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Career Advice

Equipment wants, Equipment needs

Career Advice, General, Getting started in Voiceover, People

I hope you make a regular practice of visiting Kara Edwards voiceover blog. There’s much worth reading there, not only the new things she writes, but in the archives as well. Sometimes whimsical. Sometimes very practical. Always worthwhile.

Her latest post offers some very solid advice about how to manage the purchases of equipment, either first time or upgrading what you already have, for your studio. I’d only add that the same kind of thinking needs to be applied to training, seminars, conferences and demo production. It’s not possible to do everything all at once. If you try, you’ll

sink out of sight so fast no one will notice.

I’m going to put Kara’s list suggestion into practice immediately.

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Digidesign 002 for sale (updated)

Career Advice, General, People, Tools

My friend Brian Haymond is selling his older Pro Tools set-up as he’s upgrading his system to a more current model. This is your opportunity to pick up a truly superb system, including the control surface mixer for a truly amazingly low price. (You’ll see what I mean when you click through to his site on the link above.)
Here’s a photo from his blog, so you can see just how clean this system truly is.

Update: Brian has sold this unit on eBay!

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Acting for Advertising

Career Advice, General, Getting started in Voiceover, People, Tools

Voice acting, while it is acting, has a different palette than acting for stage or film. This is one of the key things I learned through my studies with Nancy Wolfson. Now, thanks to the site that Nancy and Anna Vocino have launched jointly called Break Into Voice Over, you can purchase MP3 audio files with much of the key information Nancy teaches in her private lessons, at a fraction of the price of just one of those private lessons.

Looking at the site this evening, I see that there’s a new teleseminar for which you can sign up that will be held on Wednesday, November 14th at 6:00 PM Pacific (9:00 PM Eastern). And the previous teleseminars are all linked for purchase right on the main page. There is a ton of solid, valuable, actionable information there. Highly recommended.

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Standing out

Career Advice, General, Getting started in Voiceover

There are thousand and thousands of people with a shingle out these days proclaiming themselves as voiceover artists. To be charitable, there is a range of professionalism, experience and quality among those multiplied thousands. Obviously, not everyone can be the best there is. Indeed, only one person can occupy that position in any given category or subcategory. To be successful, you don’t have to be the best, but you do need to meet certain standards both from a performance and from a technical standpoint.

SaVoa is an effort to uphold professional standards among voiceover artists. Read their FAQ. Look through their published standards. Get some background information. If you like what you see, think about joining.

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Internet Marketing Plan from Voices.com

Career Advice, General, Getting started in Voiceover, Tools

One of the things I like about the folks who run Voices.com is that they are always working to raise the entire voiceover industry to a higher level. In particular, they prepare tools for folks who are relatively new to the world of voiceover (both those who wish to be voice talent as well as those looking for a voice) to offer guidance about how to move forward.

Their latest offering is called the Internet Marketing Plan for Voice Actors and is available as a PDF file on their site. While it’s not perfect (there were a few typos, for example), this ebook will help you think more clearly about how to move forward with your own online marketing.

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How to talk good

Career Advice, General, Getting started in Voiceover, Tools

What does the director mean when he or she says “read it like you’re talking to one person”? Steve Matthews blog is an excellent source for cogent insights into the voiceover world. His recent post about Casual Familiarity is an excellent example, helping you understand the answer to this question.

Good thoughts, Steve. Thanks for the insight.

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Study opportunities on the West Coast

Career Advice, General, Getting started in Voiceover, People

Pat Fraley is one of my favorite voiceover teachers. He knows how to pack an amazing amount of valuable information in just a few hours of instruction time over a weekend, information you can put to use right away…whatever level of professional development at which you’re operating. Pat is best known for his amazing animation and character voiceover work and on December 1 you have an opportunity to study character voice skills with Pat at Buzzy’s Recording Studio in Los Angeles. You’ll find contact details for Pat on his site. Send him an email using the link there and he’ll send you everything you need to know to sign up for this class.

