How to estimate a needed sound budget?

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KarmaLarma
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How to estimate a needed sound budget?

#1 Post by KarmaLarma »

I'm currently working on a long term project with a small group of three. We're all artists and writers, and I'm the programmer as I'm learning Ren'Py and used TyranoBuilder before for small projects. But none of us have audio experience and we're hoping to in the end make a game that we can actually sell. Currently the plan is for me to make some smaller games while learning all the things we'll need for the big one, put together a demo with our art assets once we get to a point where we can start on the big project, and then have a kickstarter to try and get the money to hire someone to make music and sounds for the game and possibly partial voice acting as a stretch goal.

However, it seems I can't find a solid answer on how much money that would be. I've sent out requests for quotes to a few small casting studios for voice actors and musicians who have done visual novels before, but I've gotten no response from anyone so far and I think it's simply because the project is not committed enough yet for them to think it's even worth the time to give me their rates.

I'm hoping someone on here has paid for/been paid for/done a kickstarter for such a thing before, so I'd like to ask the forum. What are the expected rates for music and voice acting?

Since the game's script isn't done yet I of course don't have a way of giving the full scope of exactly what the price would be but it would be helpful down the road to know what to expect in terms of buying one minute of music made just for the game or 500 spoken words of dialogue by a voice actor. Those sorts of little tidbits.

Any help there?

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codeblackhayate
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Re: How to estimate a needed sound budget?

#2 Post by codeblackhayate »

This was posted just a few days ago for a music quote request: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=43823
I can speak from the casting service end. You likely didn't provide enough detail to give a proper quote! You need to do a little more leg work and spec out your project before you can get quotes and start talking business. I doubt you'll get bites with only a loose idea of some far-off-in-the-future project that might not ever materialize.

A tiny sliver of "great ideas" actually make it to a complete project. Many projects never make it out of the idea phase, even fewer past initial development. You'd need at least a skeleton of your project to get out of the idea phase and into development (features, characters, rough dialog size, routes sketched out, rough project timeline for finished VN, etc.). You don't have to have a finished demo, but you DO need to have your project requirements defined to a fine granularity. A project without specs is a huge red flag! It means the project owners probably aren't organized enough to get to development, let alone get to a point where they'd be paying for services. It would be a gamble and a huge time sink to invest resources in that sort of projects. Casting services are business. They're not going waste time that could be used on clients that are ready to roll.

Price Estimation Considerations
Voice over costs can vary widely, and are highly depended on your project's needs. Below are some things that have a big influence on price. You'd need to have all of these defined before you can start asking for quotes.
  1. Your project's hard voice requirements (Characters required, word count/scope of voice needs, special casting needs etc.)
  2. Details that might affect talent's ability to commit (content rating, union status, etc.)
  3. Lowest level of quality you're willing to accept (If you cast a developing talent, it will take considerably more time and energy to get a good performance/fix audio/etc. than a seasoned pro)
  4. How much of the casting/direction/audio post you'd be outsourcing. (Do you want turnkey services with direction and audio post, or just someone to hold auditions for you?)
  5. Your project's timeline. (If you need something yesterday, expect to pay more for an expedite)
Below are some rate cards you can use to estimate a budget for professional voice over. (All within the first 10 google search results!) Note that none of the rate cards have "credit and exposure" as compensation. As it will likely come up as you go through your casting process, do not expect a professional talent to work for free. Being credited is a given, unless you pay for rights to use a work credit-less. For a commercial project, working "for exposure" is actually detrimental to an actor, as other paying projects will then expect more free work.

Rate Cards The rate cards are good starting point for budget planning; however, each individual voice talent is going to implement their own pricing structure. If you can accept poorer quality audio and developing acting talent, you may be able to work within a smaller budget. Some talents may have special rates or accept skill swap as compensation, while some others may have skill sets that put them miles above the rate cards.

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KarmaLarma
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Re: How to estimate a needed sound budget?

#3 Post by KarmaLarma »

Ah, the Rate Cards are just the kind of thing I was looking for! I tried all sorts of things with google but all I ever got was people asking the same thing as me without answers or blog posts talking about hiring professional voice actors for massive scale projects that involve in person studio visits and such.
I would never expect anybody do to work for free, especially for a project I'd intend to make money off of. But I'm used to quotes being a noncommittal thing anyway, since among artists someone asking for a quote is them figuring out if they can afford your services, not committing to buying from you. I didn't really understand having no prices listed anywhere and refusing quotes without a near completed project. It still seems odd to me, especially since some of the casting groups were specifically advertising that they looked to be hired/were frequently hired for indie VN projects making them extremely niche, but having at least something to guess at really helps!
Thanks for finding this for me!

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