Renee is based in Park City, Utah, but is often in Los Angeles, California working on TV and movie projects. Renee can be booked through Talent Management Group www.talentmg.com or 801-263-6940.

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Having been on both sides of productions—Talent (Acting and Voice) and Production (Casting / Directing / Producing) — I have compiled a few talent management tips for your next corporate video project which will improve communications, save on studio time/costs, and allow you to enjoy excellent technical and creative results.

Who is the Audience? – Provide a brief description of who will be watching or listening to the final video or audio. It helps the talent form a mental picture of the audience they are addressing.  If possible, provide a sound clip of a previous project…talent gets the precision of the auditory…not just verbiage.

Scripts – Remember all good video and audio projects start with a great script.

• Have someone read the script out loud before you call it final. This will help for timing and nagging problems before they occur in the studio – costing you time and $$$. I did a corporate training project where the script had never been read aloud. The Producers heard it for the 1st time as we were recording it. The inferences and “double entendres”—Viagra related—were hilarious and we couldn’t stop laughing. Luckily, the producers were light-hearted, but it did cost extra studio time to re-write and re-record.
• Make sure you are recording the final script. I’ve done whole sessions where after 2hrs of recording…in post production they discover it was, oops the wrong version.  Watch out for re-do costs.
• Make sure it’s at least 12pt font and legible…most current copy, no crossed out words and changes written out….
• Phonetically spell out uncommon words or industry terminology
• Capitalize acronyms with dashes and spell out numbers (IBM = I-B-M or AMS 2500 = A-M-S twenty-five hundred)
• Provide a script 3-4 days before the recording – this way I can read it prior to the recording date. Even a draft script would be helpful.

Direction – Only you have an exact vision of what you want for the finished recording. Now you need to communicate that vision to your talent so you get exactly what you see in your head.

• Give you talent specific/descriptive words. Even “upbeat” and “excited” has a 1-5 scale.
• These are great exacting trigger words:  warm, confident, authoritative, classy, sassy, sultry, quirky, engaging.(I suggest keeping a list of proven one-word directive)
• They hear, “Great…and Again, but make it more conversational” (when the script is written like it’s pulled right out of the Journal of the American Medical Association!)
• It helpful to tell your talent you want them to sound like a role:  corporate professional, mom-next-door, best friend, announcer, attorney, doctor, trusted teacher, or a bored DMV worker!
• Also it’s common to use, “Sound like James Earl Jones”…or a name actor on a commercial or sitcom…In this case a sound clip would help…you may get a Voice Talent who is not familiar with that particular show/commercial.

Voila, those are a few nuggets for you…hope all goes smoothly on your next project!!

Cheers,

Renee

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Thank you Renee for those tips.  The only other advice I can give when working with talent is to remember to bring water bottles, cough drops, and M&Ms.

To view some of Renee’s work click the image below:

Where is the best place to find a spokesperson talent for your video project?
The best place to start is with a local talent agency.  These agencies will work with you to identify available talent in within your budget range. Plan on paying a 15%-20%  for this service, but it is money well spent. I would recommend that you interview several agencies to review their spokesperson talent pool and their fees, before you commit to the agency for a casting call.  Good/experienced talent tend to work with good agencies.

What does a typical spokesperson video host costs?

There are three costs related to spokesperson talent:

1. Talent Fee – Usually there are half day and full day rates.  Depending on your market and the level of talent a typical range would be $600 – $2,000. A spokesperson with name recognition will cost even more.
2. Agency Fee – Agency fees add 15% – 20% to the talent fee.
3. Post production costs – The talent could also add or reduce post production costs based on their skills and preparation. I learned that paying a few extra hundred dollars for a seasoned spokesperson would eventually save me several hours of post production editing time.

What are some tips to selecting spokesperson talent?

• Teleprompter skills – If they can’t read a teleprompter effectively do not hire.
• Don’t judge talent by their head shots – Looks are important, but they don’t always equal the ability to convey your message or the ability to read a teleprompter.
• Review their demo reel – Make sure you see a demo reel of there previous spokesperson projects.
• Use Local TV Anchors – We have been most successful using local TV news anchors as spokespersons for our projects.  They are the best at reading teleprompters convincingly.  However, many TV news anchors cannot do work for companies in their news market.  We have been lucky that most of our video projects are for national companies based outside of the local news markets.

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