Career Advice

The 2004 International Radio Creative and Production Summit in Los Angeles was notable for a couple of things. It was the first time that Dick Orkin officially didn’t co-present the event with Dan O’Day. And it was the first time no live critiques of attendees work were done, what had been known at the Critique-A-Spot-A-Thon.

However, in spite of these elements that were missing, there were several excellent reasons to attend. Not least was the workshop on creating characters and the voices that go with them, presented by Patrick Fraley. It was excellent, and I say this even though I don’t do cartoon/animation voices. (Not professionally, anyway. However, I have been known to come up with a few goofy voices for my children while reading them stories.)

Let me put my thoughts about Pat Fraley this way: If you get a chance to take a class from him, do it. He will be presented a completely different seminar at this year’s Summit. It will be worth the price of admission. I’m sure of it. You might even want to buy one of Pat’s books or CDs.

I’ve previously mentioned how much I’ve learned about voice-overs from Dick Orkin.

That learning started with a bang, to say the least. It was August 1997. At the time I was Production Manager of WORD-FM in Pittsburgh, PA. My assistant was Darren Eliker, one of the most gifted actors and voice-over talents I’ve had the privilege to know and work with over the years. (Darren replaced me as Production Manager when I was promoted to Program Director in 1998 and he’s been winning awards, and more importantly, helping businesses grow ever since with his brilliant campaigns, voice-overs and directing.)

Back then I was a member of CompuServe, and hung out a fair amount in the Radio forum. In the late summer of 1996 one of the other members posted a note about what an excellent experience he had at the International Radio Creative and Production Summit. Back then Dan O’Day and Dick Orkin jointly presented the Summit.

Based on what I read, I determined that if I possibly could, I would attend the next one. Which leads us back to where we started, August of 1997. Our boss gave his blessing for both Darren and I to attend the Summit, so there we were in Los Angeles, CA.

On the first day, among the various presentations, was a group class on voice-over by Dick Orkin. But with 80 people there, Dick decided to limit his “hands on” work to just 8 of us.

In spite of my lesson from a few years previous, I was still paralyzed with fear about volunteering. Providentially, Dick didn’t ask for volunteers. He asked for those who do voice-overs to raise their hands. So, I did. And he picked me to be one of the 8. Which is where the three questions come from.

After giving us some dialog copy to read with one another, Dick offered these 3 questions as a way to quickly get to the point of our copy:

1. Where am I?
2. Who am I talking to?
3. What do I want from them?

Answer those three questions and you know the Setting, the Audience, and your Motivation.

You may be surprised that “Who am I?” isn’t one of the three questions. I was too. But, the answer to that question is either explicit or implicit in the copy.

When I remember to ask these three questions, I nearly always do a better job of auditioning. Which gets me more work. Because, as you already know, the key to getting work in voice-over is doing lots of auditions, and winning at least a few of them.

It was, I think, April of 1993. In the span of an hour and a half one afternoon, I learned a great deal about the voice-over craft and yet missed a wonderful opportunity at the same time. I was at the Gospel Music Association convention in Nashville, TN. Marice Tobias taught a seminar class that year. I mentioned this experience in passing previously, but in that post, I didn’t deal with the real heart of the matter.

You see the single most important thing I learned that day was the single thing. Huh?

Marice taught us that every good piece of broadcast ad copy has a single point at its heart. If we’re going to do an excellent job of reading a given piece of copy, we have to be able to understand what the heart of the spot is, and build our read around that. To put it another way, to tell the story, we have to know what the point of the story is.

When I’m reading over a piece of copy for an audition, I’ll ask myself, “What’s the point?” Even sarcastically sometimes. Because, the copy has to make one point, and only one point, if it’s going to work well.

So, what do I do if the copy isn’t written well? Maybe makes two or three points? Even more?

A couple of things. Try to synthesize the multiple points into a single “heart-of-the-dog” message, if at all possible. And, commit myself to do the most excellent job possible, no matter what.

Several years ago I heard an interview with the Concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on WFMT in Chicago. The discussion turned to the matter of guest conductors, and how some of them were not quite a good as others. Which led to a question about whether a bad conductor could make the orchestra play poorly. The answer? “No, there’s a level below which we will not play. We’re the Chicago Symphony Orchestra!”

I may not be the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, but I know that I have to have that attitude about my work.

So, what was the missed opportunity? Marice asked for 5 volunteers from the audience to read copy. My heart burned within me to raise my hand, but I didn’t. I chickened out. Because I felt too shy, too fearful that I would make a fool of myself in front of everyone. The only good thing that came out of that experience was the internal commitment that when I’m part of such a learning opportunity in the future, I would never allow my fears to keep me from getting into the thick of things again. A commitment I’ve kept. And that has made such a difference.