Alex Torrenegra has posted on the official Voice123.com blog about some updates they’ve made to their service.
General
The business of voiceover
While looking through some of the posts on Dave Courvoisier’s newly relocated voiceover blog, I saw an excellent survey he’s compiled of a discussion that took place on the Yahoo! Voiceover list several days ago; a discussion on the benefits and pitfalls of various ways of organizing or incorporating one’s voiceover business. Rather than re-publish the whole thing myself, I suggest you visit Dave’s blog and read his long, but excellent and informative post.
(edited to add a link to the Yahoo! Voiceover list group.)
Bob Bergen is going to be in Boston (updated)
With thanks to my friends Greg Littlefield and Moe Egan, I’m delighted to let you know that Bob Bergen will be teaching a weekend workshop in Boston, April 12th and 13th, 2008. According to this post by Greg on the VO-BB, this event will be held at Dexter Media in in Allston, MA.
Update: I noticed today that Greg now has a registration page for this event on his site.
Networking for actors
My friend Tom Dheere is featured in an article on networking in Backstage Magazine that’s now available online. There’s a bunch of good information in this article. Here are a couple of my favorites…
…networking can be learned and practiced. It doesn’t require a special gene; you don’t even have to be especially outgoing. You just have to be sincere, proactive, and prepared. And a little creativity and a positive attitude can’t hurt.
And, my very favorite…
The simplest thing is just to be nice
It’s more than a little amazing what kind of benefits you can gain through simply being nice to people. Tom is among the many nice people I’ve met through the VO-BB in the last couple of years.
New digs for Dave
My friend Dave Courvoisier has moved his voiceover blog to Typepad. Dave, the new site looks excellent.
Another study opportunity in Florida
Randy Thomas and Peter Rofé are holding an all day workshop for professional voice talent on Saturday, April 12, 2008 at Unity Gain Studios in Fort Myers, FL. Further details can be found at the VO-BB or by contacting Caryn Clark.
Directing animation insights
Nancy Cartwright last year in Animation World Magazine published an interview with animation director Ginny McSwain, and it’s available online.
My thanks to Nancy Wolfson for passing along this link.
Update: While you’re there, check out all of Nancy’s columns.
Adding to the blogroll today
My friend Kitzie Stern has begun a voiceover blog. You may remember that I pointed out Kitzie’s new web site a couple of weeks ago. She just emailed me to say that she now has her voiceover blog up and running too. Thanks for the link, Kitzie and I look forward to reading what you have to say.
Fine tune your home studio
A great many of us who do voiceover work these days have a studio at home. It’s part of keeping up with the massive changes that have been sweeping through not only our world, but the culture as a whole. But, putting a computer, microphone and a few other pieces of audio gear in there does not automatically turn a bedroom into a professional studio. While you don’t necessarily have to hire a world class acoustician, it’s a good idea to know where some of the sonic challenges are in your room.
Which leads me to Hometracked, a fabulous blog aimed mainly at musicians; but there are many valuable lessons and suggestions for those of us who use our home studios for voiceover work. For example, I highly recommend (downloadable audio samples included) this excellent post that will show you some very interesting things about your studio’s sonic characteristics.
Overnight success?
A blogger I discovered not long ago, Jonathan Fields, pulls back the curtain on the mystery of overnight success. It’s well worth a few minutes of your time.
Microphone news
My friend Willie Edwards writes one of the more interesting corners of the Internet, especially if you’re interested in microphones. Be sure to check out his post today with a survey of some of the newest microphone releases from Marshall.
Mary, Mary…how does your garden grow?
My friend Mary McKitrick is often a source of inspiration to me. Why? Because while I’ve been a professional voice talent since 1983, she’s been doing this work for a much shorter amount of time, yet she demonstrates mature insights that far outstrip her experience.
Her recent post about networking is a perfect example. I especially enjoyed her gardening metaphors near the end of the post. Here is just a sample…
…any networking you do as a voice actor and business person is like creating a garden from bare soil – you don’t plant only one kind of plant, such that your garden will look great for a week when all the flowers are blooming, and then there’s nothing going on at all. You’re planting for the present and for the future – a variety of annuals with different blooming times, a variety of perennials and shrubs and even some trees. Aim for great diversity, so that there is always something going on in your garden. Although I can’t point to concrete ways that my business has benefited from all of my networking activities, I never know when some little seed I’ve planted at a party might take root and grow into something wonderful.
