Professional Voices

Another document I have created for my clients, that might be of use to anyone wanting to have a script professionally read.

Introduction

The following information is for guidance to help you decide if you might like to use professional voice actors for some, or all, of your recordings.

In this document, we make reference to reads. A read is a professional term for the script that a ‘voice actor’ would read, and have recorded.

Audio Samples

The following audio files are examples of the quality of recordings you can expect when using professional actors:

00 St Mary de Castro, Introduction

00 Holkham Hall, Introduction

00 National Trust, Belton House, Introduction

00 National Trust, Woolsthorpe Manor, Introduction

Reading Speed

As a guide, a typical read will run at between 2 and 2½ words a second. Here are some examples of average times of recordings related to the length of the scripts (or ‘reads’ as they’re called in the profession):

135 words would result in a minute-long recording.

270 words would be two minutes.

675 words would be five minutes.

1,350 words would be ten minutes.

These will help you to understand how much time a voice actor might need to record your reads.

Recording the Audio

Professional Studio

Using a professional studio means that you are guaranteed similar qualities of voice, edited professionally and expertly engineered. But this comes at a price and one that you would have to pay for directly. This can cost between £100 to £125 +VAT, per hour of studio time.

Contracting an Actor for a Studio Session

An actor can cost around £120 per hour. Typically, the actor would be booked for a three-hour slot. Whilst the actor may only need an hour and a half to complete a particular read, you need to have a contingency and pay for the actor’s availability, in case extra recording time is needed.

Minimal costs here are £180 (at least) for the actor, plus £175 for the studio time, +VAT, which works out at £355 per ‘finished’ hour of audio.

Studio Alternative: Home Recording

If the studio costs are prohibitive, have the voice actor make home recordings, is an alternative. This also offers flexibility for the actors, which means that those with home studios tend to be more readily available. There is a risk here in that recording in a home studio requires home editing by the actor. Also, home recording can result in a lower sound quality.

Costs here are in the region of £180 to £240 per ‘finished’ hour of audio.

The Furicano Productions Option

In the past, when we have needed professional voice actors, we have worked with Daniel Philpott of Furicano Productions. They recorded the high-quality audio samples in section 2 above. They offer to deliver finished recordings for around (2022 prices) £240 per finished hour (£4 per recorded minute). That includes home recording (by the voice actors), editing and delivery as a .wav or .mp3 audio file. The quality of the recordings would be similar to the Audio Samples above.

Quality Control

Ideally, we need to be involved in such a process and have all recordings submitted directly to us for uploading to the tour and / or walk. We would then be in charge of quality control, and with your approval, be asking for retakes if something was incorrect.

Casting for Multiple Voices

If you wanted different voices to indicate different sections of a walk such as History, Architecture, Nature, etc. Furicano Productions would need to see the reads to know how many voices are needed, what kind of voices you think might suit and how many words each part needed.

Daniel says that there can be a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in casting voices. Here costs depend on how much the actor has to do, their experience, their availability etc…

For a self-editing job, he could not pay a basic voice actor less than £180 per finished hour (£3 per recorded minute).

For a more experienced voice, that figure would increase to £260 per finished hour (£4 per recorded minute), and for a ‘name’ voice, even more again.

Also, Daniel points out that there would need be a minimum fee. For example, if the actor only had to record 20 minutes of text, a minimum fee of £150 would apply as you need to pay not only for their recording, but also for their time and availability. As you will appreciate, it is in your interest to work out the exact number of reads in advance, so that they can all be recorded in one session.

Getting a Quote

Furicano Productions

If you have decided on your set of reads and would like Furicano Productions to quote for undertaking or organising the recordings for you, you should contact them directly, at Furicano Productions. You’ll need to email your set of reads and requirements, so that they can prepare a quote for you and to give you an indication as to timescales for delivery of the recordings.

Finding Other Actors / Artists #1

We have not had any experience of using Fiverr, but this looks like it could be very cost effective: https://www.fiverr.com/categories/music-audio/voice-overs

Finding Other Actors / Artists #2

If you’d like to source your own actor, try Googling Voice Over Actors and Voice Over Artists.

Copyright

You need to make sure that in any contract / agreement you enter into, that there is a clause stating that you, the client, can use the recordings for all media, in perpetuity. All actors/agents would need to agree to the ‘buyout’ of their voice and that, as stated above, you the client (who will have paid for their work) can use their voice in perpetuity without any residuals.

Next Steps

If you do choose to use professional actors for the recordings, here’s a suggested process:

Decide on how many walks you’d like to record audio for.

Decide how many different locations you’d like to have in each walk.

Decide if you’d like a range of voices for different aspects of the walks (History, Architecture, Nature, etc.).

With all the above in place, prepare the reads for each of the locations. We recommend that you name the reads for each of the locations in a walk to a logical standard. In doing this, it will make it much easier for you to work with the recordings when they are delivered to you. Please refer to our Virtual Tours & Sound Walks, Recording & Reads Guidance document for our recommendations on this.

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Or just use some AI Text to Speech service!