etiquette for working with voice talent

This article is primarily intended for content creators in the hobby/indie scene who are producing their own project and are new to working with voice actors. Working with voice actors doesn’t need to be intimidating, but here are some tips to help the process go smoothly!

Important Note: This article is NOT intended to be some draconian “list of rules” for how to interact with voice actors. Most of this simply boils down to using common sense and treating others you work with the same way you would like to be treated. There is no need to overly stress about how to manage your project – just do your best – but this article goes more in-depth on why certain behaviors are “do’s & don’ts” in case you are curious.

Naturally, voice actors should also be professional when communicating with project creators, and respect is a two-way street. We have plenty of articles on voice actor etiquette also!

table of contents

• Rates + payment
• Casting etiquette
• General project organization
• Getting recordings from your cast
• Retakes, revisions & recasts
• Communication etiquette
• Project release + social media
• Closing comments

casting etiquette

Working with voice actors starts with the casting process. Observing proper casting etiquette can go a long way towards creating good will and making sure your project runs smoothly.

Honor your deadlines.

Set a deadline and plan to stick to it. It’s always okay to extend your deadline if you’re not finding what you need, but shortening your deadline should only be done with proper notice (at least 24 hours), and you should avoid suddenly closing early at all costs.

“Why shouldn’t I just close the casting call as soon as I find what I’m looking for?” Quite frankly, it’s unfair to those who might be looking to submit. Voice actors live all over the world in different time zones and with different schedules, and not everyone can drop what they are doing at a moment’s notice to audition for your project the second it’s posted. Plus, you may think you found the “right voice” but change your mind when a more fitting submission comes along later! You can bookmark the auditions you think are “perfect”, but unless a true emergency happens, give it the time you’ve set—many people tend to submit closer to the deadline.

See our casting call rules page for more information on deadlines.

Be upfront with any potentially uncomfortable material in the script.

If you know that your project will contain potentially triggering material or other content that not everyone might be comfortable recording, it’s best to be transparent about this during the casting process so that there are no surprises and you can avoid a messy recast down the line. This is especially important if you expect your project may contain NSFW content. There are plenty of actors who have no issue recording such material, but it may affect other decisions as well such as how they choose to be credited in the project.

Avoid getting someone’s hopes up unless you are directly offering them a callback or role.

One thing brand-new project creators sometimes do is immediately write back to the first submission they get that sounds decent and say “wow, you sound great, I’m pretty sure I’m going to go with you for this part!” But then, they almost inevitably find another submission they think is more fitting…ultimately leading the first actor on and causing them to be disappointed.

It’s best to avoid responding to indicate one way or another whether you intend to cast someone, unless you are actually ready to offer them the role. If you have multiple great submissions and are truly not sure, then you may ask the final contenders to submit a callback audition to help you make your final choice.

You don’t need to give feedback unless you are specifically asking for a retake/callback.

It’s not the norm, particularly in the professional industry, to give feedback on each individual audition. Voice actors may find it bizarre or off-putting if you respond to a typical cattle-call audition with unsolicited critique, particularly if the feedback is negative.

However, it is acceptable to provide feedback on auditions in the following circumstances:
1. The voice actor has specifically indicated they would like feedback on their audition; or
2. You would like to request that the actor submit a new take on the audition with your notes/direction in mind.

Resist the urge to send rejection emails.

Actors often audition for enormous amounts of projects at any given time, and it’s generally only expected that you will hear back if you actually booked the role or are offered a callback. Understandably, you may feel that it is courteous to let actors know you that you have moved on with selecting someone else for the role, but receiving such emails can actually have the opposite effect and be demoralizing. See this article for more information about why rejection emails are not a great idea.

Try not to cast someone purely based on popularity/follower count.

It can feel insulting all-around if someone holds open auditions for a project, hundreds of people submit… only to have the project creator auto-cast the role to someone they hope will market their project to their large follower base. Now, sometimes the “popular” choice may also happen to be the “right” choice for the role, and that’s valid—but it’s best to avoid letting social media clout be your main factor for deciding your cast. Remember that there is no guarantee that casting a “big name” means they will even promote your project at all, and that lesser-known, up-and-coming talent may perhaps even be more dedicated to your project than a busy established actor who’s trying to juggle a million things at once.

One technique for helping to avoid bias in casting is “blind auditions” – where you randomize the audition files and listen to them without looking at the names attached. This will help you evaluate the auditions purely on fit versus prioritizing your friends or popular talent.

general project organization

Don’t force your actor to join a separate server or attend project meetings, unless absolutely necessary. 

