The special Faffcon rate for the Hyatt Place hotel in Portland, OR where Faffcon is being held will no longer be available after the 17th of this month. I do hope you’ll plan to join me and many of your fellow working voiceover professionals, September 11 and 12, 2010, for the unconference called Faffcon.
The quote for today comes from my manager and friend, Stacey Stahl:
You are more likely to create success when you are relaxed about a result than when you are uptight about it.
— Alan Cohen
I’m sorry for the long silence. Moving is for the birds. Actually, there are birds who are upset with me now for saying such a thing. In any case, I have a bunch of photos and thoughts about this year’s Dan O’Day “International Radio Creative and Production Summit” to share with you. Soon. I promise. Thanks for your patience.
(Update: fixed typo in heading. Thanks Dan.)
Seth Godin blogs today about being a bullfrog in a china shop. Quite a difference between a bull and a bullfrog, huh?
Faffcon, the unconference (yes, I said UNconference) for voiceover pros still has room for you. And if you book your hotel room by Monday, you can still get the special unconference rate.
I do so hope you can be there. And as you can tell from the video, I most certainly don’t belong in front of a camera; but I just had to take part helping to publicize this event.
My friend Doug Medlock voices this trailer. (NOTE: cartoon violence and gore, and quite a bit of it.)
Boogie Trailer from Doug Medlock on Vimeo.
Kevin Delaney has some thoughts about voice acting and video games that’s well worth a look.
Kristine Oller has created The Actor’s Library as a resource for smart actors (including voice actors) who are serious about career success. One of the great benefits of joining The Actor’s Library is that you get dozens of Coffee Dates that Kristine has recorded with talented people from all across the performing spectrum, including me, as part of the deal.
However, the Coffee Dates can now be purchased separately, too, on this page.
There haven’t been any posts here for a few days, not because I haven’t had anything to say but because my life has been so full that I quite literally haven’t been able to squeeze out a few minutes to post something. I do regret leaving you hanging, but the process of selling our house and moving back into an older house we’ve owned for years has turned out to be a much more complicated and involved process than I imagined. I will get back to posting very soon.
I’m taking part in my 14th International Radio and Creative Production Summit this weekend, so there will be reports and photos from that experience coming your way, soon. Meanwhile, thank you for your patience.
If you’ve seen Toy Story 3 you know that one of the most fun moments takes place when Buzz Lightyear get’s set into “Spanish mode.” This interview with Javier Fernadez-Peña was done by Voice123.com, the site that played a role in his casting as “Spanish Buzz.”
Fascinating story.
On his blog today, Scott Brick talks about his two great passions: comic books and audiobooks.
On her blog today, my friend Pam Tierney provides a great follow-up to Maxine Dunn‘s excellent article on cold calling from the other day. Now that you know how to cold call, Pam provides you with one really powerful reason why.
Do you have friends, colleagues and mentors who will tell you the unvarnished truth when you need it? My friend Rowell Gormon blogs about Questions and Answers and it was his thoughts from this weekend prompted this post.
Let’s think about voiceover coaches for a moment. If I ask Nancy Wolfson what she thinks about an audition or a demo, she doesn’t always tell me what I want to hear, but she does always give me an honest answer. I can say exactly the same thing about Marice Tobias. Both of these ladies have taught me a great deal, but the most valuable thing they’ve done is tell me the truth when I need it. If you can’t say that about your voiceover coach, maybe it’s time to re-think things?
Though he’s not been a coach, Dan O’Day has been both a friend and teacher for nearly 15 years. Dan’s another person who unflinchingly tells the truth when I need to hear it.
I have had several mentors who have guided my path through the years, stretching back to the first years of my journey in the early 80s when Armand Ciabattari and Todd Beezley took me under their respective wings. Chuck Wagner and Chuck Gratner both hired me to work for them. Both taught me a great deal. They were, without question, the two best bosses I ever had, at least until I went to work for myself last year. In more recent years, Philip Banks has generously guided me in important ways, in spite of the fact that I annoy him no end now and then.
And there are quite literally too many friends to list them all here, but Rowell and Dan Nachtrab and Janet Ault and Peter O’Connell and Pam Tierney and Frank Frederick and Kara Edwards and (oh boy I really can’t list them all, there are so many more) have each contributed to my life and work in significant ways.
In the days when I was first getting started in voiceover, friendships sprang up in the waiting rooms in casting offices and talent agencies and recording studios. Now, most of my work (like most of yours very likely) takes place in my studio at home. Which is why the VO-BB is such an exceptionally important place for me, the place where I met all but a small handful of my voiceover friends. My favorite spot on the Internet. The place where I know I can find answers, more than a little laughter and a few tears and a lot of love and mutual respect.
You don’t have to join the VO-BB, but I hope you will make sure you don’t allow yourself to get too isolated. We all need people who will tell us the truth.
A couple of days ago I had just finished a phone patch session for a television commercial (a hospital in Michigan), said thank you to everyone on the line (2 guys with the production studio and 3 ladies from the hospital), hung up the phone and clicked over to my audio software to get the file saved in the requested format. Initially everything seemed fine, just like always. But then I noticed an odd bit of distortion that seemed to be part of one small bit of the file.
Only, it wasn’t one small bit of the file. In fact, the piece that sounded normal when I first started listening was one of only 3 small sections that were clean. About three-quarters of the audio was unlistenable, filled with horrible, ugly digital distortion. Disaster. (This kind of thing had only happened to me once before about 8 years ago when my workstation had mysteriously dropped out of record a few minutes into a corporate narration session. That was a phone patch, too.)
What did I do?
Well, first I called my agents in Pittsburgh through whom the commercial had been booked to let them know what happened. They sent off a quick email to let the main producer know about the problem. Then, a few minutes later when no reply had come, I called back in to the studio to let them know what had happened. Everyone was very glad I had called back right away and thankfully they all had time to re-record, as soon as they finished their current session. 10 minutes later, I’m back on the phone with them. We record a few more takes. Everyone is happy and this time before I hung up the phone I double-checked to make absolutely sure everything is recorded cleanly. It is!
The moral of this story? One, don’t leave your workstation running for too many days in a row with giving it a chance to cool down for a bit. Two, if the worst happens and you don’t have a clean recording of something, let everyone know right away. We all make mistakes now and then. People will understand. But, any attempt to cover up or “fix” things is going to make for a bigger disaster than whatever the original problem was. Three, tell the truth. Own up to the problem and make it right. It’s the only way to truly recover.
My friend Maxine Dunn has written a brilliant piece on cold calling and voiceover that was originally only available to her newsletter subscribers, but has now been published on VoiceOverXtra. If you’d like to subscribe to her newsletter (something I highly recommend you do) click through and sign up via the link on her site.
My friend Donovan Corneetz is featured as the main voice of this television commercial.
Mighty nice work, Donovan!
My friend Dan Roberts is featured as the second of the pair of dice talking in this commercial.
Nice work, Dan.
What’s Faffcon?
Well, all the details are on the site in the “what” section, but so you don’t have to click through it’s an unconference for voiceover professionals that’s taking place the second weekend in September in Portland, OR. As of today, there are 2 weeks left to the early bird registration discount. I hope you’ll check out details at the Faffcon site and if you are a working professional voiceover talent that you’ll make plans to join us.
The lab opened a couple of weeks ago and while I couldn’t be there, my friend Tracy Pattin was on behalf of Voicebank.net. Here’s the video she produced from the event.
You can read more about this video and the event at the Voicebank.net blog.
