Today on Clubhouse we heard Liz Atherton of CastVoices talk to Edge Studio owner David Goldberg and Edge’s community relations director, Siobhan O’Loughlin. The interview covered so much, from the beginnings of Edge Studio’s work in voiceover (when David was fed up with the drugs and drinking in the music business and switched to VO production), to its current educational offerings, to notes on what casting directors look for, and wrapped up with a chat about Edge’s resources for voiceover talent. Let’s go through some highlights:
- David says that Edge is set up like a college, where new students begin with an evaluation, and an advisor helps guide them through their journey through all facets of the voice over industry.
- Liz loves this approach to put talent first.
- Siobhan focuses on building the Edge community by offering free resources such as the Ask Me Anything Q&As on Zoom every other week with David and guests, the Home Studio Show & Tell sessions, and other social events in the works. She says that the booth tours were created to support everyone who is trying to pursue voiceover and to inspire people who may be feeling overwhelmed by the process.
- With his insights as a casting director, David says that one mistake that voice actors make is that they don’t think about things from the client’s perspective. You have to be in it for your client, not just for yourself.
- Liz and David discussed the importance of following directions, especially when slating. And then they shared notes on the most extreme cases of slating fails that they’ve heard as casting directors: Liz takes the prize for listening to the longest slate at 2 minutes and 22 seconds; and David won in the category of hearing the most awkward slate, where the talent said after his name, “I fixed the script because there were so many typos — no extra charge.”
- David says that when you’re listening back to your auditions, try to imagine the different people on the creative team who might also be listening and what they may want to hear. For example, the client might be focused on how you say the product name, the marketing team might care more about how you deliver the message, and the engineer might be listening for the recording quality.
- Some of the resources that Edge offers are: an extensive script library, a non-union rate card, a words-to-time calculator, and a monthly script-reading contest that gives a detailed explanation of why the top three were chosen from all of the submissions.
Thank you so much to Liz, David, Siobhan for your time today, and to the audience questions as well! You can catch the replay on Clubhouse. Be sure to check out CastVoices and Edge Studio, too!