 Okay. Okay. So this is going to be my second video which has been unscripted in a row. And I don't know how it's going to go, but I am kind of liking the, you know, whole window set up with the lights, not having to set up any lights when I'm recording. It's becoming really, really, really enjoyable for me. So yeah, welcome to today's edition of the vlog. And today the setup is different. And the reason is I'm going to be talking about something that I have not spoken about yet on the vlog. Maybe I've touched on it a little bit, but I've not gone into detail. But I think the time is right for me to do it. And no, it's, it's not about my, my love life. No, it's not about that. I wish it was, but it's not about that. It's about work. And one of my income streams, can you guys, can you guys hear the air condition? If you can't hear the air condition, I'll be really happy because I really, really dislike turning it off because I have to rush through a script all the time. And because it gets warm when the air condition is off and your windows are closed because you want to have good sound. But if you can't hear the air condition and my voice is fine, then I think that I'm going to keep it on. Can't really hear it. So yeah, let's talk about voiceovers. I do guess, I do get asked a lot. Okay, no, not a lot. Often, quite often about voiceovers and how I got into it, how the journey has been so far, how the people who ask the questions can also get into it. Do I offer training? What do they need to know about the voiceover industry in Ghana? Does it pay? You know, all these questions come up and often people ask me to help them because they want to get into the industry. They need help. They need training. They need coaching. They need somebody to guide them. And sometimes I think it's a bit scary for me because although I've had about eight years or more professional experience in voiceover work, I still think that I'm not anywhere near where I want to be to the point where I can teach. So often I do give some pointers to places and certain resources that people can find and learn from. So today let's talk about how I started the voiceover work where I am now and what you need to know if you want to start voiceover work in Ghana. I think it's going well very so far. No, it's going well very well so far. Yeah, with me not scripting the whole process of this video. So I think voiceover work for me started a very long time ago. This is extremely cliched but it's true. When I was a kid? Yes, when I was a kid I had always been fascinated by sound, by voices, by language, and by accents when you can do a French accent. This is not French. No, that's not French. Not bad. Not bad. But yeah, you can do accents, you can speak like other people, you can make voices. I've always been fascinated by it and I think that was inspired by watching a lot of cartoons and movies. When I would watch these things I would try and mimic them. I'll try and practice and try to sound like them because I mean there was a rhythm to the way they spoke. I'm not saying that I mean what we're taught in school and how we sound is wrong but I just liked hearing the rhythm of speaking from different people, you know, especially with different accents. So that's where my interest had been and growing up among siblings who didn't give a rat's bum about you know how you sounded or all these accents and everything. I'm checking to see if I'm recording. Yeah, I'm recording all these accents and everything. It was quite difficult, you know, practicing in quotes because anytime I try to speak like the people in the cartoons that I've been watching or in the movies, I'll be told that I announced where they're from and they don't know why you're trying to slang or can't slang. What was the meaning of all this? So I was a bit discouraged growing up with siblings and friends who didn't care about these things but it didn't stop me. I still liked, you know, having practices, movie quotes, you know, try to sound like, you know, movie characters and cartoon characters, you know, I did all of that. So I've been learning and practicing voiceovers and voice acting. Okay, look, let me define this. The difference between voiceovers, which is announcement or voice announcement for radio, TV, television or something, is different from voice acting. Voice acting is actual acting but without the person being seen on the screen, which means that you're doing voice acting for animation or cartoon or you're doing it for game or something. So that's voice acting. You need real acting emotions in there to convey your message. So voice acting is different from voice over work. You can be a voiceover artist who's not a really good voice actor and I think a voice actor can maybe have an advantage over both because of the act. They can easily mimic or act out a certain character, even if they're trying to do an announcer. So that's the difference between voice over work and voice acting. So I've been learning a lot in my childhood all the way to like grew up. And when I speak to people at a certain point in my life, when I did encounter people, I got this statement or this observation