Hey all,
I haven't posted a single thing since the new year. The fact was the move from sublet to friends couch to new sublet not only took about a week, but it also put my health in jeopardy. For the first time in a while, I was out of commission and sick. Here we are at the 16th and my body is still coughing through stuff. Eck!!
Anywho, during those weeks of no-microphone ability to record. A few interesting things happened.
1) My audiobook which was done in early December was apparently in need of another pickup. I got this email of "Hey we need you to do this, by the way can you get it done tonight?". To the response of "No, I can't upload or record anything because I'm sick and not moved into my new place yet".
I honestly feel less bad by saying that as I would have say, four months ago. I think once you get going as a non-union vo artist and you start making decent money, lets face it, you should probably be making bigger money with union-vo. Admittedly, I'm in the position where I get the big auditions from my agency, which I haven't pulled yet, but non-union vo is really cheap work.
You have to kind of have a backbone, everyone you do a job for is getting you DIRT cheap. Especially if you produce it yourself. If you can't do something, you can't do it. If you're out of town on vacation, don't stress. For a cheap job, you're as much in charge of the situation as them.
I've never had a person set a specific REAL deadline on me that happened later in the game. Usually the deadline, if important, is set even before the job is offered. I get plenty of emails saying, can you get this done by set date, if you can it's yours.
2) On the note of backbone, this one guy that I complained about BEFORE the new year has yet to get me my payment. I'm hoping it's just at my other sublet, so I'm dependent on my roommate to get back from Boston to check the mail.
The guy says he'll cancel the check and send it again. I requested priority mail with tracking and he said he'd take care of it. But, nonetheless, it's rough.
Here's a couple things I've found out from this situation. 1) USE PAYPAL : it makes life so much easier. I have SO many checks coming in and I feel like I have to herd kittens to get paid for my work. Especially since I moved and emailed every one of my jobs my new address, I'm pretty sure all of them mailed it to the wrong address.
I find a lot of this insulting, but what are you gonna do. I'm non-union. When the check comes, it comes. I had to wait 4 months for a commercial check to come in. Paypal is your friend. Voices.com is your friend. Everything else is kind of wishy washy.
3) I got a few jobs without auditioning. The thing about laying all those auditions down is that a lot of them take a while to go through. I ended up getting two jobs off of V123. I ended up getting redo jobs off of a voices job.
You may find yourself in a situation where you have a script that is just grammar HELL. Fix what you can, but record it. When they come back with a few sentence changes, make your stand. Say, "I can do redoes of the original script. I'll do these small changes. But, for any other rewrites, there has to be payment because it will be a different script".
Saying this ended up getting me 3x the payment of the original job. It's not being unreasonable at all. To reread an entire job should cost something. Don't be taken advantage of.
Anyways, I know this sounds like I'm jaded and hate everything, which I don't. I love vo and it's keeping me in NYC which is amazing. I just find myself in a situation where I'm waiting for payment on 2 audiobooks and one website which was done in December. Combine that with the sickness and tiredness. You get an unhappy v-o boy.
But, I am surviving. Actually doing very well. New York isn't cheap and this can be done. So, I'm hoping you take from this the following: VO is all encompassing and you have to keep track of who owes you money. If you work hard enough, jobs will eventually come to you. Have a backbone, just because you're work is inexpensive doesn't mean people can get you to do anything.
Take care everyone. Much love from NYC>
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