Still on the West Coast but a bit further north another gifted talent and teacher, Deb Monro, is getting ready to hold a weekend of workshops in Vancouver. The dates of November 24 and 25. Prices and specifics are in Deb’s website.

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In Austin

Career Advice, General, People, Tools

For the weekend I’m in Austin, TX for a couple of very cool reasons. First, my oldest son Eric and I are going to attend the annual reunion of the Wizard Academy. It will be great to see Roy, Pennie and no doubt a bunch of other old friends Saturday all day and Sunday morning.

And while I’m here, a few voiceover friends from around Texas are going to join Eric and me for a Texas BBQ dinner late Saturday evening. I’ll post a photo or 2 and a little who and what all took place here as soon as I can.

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What is Financial Core?

Career Advice, General, Getting started in Voiceover

There is a great deal of confusion about the term Financial Core. Lots of folks are under the impression it’s a special form of union membership (in the case of us in the voiceover business in the USA that would be AFTRA and SAG) that allows one to work both union and non-union. This is simply not true. Financial Core is more correctly termed dues-paying non-member. Emphasis on the “non” part of non-member.

For a thorough explanation, I’ve never seen a better article that this one about financial core on the BizParents Foundation site. And my thanks to my friend Connie Terwilliger for posting a link to this article on the VO-BB.

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Intensive study opportunity in San Diego

Career Advice, General, Getting started in Voiceover

James Alburger and Penny Abshire are hosting a 3-Day Intensive Workshop produced through their website, VoiceActing.com. Full details and registration information is on their site. Here are just a few of the elements to be covered in these three days.

    • Single Voice Intensive Workout
      “Tell me, Don’t Sell me”! The Art of a Conversational Read
      Dialogue Intensive Workout
      Mastering Techniques for Effective Self-Direction
      Audition Tips and Tricks
      Microphone Techniques
      Intensive sessions on Creating and Developing Believable Core Characters
      Finding Unique Copy for Your Demo
      Designing Your Voiceover Career Plan
      Mastering the “cold” read
      “Down and dirty,” honest demo evaluations
      How to negotiate your fees and get the $$ you’re worth
      Review of the Alburger & Abshire 7 Core Elements of Performance
  •        How to Record and Submit Auditions On-Line

Again, you’ll find full details and registration information on their site.

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Speak up or keep quiet?

Career Advice, General, People

As a general rule, when you’ve been hired as the voice for a project, keep your opinions to yourself. If you’ve been working in voiceover for any length of time, you probably already understand the wisdom of this advice. You see, you’ve been hired to tell the story the way you’re directed. Doing a good job following direction is key to getting hired again. Because being good at following direction will help you stick in the minds of the director and producer with whom you’re working.

But, as my friend Mary McKitrick points out on her blog, there are times when it’s important to go ahead and speak up. Knowing when and what to say is the tricky part, of course.

I have, at times, offered a thought or opinion while in the booth. Most often this has happened when there’s a discussion taking place about some specific bit of copy. As an example, recently I was recording a project in which a given word was used three times in a single paragraph. No one noticed the redundancy until we were in the session. While the writer and producer were talking about alternative language, I asked if it would be OK to make a suggestion for an alternative phrase. I was given permission, offered my suggestion and a variant of it was ultimately used.

It’s vitally important to be polite in these situations. And if you wonder whether to say anything, most of the time (to quote some of my Mom’s advice) it would be better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

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One-Stop Resource for Voiceover

Career Advice, General, Getting started in Voiceover

I hope this blog serves as a resource for you as you work on being or finding a professional voice. But you should know there are lots of other places on the Internet with valuable and useful information.

One of them, which has been nice enough to post one of my pieces some weeks ago, is Voice Over Xtra. I subscribed to the Voice Over Xtra site months ago. I hope you’ll join me there.

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