Communication can and should be done by email (or DMs, if preferred). Most people don’t have time, especially for a volunteer project, to participate in group meetings or sign up for separate websites. “Table reads” may be doable if your cast is really into it (particularly for beginner actors who want a chance to practice and play off of other people), but it can be a nightmare to schedule and coordinate a time when everyone can be online at once.

Furthermore, your voice actors generally don’t need to attend “production meetings”—those are for your team, such as animators, artists, programmers, etc—as long as the voice actors have the material needed to do their jobs, they’re good.

“But it’s easier for me to have a Discord server to keep things organized for the cast and crew!” It’s okay to have one especially for your own organizational purposes, but it’s not realistic to expect the cast to be constantly checking such a server to see if their lines are ready yet, especially because these groups often turn into spammy social chats rather than project discussion for important updates.

Now, sometimes group chats or Discord servers can be fun and allow the cast and team to get to know each other—so there’s no HARM in creating one, but it should ideally be optional, not mandatory, for someone voice acting for your project to be active in such groups. See this article for more about project servers.

Keep updates/announcements to the important stuff. 

It may be tempting to mass email or “everyone” ping your cast on Discord every time you’ve made a slight bit of progress, but remember that actors are working on plenty of projects besides yours at any given time, and this stuff can easily clog up their inbox or notifications. It’s okay to update your cast on certain milestones, but keep it to the major ones as opposed to a constant running commentary.

If doing live sessions, follow proper session etiquette to ensure a positive atmosphere for your cast.

While live direction is typically unnecessary for unpaid projects, there are situations where it may be beneficial, particularly when agreed to by both the director and actor.

We have an entire article here on live directed session etiquette to help you approach these sessions like a pro.

Don’t forget to BCC when sending a mass email, particularly if you have a large cast.

Many actors have a habit of “replying-all” to work emails, but this can quickly take a wrong turn when a producer sends out a script to 20 different actors and people are sending a reply-all to confirm receipt, turn in their lines, or ask a question. It can even create a privacy issue if an actor prefers to keep their email address confidential but someone else in the cast uses it for other purposes (in a worst-case scenario, there was once a situation where someone harvested a bunch of email addresses from an audition to send out a promotional email about their own project.) Using the BCC feature is the safest option.

getting recordings from your cast

Specify any formatting, editing and/or labeling needs up front. 

Particularly when working with a large cast, consistency becomes important to ensure everyone’s files can be edited and mixed together seamlessly. If you do need files exported, edited or labeled any particular way, it’s best to say so upfront.

Things to consider specifying, if it will be helpful to you:

• File format (.wav is most common for final recordings, unless you’d prefer .mp3 or even .ogg)
• Labeling instructions (ex: label your recording as Episode 1 – Character Name.wav)
• Number of takes requested per line
• Editing instructions (Would you prefer recordings completely raw, or with basic editing (such as noise reduction) applied, or fully edited/broadcast-ready?)
• File delivery instructions (WeTransfer? Shared Dropbox/Drive folder?)

Do not require your cast to split each line into separate files, unless they volunteer to or unless you are paying them to do so.

Asking for a small handful of separate files for organization purposes (ex: split by character, episode or script) is perfectly reasonable, but it’s best not to require your cast members to split each line/take into individual files—this can be extremely tedious and time-consuming, and is normally outside the expected scope of work for a voice actor. Editing can easily double or triple the work time on a project, so if you need your actors to, say, turn in 150 individual, fully edited wav files, you should probably be paying them extra for it.

Remember that most of your cast is not audio engineers, and will not be experienced in editing.

It’s fair to expect voice actors to turn in reasonably “clean” files, but it’s unrealistic to expect them to edit out every single breath or small noise, make all the files a certain volume, or master the audio to be “production-ready” unless they are already experienced in delivering audio this way. If you do have a sound engineer or editor on the project, or are willing to do some of this yourself, it will help save a lot of time and trouble and make your project audio much more consistent anyway.

Live direction is okay if you think it’s important, but you can still achieve good results by allowing the actor to record on their own time.

For paid projects, it’s fairly common to set up a session on Discord or Zoom to direct the actor. This is a fair ask if you are paying your actors hourly. But when it comes to unpaid projects, it’s better to make live direction optional—some actors may prefer having that guidance, whereas others may prefer to work on their own time.

Do keep in mind, especially if you don’t really know how to direct or have experience doing so, that many actors can self-direct pretty well for their first takes as long as they have the proper materials (full script for context, any video or picture references, character descriptions, etc.) If they send over their first takes and there are some lines that need changes, you can ask for a round of retakes and point out what you’d like to hear differently in those lines.

Try to be reasonable and understanding when it comes to deadlines, particularly for unpaid projects.

