Getting started in Voiceover

Pat Fraley just emailed me the following…

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Recently, I’ve been focusing on teaching critical voice over skills, which are not often available. That’s why I’m presenting the Master Comedy Performance Event, Saturday, April 5, in LA, with Candi Milo.

85% of all Animation and Radio Dialogue Spots are Comedy driven. All other voice over genres of advertising and entertainment call upon Comedic Skills to some degree or another. It is a critical skill, and there are many valuable truisms to Comedic Voice Over Performance, which can be effectively taught.

I’ll be teaching with the greatest and most successful performer in animation ever: Candi Milo.

Here’s a link to more information and a Free Lesson from Candi.

http://www.patfraley.com/CandiMilo/CandiMilo.html
To reserve a place in the event, just e-mail me at: patfraleyteaches@aol.com

Regards, Pat Fraley
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I’m sure this will be another great learning opportunity.

Tracy blogs at Voicebank.net’s VoiceRegistry Blog. I’ve linked to several of her posts because she’s had many excellent things to say, interviews, and insights. A few days ago we exchanged several emails and then visited together on the phone for a podcast. Just a bit of the interview is posted for you to read now, and tomorrow the podcast will be live.

Thank you for the delightful visit, Tracy. I look forward to our next connection.

More and more information is coming from the VOICE 2008 conference. Here is some information about the General Session presenters.

Friday Morning Keynote Speaker is Susan Berkley.
Susan Berkley is a top voice-over artist whose voice has sold millions of dollars worth of products and services on TV and radio commercials. She is the telephone voice of many Fortune 100 companies. Susan is CEO of Berkley Productions, Inc., a company that provides voice mastery training for aspiring voice artists, and well as performance coaching for business and sales professionals. She is the author of Speak to Influence – How to Unlock the Hidden Power of Your Voice. Visit www.greatvoice.com to learn more about this dynamic lady! Susan is a master marketer and a darn good voice coach!!

Keynote Speaker on Monday Morning is Pat Fraley.
Winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Voicey Awards in 2008, Patrick Fraley has created voices for more than 4,000 characters, placing him among the top ten performers of all time to be cast in animation. Pat teaches 700+ students a year in events, workshops, and seminars on various aspects of voiceover. His unique character voice curriculum is the only one accredited at the university level. He has taught voice for 35 years, is a member of the Voice and Speech Trainers of American and holds a Master’s of Fine Arts degree in Professional Acting from Cornell University.

Pat Fraley is the “Voiceover King” of working outside the box! During his special guest appearance at VOICE 2008, he will reveal his “Secret Dialect System” created for voiceover. You’ll be amazed at how Pat’s dialect secrets will change the way you work with your characters! All that and even more. . . Pat is one of the nicest people we know!
Learn more at www.patfraleyteaches.com

Keynote Speaker on Sunday is Marc Cashman.
Marc Cashman is one of the few voice-acting instructors in the U.S. who is on “both sides of the glass” as a Clio-winning Radio and TV commercial copywriter, producer, and casting director, and as a working voice actor. As a voice actor, he has been heard locally, regionally, nationally and internationally on radio, TV, film, documentaries, radio plays, video games and audio books. Marc has voiced thousands of commercials, dubbed foreign films, narrated dozens of audio books, and created the voices of many CD-Rom, online and video game characters. Oh, and did we mention. . . he’s a really funny guy! Find out why at www.cashmancommercials.com.

VOICE 2008 will be August 8th through the 11th, 2008 in Los Angeles. I hope I see you there.

My friend Dan Nachtrab emails in response to my post about Connie Terwilliger’s Self-Evaluation course. He sent me a link to a very interesting article that, at least on the surface, doesn’t seem to have much to do with voiceover work. But, think about these points…

* framing (how you present data is as important as the data itself)
* impact bias (overestimation of possible outcomes),
* confirmation bias (recognising only data that supports your hypothesis)
* loss aversion (we stand to gain more than we would lose, but our fear of loss prevents us)
* selective perception (seeing what you want to see),and
* rosy retrospection (integral to the repeated experience of family Christmas)

Mighty interesting stuff. Thank you for the link, Dan.

My friend Frank Frederick has written an excellent article on podcasting over at Voice Over Xtra. Lots of good ideas here. Thank you Frank, and thank you John Florian for your excellent site. If you haven’t signed up for Voice Over Xtra, why not do it today?

My friend Pat Fraley, one of the finest voiceover talents extant, is not only brilliant at doing voiceovers; he’s brilliant at teaching voiceover as well. Normally it costs a pretty hefty chunk of change to study with Pat, but he emails today to say “check out this page on my website.” So, I do. And what’s there? A series of free voiceover lessons. Yes, free.

Were I you, I’d visit soon. One of these days Pat may come to his senses and take the page down.

Pat Fraley is both a mentor and a friend, a tremendously talented man and a gifted teacher. I happily spent a couple thousand dollars to study with him for a weekend. That an investment has returned many thousands of dollars in work that I’ve booked based on the lessons learned that weekend in July of 2006.

On the VO-BB today, Pat posted a link to an audio file. It’s a 7 minute lesson on the skill of Voice Matching. It’s there for you to hear, download, load into your MP3 payer and profit from. My thanks to Pat for his generosity. My thanks also to DB Cooper for her wonderful service to the voiceover community as a whole, hosting and policing the VO-BB.

(edited to correct typo in header.)

My friend Frank Frederick has another excellent podcast at the Voice Over Experts site, this time offering guidance on how to target your marketing to the niche markets where you are most likely to find work.

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.

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.

Elaine Clark and Harlan Hogan are planning study weekend in Portland, OR and Sarasota, FL. The dates for Portland are April 12 and 13 and the dates for Sarasota are April 26 and 27, 2008. Elaine is teaching on Saturday. Harlan on Sunday. Sign up and find more information on Portland are on this page at Harlan Hogan’s site and for Sarasota on this page at Harlan Hogan’s site.

My thanks to Lee McCard for posting the Sarasota info on the VO-BB and to Bill Ballenberg for posting the Portland information on the VO-BB.