Quote: "So what is really the difference between a $50 studio and a $500 studio?"
quality of the room gear and the engineer. but really for voice acting you don't need a master engineer, you dont even need a great room, all you need is someone who can plug in a mic and set the gain right. you dont even need a 24 channel valve tla console either. just one channel and a good mic(2 channels and mics if you want a stereo feel to your back and forth dialogs)
if your hell bent on spending money i'd put it into post production, that's where the signal and background noise disappears. its an easy job, so again, go to you local sound engineering school.
I studied Sound engineering at SAE - they have great gear, and for something as simple as recording dialogue and with post production as simple as noise removal and basic EQing, you will get the job done quickly and well. SAE can afford waves plugins which are as good as plugins get.
Quote: "I also don't like the idea of "a bit of money now, maybe more later" style of pay. I wouldn't work under those conditions so I wouldn't expect anyone else to"
yeah, I think peoples lust for money can really get in the way of art. I've played and sung on a lot of friends projects and I did so for free. I do this because I like to help people with their art. I've also done a lot of free sound work (with the nice surprise of a bottle at the end of the project)
If I were an extremely well known artist/engineer whos name would bring power to the product then i would more than likely negotiate pay and contracts and the like.
but as an unknown artist/engineer who is capable of doing things for people I just do it. on the indi level if everyone starts grabbing for pay you just send people broke. I think most people can understand that and those with good conscience will work for free on your early productions.
do set up royalty arrangements.
I never work with contracts, because im not a dick and am not going to re-appear when the project makes it demanding half of the income because I own the recording and the performance of three of the instruments, plus the composition of the middle 8 and the solo and I co wrote the lyrics...etc
people can really bury you if you don't set up a good contract. maybe worth even taking to a solicitor.
if you do nothing, the sound engineer owns the recording, the voice actor owns the performance and all you own is the words you wrote.
Sometimes I like to use words out of contents
