Life Magazine has a photo gallery of famous voice actors from Mel Blanc to Nancy Cartwright and back again. My thanks to Stephanie Ciccarelli for tweeting and blogging the link.
Epic Voice Actors in Life
General
The Voice Match Masters Event
Pat Fraley is holding an ADR/Voice Match/Looping event on Saturday, September 26, 2009 in Los Angeles. Casting Director Barbara Harris will join Pat for the one day event that is sure to sell out very quickly. All the details are on Pat’s site.
More political ads means more voiceover work
With my thanks to my friend Jane Ingalls for sending me the link, take a look at this fascinating article in the Washington Post about Changing Targets Media, a new company that aims to ad much more precision to the process of buying political ads.
Voice acting for advertising
For most of 2007 I studied voice acting with Nancy Wolfson. While not everyone has the same experience, I loved everything about working with Nancy, even the times when she was hard on me; because I could tell I was getting better. How?
In that one year my voiceover income went up by over 40 percent. Let me put that into context for you. For almost 10 years in a row my voiceover income was enough to live on and support my family. Then in one year, I started booking bigger jobs and better paying jobs. More of both. Enough to raise my voiceover income by more than 40 percent.
As a former agent and casting director, Nancy’s sole goal as a voiceover coach is helping the performer book the audition.
One of the methods she teaches is identifying the VO character as either “referencer” or “expositor.” It’s a completely different way of looking at voiceover performance.
Her one-to-one coaching is very expensive. But now you can download a nearly 3-hour audio seminar of Nancy teaching and demonstrating her revolutionary approach.
I think you’ll also be intrigued by her explanation of the difference between acting for theatre and acting for advertising.
Getting out there and networking?
I received an message today asking for some thoughts about networking and getting “out there” in voiceover work. Here are my thoughts, distilled into a couple of paragraphs.
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Honestly I really don’t network. I know it may look like I do, but all I’m doing is making friends. Sometimes that’s online, sometimes it’s in person. Just make friends and don’t worry about whether you’re doing the “networking” thing.
As for getting out there, all I’ve done is take the opportunities that I’ve found. Not even all of them. I’ve missed some important ones along the way, but those that I have taken have been done to the best of my ability.
The perspectives that have served me best are:
1. Voiceover work is a lot like farming. (I grew up on a farm in Minnesota.) You have to plant, tend and harvest. One (harvesting) follows the other (planting), but usually not immediately. It takes a lot of time, patience and effort to build a successful voiceover business.
2. I’m not really in the voiceover business. I’m in the problem-solving business. Most of the time the problems I solve have to do with my providing a voice for someone else, but not always. And it’s those “not always” situations that can make all the difference.
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I hope there’s something here you can find useful.
Marketing advice from one of my favorite people
My friend Janet Ault is one of the brightest marketing minds I’ve ever encountered. Take a few minutes to read her excellent article on marketing at VoiceOverXtra. Great stuff, Janet!
Quote of the day
From my friend and manager Stacey Stahl comes this fabulous quote today.
“The first thing is to love your sport. Never do it to please someone else. It has to be yours.”
— Peggy Fleming
I don’t think I need to spell out the connection to voice acting for you do I?
Jim Cummings is quite the characters
Yes, I meant to write the title that way. When you click through to this article about voice actor Jim Cummings in the Ventura County Star, you’ll see why. My thanks to my friend Nancy Wolfson for emailing me the link this morning.
Vocal Health podcasts
Bettye Zoller has done a series of podcasts on vocal health. Number 10 has just been posed at VoiceOverXtra. Links to the previous 9 entries are on that page as well.
Take a listen to my friend Mandy
Mandy Nelson is a wonderfully talented voiceover performer. Exhibit A is the video below.
Nice work, Mandy. (edited to add link to Mandy’s site)
Vote for the best of the "worst" at the Voicebank blog
Tracy Pattin collected a bunch of “worst voiceover experience stories” from voice actors over the last several weeks. You now get to pick your favorite among them. The list of the 10 finalists. And the place to click through to vote. Oh, and since several of my friends are finalists, I can’t give you any hints about for whom to vote.
VOICE 2010
According to the official site VOICE 2010, you can save $150 with Early-Bird Registration through the 31th of December 2009.
(edited to fix typo)
New opportunities for voiceover work
With thanks to my friend Rowell Gormon who posted the link on the VO-BB, check out the fascinating new technology coming soon to a magazine near you.
Today’s quote
From my manager and friend Stacey Stahl comes this gem today.
To avoid criticism say nothing, be nothing, do nothing.
      — Elbert Hubbard
I can’t say I’ve never won an award anymore
For the last few months over at Voiceover Universe, Marla Kirban has been sponsoring the VoiceOver Shuffle competition. There were a total of four rounds of competition. Female commercial voice, Male commercial voice, Promo voice (male or female) and Narration voice (male or female). I just learned this week that I won the Narration round! I don’t know how long the audio is going to be live, but for the time being (if you wish) you can hear award announcement on the Voice Wars page at Voiceover Universe.
The Demo World Masters Event
Pat Fraley emails today with news about The Demo World Masters Event to be held Saturday, September 12, 2009 in Los Angeles. Click through the link for all the details. This is going to sell out fast, so if you like what you see, you might want to act quickly.
Live video chat on self-employment
Kevin Delaney is hosting a live video chat on Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 4:00 PM Pacific / 7:00 PM Eastern. The topic will be self-employment. Details are on Kevin’s blog.
The Voice Over Mistake Chart
Edge Studio has many resources for voice actors. One of the best is their on-going and ever growing Voice Over Mistake Chart.
Superb insights about copyright
With my thanks to Nancy Wolfson for emailing the link this morning, check out the superb blog post “Your Copyright Questions Answered” by Amy Everhart, Amy is a trademark, copyright and entertainment attorney.
Added to the blogroll today
Michael Lenz is blogging about voiceover at Paid to Talk – A Journey into Voice Acting. I ran across his blog today thanks to a tweet from my friend Stephanie Ciccarelli of Voices.com. You might want to take a moment to check out his post You Got a Job!
