My manager and friend Stacey Stahl sends out an encouraging quote every day. I always enjoy getting them. Here’s today’s which I thought well worth sharing.
“If you lose your wealth, you have lost nothing, If you lose your health,
you have lost something, But if you lose your character,
you have lost everything.”— Woodrow Wilson
… Tweet and you …? OK. I’m twisting the old saying to a different purpose than the original. Regardless of what you think of my weak humor, I do hope you’ll take a moment to click through to this excellent commentary by Jeff Sexton about Twitter.
M.S. Taji, a voice actor based in Egypt, blogs about voiceover at Taji’s Voice Emporium. He has written an excellent article about SaVoa on his blog. Well worth your time, especially if you’d like to get a point of view from someone outside North America.
Craig Crumpton is doing a great job of covering Comic-Con 2009 on his Voice Actors in the News blog.
A voiceover blog by Justin Shenkarow called JustIn Time. My thanks to Craig Crumpton for posting the link on his Voice Actors in the News blog.
Take a few minutes to click through to this lovely blog post by the lovely Kara Edwards: 11 Reasons Your Voice Over Business Will Be A Success.
My friend Connie Terwilliger has launched a voiceover blog so I’ve updated the link on my blogroll with that site. Very nice stuff, Connie. I look forward to reading more of what you have to say.
My friend Tom Ackerman is the voice talent featured in this television ad for Cleveland State University.
Nice work, Tom.
My friend Caryn Clark has some powerful comments about Integrity on her blog today.
Tracy Pattin always has something interesting on her blog. Her current podcasts are with commercial copywriter Colleen Wainwright. You’ll find a summary and links on the Voicebank Blog.
Most often when a voiceover recording session begins I will get very clear direction about a specific kind of delivery style that the client wants to hear. One such session took place just a couple of days ago. I’d booked a job through In Both Ears, my agent in Portland, OR. Right from the start of the session the direction was clear and easy to follow. We did a couple of reads that way, then there was a short pause in the action while the producers (there were 4 involved, I beleive) talked with one another with the line to me turned off. (This was an ISDN session, so I was in my studio in Charlotte, NC while the clients were at a studio in Portland, OR.)
After that short pause they came back on the line and asked to go in a rather different direction. Again, this new direction was clear and easy to follow so off we went. After the first take with this new style, it was obvious from the reactions on the other end of the line that everyone was much happier with what we were now doing.
It’s true, sometimes the direction you get isn’t all that clear, or maybe it’s framed in a way that’s outside your experience. If you need clarification, be polite but ask. Don’t faff around. Get to the point. Let your director know you’re not quite sure how to do what’s been asked.
This is different from misunderstanding direction. If you think you’ve got what’s been asked, head off in that direction. Don’t worry. The director will let you know if you’ve missed the mark. Make corrections based on the new direction and then launch in again. But, by all means, follow the directions you’ve been given, even if you think they’re all wrong. Voiceover work isn’t about you, your voice or what you want. It’s about what your client wants, telling his or her story in the style and manner he or she has requested.
(edited to fix typos)
One of my favorite, on-going projects is recording the podcasts for the online journal “bridges” from the Office of Science and Technology at the Embassy of Austria. The latest edition is Volume 22 and it has just gone live. You can find all of the podcast articles on one page.
You may have seen the announcement during E3 that Star Wars: The Old Republic(tm)will be fully voiced. My son Eric passed along to me this morning the link to this site which provides a lot of detail about how the producers are doing this project in the documentary video there.
(updated to remove auto-play video)
Kevin Delaney has details over at his Voiceover Ninja blog about the live Voiceover for Video Games video chat he’s doing on Sunday, July 19, 2009 at 10:15 PM Eastern/7:15 PM Pacific.
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a casting notice up for the now revived animated program Futurama. My friend DB Cooper, Grand mistress of the VO-BB, has started a thread there about this mess. I hope you’ll pop over to take a look.
My friend Caryn Clark writes about her lessons in patience, in a blog post called Patience is a Virtue.
Check out this voiceover session from earlier today by my friend John Taylor.
And you’ll find the finished cartoon on Mark Fiore‘s site.
(edited to add link to cartoon)
Here’s a video that puts you behind the scenes of the Adult Swim show.
My thanks to Smith Harrison for tweeting this link.