The folks at Vox Daily and Voices.com have added a new podcast to their services, specifically a podcast focused on the world of voiceover work. It’s called VOX Talk. You can listen via the flash players on this page. Or sign-up via iTunes.
Update: Of course, there’s also Avi Melman’s voice-over podcast, which you’ll find here. And Donna Papacosta’s Trafcom News Podcast is here.
Blogging
Two new podcasts for you to check out
Check out the latest editions of the Voice-Over Podcast. Featured are Rikki Simons (Episode 3) and a special Holiday Episode with the amazing Pat Fraley. You’ll also find the podcasts at Avi’s MySpace page here. (Or search for voice-over in the iTunes stores.)
Celebrating the Power and People of Radio Drama
I’ve just added a site to my blogroll called Lit Between the Ears, which is a blog (as the title of this post says) celebrating the power and people of radio drama.
As someone old enough to remember the last few years of the way radio used to be, I’ve been and remain a fan of radio drama. I plan to visit Lit Between the Ears often. I hope you will too.
The new podcast is online
One of my favorite, on-going voiceover projects is the podcast edition each quarter of the “bridges” newsletter from the Office of Science and Technology at the Embassy of Austria. Science has been an interest from my youth, so it’s a delight to record the articles and stories for each edition.
You’ll find the current edition, Vol. 12, of “bridges” here. And you can listen to the podcasts either through the links with each individual article, or all collected on one page, here.
More Joe!
If you enjoyed reading my interview with Joe Cipriano a few weeks ago, you should check out the podcast interview with Joe done by Donna Papacosta. (Joe is such a great guy.)
And my thanks to Stephanie of Voices.com for pointing out this podcast interview on Vox Daily. (And in the comments section here as well.)
Several voices
Over at the Voicemarketer.com blog, Ryan has been interviewing up a storm, as it were. He has features just in the last few days with Chuck Buell, Lisa Lupari, Bob Michaels, and my friend Peter O’Connell.
Check them all out. And nice work, Ryan.
Demystifying the Home Recording Studio
There’s a new blog I’ve just added to my blogroll over on the left called Master VO. Dan Lenard introduces himself as the writer of this blog in his first post, here. I strongly suspect I’m going to visit this little corner of the blogosphere quite often.
Let me know what you think. You can leave a comment. They’re open.
Live blogging Debbie Munro’s Webminar
12:00 Noon – Debbie Munro is an experienced voiceover talent, introduced today by Caroline Perkins, Project Manager at Voice123.com. Debbie begins by describing how much she enjoys doing voiceovers. It wasn’t easy to get in to this business. It took a lot of hard work. She’s worked full-time for about 6 years and encouraged all of us to get a professional home studio set-up.
12:05 PM – Debbie talks about the value of a membership at Voice123.com (the sponsors of this Webminar), how it can provide professional experience auditioning, providing a web presence and possibly some income all for only $195.00 (US) per year.
12:08 PM – How do you start? With a demo? A demo is important, but she says the right place to start is at the start. She also mentions that she’s going to talk about The Key Ingredients of a voiceover career, the Types of Work available, different Reads to Know, How to Create Characters, A Script Checklist, Industry Secrets.
12:12 PM – How can voiceover work benefit me? By giving me the opportunity to work full or part time, at my own schedule. Work in my own home. It’s less discriminating than acting. (By this she explains “the look” is imperative, and talent can be secondary in film and television acting. Voiceover work depends on one’s talent, or ability to delivery the goods, is the whole deal.) But, to do this, you need training. Read. Take classes. Find our own styles and areas of ability.
12:17 PM – Further benefits of voiceover work? You can pick and choose what you want to work on. Do what you want and make money at it. Debbie suggests that they next time we’re at a party, start doing character voices for the kids. By this we learn to break through the inhibitions that we’ve lost since we were children. And this “childishness” is vital to be able to engage in characters. If the kids pay attention, you know you’re doing it well. This is how we get in touch with our “inner child” and learn to break through.
