Sample rejected for being "happy" but not "passionate" enough
I have to say, I appreciate there being a vetting process for quality control, but I personally believe this should be strictly for technical purposes. QC should not be giving subjective feedback - that should be left up to the client. That said, I had a job rejected last night while I was sleeping and this is the feedback I received:
Needless to say, I'm a little salty waking up this morning to see that I missed the time allotted to make revisions, based on this subjective feedback. Not really sure what to ask about this, because seeking feedback from the community doesn't matter if one QC person doesn't share the same opinion. I guess I'm just suggesting that we limit QC rejections to technical standards that are not met, and let the client decide if the intended tone was achieved or not.
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Hi Alaina,
Thanks for your feedback. However, we do have to assess performance as it's a big part of a voiceover and it's a common reason for rejection. If we don't, then flat, monotone robotic reads would get through and impact the quality of what we deliver. I do agree that performance is a more subjective matter but all of our agents have listened to hundreds of voiceovers and have a good feel for what our client means when they give directions regarding a specific tone.
In this specific case, I feel your read is a bit rushed. I do think it could've been handled through a revision, so I'll forward this to the team so we can improve on that front.
-Seb
Hi Sebastian,
Thanks for clarifying. I do understand the need to critique tone of voice, however I will add that when the client doesn't attach a reference sample, it can be very hard to deduce exactly what someone wants based on the adjectives they provide. The same read might be exactly what one person meant by happy, but not enough for another person – I just think the client has the right to decide in the event that they did not initially provide a reference for voice matching. I've never had a sample rejected for performance reasons before, so that's mostly why I was surprised.
In addition, in this specific case, the VO was to be timed to music but there was no music file attached for timing purposes. I did my best to guess how fast the read needed to be done after listening to the song on my own. So overall, I just feel that there were a few missing links in this case. I do appreciate your feedback and will take this as a learning experience for next time.
Alaina