At least according to my friend Peter O’Connell (the mild-mannered secret identify of the super hero known around the world as AudiO’Connell), who blogs with great clarity and insight about his marketing efforts to promote his free e-book for beginners in the voiceover business, The Voice Over Entrance Exam.
From scouting to voiceover, be prepared are words to live by as Kara Edwards demonstrates with great clarity in her blog post today about Lightning and The Zap Cap.
My friend Bryan Cox has published a white paper for voice actors. The bold promise is that his free paper (donation requested by not required) will point you to making 1000 plus per month in your local market.
It takes a certain kind of bent sense of humor to get my friend Philip Banks. Here’s seeing if you have the sort of bent I mean.
Hilarious, Mr. Banks. Totally! And I’ll say again, it was ever so much fun seeing you again this weekend.
VOX 2009 wraps up each year with a lovely British breakfast buffet. I called a halt to my evening the night before just after midnight, which was long before the festivities ended. But, given my rather jet-lagged state I thought it best not to try to push things too late. I’m very glad I did because I was able to rise this morning and head down to the breakfast nice and early. The main benefit of which is that when I arrived, I was invited to sit at the largest table in the room with a number of other early risers for a very pleasant chat about all kinds of things including many new insights into the voiceover business in the UK. Then as the morning wore on, I kept re-filled my cup of tea while those at the table left and were replaced by other faces.
Toward the end of the morning I had the pleasant company of DB Cooper, Philip Banks and Sarah Parnell.
Sarah was facing a long journey home to the South of England involving 4 trains and a bus transfer so since I had to drive almost that far myself to get to my hotel this evening I offered to give her a lift, which she reluctantly accepted. Dropping her off at her home added only an extra hour to my driving today, which might be a lot of UK standards; but didn’t phase me at all. And provided time for a very pleasant chat in the bargain.
It’s been a really delightful trip. At least a few of the producers I met over the weekend indicated that they were looking for new voices from the States, so that’s a promising sign.
(edited to fix typo)
Kristine Oller is a brilliant organization consultant. She publishes a newsletter every few months that are chock full of good information. There’s some excellent counsel in her last edition on bringing order to a cluttered workspace.
J.S. Gilbert has extensive experience as a voice for video games along with lots of other major league voiceover work. He’s written a couple of articles on video game voice work for VoiceOverXtra. Part 1 is The Floppy Years to Today’s Exploding Voice-Over Games Genre. Part 2 is A Playbook for Winning Jobs. Enjoy.
What a wonderful day I’ve had today. Spent most of it in the studio with my friend Rowell Gormon and then visited with Rowell and two other good friends, Donovan Corneetz and Adam Creighton over dinner. Sadly I neglected to bring my camera to document the day (thought about it 60 miles too late) but can’t help at least leaving links and a few thoughts here.
Donovan and Adam are two of the brightest marketing minds I know, so I always learn something valuable when I interact with them. This was my first time to meet Adam in person. Donovan and I have spent many excellent hours together. Some of them in North Carolina where we both live. Some in Los Angeles and Las Vegas at various conventions and seminars. And Rowell is a guy who has forgotten more about acting and voiceover than I’m ever likely to learn.
To top it off, as I drove back to Charlotte in the evening, I was able to listen to a truly fabulous tele-seminar led by Dan O’Day on the subject of getting things done. This was a bonus class added to the month long series of tele-seminars Harlan Hogan and Dan O’Day are holding this month. (The class is closed now.) The focus of this bonus session was on Getting Things Done. This tele-class was so useful and valuable I truly cannot imagine how my time could have been better spent. It was, without a doubt, the most valuable set of things I’ve ever learned from Dan O’Day and given that he’s been part of 13 years of my professional growth and development, that’s saying a lot. If you ever get a chance to hear Dan speak on this subject, don’t missing it. Seriously.
Maybe if Dan gets enough email, he could be persuaded to make the MP3 of this tele-class available for purchase? I don’t know. But, if he does, grab it. Yes, it’s that good. I’m going to listen to the whole thing again tomorrow and since I won’t be driving this time I’ll be able to take notes. There will be lots of them.
My friend Frank Frederick provides the voiceover for the video about the Electric Hummer H3. Very nice work, Frank. And a mighty cool vehicle.
Deborah Puette writes in Back Stage about working on her very first voiceover demo, something she’s thought about many times over the years, but never did. It’s an excellent article that will help you understand at least one view of how this process works.
My thanks to my friend Dave Houston who blogged about this article, thus leading me to it.
