A Return to Normalcy: Old School is Coming Back...Online!

Do you remember what it was like 20 years ago?

It seemed like there was a lot of voice over work out there, but only the best paying jobs, union or not, went to the most experienced voice over talents. No one exactly knew who these people were at that time. Newcomers to the industry had to work very hard to be competitive, yet along the way, they were able to find some sort of work to stay in practice if they were working hard enough.

I believe there are significant events that changed the voice over industry, which used to be somewhat of a smaller click of people doing most of the work. At least since I have been watching, I have watched the voice over industry expand, but now....I see a 'return to normalcy' just around the corner, at least from a Voice123 perspective.

• The SAG/AFTRA strike of 2000:

Call it a collision of destiny, but at the same time when VO artists were becoming mainstream, and you actually knew the people behind the voice, there was a little thing called 'file sharing' that appeared on Napster. I firmly believe that this gave birth to the demon that 'quantity is more important than quality', and that 'it does not matter what it sounds like as long as it is cheap'. Meanwhile, you had many actors out of work, and even if non-union, the pressure was placed on all actors that if you were seen doing struck work, you would have problems with SAG.

The problem: People still needed to work because if you were doing well, and had a great yearly income, it is hard to just 'stop what you are doing'. Factor in that managers had plenty of non-union talents at their disposal, and experienced talents, while many knew it was wrong, even went so far as to change their names and do voice over work.

The result: The small click of voice over artists had to contend with a new, saturated batch of non-union talents, and now, actors who had previously only done modeling, tv, film, theatre, were now in the game too. That was a great deal of quantity, and not too much quality. When the strike ended, things did not go back to normal. There was now a saturated market of voice over talents. Needless to say, in a saturated market the phone rings less and less, unless you are heavily dug in to the industry on both a talent and producer level. The good one's had to find more opportunity, and the online age was just around the corner.

• Voice123 Enters The Picture: When All Can Pay To Audition
  

Along comes a website, carefully put together by a voice over talent and an Internet entrepeneur. You can even see by the Project Directory on Voice123 how things quickly grew. Voice123 now opened the voice over industry to the entire world, so now there were more choices more than ever before.

However, there was a catch. Those posting jobs on Voice123 quickly found out that there were a great deal of people who claimed they could do voice over work, but were not sure of what it was like to work or market online on an international stage. The experienced talents that could work as producers took in a majority of the work, while the majority of inexperienced talents who expected a carbon copy of the old industry, were left feeling that the site was a scam, or if they were smart, feeling like they have to learn something new to work online. It was almost like starting over for so many who, in the past, relied on the agent/talent relationship to get work. Now the talent was on his/her own.

After a couple of years of everyone auditioning, voice seekers who posted jobs found that working online should no longer be about 'quantity', but more about 'quality and saving time'. Voice123 experienced talents complained that there were too many 'hacks' on the site, and that they wanted more opportunities to get work because of their experience.

This completely made sense, for both the voice seeker and the voice talent, and so began the process of returning to 'normalcy'.

• SmartCast is Released by Voice123 in 2007

SmartCast achieved what many wanted in the faces of many talents not realizing it. This system, through its technology, focused on the talents who knew what they were, how good they were, and exactly how to get work. The focus of the system was to achieve return of investment, and get the right talents to the right voice seekers, therefore making for a better Voice123 community.

• What took place next though was that many experienced talents were not ready for the change

It is often said, 'Be careful what you wish for because you just may get it'. When a group of talents get together and say, 'We should be the only one's allowed to audition.', what they fail to realize is that they are now competing against each other, thereby limiting their own opportunities. It is like the saying, 'When you get to the big leagues, you find out you were only a big fish in a small pond.'

Sadly, not getting work leaves many to try some tactics that damage the entire industry, maybe the most damaging is 'underquoting'. When one does not work in an ego-centric business, the first reaction is to blame someone else, and some become fixated on these ideas and pass them along as 'truths taught by experienced talents'. So, in turn, those who have underquoted once or twice themselves, and not gotten work then believe that someone else must have gone underquoted even more, when the budget quote had next to nothing to do with it.

Experienced talents have created the belief in their minds that underquoting gets work because they do not realize that the true issue at hand is that experienced talents are now competing against each other for higher paying gigs, which have been made so rare because experienced talents taught voice seekers that it is ok to underquote. This will lead them to offering less the second time around, and over time will drive budgets into the basement.

What happens next? All the talents with lesser experience audition for these jobs because they paid to audition on Voice123, while experienced talents sit and wait for the higher paying jobs only to find they get less and less work now.

• The result, and how 'normalcy' is making a return

Literally, seekers can only deal with so much frustration for so long before they decide 'enough is enough' or 'this just is not worth it.' This comes when you find that the 'quantity' cuts into the quality, return of investment, and time saved. Given the 'pay to audition' format is getting really old, really quick, almost because Voice123 was so successful...it seems like the next step is to work towards making a return to 'normalcy' as many knew it years ago. Only now, it is online at Voice123.

When this happens, the experienced talents are going to want Voice123 on their side because we have been working towards getting people work for over five years now, and this team has the experience to both, run a website and prove itself knowledgable about the industry for healthy decision making.

In the end, it is almost like the world grows, then shrinks, then feels too crowded, and then goes somewhere else to grow again.

The best websites will recognize this, and keep up with the changes, or else find themselves obsolete in a few years.

Where is the return to 'normalcy'? Things will go back to being about 'quality business', and not 'who I can find.'