[00:00:00] Leslie: In Voice-Over, you want to sound like you're completely off the cuff, messy or looser, the way I'm talking right now.

[00:00:10] VO: Welcome to BRANDwidth on Demand, your guide to rebooting radio.

[00:00:15] Leslie: I think for radio people, medical narration, on-hold messaging, there's another huge field, which is called e-learning and education videos, training videos, things like that. So that's a really great area to get into. They're going to get a lot of work...

[00:00:30] VO: BRANDwidth on Demand, rebooting radio with a different take on all radio can be. Now, your guides through the MediaMorphosis, David Martin and author of the book BRANDwidth, media branding, coach Kipper McGee.

[00:00:45] Dave: Leslie Bailey is an award-winning casting director, voiceover coach demo, producer and consultant. She comes highly recommended as a voiceover coach in the inner circles of RND. Now as head of voice over [00:01:00] gurus.com. Leslie helps voice actors bring out the magic while offering those little tricks and betray that she's gathered over two decades of working with the best producers, directors, writers, agents, and talent in the biz. Her students provide voiceover work for brands like AT&T, BMW, Dove, McDonald's Verizon Dunkin donuts, and so many more. She's even guided the voice of the Blue M and M! If you're looking to enhance your portfolio of income streams, we've got one great solution ran with on demand is proud to welcome the voice over guru herself, Lesley Bailey.

[00:01:40] Leslie: Hey, listen. I am a little nervous to speak after that beautiful voice. Yeah, thank you for the intro.

[00:01:49] Kipper: Dave's got the voice for radio. I've got the voice for print, but we're glad you're here. I think one of the first questions I've got is what is one of the things that radio people need to know before trying to get voiceover work outside of radio?

[00:02:08] Leslie: The first thing is actually figuring out how to transfer those skills. To the voiceover realm, much like a theater actor or a sports announcer. There's a performance there, there's a projection, there's a preparedness. And in voiceover, for the most part, you want to offset all of that and sound like you're completely off the.

[00:02:33] Not looking at any prepared words, just talking from your own mind, messy or looser, the way we talk the way I'm talking right now, since I don't have a prepared speech, I'm just kind of like talking from my brain, which is so mind blowing that I can just keep going without a script. And I don't even know what's coming out of my mouth.

[00:02:49] And so the second it comes out. It's crazy. So, yeah, that's where training comes in. Right? Kind of like the ballet dancer who keeps saying. Smacked on the shoulders, by the instructor, you know, [00:03:00] lower your shoulders, stop scrunching your shoulders. It's just getting reminded of those bad habits and recreating new ones.

[00:03:07] Like stop talking so loud. You're not talking to a million people. Pretend like you're talking to one person because how appealing is that sound? Right? It makes us feel important. Like what they're saying is just for us. So we address volume, we address pacing, we address inflection and then more than anything.

[00:03:25] What does that script want of you? What's the specific emotions of that screen? You're really auditioning for the writer, you know, is that writer thinking comedically? Was he thinking warm and fuzzy? Was he thinking confident and bad-ass and doing what that writer wants? And so it really is acting right.

[00:03:45] And so it's a different world and I believe everybody has that instinct in them, just like we do, um, have the instinct for human observation. Right. It's just channeling that and just paying attention to.

[00:03:56] Dave: Well, honestly, when a casting person like yourself is [00:04:00] looking for the right boys talent, what are you looking for? I mean, how exactly should a radio person package themselves to make the right impression?

[00:04:08] Leslie: Well, there's a few things to factor in. One is knowing how to stay in your lane. Right? What age range are you? Do you have a really deep voice? You have a really high voice so that you know, the right things to audition for the right way to brand yourself.

[00:04:23] If you're a really like strong, deep, masculine voice. Okay. Maybe you can do that, like monster truck commercial. Um, if you've got like this higher feminine voice, so maybe you're going to do the baby shampoo thing and not to make it that generic because that's again, then where acting comes in. So if you don't have a voice, that's that distinctive, it means you can kind of do anything if you have those acting instincts, because if they're looking for a certain emotion and you can go with it.

[00:04:57] It doesn't really matter what your voice sounds like. [00:05:00] So I think, again, it goes back to training, knowing what your emotional range is like, what your acting capacity is like, so that you can know what you're going to market yourself as. Are you going to be the Meryl Streep of voiceovers or are you going to be the Tom cruise of voiceovers or something?

[00:05:22] So, I don't know if those references make sense to people, but you know, are you going to be really broad? Are you going to be like, I do this one thing, but I do it really well.

[00:05:30] Kipper: Right. And this may be a radio is in the, in the very question I'm asking. But in terms of demos, what do you find working right now?