That’s what my friend Dave Courvoisier has found. PRNDL. If you drive an automatic transmission car you’ll recognize that sequence of letters of course, but Dave has found another application for them. Good stuff, Dave. Thank you.
Pat Fraley will be in Atlanta, GA on Sunday, May 31, 2009 for a special one-day voiceover training event called “The Everything They Expect You To Know, but Nobody Teaches” event.
Pat has created a free first lesson, which you can hear here.
[audio:https://bobsouer.com/pix/PatFraley_EverythingOverview.mp3]This event is being held at Doppler Studios in Atlanta. Full details including registration information can be found at this page of Pat Fraley‘s web site.
Mahmoud Taji emails this morning with news that he’s posted the second half of his interview with Robert Lee, the narrator for the Mythbusters television show on his blog.
With thanks to Dan Hughes who posted this link in the Yahoo! Voiceover Group, this video features 2 legends from the days of classic radio drama.
Fred Foy was the announcer for the Lone Ranger radio show from 1945 until it ended, and later for the Dick Cavett Show. Barney Beck was the sound effects man for The Shadow and the radio version of Superman, and later Bob & Ray. They both appear in the video above in which Dan and his 11-year-old (at the time) daughter Karen appear.
On his voiceover blog, Mahmoud Taji has posted an interview with Robert Lee, the narrator for the Discovery Channel program Mythbusters.
Be sure to hop over to the Voice Registry blog for part 2 of Tracy Pattin’s podcast with audiobook narrator superstar Scott Brick.
My friend John Taylor posts on his Voiceover Universe blog today a cautionary tale about an experience he had with his PayPal account. The long and short of John’s story is that there are risks to just about everything.
Marice Tobias who is both my voiceover coach and my friend will be a featured speaker at Promax this year. Marice will then conduct her traditional follow-up weekend incorporating the news and views expressed by producers, stations and networks at the Conference in this pivotal year of change.
The Promo challenge for performers is to continually distinguish the vast and varied demands of the read in all its subtleties and shifts.
Trailer is the most elusive discipline in VO, yet it’s growing in number and in diversity. The trailer read informs and influences all other aspects of VO and is an imperative skill for serious players.
With the expansion of Cable and the Internet, Narration is the ever-growing opportunity for performers to deepen their footprint and opportunities.
Creative teams are compact and fluid. Networking and recommendations, genre to genre, promos to shows, shows to networks are guided by social media as much as personal experience. The more chips you have on the table, the better.
The Post Promax Voiceover Intensive for Established Professionals. New York City – Saturday and Sunday June 20 & 21, 2009 from 10am-5pm each day. New attendees: $775. Returning: $650. Call Stacey Stahl at Creative Entertainment Management 503.246.2239 to bookmark your spot.
My friend Ross Bagley emails the following, which is too good a story not to pass along.
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Yesterday I got the perfect VO compliment. Let me explain.
As you well know, one of the interesting challenges in industrial VOs is describing in detail a procedure you’ve never seen, don’t understand and can’t visualize. The trick is to not let the audience, who is familiar with the subject, in on the secret that you haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about. Yesterday’s assignment involved an oil rig in Alaska. When we finished, the petroleum guy said: “Great! You sounded like you’ve spent 20 years on The North Slope”
Now THAT is voiceover heaven: pleasing a client who didn’t expect to be pleased. He just might come back for more of the same.
Today’s project should be easier: “How to Clean an Operating Room”. At least I’ve been in one of those. Of course I was asleep at the time and don’t remember much.
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Nice, Ross. Good for you. I had a very similar experience several years ago. I walked in to the studio (so you know it was a long time ago) to record a narration for a new client of a video production company at which I had done hundreds of narrations. Their client was using an outside production company for the first time as was really nervous that everything go just right.
The script was about 60 pages long and described the processes for providing maintenance on the machinery that binds and stitches books together. I sat down with the script, looked over the first several pages, asked for clarification on the pronunciation of one term I didn’t recognize and then said, “OK. I’m ready.”
The client objected, wanting me to read through the entire script before we started. Thankfully, my engineer that day was one of the co-owners of the video production house. He quietly said, “Bob’s done quite a few narrations for us. Why don’t we let him go ahead into the booth.” Reluctantly, the client agreed.
About 3 or 4 pages in to the script we had to stop for our first re-take. The client came on the talk-back immediately and asked “Have you ever worked on one of these machines?” The rest of the session went very smoothly from there.
(Edited to correct typo)