Quick turnarounds are common for paid work, but when you’re dealing with volunteers on hobby projects, other things may have to be higher on their priority list. Remember that everyone has commitments outside of your project, such as work, school, and family obligations. Allow a reasonable amount of time for delivery based on the workload, and try to be open to allowing extensions if you’re able to do so.

The general rule of thumb is that the more you’re paying your actors, the faster you may expect them to work. If you have a circumstance where a very quick turnaround is needed on a project, make sure to state this in the audition so that only people able to turn in work in that time frame will apply.

Don’t constantly hound actors about turning in lines. 

Set a specific deadline so your actors know when they’re responsible for turning in their work. Sending out a reminder one or two days before the deadline is perfectly acceptable…in fact, many actors prefer it, as it can be easy to forget when you’ve got something due. But don’t tell actors to “take their time” but then message them multiple times a day asking when they’re going to turn it in…that will just make them resentful. Let them know upfront when you need it by, send one optional reminder right before, and then you can send a followup after if you don’t receive your lines on time.

Never, ever, EVER feed the recordings into AI generators or use AI to generate any recordings of your cast.

Regardless of your intent, feeding actors’ lines into AI generators is a huge violation of trust and considered wholly unacceptable in the industry. It doesn’t matter if you “just need one line changed”—ask the actor for a pickup instead. It doesn’t matter if it’s “just for fun” or temporary—it feels extremely violating for an actor to hear their own voice saying things they never actually said, not to mention once someone’s voice is put into certain algorithms, it can train those algorithms to generate a voice similar to theirs in the future.

Any project wishing to use AI assets in any capacity has a duty to use this technology transparently and ethically, and should only be done with opted-in consent, compensation, and control. As a show of good faith, it is strongly recommended to include in your project contracts that you will not use voice actors’ recordings for generative AI or to train machine learning algorithms.

retakes, revisions + recasts

For projects with a heavier workload, consider asking for a sample first to approve tone and pacing.

Most of the time, you’ll have an audition process for your project. But if you decide to “auto-cast” a voice actor – either because you know they’d be the right fit based on other work or their auditions for a different character – it’s good to have them record a quick sample from your script first, just in case, so that there are no surprises. If the voice actor puts in hours of work only for you to decide you want them to redo all the lines in a different way, this can waste enormous amounts of time, assuming they’re not being paid for the revisions.

Be reasonable (and specific) with retake requests.

Retakes are perfectly normal and even expected most of the time—after all, you want to be happy with the finished product, and it’s quite rare that an actor will nail every line exactly the way you wanted it on the first take. So if you want to hear something different, ask—maybe you want a different speed or emotion or emphasis, or you just want to hear a couple more options. That’s fine! The more specific you can be with the changes you’re looking to hear, the better the chances are that they’ll “get it” on the second try.

If you’re finding yourself asking for retakes on every single line, you may wish to consider whether it would be better to do a directed session to ensure you get what you’re looking for.

However, try to avoid being overly nitpicky, especially for no-budget or low-budget projects. 

Again, the more you are paying your actors, the more you can demand in terms of quality. Retakes for tech issues are understandable to a degree (pops, huffs, clipping, etc) but keep your expectations in check if you are working on a hobby project in particular, and understand that not everyone is able to afford fancy microphones or expensive recording booths. After all, you heard the actor’s recording quality when you cast them, and assuming it’s consistent with their auditions, you knew what to expect.

Recasting should be a last resort…but if you need to recast, be sure to communicate. 

Unfortunately, recasts happen sometimes. Maybe the actor doesn’t turn in lines or respond to e-mails for a long time after the deadline has passed, or they’re out of town and you can’t delay any longer, or a big event happens in their personal life that leaves them unable to record. Or, perhaps you change the design or direction of the character and the voice/performance no longer fits what you have in mind. It’s best to try to work things out with the original actor first, but otherwise, communicate with them that a recast is happening so they aren’t suddenly left in the dark. 

If you need to recast due to wanting to go in a different direction with the character, communicate this to the actor and consider working out a compromise if possible—for example, would they be able to re-audition for the role with the new specs in mind? Or if not, is there another role that might fit them so that they could still participate in the project? Whatever you do, don’t recast just because you suddenly “found someone better” – that is incredibly hurtful and an almost surefire way to burn bridges. For more on this, check out our post on recasting etiquette.

communication etiquette

Decide on a preferred method of contact.

This will usually be email, which is considered the default for professional projects. However, projects in the indie scene may prefer to utilize Discord for more instantaneous communication, which is acceptable if that’s what everyone agrees on. Avoid making your actors sign up for a separate platform or forum if possible, as chances are these will not be checked on any regular basis. If Discord is your preferred method of communication, send the actor a DM when you have something that needs answered or addressed—don’t rely on them to regularly check a separate server. Relying on social media for communication is not always ideal as people can get overwhelmed with messages or accidentally locked out of their accounts.