[00:05:42] Or is everything kind of done on spec custom for the particular role or being cast?

[00:05:48] Leslie: So they are actually still two different things. There's the demo which you create as kind of your business card. Hey, here's the proof that I'm really awesome. Listen to this, you know, and it's your, your, [00:06:00] your one minute example of all the things you do really well and demos are, and have been very specific to genre.

[00:06:06] So if you want to go after commercial work, you have a commercial demo. If you want to go after corporate narration work, you have a corporate narration demo and so on, it gets kind of expensive. And then. The other thing is yes, you will also maybe then get auditions from these ways that you're going after auditions.

[00:06:26] And you have to do a custom audition with that script and that's separate from your demo. So it's kind of like you need, you do.

[00:06:34] Kipper: If I'm hearing you, right. It sounds like the demo should be more quick cuts rather than complete commercial.

[00:06:39] Leslie: Yeah. The way I normally produce them is they're about a minute long. It's not a hard rule, but it's an aim and maybe we get about five in there. So we try and keep them under 15 seconds each, maybe even shorter so that once you've highlighted a style that an actor can do really well. Boom, you [00:07:00] move on. Get to the next one, get to the next one, keep their interest so you can keep quickly showing them all the different things you can do without them getting bored. Especially in our Twitter age, our soundbite age, right. Have super fast flowing quick pieces of.

[00:07:17] Dave: No, that's a great point, Leslie, you know, there's a lot of voiceover talent seems to be needed in things like audio books right now. So how does a boy's talent prepare for reading books as opposed to doing commercials?

[00:07:30] Leslie: Books are probably the most work that a voice actor will do, obviously, you know, they're the most time consuming. Uh, when you prepare for a commercial audition, you have to read maybe 15, 30 seconds of material and try and understand it with a book. You're not reading the whole book for the audition, but let's say you book the job. You now have to read the whole book and prepare for it and know everything in advance. So you don't trip up or you're going to be. [00:08:00] Extra hours in the booth editing your work. And you're expected to complete, you're expected to be the engineer as well for audiobooks, which is a little different than,

[00:08:09] Kipper: Yeah... So how do people break into that field these days, specifically?

[00:08:15] Leslie: Audiobooks, first training, next demo. And then I don't think really agents are a thing with audiobooks as much. So there's a lot of direct marketing involved. You can probably contact publishers directly. I know that there's a big website. Don't think it's audible. Although audible is something I think it's called ACX. And one of my students, he was actually a manager at Trader Joe's and he. He made a commercial demo with me and he was still afraid to cut down his hours at trader Joe's. And then he made a medical pharmaceutical demo, like narrating pharmacy ads. And when he made his audiobook demo and [00:09:00] posted it, I think on AC. He quit his job at trader Joe's. So that might be a big one.

[00:09:07] Kipper: Well, that's kind of what we're looking at here is, you know, radio with the kind of a rampant number of people who are out of work or finding themselves cut back or whatever we're looking for people. that want to supplement their income or perhaps even replace it at some point because they have got the town, they got the chops. They just don't have the gigs.

[00:09:30] Leslie: Yeah. Just to add to that Kipper, audiobooks are one of the genres where we expect to hear the reading. So it might be a little more forgiving for a radio announcer, right?. They're used to reading and not sounding as natural, like, you know, they're just riffing. So, might be a great one. Another great one would be medical, medical training, medical narration because they are a little less emotional. They're a little bit more just matter of fact. [00:10:00] On hold messaging, right? When you call up your credit card company and you're waiting for an hour and you hear like for billing, press LUN, right. Things like that. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of things that I think radio announcers could slip into easily, but if they're comfortable and they have the capacity, I think the whole world of voiceover is available to.

[00:10:20] Kipper: So you mentioned that you don't really need like an agent for the audiobook realm. What about doing bigger commercials? Even regional ads are worthwhile to get an agent, or is it something that can contact and build upon friends? Is there a coconut grapevine that says, Hey, you got to use so-and-so or how does that work?

[00:10:41] Leslie: There are, I think in the beginning, it's wise to do sort of multi-tiered marketing. Campaign for yourself. So, I mean, I have many students who went on to get some agents all over the country because it doesn't matter anymore. Right. Because everybody's recording from their home [00:11:00] studio. So they find agents in smaller to mid-size cities who can represent them and throw them auditions every once in a while they might also join what we call, pay to play websites like voices.com.

[00:11:15] They're going to wake up every morning and find auditions in their inbox. I have some students who go through an entire, a to Z list just a little bit every day and cold call production companies and direct market. His demo, you know, like, or her demo, like, hi, I have a demo. Is there anyone specific? You know, that's in charge of listening to things like this and would be willing to review mine.

