One of the features on Pay to Play sites allows Voice Seekers to select how many auditions they’d like to receive. If you’ve used these sites before then you’re aware of this. If you’re considering using a site like Voices.com or Voice123.com to find a Voice Talent then it’s something you should be aware of.
It’s easy to get caught up in the notion that having more to choose from is better. When you walk into the ice cream store on a hot summer day, you can spend twenty minutes trying to decide which of the 31 flavours you’d like to try.
When you’re going to buy a new car you may hit a dozen dealerships and test drive 20 cars while actually browsing hundreds of them on all of the different lots.
But more choice isn’t always the best option.
Let’s assume, for a moment, that the average voice-over audition submitted by talent is 60 seconds. Sometimes it will be more, sometimes less, but let’s use 60 as the average.
Now lets say you choose to have 200 auditions for your project.
A little math (and this wasn’t my strongest subject in school, but bear with me). 200 auditions x 60 seconds = 200 minutes of auditions, or, 3 hours and 20 minutes!
Do you really have time to listen to over 3 hours of auditions? Or maybe you’re the producer, the middleman, if you will. Does your client really have time to listen to over 3 hours of auditions?
I’m going to safely assume that for the most part, you don’t have that kind of time. Odds are, you likely didn’t even realize it would take that kind of time. And lets be honest, after a couple hours of listening to auditions of the same paragraph of your script, they’re all probably going to start sounding exactly the same.
Next time you submit your project and begin the process of collecting auditions, consider how much time you have to actually review the auditions and then decide how many you actually need to collect.
Sometimes fewer choices is better.
