Editing audio is part of the job description if you want to be a voice actor. But are you spending too much time editing? The faster you can edit, the more auditions you can crank out. Take the Gabby Nistico Audio Editing Challenge!
Learn how to edit your voiceover audio FASTER! - 6:20
Hey guys, thanks for joining me on another edition of The Gift of Gab. Today we're going to talk about audio editing and we're going to talk about how much time you should be investing in it, and whether or not you're investing too much time. If you think that's you, stay tuned.
So I want to talk about audio editing. Specifically, I want to talk about whether or not your audio editing is killing you. Are you just super, super frustrated and spending loads and loads and loads of time editing audio? This is not uncommon. For new voice actors, I think people can get really obsessed with the audio editing process and spend way too much time in the editing chair. So today I want to give you Gabby's audio editing challenge. It's going to be a way to improve your skills in audio editing but also do so purposefully so you're not just spending loads and loads and loads of time on the same tasks day in and day out.
So first off, if this is happening to you, you're not alone. It happens to almost everybody. Audio editing is hard. It's really, really, really hard. Realistically, most voice actors don't ever master the process of audio editing. In fact, that's the very reason why we work with and for people who are called audio editors because that's their job. That's what they do, right? Audio producers. Most of us never get to that level and that is perfectly okay. It is a separate job and if you're here going, "Hey I want to be a voice actor", awesome! There's a minimal amount of skill that's necessary for you to know and understand to present your audio for an audition or for a job that you're self-producing, but it's certainly not at the same level as that of an audio producer.
If you're spending hours upon hours upon hours editing audio, um, you're kind of killing yourself for no reason. One, you're probably over editing or getting way too particular about things that other people know how to fix and mitigate way faster than you ever will. And if you're just editing one file to death, in essence, um... again you're kind of not really giving yourself a realistic challenge of what happens in our industry every single day. You've got to ask yourself how much time do you think a voice actor has in any given project to turn around a piece of audio and get it out the door. It's not hours, I can tell you that. In most cases, minutes. So we've got to get you moving faster and we've got to get you understanding what you need to do versus what you don't.
So your audio should take about three times the length of the recording to edit, which means if your audio is five minutes long, it should take you no more than 15 minutes to edit that piece of audio and be done with it, put it to bed, have it out the door as an audition, whatever it is, right? Enough. Your job right now, your challenge is to force yourself, hold yourself accountable, to be faster and more accurate. I want you to record five minutes worth of audio, that's it. That's all you get, right? This is not about recording hours and hours and hours of material. Five minutes, because that's what's about average for most auditions. Actually, most auditions are between 60 seconds and two minutes typically, so five minutes is really being lenient. That's multiple takes, that's giving you a chance to work out the bugs, make mistakes, all the things.
Okay, so you record five minutes worth of material and you set a clock for yourself. Initially I want you to set it for 20 minutes. You're giving yourself plenty of extra time, and you can be meticulous and you can be methodical and run through that audio, and get it edited. Okay, the next day, I want you to pick another five minutes worth of audio to record. Now, give yourself 15 minutes. The day after that, 12 minutes. Day after that, pick another five minutes worth of audio, 10 minutes, right? The goal is to really hold yourself accountable for being faster, but also being accurate, because those are the two things that matter when it comes to audio editing. Is there accuracy? Technically, right? Does the audio sound good? But also, am I able to get this turned around relatively fast? It's no great secret that a lot of our success comes from volume, right? The more auditions we are able to get out the door, the more auditions you are able to answer, the more you maximize your odds of booking. So if you're spending excessive amounts of time dealing with editing a file, you're reducing the amount of auditions you can actually turn out in a given span of time, so this should be really helpful with that process.
Don't get super caught up in the editing. Don't let it consume your voice acting efforts. Remember, the faster you get the editing out of the way, the more time you can spend doing, you know, acting! The thing you were actually wanting to do in the first place.
So there you go, I hope this helps. It's my little audio editing challenge. It's a chance for you to hold yourself really accountable to that process, make it faster, tighten it up. Thanks for watching, guys. I hope this helps.
704-674-8294 / GabrielleNistico.com / gabby@voiceovervixen.com
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