VO Recording Sessions: Is Remote the New Normal?

As many of us begin to consider the possibility of in-person work, I find that I’m thinking about remote voiceover sessions a lot more. Those thoughts are a bit mixed.

On one hand, I’ve been listening in on discussions where studio owners are saying, “…well, all the voice talent have dialed-in home setups now. There goes that part of my business…” At the same time, I’m encountering VO’s who can’t wait to stop being their own engineers and never take part in a connected session again. Many can’t wait to hop back in the car and jump back behind the glass and not have to worry about levels and connection quality and the myriad of things which need to be monitored when a director or production team is on the line.

Like many of you, I truly miss going into a great recording space with talented engineers, hanging out with the studio dogs (literally) and sharing that generous interaction of focused creativity. It’s always a lift. We all end up richer for the experience.

Remote Sessions Are Here To Stay

However, I have a hard time believing someone will throw a switch and all us voice actors will find ourselves working entirely in studios again. Personally I’d rather have 3 remote sessions in a day than spend time traveling between three different locations. It’s less stress and fewer logistics (though I do find I’m falling behind on my podcast listening). Most of the production people I’ve spoken with also enjoy the efficiency of immediately accessing remote sessions. Deadlines always seem to be growing tighter. Being able to quickly connect with a VO talent makes things run more smoothly.

Source-Connect, ipDTL, Session Link Pro and others have all improved their services and created new functionality to support needed workflow. The stresses created by immediate and widespread demand have made all these tools more useful and resilient.

No one has a crystal ball in all of this. But it feels as though we popped through a wormhole in the space-time continuum. This past year accelerated a lot of changes which have been in the works for a while. These connection tools all work better now. Expectations for a professional voice actor have risen.

What VO Services Matter For Your Clients?

All of this gets back to what I was talking about a few years ago – the ability to connect seamlessly with studios is a necessary VO service. 5 years ago, Source-Connect was that thing which you might consider adding to enhance your business for certain types of work. These days, most quality VO agents won’t consider you for their roster without it.

From the way we acoustically isolate our recording spaces to the realtime handling of sudden technical issues when they crop up during a session, solving these challenges raises our game. Implementing and learning these tools will let us stand out. Clients always appreciate when a session goes well.

We will continue to search for the balance. Perhaps the perspective gained from this past year will help us distill the best parts from all of these options benefitting everyone.

As a Source-Connect Certified studio, I am happy to help set you up with Source-Connect or any common remote connection solution through a remote session. I also regularly teach a comprehensive workshop on remote connection tools for the VO studio.

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