Merry Christmas from PFMcCaffrey Voices!!
Happy Friday and Merry Christmas! Welcome to my weekly blog post. This week will be a little light on work done. Yesterday and Today have been pretty non-descript in terms of auditions posted. I spent Yesterday and Today celebrating Christmas in a socially distanced manner. I streamed Christmas movies on discord with friends all day yesterday, and today is a Zoom call with family.
What’s new?
A few things. I’ve started looking at a couple more web sites to do auditions and look for jobs. And I got a new microphone and mic stand with Hanukkah and Christmas gift cards. I got the Rode NT1-A Large Diaphragm Condenser Microphone. I just set it up yesterday, so I don’t have any new samples from the new microphone yet. But the big thing that I’ve worked on this past week is a bit of branding and marketing. I’ve tried to do a little bit more with the website and SEO. Making sure it’s up to date and readable and blah, blah, blah. That’s the boring part. The more interesting part, and the part that I’d actually like to talk about is something that came out of trying to come up with a tag line: my Brand Heart.
Brand Heart
My Brand Heart was an exercise that I did as suggested by Column Five Media “How to Find Your Brand Heart”. And as it describes it, the Brand Heart influences everything your brand does, from how it presents itself, to how it treats customers and employees. It’s a way to articulate your brand by answering the Why, the What, and the How, described as your Purpose & Vision, your Mission, and your Values. I had a vague idea about all of these things, but never wrote it down, which is something that I just never thought I needed to do. But having that written down helped me a lot with the parts of all these web sites that I’ve been submitting auditions on, most specifically “My Bio”.
I had a hard time filling out “My Bio” because I didn’t know what to write down. I don’t really like talking about myself, and without having some kind of guideline, the open ended Bio section was . . . intimidating. But having written down my Brand Heart, I have something to work off of, a guideline for telling people about my Voice Acting Career/Business/thing that I do. And you can see how that looks under my About Me section. If you’d like to see my entire Brand Heart, it’s still under construction, but you can see it Here!
What’s brewing? What will we see (hear) from you?
This section is going to be light this week. I’ve done a few auditions, and I have a couple of jobs from Casting Call Club that I’m working on, but aren’t completed yet. The one that I’ve been cast for a bunch of bit character roles is called “Meet The Feebles 2” which is a Fan-Made “What if” project that is set as a sequel to a movie from 1989 called “Meet the Feebles”. But I wouldn’t expect to see anything from this project until sometime in January or February.
I also got cast in an Audio Drama called “We Are Here”. Again, I’m not 100% sure when it’ll be published for public consumption, but I’ll be sure to share it when it’s completed. From the project description: “We Are Here” is an urban fantasy, set in an alternate reality where your fears, insecurities, and trauma are represented by ghosts, that follow you around all day. It deals with themes of anxiety, depression, abandonment, trauma, and eventually learning to heal. It also has a slow-burn wlw romance and found family, and friendship. Think “Stranger Things” meets “Heathers”.
Statistics? Auditions?
Like I said at the beginning, this week has been pretty light. It was essentially a 3 day week with yesterday and today off, and not much new to audition for on Wednesday. But I’m working on being consistent at least with the format of my weekly summary blog post, so here’s the numbers.
On Voices.com I did 16 new auditions, with 14 listens, and 1 new shortlisted audition. So that’s a 87.5% listen rate, and a 6.25% short list rate. There might be more coming from the auditions I did this week, but I don’t expect to hear anything more before Monday.
For CCC I did 14 new auditions, and got 2 new jobs. I’ve backed off on doing a lot of auditions for CCC this week, mostly because I have a bunch of jobs from there already that are mostly non-paying, but again, building that portfolio. When I get most of them out of my queue, I’ll pick up auditioning again.
And on ACX I’ve done 4 new auditions, and have 7 auditions pending (meaning that the author hasn’t chosen a voice actor for their job yet). I’ve actually been contacted by a couple of the auditions that I submitted and was complimented on my performance and production quality, but ultimately they went with another voice, which isn’t a bad thing. As frustrating as it is to not get a job, sometimes they’re just not looking for my voice. And that’s why I spend the time auditioning, so that I can find the person(s) who are looking for my voice. Ultimately, it’s all about the client and providing the best performance for them, and sometimes the best performance won’t be mine.
Timeular
And of course, the statistics from Timeular. The tracked activities this week include ACX, Voices.com, CCC, Freelancer, and Marketing. For this week, I’ve done 3 hours of ACX auditions, 2.25 hours of Voices.com auditions, 2 hours of CCC auditions, and spent about 20 minutes (probably more honestly) setting up my Freelancer account. The last activity “Marketing” is what I’m collectively putting all of my activities that I’m doing to improve my brand and get my name and voice out there. This includes the work I’ve done on my Brand Heart, doing Facebook Live on Mondays, and typing up blog posts and working on the web site.
In the future, I’ll try to break it down into specific activities, because I love seeing where I’m spending my time. But for this week, collectively, I spent about 3.75 hours on “marketing.” These times don’t include any of the times I just obsessively check to see if my auditions have been listened to yet, or time that I browse jobs on my phone while using the bathroom. I’m still working on that whole “work when you’re working, and stop working when you’re taking the day off.”
Samples!
It’s a short week, but I’ll still include an audition I submitted from each service. These are not my words, but they are my voice.
First from CCC, my successful audition from “We Are Here” The character (Rob) is another characters’s dad. He’s very authoritative and controlling, and not a fun person to be around. He can be loving, but only when he feels like he’s the one in charge of the relationship. And if other characters challenge that control, he quickly becomes cold and hostile, often punishing his daughter with the silent treatment when she’s done something wrong.
Rob Wilson – We Are Here Audio Drama
Next is an audition that has been shortlisted from Voices.com. The job’s Artistic Direction is described as “Male, 30-40 years old; conversational but with a confident, authoritative tone. Experience with feel-good brand anthems would be ideal, Should sound experienced, but not old.”
And the final one is a bit longer. It’s from my ACX audition for “The Way Around” by K.M. Halpern, a collection of absurd, horrifying, and downright inexplicable shorts. There are 4 shorts that were included in the audition and I hope it’s delightfully creepy for you.
The Way Around by K.M. Halpern
Plans for next week
Next week, I get to try out my new microphone! I’m excited to try it out. New microphones give me more tools to help get the best performance from my voice, and every microphone has its own character. My voice is somewhere in the Bari-tenor range. And because I enjoy doing different character performances, I’m hoping to have the best tools for moving in and through my range.
I’m not sure how many new auditions will be available next week, but between Voices.com, CCC, ACX, Fiverr, Backstage, Freelancer, et al, If I want to be busy, I can find things to do. And it’s time to reach out and engage with other voice actors, casting directors, marketing firms, and get my demos out there, and my voice heard. This means spending more time on LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as working on my website. It’d be nice to embed media files directly in these blog posts so you don’t need to click away to listen to the samples.
It’s also the last week of the year, so I’ll do a little bit of a wrap up for the year. It’s 2020, so don’t expect it to be all sunshine and rainbows, but it’s still hopeful.
Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful weekend and a Happy New Year. I’m Patrick of PFMcCaffrey Voices – It’s Your Story, My Voice