[00:11:39] And so, yeah, I think in the beginning, it's not just about an agent. Like it used to be when everything was local right now, everything is everywhere. Thanks to the. So there are many ways to get work.

[00:11:52] Dave: Voiceover guru, Leslie Bailey. Hey, somebody you'd like to hear from we'd love to hear your suggestions, [00:12:00] email us show@brandwidthondemand.com, and please spread the word about the brand on demand.

[00:12:07] Our goal is to help you future-proof your career and your friends as well.

[00:12:12] Kipper: And now a whole new way to keep up with what's happening in our ever-changing, ever-evolving industry and the multi-channel media mega verse we're becoming just follow a brand with plus that's brand with P L U S brand lift plus I'm Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. At BRANDwidthPLUS you'll find we're pretty social and hope you are two

[00:12:41] Dave: Coming up, voiceover guru herself. Leslie Bailey shares some opportunities for you that others may find hiding in plain sight.

[00:12:51] Opportunities hiding in plain sight: BRANDwidth on Demand

[00:12:54] VO: Lesley thinking about traditional broadcast. What's one opportunity that you [00:13:00] see that may be hiding in plain sight for radio people.

[00:13:04] Leslie: I think going back to my earlier mention. I think for radio people, medical, narration, on-hold messaging, there's another huge field, which is called e-learning and education videos, you know, training videos, things like that.

[00:13:21] And there's a lot of that done overseas as well. So that. As a second language, they're not triggered by hearing whether we're super conversational or not. So that's a really great area to get into. They're going to get a lot of work and they're not going to have to refine their naturalism read. Does that help?

[00:13:41] Okay. But I'm going to find that perfect one. As soon as we're done the one really hiding under my bed. I think you might've asked something like this earlier, but it was a multi-faceted question. So I didn't finish the thought, you know, just talking again about the conversational aspect that is so [00:14:00] popular these days and has really edged out that announcery sounds that a lot of us grew up. I think, you know, just talking about strategy, it goes back to the idea of how we talk to one person only, which is how we talk almost all day long, except, well, I guess for you radio people, but yeah, that is recognizing your volume, your pacing, the way you articulate or don't articulate when you talk to one person it's, it's a much more relaxed sound, and, and these are the things when I just throw a script at somebody again, it's like muscle memory training, I'll just say, oh, you said those words, so perfect. And that didn't sound natural. Right. And just reminding them over and over just being there blind.

[00:14:47] Kipper: Yeah. When working with radio stations, I will often take the production team and have them listen with the visual look away from the TV, but just listen to the reads on TV [00:15:00] and say, notice a difference.

[00:15:03] They are not as "announcer-y"

[00:15:10] Dave: In the beginning, we were really screaming at people. If you look at all or listen to all the early radio or watch any of the early television, they're screaming at people, you can see that now in the evening. Watch the network news, MSNBC. They're not talking to people. They're screaming at me,

[00:15:37] Leslie: So true. And I have my own personal coach, my 14-year-old child who constantly reminds me, especially on calls like this. Mom...the microphone is right there. You don't need to shout. I'm like, oh, I forgot. Like they can hear me through the microphone. It's my new Yorker voice kicking in. Yeah, [00:16:00] exactly. And it's, it's off-putting. Right. And it's one of the number one things I tip my students off to in the beginning. Do you want to stand out above everyone else? As long as it's not an energetic spot that you're doing just lower your voice a slight bit more than you think you should, because now it sounds like you're just talking to them and it's like this great secret that you have to share. And they're going to really lean in and be like, oh, this is for. Yeah, and that is really attractive in voiceover.

[00:16:31] Dave: Wow. She is something Kipper. That is the voice-over guru. Leslie Bailey. We have links to Leslie's website, radar articles on voiceover skills, examples of a voiceover coaching session in progress, and more all in the show notes. Just scroll down on your phone

[00:16:48] Kipper: as always our special thanks to the stunningly skillful editing of our exact producer, Cindy Huber.

[00:16:55] And guests booking help from associate producer, Hannah [00:17:00] B and coming up next. What more can we say than WOW?.

[00:17:05] John: This is John Sebastian. If you want to know the secrets behind the success we've had with the WOW Factor here in Phoenix, tune in to the next BRANDwidth on Demand

[00:17:13] Dave: That's a wrap Kipper, Never stop learning. We're going to talk about learning and one-minute mark nicely. Find it in the show notes at BRANDwidthOnDemand.com. I'm Dave Martin.

[00:17:24] Kipper: And I'm Kipper McGee may all your BRANDwidth be wide!