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People

A different kind of love story

General, People

One of the brightest people I know is Holly Buchanan. We first met many years ago at a conference in Los Angeles. At the time Holly was working as Production Manager for a group of radio stations. In the years since, she’s demonstrated again and again that she’s remarkably insightful about marketing and communication.

Which is why I hope you’ll take a few minutes to learn some lessons about how to communicate from Holly. The few minutes you’ll take to do so will be well spent because I think you’ll see the information is valuable on several levels.

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You meet the nicest people in Texas, too

General, People

This evening, while my oldest son Eric and I have been in Austin, TX on a business trip we arranged to meet a couple of voiceover friends from Texas at a BBQ place called The Coupland Inn. We had a fabulous meal of all-you-can-eat-BBQ, catfish and much conversation about life experiences, radio, more life, animation, and voiceover. Dave DeHart drove over from Houston and Justin Barrett came down from Dallas. What a great joy it was to spend a good chunk of time this evening with these two talented men, gaining some insight into their lives and work. Both Eric and I had a truly delightful time.

I’ll update this post with photos once I receive the them from Dave and Justin each of whom brought a digital camera.

Update: My thanks to Justin and Dave for sending along these photos. Dave arrived first, so he took a shot of the outside of the restaurant as he walked up to the front door.

TX Voiceover get-together at The Coupland Inn

Before food arrived, Dave and Justin reached for their cameras. As you can see, Dave got the drop on Justin.

Justin Barrett reaching for his camera during the Texas VO get-together

After the meal we asked a member of the staff to take a couple of shots.

Justin Barrett, Bob Souer, Eric Souer, Dave DeHart at the Texas VO get-together near Austin, TX

Justin Barrett, Bob Souer, Eric Souer, Dave DeHart at the Texas VO get-together near Austin, TX

And Dave took a final shot of Justin, Eric and me standing under the restaurant’s sign as we were leaving.

Justin Barrett, Eric Souer and Bob Souer at the Coupland Inn leaving the Texas VO get-together.

My thanks again to Dave and Justin to going to such lengths so that we could visit together. The only thing that could have been better is if we’d been able to spend more time together. But, we hope to get back to Texas again before too long and maybe spend more time while we’re there.

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In Austin

Career Advice, General, People, Tools

For the weekend I’m in Austin, TX for a couple of very cool reasons. First, my oldest son Eric and I are going to attend the annual reunion of the Wizard Academy. It will be great to see Roy, Pennie and no doubt a bunch of other old friends Saturday all day and Sunday morning.

And while I’m here, a few voiceover friends from around Texas are going to join Eric and me for a Texas BBQ dinner late Saturday evening. I’ll post a photo or 2 and a little who and what all took place here as soon as I can.

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When a friend is interviewed…

General, People

What can I say, my friend Kara Edwards is one of the most talented people I know. And, as you can tell from this interview, she’s every bit as fun as she is talented. Be sure to watch all the way to the end for the bunny impression. Most impressive, Kara!

With thanks to my friend Joe Rodriguez for posting the link to this interview on the VO-BB.

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Speak up or keep quiet?

Career Advice, General, People

As a general rule, when you’ve been hired as the voice for a project, keep your opinions to yourself. If you’ve been working in voiceover for any length of time, you probably already understand the wisdom of this advice. You see, you’ve been hired to tell the story the way you’re directed. Doing a good job following direction is key to getting hired again. Because being good at following direction will help you stick in the minds of the director and producer with whom you’re working.

But, as my friend Mary McKitrick points out on her blog, there are times when it’s important to go ahead and speak up. Knowing when and what to say is the tricky part, of course.

I have, at times, offered a thought or opinion while in the booth. Most often this has happened when there’s a discussion taking place about some specific bit of copy. As an example, recently I was recording a project in which a given word was used three times in a single paragraph. No one noticed the redundancy until we were in the session. While the writer and producer were talking about alternative language, I asked if it would be OK to make a suggestion for an alternative phrase. I was given permission, offered my suggestion and a variant of it was ultimately used.