12:20 PM – So where do we start? Set realistic goals. It’s vital not to set goals that are completely out of reach. Take classes, but not just stage acting. Film and television acting as well; because it’s important to balance internal and external acting energy. Voiceover classes. Improv classes. Research the history of voiceover. For example, Daws Butler and June Foray.
12:24 PM – Create a demo. But, don’t rush into doing a demo. How do you know when you’re ready to make a demo? When you don’t have to ask yourself “Am I ready to make a demo?” Because you have to be actually deliver the goods of what’s on your demo when you’re in the studio. And make sure you work with a director who actually will direct. My demo needs to reflect who I am, my personality.
12:27 PM – Contract with an agent. But, don’t rely on the agent to find all of your work. Market yourself. Debbie mentions that she talks about her voiceover work where ever she goes. And finds a remarkable amount of work just by talking with people.
12:29 PM – Practice, practice, practice. Listen for interesting voices in real life. Audition the scripts that come through Voice123.com. All different kinds. Keep practicing and keep studying. Study the midwestern US accent, which is the “standard” sound.
12:31 PM – Book work and Have fun!
12:32 PM – What do we need? Talent and passion. Means to a recording studio, either through renting time at a local studio or building one’s own at home. A great demo. Listen to lots of demos. What do I like? What don’t I like. Write down impressions both ways. But, again, we have to be able to pull off what’s on our demo. A web site. Make sure my own personality shines through the site. We needs to be able to do different reads and characters. Lots of ideas. Don’t be afraid to add something to the copy, especially in animation. Versitility.
12:36 PM – Take a chance and put yourself out there. Risks are risks. There can be a huge payoff, and there can a huge downside. Being willing to look stupid. Never take “no” for an answer, take it for what it is “Not right now, maybe later.”
12:37 PM – Stay organized and keep business focused.
12:39 PM – What kind of work is available? Anything that has a voice? Talking toys. Video games. Internet flash presentations. Web sites. Every script has a character in it. See the characters. Find the characters. Our reads will improve. What reads do I need? Conversational, which is most popular right now. Hard Sell. Medium sell. Soft sell. Sultry (but to pull it off you have to feel sexy). Flat (throwing it away, kind of “less is more.”) Monotone which is harder that it seems. Straight. Energetic. Narrative (telling a story). Character (which is all over the place).
12:43 PM – Who am I (the character I’m playing)? Define with as much detail as possible, scanning for clues in the script. What am I talking to? Acting is reacting (re-acting). Back story? Motivation? Location and what’s happening? Each character is another personality, become that personality completely. There is no wrong way to do a character. The client might like it or not, but go with what seems right.
12:47 PM – Record practices. Listen back. It’s vitally important to be able to self-direct and learn. Listen for human qualities. Listen for what sounds “real” now fake. Learn to be comfortable with what we sound like. Stay focused.
12:49 PM – This is a tough business. You might not make it. But, there are a billion commercials every day (world wide) and James Earl Jones can’t voice them all. So, persist. Focus on realistic goals, not on getting rich. Staying power is vital. Have fun. Have faith in yourself. Be interesting and interested. Never stop learning. Tenacity is vital. Stop thinking about it. Do all the homework, but when you’re in front of the mike let it go and just let things come out.
The balance was questions and answers. Debbie talked about how she got started and her life-long passion for acting, the blossoming market of podcasts, suggestions for folks who are having a hard time landing work, taking further private coaching, focus on specific areas of work like commericals as you get started, how to find a good coach for training, how to learn computer audio editing, Debbie mentions that she’ll be starting an on-line course on January 9, 2007.
Away from the microphone
Joe Cipriano’s latest blog post gives us a glimpse into what he calls The Perfect Weekend. Enjoy, it’s a very pleasant read.
You have to see this to believe it
Over at the American Small Business blog, there’s a photo you just have to see to believe; part of a publicity stunt pulled off by KFC. No, this post doesn’t have anything to do with voiceover, but there’s a lesson here about publicity stunts that’s worth taking to heart of you decided to try one.
The Blogosphere belongs to…
The Blogosphere. (Note: this post has nothing directly to do with voiceover work.)