But, please, read the whole thing. It’s very much worth the few minutes of your time that it will take.
Play the games
DB Cooper gives voiceover folk a wonderful place to hang out with one another on the Internet, the VO-BB. She’s a brilliant voiceover talent in her own right. And an avid gamer. These last two come together in a fabulous piece you about voice acting for video games that can read on Vox Daily today.
My thanks to my friend Jeff Kafer for posting a note about this article today on the VO-BB.
Update: And if you’d like to know more about DB Cooper, check out my interview with her.
Audiobook podcasts well worth hearing
While thinking about audiobooks, I want to let you know about a couple of podcasts that Tracy Pattin has recorded and published, interviewing Dennis Kao with Hachette Audio (formerly Time Warner Audio).
The first podcast is here. The second podcast is here.
Good stuff, Tracy. Thank you for these excellent resources.
Major audiobook news
Amazon.com is buying Audible.com. You can find details about the story at the Voice Over Times site.
Marketing tension
In his latest article, Tom Asacker provides some thoughtful guidance on how to stay on track with your marketing as you navigate the rapidly shifting winds of our current business culture.
And while you’re at Tom’s site, check out the post from yesterday. For a number of years now, I’ve heard the expression “a brand is a promise.” Tom has a somewhat different point of view, that is well worth a few minutes of your time and more than a few minutes of reflection and thought after you read.
A study opportunity tonight
Nancy Wolfson and Anna Vocino are doing Acting for Advertising Part 4, a new teleseminar this evening, Wednesday, January 30, 2008. You don’t have to have heard any of the previous episodes in this series of teleseminars to appreciate and gain from tonight’s class. 15 minutes of Q and A will conclude the teleseminar.
Sign up for the teleseminar (or for the teleseminar and an MP3 of the entire event) at Nancy and Anna’s site Break Into Voice Over. (If you’re reading this after January 30th, you can still order the MP3 from the site.)
Finding and directing voice talent
As you might be able to tell from my posts about narrating the Bible, I really enjoy working on long-form narrations. In fact, there’s a special thrill that comes from reading highly technical material, getting the pronunciations right and finding ways to tell the story clearly and effectively. My favorite form in which to work is documentary narrations. There’s something about being involved in that marriage of cinematic and audio story-telling that is so satisfying.
My good friend Connie Terwilliger is one of the people I know who are tremendously talented in this area of work as well. A few years ago Connie wrote a superb article about how to cast and direct long form narration work that is now published online. This is really good stuff Connie.
A small gathering of NC voice talent
On Sunday, my son Eric and I drove up the highway a couple of hours to Raleigh, NC to visit with some good friends and do what we could to get Rowell Gormon’s voiceover blog back in operation. While we did get things working again, it wasn’t quite as smooth an operation as I hoped it would be. But, we did get him functioning again. (He’s written about that experience on his blog, in fact.)
While we were there in Raleigh, we managed to pull together a few of our voiceover friends for a pleasant dinner and conversation. Thanks to the photographic skills and quick thinking on the part of my friend Donovan Corneetz, there’s visual documentation of this trip. As you can see, Eric and I wore our “I Want You for the VO-BB” t-shirts.
Here’s the whole group.
From left to right, Donovan Corneetz, Rowell Gormon, me, my son Eric, Vance Elderkin and Brian Bowman.
We had a very nice visit together. It was great to catch up with Donovan, Rowell and Vance. And equally nice to meet Brian Bowman for the first time. We also started talking about doing another Carolina Voiceover get-together this coming summer, so as those plans come together I’ll be sure to write more in the coming months.
One major hurdle cleared
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I’m working a portion of just about every day, Monday through Saturday, on the largest project I’ll probably ever tackle: reading the entire Bible for eventual release as a podcast by Thomas Nelson Publishers. We’ve now finished the narration of the Old Testament and have, as of yesterday, also finished the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. We should have all of the narration completed before the end of next week. (When we’re done, it will have taken 4 and a half months to record the Old Testament and barely 2 weeks to record the New Testament.)
Once I have details about how this podcast will be distributed, I’ll be sure to post that information here.