- How To Figure Out The Length of a VO Script

Voiceover artists tell me quite often that a client will ask for a price on a narrative that they say is a half hour long. They then discover that it's much longer. Yikes! Here's the easiest easiest way to find out the length. Ask the client to send you the narration as a Word Doc.  Open the document and select all. Go to tools and select word count, this will tell you how many words there are. The general rate of speech is about 120 to 150 words per minute depending on the material of course. Simple divide the total number of words by 150 (or whatever number represents your rate of speech) and that will give you a rough idea of how many minutes or hours of finished audio there will be. Do this before you quote a price:)