It all depends on yourself, for instance if you’re the sort of person that hates paperwork, dealing with accounts, and ringing an advertising agency every month to enquire about the whereabouts of your long overdue money, then yes… you probably need an agent.

If, on the other hand you are organized enough to find out what stations/media your voice is going to be used on, get a PO (Purchase Order) number from the contact in the advertising agency, write up an invoice, send a statement and pester their accounts department, then no… you don’t need an agent.

We spoke to quite a few clients about this, and a lot of them prefer to deal directly with the talent, especially if they are on a tight budget.

The one essential piece of advise is, you need to be on a site where you are going to be heard, whether you wish to give away a percentage of your earnings or not….only you can answer that one.

We get a lot of people who think they might like to give voice-overs a try, they had a friend who told them they had a nice voice, or they were good at accents/ impressions while in school.

Most people who get into voice-overs come from an acting or broadcasting background, so they have done the speech & drama courses, where they learn about voice control, delivery, accents, etc, but most importantly they learn how to take direction.

So what advice to people who are thinking about it?

If you one of the few who have a serious talent, well it’s easy, you book a studio, record a short demo and send it around a few voice-over agents, a good agent will spot that serious talent in the first five to eight seconds on your demo. Sorted.

If you are a person with average talent, you need to work on your craft, research other demos, play to your strengths, if you’re from Dublin do something Dublin related, the same rules apply if you’re from Donegal, Cork or Galway. The market is flooded with people with neutral accents.

Find out about studios, get quotes and remember a good engineer will bring out the best in you, where you will learn about microphone technique, popping, projection etc during the recording process, also he or she is also the person who might be able to drop your name to a producer or copywriter.

Warning: there are companies out there that will exploit you, they run workshops where you pay hard earned money to listen to what’s in this blog. I recently came across a voice-over workshop “on line” for the bargain price of 30 Euro, our advice don’t waste your money.

Being a voice-over is not a hobby, it requires hard work, dedication etc, the good ones make it look easy, the bad ones get found out very quickly. You’re only as good as your last gig.

We got a call from Beacon Studios, as they were approached by Focus Ireland to record a radio commercial to promote a charity run in the Dublin Port Tunnel in August.

Beacon were offering their services for free, so we put the feelers out through Facebook to our voice-over talent to see who was prepared to offer their services for this worthy charity.

The response was phenomenal, the commercial has been recorded, voiced by Richie O Shea, and it will be aired on Today FM from Monday 25th June. So thank you to all who offered to help out, and let’s hope the run is a great success.

http://www.focusireland.ie/index.php/get-involved/take-part-in-an-event/upcoming-events/dublin-city-tunnel-run-2012