being passed that you don't sound very Ghanaian. And I'm like, huh? You have an accent. I have an accent saying. I think I sound very neutral. I think when people speak well or they sound a bit polished, I don't know if I sound polished. They tend to get that a lot. And a lot of people ask me like, you know, did you travel a lot? I said travel. Travel where? I was born and bred in Ghana. I had never traveled before in my life. This is the truth. I had never traveled before in my life until or traveled outside Ghana. Yeah, until 2017. Actually, that was my first time traveling outside Ghana by virtue of the fact that my partner is European and we went to visit her family. That was the first time I traveled. And I even traveled to an English speaking country, although they speak predominantly speak English over there. But I didn't travel to an English speaking country. And I'm not going to go to a country and come back. You went to Côte d'Ivoire, you came back with an American accent. No. So that didn't happen to me. However, I sound now, I had been practicing from watching movies, from watching cartoons. So that has been it. Now, how did I get into professional voice overwork or voice acting? I think it's voice over. Let me stick to voice over. Yeah. How did I get into professional voice acting? So after my radio school, I had a chance to intern at a radio station Atlantis radio at the time in 2012. And part of your applying to work there, you had to have an audition CD. They listened to my audition CD. And based on the audition CD, I was picked to be the intern to start work there. And based on the audition CD as well, I was given a job. My first time ever, I was given a job to record a Christmas ad. And it was a paid gig. I was like, what? You're going to pay me to record something for just 60 seconds. And the price at the time was 300 CDs. I was like, what? Like all my life, I'd been mimicking, I'd been trying out all these things. I never for once thought that I would make a career of it. Even when I thought of making a career of voice acting or voice overs, I just wanted to feature in the film and be an actor in there. It was the passion for me. I never thought that I'd be making millions of voice acting or voice overs or actually making a living of it. I'm going to come to whether you can make a full time living of it in a bit. But yeah, so I was paid 300 CDs. I was given the job as an intern. And it was from there. That was my first time I ever earned with my voice 300 CDs from doing a voice over. And I was like, whoa, okay. So there is space for this. I mean, I'm sure it already existed and people were earning from it. But I was that naive, which means that I've had, yes, had had several years of experience unknowingly. So when people ask me the question, what do they need to know if they want to get into voice over work? I often refer to them. I often refer to them to listen to a lot of voice over work or listen to a lot of people who speak the way they want to sound when they present themselves as voice over artists. So I can't confidently tell you if you're watching right now that you can become a voice over artist in a space of a month unless you already have that speaking ability or you have you grew up in a space where, I mean, your tone or your accent is already sought after. But if you grew up in Ghana and you don't have the accent or the neutral accent, or what you say La Fa, a bit of the La Fa, not the La Fa that is crossing borders more than the people in the Abruce. No, you don't have a neutral accent. Then you have to listen to a lot of these things. And you have to spend a lot of man hours, if that's a thing to say, to practice. You need to practice a lot. It's a bit of madness if you put it that way. Because you listen to somebody on TV and you try to replicate what they said. You mimic them. You find a script anywhere and you try to say the tagline as you would hear on radio. You see MTN everywhere you go and you want to try MTN everywhere you go. Like that's the kind of madness you have to live with and unconsciously practice over time to be able to get there. Now, there's also the thing with being, should I say tone deaf? Because if you can't really mimic to the point where you sound almost exactly like what you were listening to, then chances are you are not getting right. And that's a problem. So if you want to become a voiceover artist, and first of all, for me, I mean, I can't say that you shouldn't do it. For me, I didn't even know I could make money from it. It was passion until I learned that I could earn from it. So if you're coming to, like, you want to become a voiceover artist and you're coming because you heard that voiceover artist earn a lot of money and you want income from it, good thing. It's good motivation. But if the craft is not there for you, the skill, the interest, enthusiasm is not there and it's only powered by money, you will not enjoy it because you will not be able to play with it. And it's a lot of acting and playful acting as well when it comes to voiceovers and voice acting. So that's one thing you should remember. And with the money or with pain, well, should