I’m Not ‘Too Precious’ to Scream For You

Just be up-front and pay me for it!

“You simply turn the crank and peddle the bellows, then add a drop of sunshine and a spoonful of tickles!”, AI image made by the author using DALL-E 3 from OpenAI

Imagine you’re a concert violinist. You play an instrument it took you years to learn. You studied different genres, reading sheet music, playing by-ear, different techniques and then you honed those skills with experience for years.

Now imagine that part of your time is spent playing with a rock band! So cool! They’re fun and energetic and sometimes they use classical musicians to get the sound they want! You play your heart out, you shred your violin, and then you have to spend the next two days mending your instrument.

It needs restringing. Adjusting. Maybe the veneer got damaged (which might affect the sound!). It takes time to mend, and those are days where you can’t play for anyone else because your instrument is out-of-commission.

Dear God… what was I playing last night?!, AI image made by the author using DALL-E 3 from OpenAI

Playing that one-hour rock concert might get you $75... but now, you can’t play for the next two days. Wouldn’t it then be reasonable to say to the rock band:

“Hey, guys, I love playing with you but I need to ask for more than $75. It puts high stress on my instrument (more than usual) and it takes me out of the game for a day or two after.”

You might even word it as…

“The damage to my instrument is going to cost me more than you’re paying… maybe you can offer a little bit more to cover that?”

Well, if you’re a voiceover actor then the violin is your voice — your voice that you’ve spent years training and thousands of dollars in coaching and acting classes. Your ‘classical’ genre will be some variation on commercials, corporate, audiobooks and ‘explainers’, and the ‘rock’ genre will be high-energy games, animation and a few audio dramas.

“Oh… my… God… it was a metaphor! That stuff about the violin was a metaphor! MIND: BLOWN.”, AI image made by the author using DALL-E 3 from OpenAI

Unfortunately, the answer you’ll often get back from the studio or producer will be some variation on this:

“It just isn’t feasible to pay more. Besides, this is what voiceover is.”

You’ll even get that line from some other voiceover actors. They’ll tell you it’s the reality of the job and you’re just being precious. The old “I had to do it so you have to do it” line of reasoning.

“Quit your honking! I had to live down the well, my father had to live down the well and his father had to live down the well! Now you get down the well before I push you down the well!”, AI image made by the author using DALL-E 3 from OpenAI

There’s a lot to unpack there, but let’s be clear about what we’re discussing. Audio drama, games and animation expect you to put energy into your voice. They expect you to act, to shout, to cry. Whatever the emotion is, you feel it and you act it out loud. Very loud. Often for multiple takes.

Many times I’ve had that iron taste in my mouth which means my throat is actually bleeding.

Yeah, like this but the cheese is your throat and the pasta is… er… the pop filter?, AI image made by the author using DALL-E 3 from OpenAI

And to an extent that is fine. That’s the job with animation and games. That’s being an actor and it’s what we do because we love doing it: the character is being stabbed and they need to sound like they’re being stabbed. I get that.

The problem ambles into view when we show our surprise — surprise because we didn’t know the role would involve such exertion, or surprise because we’re not being paid enough to warrant losing our voices for the next few days. That is a very awkward conversation to have, and I’ve had it.

I once spent a solid hour screaming. They wanted different physical actions (kicking, punching, being punched etc.) with three levels of intensity each (low, medium and high) with three variations of each intensity and three takes of each variation. In total, it was well over 100 lines, all belted out.

My voice got destroyed by that and didn’t work properly for two days after. I wasn’t told it would be a highly vocally stressful recording, and I was paid $75 for the hour.

Seventy-five buck-buck-bucks is also a long way from the lowest offers I’ve had. When I asked about it on an online voiceover group, a producer chimed in with “meh, sounds a lot per-hour to me. We just pay a flat day-rate of $390”, equivalent to about $48 per hour.

“We pay our actors with buckets of sand. We used to pay our actors with rubber washers, but that was too expensive so now we use buckets of sand.”, AI image made by the author using DALL-E 3 from OpenAI

$48 per hour, and for the next day I can’t record any commercials ($200 per hour plus usage), audiobooks ($175 per hour), podcasts ($50-$150 per hour plus usage) or anything else. None of which generally involve screaming.

Why are so many studios like this?

Part of the problem is that producers and directors are under financial pressure. They have to keep costs low, because enormous budgets are not common. It’s also especially easy to screw over actors because there’s an endless stream of wannabes who’ll take the low pay and poor conditions — I genuinely believe part of the reason anime dubbing pays so little is it has legions of fans desperate to play a role.

“Look, I’ve got a kid on the line from Milwaukee who says it’s their dream to play in Unagi Wasabi: Warrior Panic in the Sushi Bar Harem and they’ll do the job for $1 — you gonna beat that?”, AI image made by the author using DALL-E 3 from OpenAI

Another part of the problem is that some creatives aren’t experienced at dealing with actors. They don’t know any better and think this is just how it is.

Couple that with the fact that lot of actors who were doing this work twenty years ago, back in the early aughts with the big booms in videogame acting and anime dubbing, are now directors — and they want to pay-it-forward. The ‘I had to do it, so should you’ mentality inviting itself over for a cup of tea and a slice of cake. Again.

“Quit your honking! I had to wrestle the cobra, my father had to wrestle the cobra and his father had to wrestle the cobra. Now you get in there and wrestle that cobra or I’ll push you in there to wrestle that cobra!”, AI image made by the author using DALL-E 3 from OpenAI

This is a very disrespectful way to treat artists. After all, we’re not asking for much — in fact, the ‘video game voiceover manifesto’ would be very short:

• Tell us in advance how strenuous the session is likely to be
• Give us time to recover between sessions
• Offer a reasonable rate in-line with the size of the project (ie. indie games pay low rates, AAA titles pay high rates)

The best studios already do these things without being asked! Equity recently published their first guidance of video game voiceover contracts and it basically comes down to those three points.

“Oh shit — it’s the Ghost of Paying People Fairly!” Illustration by John Leech, public domain.

At least one major UK studio refused to engage at all with the process. Another played nice during the planning stages, only to then turn-over the table when time came to sign, citing concerns with the proposals that they had helped to write!

So, what’s the answer?

The main thing is that we actors, all of us, must respect ourselves enough to say “no”. We are not making ourselves more attractive to casting directors by accepting lower wages or worse conditions, we’re just making the industry worse and screwing over the next guy even more.

We need to respect fellow actors when they say “no”, instead of trying to get them to “pay their dues”. Respect your cast who are offering you vulnerability, pathos, years of training and, increasingly, professional recording equipment and editing from home. Show that respect to your cast with how you treat them and how you pay them.

“Highest bid is now $50 — you will pay us $50 to appear in this project — do I hear $55?”, AI image made by the author using DALL-E 3 from OpenAI

We need to turn down projects that are turning our profession into a race-to-the-bottom where only the rich will be able to afford acting as a career.

Or, to put it another way:

You want me to shred my violin for you? Sure, a rock concert sounds fun! I can do that. But… I’m gonna need some extra dollarydoos to cover the damage.

Most of the images in this article, with the exception of the public domain picture from A Christmas Carol (1843) are created with AI. Specifically DALL-E 3 from OpenAI, accessed using the Bing Image Creator built into Co-Pilot in Microsoft’s Edge browser. Use the images as you like, AI sucks and should go in the bin.