My thanks to The Instapundit for reminding me with one of his posts today, to check out Terry Heaton’s PoMo Blog; a site I’ve visited from time to time.
Terry writes about the ownership of the blogosphere in this insightful post. Well worth your time, especially if you have any interest in reading or writing blogs.
Excellent thoughts about voiceover work
With my thanks to Karen Commins (for linking to an excellent article on her blog), you’ll find some tremendously valuable thoughts posted on Adam Creighton’s voiceover blog about the work of acting, including voice acting.
I’ve added Adam’s Ramblings blog to my list of voiceover blogs in my attempt to compile as complete a list as possible of voiceover blogs.
The Voice Cat blog
For some time now, one of the best blogs to visit as a voiceover talent has been Vox Daily, hosted by Voices.com. Now, the team there has added a new blog that features Marc Cashman. This blog is called Ask the Voice Cat it’s focus is on providing guidance and assistance to people who are new to the voiceover business.
Even if you’ve been doing voiceovers for some time, there are sure to be valuable pieces of advice here and there. One example would be this post. Sometimes the truth hurts, but it’s a good kind of hurt.
A great post at the Nice Blog
I’ve just finished reading this exceptional post at the Nice Blog. I think this might be one of the most interesting things I’ve seen in a long time.
No doubt about it, Americans love to win. We also hate to lose – witness the desolate despair of the losing team’s city. So when a group of researchers at Emory University in Atlanta conducted a gaming experiment, they expected to see the strongest reactions occur when participants experienced either the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. To their surprise, they discovered that players experienced the strongest response when everyone won – when the competitors cooperated.
Read the whole thing. After you do, tell me how you see this information applying to the world of voiceover. Comments are open.
Bob blogging by Ralph
My friend Ralph Hass, who does voiceover work for the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres, blogs about voiceover here. Recently he was nice enough to link back to me here, and then wrote a really cool riff about all the guys named Bob with whom he’s spoken recently. Read it here.
And on a somewhat related subject, several years ago I was given The Bob Book as a gift. If you are or love a Bob, you might want to think about picking up a copy. It’s a bunch of fun. And as the author points out, only someone not name Bob could write The Bob Book.
Winning the battle against comment spam
If you blog, you probably know that comment spam has become as much of a plague as email spam. As I’ve noted previously, Akismet has been a great tool in this battle; so much so that I’ve changed my comment policy to allow comments without moderation.
Lorelle VanFossen has written an excellent blog post on this subject that is well worth a few moments of your time, even if you don’t blog.
The value of good writing
Whether you blog (about any subject), use emails for marketing, send out email newsletters or just have your own website you’ll find a treasure trove of good ideas from Susanna Opper through her own email newsletters. See past issues here. After you’ve read them, sign up to get her new issues here.
You can also hear an interview with Susanna here.
Either way, you’re going to learn a lot about how to write your marketing emails and web sites (including your blog) much more effectively.
My thanks to my friend Mary McKitrick for alerting me to this wonderful resource. Mary, by the way, blogs about her voiceover work, here.
Visit your local Apple store and hear Joe (updated)
Joe Cipriano’s voice is being featured in your local Apple store. He has the whole story in his latest post to his blog. And if you’d like to see the video seminar Joe talks about, click here. (PLEASE NOTE these details from Joe’s blog: “You’ll need Quicktime and you’ll be asked to sign up. This is for demographic studies, the seminar is FREE.”)
UPDATE: There’s also a very nice profile of Joe Cip on the Apple website, here. Enjoy!
Unintended consequences
Finding work is the real work of the voiceover professional. We’ve discussed this truth a number of times and in a number of different ways here.
While this story from Dave Young isn’t about voiceover, the lesson is one we need to heed. Whether it’s pulling off some kind of publicity stunt or just sending out emails, if you don’t have your web site in order, you have no idea how much your marketing efforts are costing you.
A very nice plug
Brian Haymond is a very talented voiceover guy who also lives here in Charlotte, NC. He recently wrote some very nice things about me and this blog. If you’d like to read them, click here.