Respect professional and personal boundaries.

Remember that your relationship with your cast members is first and foremost a business relationship. Sometimes friendships do form naturally, especially on long-term projects. But just because you have cast someone for a role in a project you’re making does not mean you suddenly have free reign to hit them up 24/7 for a chat. Avoid asking invasive questions, “trauma dumping”, or venting about problems in your personal life, especially to actors you don’t know outside the context of the project.

Occasionally, you may be in a position to cast someone for a project whose work you already admire. Complimenting someone is of course welcome, but if you behave too much like a “fan”, it can make things awkward, especially in a live session—remember that this is a business engagement, not a convention meet-and-greet.

Perhaps the most egregious behavior, however, is when project creators make unwanted romantic or sexual advances to their cast members. This is wholly inappropriate and will likely make your actors extremely uncomfortable, perhaps to the point of dropping out of the project. This goes for NSFW projects, too—just because someone is comfortable voicing NSFW content does not mean they consent to receiving messages of that nature outside of the specific context of the project.

Any issues with your actors should be handled directly and confidentially. 

Once in a while, a conflict happens, things go sour, and maybe there are some hard feelings. But if you’re having an issue with someone, talk to them directly about it whenever possible. Don’t take to social media to vague post or vent about them to other cast members—it makes you look petty and unprofessional. If you must make a statement of some kind, keep it neutral and professional—for example, “Cast Update: The role of Garbage Man will be played by John Doe going forward. Please welcome him to the team!” Burning bridges and stirring up nasty drama can cause issues with other relationships in the future.

And finally, don’t be a jerk.

Yes, this should be obvious, but just because you are in charge of a project does not mean you have the right to treat your cast in a threatening or abusive manner, regardless of how popular your project is or even how much you’re paying them. A prime example of this is when a project director threatens to “get someone blacklisted” for doing something they don’t like or due to some personal drama – this is primarily a scare tactic meant to silence their cast or crew into putting up with bad behavior. No project creator, especially for an unpaid project, has the power to blacklist someone across an entire industry!

Don’t insult your actors’ skills or negatively compare them to other actors you think are better. There is a legendary story of an amateur producer who once said “voice actors are like instant ramen; cheap and easily replaceable.” If that is your attitude, people will not want to work with you!

project release + social media

Credit your cast when possible, unless they request otherwise.

Generally, voice actors love being credited for their work, and it means other people may potentially see them and scout them for projects—not to mention having a verified and completed project for their resume, which can be especially helpful for new actors. But it’s a good idea to ask your cast if and how they want to be credited prior to the project’s release. There are a number of reasons someone may not wish to use their real, full name on a project, especially for fan work or anything containing adult content.

Do not disclose an actor’s pseudonym without consent.

There are all sorts of reasons an actor may wish to use a pseudonym on a project, and ultimately it’s their own business if they choose to do so. Outside of important legal documents, do not “out” the actor’s real name or identity unless they announce it themselves or give you permission to do so. In the case of NSFW, this is not only a matter of discretion but also personal safety of your cast members.

If using cast pictures for announcements, ask the actors what image they would like to use.

Cast announcement images featuring headshots of the actors have become more popular over the years. It’s fine if you want to do this, but make sure to ask your cast members to send you the photo they’d like to use—don’t just grab a random old photo off the Internet and assume it’s fair game. Do consider being open to non-headshot images such as a drawing of the actor or an image of their vTuber – some voice actors are less comfortable sharing photos of themselves online for various reasons.

Respect people’s decisions in regards to sharing on social media.

It’s understandable to want your cast to post about the project so you can receive some more publicity, especially if you’re crowdfunding. It’s fine to make a polite request, such as “if you get a chance, I’d be appreciative if you could retweet/share the post!”

But if they don’t feel comfortable doing it for whatever reason, please respect their decision. Some people aren’t active on social media, don’t want their accounts to be seen as “advertising” too much, or may be selective about what they choose to promote. Continually pressuring people into posting about your project or crowdfunding page puts them in an awkward situation and makes them feel as if maybe they were only cast because of their social media reach.

You can increase the chances of authentic shares if, say, you put out a great trailer or some awesome artwork, and tag the person who voiced the character. If they like it, it’s easy for them to reshare or add to their story. Check out this thread for more on marketing expectations.

closing comments

Believe it or not, working with voice actors doesn’t need to be stressful. The important thing is mutual respect and treating your cast like fellow human beings working with you to help your creative vision come to life.

It is natural to make mistakes, especially when organizing your first project. If you do make a mistake, apologize if necessary and do your best to fix it. If you’re genuinely doing your best, people will understand!