I didn’t expect. I ended up educating myself about the various aspects of voiceovers and it has brought me clients and pure acceptance »
ON SOCIAL MEDIA
« I was an early adopter of social media as a marketing tool and has worked very well for me »
« The blog has been central to my reaching out. I refer back to it from my social media. I built up this consistent marketing brand across all those networks »
« Social media is mostly free. I understand some people don’t like it, but as a marketing tool is hard to beat »
ON VO WORK TODAY
« It used to be that the major talents would live in the big city and would drive themselves to the studios for each audition »
« Now you are sitting in your own home studio and have the technology to cut quality audio you can send on the Internet to the agencies. »
ON MARKETING VO SERVICES
« The wise advice for prospective voice talents : it’s great to have a good voice, but 80% of your effort would go into marketing and 20% goes into the actual talent end »
« You can’t depend on your voice only to get business, you’ve got to be entreprising, get out and sell yourself »
« It doesn’t hurt to have a few agents out there to do marketing on your behalf as well »
ON P2P SITES
« Many people do very well on Pay to Play sites. If nothing else P2P sites introduce talents to new possibilities which turn into regular clients »
« For people who are starting out, P2P sites are a wonderful place to start practice audition scripts and get connections. These sites have a formula you should follow to maximize your possibilities of getting jobs »
« However there is a « cattle call » effect in those sites that are wide open to just anybody. So unprofessional voices are also applying for the jobs »
« There is a rush to answer the ad, which brings a huge wave of responses and only a few are really very good »
THE GOLDEN TIPS FROM DAVE COURVOISIER
If you want to succeed in VOs and land jobs you have to :
- immerse yourself in the culture of voice acting
- practice and practice, reading out loud
- hang out at the places where voice-over people hang out
- get coaching
- invest a few dollars in decent equipment
If you are starting out, what are you waiting for?
Your reactions to this interview with Dave are much appreciated. Please write them below.
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RT @DirectVoices: Dave Courvoisier, fresh, compelling reporting on VOs: http://t.co/3MCFLZFvO2
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