I talk about the industry or should I talk about the industry in a different video? Because there's a lot of things to say and the things you should know about the industry that we work in. Let me check. I'm recording with this. Whoa. I'm already doing 12 minutes. I'm recording with my zoom and wow, 12 minutes. Okay, so let me quickly go on with the industry. So industry standard payments and things you should note. Yes, you will get paid for your voice over work, but just like every other field, it is grossly dependent on your talent level, proficiency. That's the same as skill, experience, all of that. It depends on that. And of course, I mean, the need for brands to use your voice. If your voice is the kind of voice that is well sought after, it's neutral, it's not too pitchy, it's not too low and it can be used in almost any instance and you are quick. You can get scripts, you can say it or you can read scripts as fast as, you know, not fast in speed, as in you can quickly go through script and you are easy to work with and all that. Then chances are you'll be earning more. But industry standards in terms of payments, as far as I know, even up till now, correct me if I'm wrong if you're watching this video and you know industry standard rates that I probably don't know. It's about 500 Ghana cities per script and usually it's radio and TV ads between zero and 60 seconds. It depends on the place you're doing it and depends on what the client is paying, but if you're working with an agency, then chances are that would be the rates that you would get. Part of the reason why I broke away from doing agency work was that I wanted to be able to set my own rates and also do my own production when the need arose. So I also invested in things like this, the microphone, the interface. I do have another microphone set around my studio. I would show you but that would be long. So yeah, I have invested in those things, a bit of sound treatment. You can find out more about it and yes, you can do it yourself. However, if this is what you want to do in Ghana, I don't know anybody who does this full time, like lifts off it. It's the only income stream or 90% of their income from voice overs. I don't know anybody like, maybe I know somebody like that. No, no, I'm not going to mention names. But yes, that is what I will tell you with voice over in Ghana. Yes, it does pay enough if you're skilled and you can do a lot. However, it takes a lot of work and if you have the passion for it, it will be easier for you. That's the thing, that's what I would say. If your passion is the money, it might not be as easy for somebody who is genuinely interested in wanting to do this. Another thing I would say here is that I'm going to link a few websites in the description box below. You can check out voice over platforms, which has a lot of voice over artists and you can listen. Listen to a lot of ads. The listening is very important. I think listening forms about 70% of your craft because once you can listen and replicate the exact tones over time, you realize that it becomes easy when you pick up a script, you know which places to enunciate, which places to pause, which places to stress, like all those things will come naturally to you over time. So yes, check out the links below and find out which websites that you know I've put there. You can listen to all of these things. And also I'm going to put a link to a website that has sample scripts that you can actually go through and practice with and yeah, try it for yourself over time. And also if you want to reach out by email, I think my email is on this channel. You can do that if you want me to listen to things that you have recorded so that I can give my feedback to you, I'll be very happy to do that to do that. So yeah, that's about my breaking down what voice over work in Ghana looks like at the moment. I've been doing this for the last professionally for the last eight to nine years. And at the moment is one of my income streams. And I'm happy that I can do it from home comfortably. And I hope that you can also do it. I'm actually looking forward to the time where we have a strong enough group to have a stronger voice because I think voice over artists deserve better treatment than they get or voice talents deserve better treatment than they get locally. And so I hope that over time we can have a stronger voice that will get the respect that we deserve. By the meantime, does it pay? Well, you find out for yourself. I can't say anything now. So yeah, I hope I answered some of your questions. I will probably do a follow up on this conversation in another time or another video. But I do hope if you have any questions, you can also ask me in the comment section below on things that you should note, local languages, voiceovers, things to like all of it. Just ask me the questions and I'll try as much as possible to answer for you when I can. I'm blabbing now. This is why I don't like not scripting videos. I'll cut you again in another video. My name is Kwame and if I'm not doing YouTube, I'm shooting documentaries and recording voiceovers and sometimes his voice acting too. Coming soon.