General

My friends Dave DeAndrea and Peter O’Connell have also blogged about their experiences this weekend in New York.

Update: Dave Courvoisier has posted his thoughts and photos, too. Dave’s also done a video of many of his photos.

Further Update: You can find John Florian’s wonderful write-up of the weekend’s events on VoiceOverXtra.

And yet some more, including this video montage of photos posted by Voice Talent Productions Erik Sheppard on YouTube.

Also don’t miss VoiceChasers coverage of the event.

(I’ll add additional links to this post as I find/learn about other blogs with photos and stories.)

As I mentioned in my post about the New York voiceover trip, one of the highlights was the marriage proposal of Erik Sheppard to Lindsay Reiss. You can read all about it on VoiceOverXtra.

This weekend I made a trip to New York City to meet up with a bunch of my voice actor friends from not only New York, but lots of other places in the world.

Dave Courvoisier and I shared a hotel room to keep our costs to a minimum. He arrived Friday evening.

Dave and I drove into Manhattan around lunch time on Saturday, where we caught up for lunch at the famous Katz’s Deli with Doug Turkel.

And Anthony Mendez.

We hung out at Katz’s as long as we could, but the place was so busy that we didn’t feel we could keep our table forever. Eventually we found a table at a Starbucks not too far away and spent a wonderful afternoon talking about everything from the joys of being a Dad to how to field strip an M-16. OK. I made up that last part, but we did cover a wide variety of topics, including some stuff about voiceover, of course.

We met up with Philip Banks, Elaine Singer, Moe Egan, Liz de Nesnera, Melissa Exelberth and Elisa Cañas and then made our way across the street to the Boca Chica for our dinner. Also joining us was John Florian of VoiceOverXtra.

Doug Turkel and Philip Banks, sitting across the table from me.

Just to my right were Liz de Nesnera and Elisa Cañas.

Across the table and next to Philip Banks was Melissa Exelberth.

Also with us at the dinner, but of whom I don’t have good photos were Peter O’Connell, Tony Impieri, and Lee Gordon.

Making a dramatic, late, appearance were DB Cooper …

… and her husband DeWitt Hardy, Mary McKitrick and Mandy Nelson. And and even later and more dramatic appearance was made by Pam Tierney. Oh, what a wonderful evening of fun, laughter and joyous conversation it was.

And things were just getting started, because after our dinner we walked across the street and down a block to the White Rabbit for the New York VO Mixer organized by Erik Sheppard and his Voice Talent Productions. With Erik was the lovely and talented Lindsay Reiss.

One of the more dramatic moments during the mixer was at the end of the “door prizes” when Erik announced that Lindsey had won a prize, then pulled out a small box, knelt to one knee and asked Lindsey to marry him. Fortunately for Erik she said “yes.”

It so much fun meeting Elaine Singer before the event, and seeing and spending time with Doug Turkel again for much of the day.

One of the highlights of the mixer for me was getting to meet Dave DeAndrea in person.

Dave Courvoisier taught Bob Bergen how to tweet from the floor of the event. (OK, not really. Tthey were talking, but about what I don’t know.)

Here’s a shot of the crowded floor from near one end.

Getting a hug from Pam Tierney.

And it was a great delight to see September Day Leach at the Mixer, too.

Aside from the music being so loud it was almost impossible to hold a conversation and the name tags being hard to read, it was a whole lot of fun. I’m very glad I went. Thank you Erik and congratulations Erik and Lindsay. May you have much happiness and a long life together.

Tracy Pattin presents part 2 of her video interview with voiceover artist Tasia Valenza.

With my thanks to my friend Eddie Eagle for posting the link on the VO-BB, here’s a video that takes you behind the scenes of the Disney show Prep & Landing.

Peter Dickson is a voice actor in the UK. He does a star turn in this BBC video.

My thanks to my friend and mentor Philip Banks for posting the video link on the VO-BB.

My friend Justin Barrett is the featured voice for this Brand Me Big demo video.

Nice work, Justin!

Mahmoud Taji has written some excellent thoughts on the whole question of pricing one’s voiceover services. Well worth your time today. Thanks for emailing me about this Taji.

My friend Connie Terwilliger has written a couple of thoughtful and thoughtprovoking blog posts in the last couple of days on the subject of auditions. One. Two. Take a few minutes to read. I think you’ll find they’re well worth the time.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 8:00 PM Eastern/5:00 PM Pacific , James and Penny are joined by the very talented Maxine Dunn for a free teleseminar on maximizing your voiceover business. Details and a link to the free registration are on the VoiceActing Academy blog.

My friends Mandy and Dan Nelson are featured in a very nice article in their local paper. What could be better than a love story that includes professional audio and voice work?

On NPR’s site you’ll find this treasure in both text and audio from Neil Gaiman, talking with David Sedaris and Martin Jarvis. My thanks to my friend Donna Postel for posting the link to this lovely piece on the VO-BB.

My friend Tracy Pattin blogs for VideoVoicebank and now publishes her first video voiceover interview, with Tasia Valenza.