Here’s Paul on the latest lotto ad.  [He's the dude in the bright yellow suit]

TO LISTEN TO PAUL’S VOICE OVER DEMO CLICK HERE

We get asked a lot about the standard rates for voice over work in Ireland.  Below is an excerpt from our great guide to getting voiceover work.  I hope you find it useful.

Dublin based, Igloo Animation, recently launched a new service aimed at Dublin businesses. They create short explanatory animations, illustrating how products and services work. Of course, all this means more work for voiceovers. Good stuff. Trevor answered a few questions for our blog and here is what he had to say about getting voiceover work for animations.

Who the hell is Igloo Animations anyway?
Igloo Animations is an award winning animation studio
set up in the digital hub in Dublin8

What sort of clients do you have?
Igloo’s clients range from large corporate companies to small businesses

Where do you get your inspiration from?
Ted.com and Movies, Music, People that make a difference

Where do you normally find to people to voice your animations?
It depends, sometimes it could be someone that you live with
and other times you have to cast actors for different roles
and find them through casting agencies.

Do you have a favorite VO?
No, nor do I really have a favorite screen actor. I have seen even great
actors cast wrongly and it’s hard to look at when that happens. Sometimes an actor that you would never rate highly can get cast into a role that they fit perfectly and then your opinion changes, so you never know

What advice would you give to a voice over looking to do more animation work?
Get VO samples online at casting agencies etc… so that people can have a basic idea of what to expect of you before you come in.

You have recently started doing special ‘explanatory’ animations for products on services. Have you any idea how much more effective (if at all) they are over plain old text?

Yea, It’s way more effective, well for people that want visuals like me anyway. Would you prefer to read about a movie in ?plain old text? or would you prefer to see the trailer? A picture can say a thousand words

What sort of budget do I need to get one of these short animations made?
2,500 euro’s

What better way to see what this is all about than heading over to their website where you can a short version of NAMA, Sustainability and even FL Financial Services (whatever that is).

Brief videos explaining how to use a web-site or web-app are all the rage. I like it. It’s an engaging way to tell people how to use your service without them having to dig through explanations. Its just a shame that most of these video’s don’t go the extra mile and pay attention to the sound.

It is a bit of a bug bear of mine - but there is nothing worse than watching a grainy vimeo video where I can’t hear what instructions being mouthed by the demonstrator. If they knew how easy it was to get a voicover to mix in decent audio, perhaps more people would do it.

So here is how it works.

1. Find a voice-over for your gig. You can search for Irish, UK and Canadian talent. FYI: the Canadians sound just like yanks so you can hire them if you are targeting that market.
   For a small job like this, you are looking for someone with a home studio. We can help advise on this front.
2. Get a portion of your script together and post it via our online auditions.
3. The results come in pretty quickly, and once you have someone you like, hire them.
4. They’ll send back a mp3 which you can lay over your video. Some of them will be able to mix the video for you also.

And that is it. It won’t cost a bomb but it’ll make the world of difference when it comes to how likely your users are to actually stay and figure out how that website actually works.

Hear Esther O’Moore Donohoe on VHI Healthcare’s promo for Grey’s Anatomy, Tuesdays at 9.00pm on RTÉ Two. Stat!

LISTEN TO ESTHER’S VOICE OVER DEMO.

A lot of people wonder if they should try and get into voiceovers . There are expenses involved in doing so.  You need a professional demo, maybe a home studio, ways of marketing yourself.  They all take either time or money.

Unfortunately, if you don’t have the talent, it is all for nothing.  You might be great at marketing yourself and have a cracking demo, but if you don’t have the raw talent, then your career may be short-lived.

That is where we come up.  We’re offering free phone auditions.  Call our number, do a demonstration read and we’ll tell you straight whether we think you have potential.  It won’t cost you a cent and we’ll be brutally honest.

1. Try out here!

Don’t forget to leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you with some feedback.

Yeah obviously. Even my mum’s on facebook.  Well anyway, we started a facebook group. Find us, we’re under the name Piehole.  It’s for ad industry folk and voiceovers alike.  The plan is to bring the two groups together. For Piehole VOs - if you have comps to any shows you’re doing, and would like to promote yourself and show off your acting talents, you can get the ad industry to go and watch you.  We’re going to use the facebook group for that type of thing.  So get your butt in there, it’s lonely without you.

Finally got the new website up and running. My buddy Ian Armstrong had put the original blurb up in 2001 but of course since then technology has gone sky high. I remember the audio quality and limits on the amount of samples you could put up was really frustrating on the 1^st site, but you must remember, most of us were on the steam engine dial up system then.

Anyway; last January, talking rubbish over a few pints turned in to “ You really should update that site you know”,  resulting in poor Ian nearly having a nervous breakdown as his friend suddenly turned into the client from hell!

But we got the design and content sorted and I began to regret the photo opportunities I had missed over the past 8 years – people I had in studio and never bothered to get the camera out, E.G. Alan Stanford, Joe Dolan, Brian McGuigan of McGuigan Wines, Derek Davis, Joe Deane, Pakie O’callaghan & Frank Toomey to mention a few. However, let there be no panic……………….the camera is now a permanent fixture in the studio and photos will be uploaded faster than you can say “Cheese”.

Check out the new site please, I’d love to get comments, suggestions, ideas, hate mail…

Play Pat’s voice over demo.

Q: What does your average voiceover artiste and a leprechaun have in common?
A:Answer: they both know how to avoid getting found.

If you catch a Leprechaun, he has to give you his pot of gold. As a result, Leprechauns are secretive little fellows. One was however once caught by a young farmer. The farmer couldn’t believe his luck. Demanding his pot of gold, the Leprechaun reluctantly pointed to a tree in a forest under which the gold could be found. The farmer tied a red ribbon around the tree and headed off to get a shovel so that he could dig up his new found wealth.

Here voiceovers and indeed many other business people go wrong. You see – on www.piehole.ie, the most popular category of voice talent is ‘versatile’. In other-words “I can do anything”. As a result, searching the ‘versatile’ voices tells your pretty much nothing about the voice. But if the category is pretty useless in finding the one VO you need for your job – why does everyone choose it in the first place?

The reason is that they don’t want to lose out on all of the other work on the site. Fear is the strongest human emotion and the fear of losing out drives them to put themselves in this bland category where they get lost in the crowd.

The Leprechaun in our story used this effect to his advantage. He didn’t want the farmer to find his gold so while he was away he tied a red ribbon to all the other trees in the forest – making his pot of gold completely vanish.

The Leprechaun here knows how not to be found. So does a your average voiceover. The only difference is – one wants to be and the other does not.