Pat Fraley presents The “A” list, an opportunity to study animation, advertising and audiobooks with three of the very best. Pat Fraley, Ed Asner and Scott Brick. It’s taking place in LA at World Famous Buzzy’s Recording on Saturday, May 22, 2010. Here’s what Pat has to say about this event:
[audio: http://patfraley.com/Events/A-List/A-ListOverview.mp3]Details including registration is at this page on Pat’s site.
Actress and voiceover talent Kristina Hughes is featured as the guest in this episode of Actors Entertainment.
AE Kristina Hughes April2010 from Actors Reporter on Vimeo.
Steven Lowell posts excellent tips for everyone who does voiceover work from home on the Voice123.com blog.
I love telling stories for people. It’s why I work as a voiceover talent, because I love to tell stories. Most of all I love telling really well written long-form projects like documentaries. Currently I’m narrating a series called A History of Christian Worship: Ancient Ways, Future Paths. The first episode, The Word, is just now being released. The other five will come out through the balance of this year.
Paul Strikwerda has written a superb blog post about setting rates. My thanks to DB Cooper for posting the link on the VO-BB.
(Updated to add the link to Paul’s voiceover site.)
You’ll find the list of the 25 finalists and links to their demos on Scott Brick’s site. Congratulations to the finalists.
I found this video linked on my friend Bill Elder’s blog. Doesn’t have much to do with voiceover, but Mel Blanc is there so I’m posting it here for your amusement, too.
My friend Bill Pryce provides the voice for this Dell web video. Very nice work, Bill.
Have you ever been given extra time to work on a project? Take some hard-earned advice from my friend Rowell Gormon and make good use of it. And while I’m pointing you toward good advice, if you’re faced with a new challenge and have no idea how best to tackle it, take a page from my friend Pam Tierney’s playbook.
Volume 25 of “bridges” the quarterly web publication from the Office of Science and Technology at the Embassy of Austria has been released. It has been my pleasure for several years now to narrate and produce podcasts of several of the articles from each release.
Kristine Oller is flat out brilliant when it comes to organization and career planning. How brilliant? Well, read this article about how to get the most out of attending an event and then you tell me.
If you’ve been thinking about seriously pursuing voiceover there are a couple of things you need to do. Get your performance skills up to speed. I’ve talked about the voiceover coaches I recommend on this blog loads of time. Links are in the Career section of my blogroll. But, you also need to get yourself in the mindset that this is a business, not just a way to have fun. Which is where the tele-classes that Harlan Hogan and Dan O’Day will be doing this year in May will make a huge difference.
I took this class last year and even though I’ve been working as a professional voiceover for over 25 years, I got a lot out of the classes. I recommend you sign up. All the details are here. And if you mention in the comments section at the bottom of the registration form that I recommended the class to you, I’ll get a commission. If you don’t want me to get that commission, don’t mention me. Whether you do or not, the price of the class is the same.
The last few days I’ve been thinking quite a bit of generosity and in particular how being generous can be extremely powerful and beneficial. But there’s a kind of catch-22 involved. You see, if you are generous to others in order to gain some benefit for yourself down the road a ways, that selfish intention has a way of blunting the value of the generosity in the first place.
My good friend Rowell Gormon wonderfully illustrates how things are supposed to work on his blog recently. And as I noted in my comment to his post, it was his own act of generosity toward me that was the catalyst for our friendship several years ago. So many other people have been generous and helpful to me through the 27 years that I’ve been a professional voiceover that I feel obligated to be generous to others. Well, that’s not entirely right. Not obligated as in a burden. Obligated as in how can I not respond with generosity to others?
Of course, talking about how generous I am here on this blog smacks a bit too much of self-elevation. Kind of like that line that I always laugh at when I think about it. “But enough about me, what do you think of me?”
No, the point of this post isn’t to point at myself as some sort of paragon of virtue and generosity. It’s to encourage you to think about ways you can pass along what you know to those who are coming along after or with you. Much of the time, those opportunities will sneak up on you so you have to make up your mind in advance that you’ll grab them when they come your way.
Grab and then immediately release. Which is the point, isn’t it? It’s not the fastest way to build your voiceover business, but it may be the most satisfying.
My friend and mentor Philip Banks demonstrates his skill with this video.
My friend Doug Turkel started a voiceover mastermind group in South Florida a year ago and it has been a wonderful experience for all involved. Doug wrote about this group, and offers thoughts about starting one in your part of the world, in an article on VoiceOverXtra. Well worth your time.
Whitney Wyatt emails to introduce himself today and to let me know that he’s started blog about his newly launched journey into voiceover.
I have a pretty long blogroll, in case you’ve never noticed. Near the bottom of that very long list is a group called “Other Blogs.” I’ve added one there today called the Beagle Bugle. It’s the official blog of the Wizard Academy. I will be visiting there often. I hope you will too.
Saturday, June 26, 2010 from 10 AM to 4 PM at Tree Falls Studio in LA, Rodney Saulsberry will be holding a one-day intenstive workshop focused on auditioning, script interpretation, breathing and microphone technique. For registration and more details go to Rodney’s site and click on the “Voice Over Workshop” tab.
My friend John McCalmont is the host of Sliced on History.
He tells me that he’s been on the road so much putting this show together he’s set a new world’s record for recording voiceover session in rental cars. Premier is this week (April 22 according to John’s blog) and kudos to John for all the drive and determination he’s put into this project.