It’s vitally important to be polite in these situations. And if you wonder whether to say anything, most of the time (to quote some of my Mom’s advice) it would be better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

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Connect with your customers

Career Advice, General, People

Viewpoint Business is a new podcast focused on how you can improve your business world. Their first episode is posted. It’s an interview with Geoff Burch, a business guru from the UK who offers some solid and cogent suggestions on how to really connect with your customers.

This site and podcast is presented by Graham Jones and Jeremy Jacobs. Well done, gentlemen. Thank you for the solid and practical information.

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You meet the nicest people…

General, Getting started in Voiceover, People

When voiceover people get together, there are two things for sure. There will be lots of fun. And everyone there is going to be some kind of nice.

Case in point was the latest get-together I was able to attend today while I’m in central Ohio on business. Thanks to the excellent planning skills of my friend Ben Wilson, we met at a charming little pub called The Old Bag of Nails.The Old Bag of Nails Pub in Columbus, Ohio

There were six of us in attendance this time. As the meal drew to a close, I stood up and took a quick photo of the group with my phone’s camera. Here you see from left to right around the table Rob Ellis, Dan Nachtrab, Ben Wilson, Joe Szymanski and Roger Tremaine.
Rob Ellis, Dan Nachtrab, Ben Wilson, Joe Szymanski and Roger Tremaine

We gathered at around 11 in the morning and stayed until 3 in the afternoon, sharing war stories from our years in radio (all of us had spent at least a little time working for radio stations) and thoughts about marketing. There were all kinds of spontaneous outbursts of fake television or movie promo voiceovers and generally a great deal of fun was had by all. I know I will remember this time very fondly. And after more than I year, I finally got the opportunity to return the favor by paying for Ben Wilson’s lunch, since the last time we got together over a year ago, he had paid.

Of course, I owed Ben an additional favor since I’d had a huge brain fade this morning, forgetting that I had planned to meet him at his house so we could ride over together. By the time we talked on the phone, I was already well on my way and ended up just meeting him at the Old Bag of Nails along with everyone else.

Just before it was time to leave, we asked our waitress to take a photo of all 6 of us, which she did. This one comes from Dan’s camera phone. Here we are. Dan, Roger, Joe, Rob, me and Ben.
Dan Nachtrab, Roger Tremaine, Joe Szymanski, Rob Ellis, Bob Souer and Ben Wilson

(edited to fix typos)

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Having friends solves problems

Getting started in Voiceover, People

Having problems is inevitable. Having friends, at least this has been my experience this week, leads to solving and overcoming those obstacles. Case in point, at the moment I’m in central Ohio on a business trip. Among the things I need to accomplish while I’m here is to record a number of long meetings so that eventually portions of these meetings can be edited and used for radio broadcasts in future months and years. But, as they do, problems cropped up.

My first and most important challenge, I discovered after arriving in Ohio that my portable audio interface is no longer reliably recording audio. Thankfully, my good friend Dan Nachtrab has a comparable audio device that he’s not using for the next few days and he’s willing to let me borrow it to get the recordings done that are my primary purpose for being here.

Second challenge, I was booked for a recording session by my agent in Pittsburgh while I’m here in Ohio. The session had to be done in person or via ISDN. Thankfully, my friend Dan Nachtrab has ISDN in his home studio and was willing to let me use his studio, especially since I was going to need to drive over to borrow his portable audio unit anyway.

So, I hop in my car and make the drive to Dan’s house in Dayton. It’s a bit of a drive, but given the fact that I can solve all of my problems in one go, it is well worth it.

A third challenge arises while I’m at Dan’s house, when I get a call from my friend Peter Brown. He needs a few voiceovers done and in fact, needs more than one voice. So, again Dan comes to the rescue. We record the audio in his studio and Dan even acts as the extra voice, which also helps solve my friend Peter’s problem of needing an additional voice for his scripts.

I took Dan and his charming wife Niki out to dinner as a small way of saying thank you for helping me out so much this week, and then gratefully drove back to my hotel room after that wonderful meal and lots of interesting and invigorating conversation.

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