People

According to my server logs, quite a number you dear readers, are located in Canada. Since I’d hate to leave you “out in the cold” as it were (ahem), here are some study opportunities coming to various cities across Canada. All of these are classes offered by the brilliant Debbie Munro.

MIC & ME Voice Workout – $375.00 (full weekend) or $225.00 one day only. All levels of experience.
Work for two intense days on mic. Be directed as you work on a variety of current scripts. Tips, tricks and amazing stories throughout.
Toronto – June 9/10, 2007 (NOTE: Check this post on the Vox Daily blog for more about this event.)
London UK – June 16/17, 2007 (see info sheet for prices)
Calgary – August 25/26, 2007
Regina – September 8/9, 2007
Saskatoon – October 6/7, 2007

MIC & ME Voice Biz – $375.00 (full weekend) or $225.00 one day only. All levels of experience.
Learn all about the business for day one, time on mic and basic editing day 2. Perform an actual audition as I direct you, then you edit it and submit it yourself.
Vancouver – Sept 22/23, 2007 10-5 p.m.
Calgary – TBD Fall 2007
Edmonton – TBD Fall 2007

As far as I know, the prices quoted are Canadian dollars. But, to be sure check Debbie Munro’s website for all the latest updates and details.

Rather than trying to live blog this evening, I’m just going to pass along what I see are some of the key thoughts. We began with Nancy talking with about some of the core concepts of Nancy’s instruction, the material that forms the basis of many of her private lessons. The thing that is different here is that Nancy (with Anna chiming in from time to time) is doing all the talking rather than the interactive experience that studying with her in Private Lessons is like. (I confess, I like the Private Lessons better; but this has been great review of some of these very basis ideas.

Here are a couple of examples of ways to sound like a real person: Don’t emphasize conjunction words. (and, but, then, etc.) Don’t emphasize “you.” (The person seeing or hearing the commercial isn’t thinking about anyone else listening, so emphasizing “you” telegraphs that this is a [small time] commercial.)

In the question and answer time, one of the questions had to do with “what about those times when the client insists on one of those words being emphasized.” Nancy’s response: Ignore what I said and do what the client wants.

Observations from the demo evaluations: 1 minute and 22 seconds is too long. It needs to be right about one minute. Don’t leave mispronounced words on your demo. Make acting choices and then commit to those choices. Don’t just say the words. Don’t use a slate on a demo unless it’s part of a house reel. Have the first voice that’s heard be our money voice. Don’t lead with a partner voice, because an agent wants to hear money and partner reads suggest “radio” which is the lower paying stuff. Lead with a campaign sound, a Porsche not a Kia.

Lead with our authentic sound, the one that establishes our individual brands. Sometimes, especially for pieces that are TV spots, the background music should drown out our voices slightly, because that’s the TV spots really are mixed.

Nancy has done demos for people all over the world, including people she’s never met in person; by using Source Connect to direct remotely while connected with a studio where the talent lives.

And to cap off the evening, Kara Edwards won a free one year Premium subscription to Voices.com, when her name was drawn out of the hat at the end. (It was a good evening for Kara, as she was also one of the 4 who had her demo evaluated on the spot by Nancy.)

And for more information, be sure to visit BreakIntoVoiceOver.com.

From time to time Philip Banks backs up his Brinks Truck of insight and unloads a great pile of it at the VO-BB. Today was one of those days. Since he has previously given me blanket permission to quote him, I will do so here. And thank you, Philip, for these very thought provoking comments, buried as they are on page 5 of this thread.

I’m a $20 per month member of Voices.com and a $195 member of Voice123. My membership of both sites has helped me spend part of my marketing budget; it remains to be seen how effective this exercise will prove.

For several months I’ve been looking for value in my marketing spend and this has proved increasingly difficult to find. In order to connect with business people I joined ecademy.com at a cost of $20 per month. Most of the members are entrepreneurs (Bilkopedia = between bankruptcies) who talk the talk but do not walk the walk.

Never before have I encountered so many bedroom based CEOs. Why do so many business people spend time networking online, going to local, regional and national networking meetings? Because they have nothing better to do, in other words NO BUSINESS. My final test for ecademy was to place an ad in the so-called Marketplace offering the service of a Voice Over. I didn’t expect a response but did expect to see another ad to appear offering the services of a Voice Over. No disrespect to the other Voice Over, it just confirmed that ecademy was not the place for me.

I was taught a long time ago to test everything I do in marketing and to establish the £ (or dollar) value. As law student I was also taught that the most important question to ask is always the second one because people seldom answer the first. if you combine these two disciplines you will have a powerful marketing philosopy.
We need to be sure why we are doing something, is it business or is it pleasure? Guess what. VO-BB is of no commercial value to me at all!

“OUCH! How VERY dare you, Sir. I spurn you as I would spurn a rabid dog!”

Over 1500 posts, each has been a pleasure. I’m delighted to be in your company and I chose to spend the time I’ve spent thus far on here because I enjoy it.
Having placed the above on record there are sites like voices.com that work the voices but do not work for voices – Here’s what you do. Use the site to fit in with your agenda, never let things work the other way. Do you have a minimum session fee? Do you audition for jobs below your minimum session fee? When someone asks for a custom audition send them a note requesting that they listen to you demo’s and if they feel it’s appropriate get in touch for a custom piece of audio. You feel this may be heavy handed? What if you don’t get the job? There was only a 100-1 chance you were going to get it any way so you’re not losing much.

Pay to play sites – You pay them to get you work, you do not pay them to allow people to collect free auditions.

Agents – The job of an agent is to represent your interests and to help promote your career. An email that reads “do this audition” should always be followed up with a request as to why the client wanted an audition from you in particular. You would be amazed how many agents work on the “mud sticks” principle, that is not in your interest. If you honestly believe it is the following may be of use – You would be amazed how many agents work on the “mud sticks” principle, that is not in your interest

When I moved up to Scotland a journey of over 600 miles I was contacted by an agent. Would I go to a TV studio to audition for character voices for a new puppet TV series ? Qualifier was very important as the audition day was my moving day – “Why does the director and producer want to see me?”
The agent lost her temper, she snapped that she was very busy and this was a good opportunity. I asked the same question again – Keep asking your question until you get the answer. It turned out that the production team were seeing anyone from any agency. I was going to allow 6 people on salaries plus expenses to waste my time, fuel and not pay me a penny. Was it going to be an investment? 100-1 chance or over? No, I doubt it. Did I upset the agent? Yes. If someone took from you (or tried to) around $500, stopped you from doing something more productive and all for no good reason would you mind upsetting them?

The two great motivators in this business are vanity and fear, beat those and your career will go into orbit. Most people never manage to beat either, let alone both.

The first presenter at the VOICE 2007 conference was Rodney Saulsberry. As I was looking at this site this evening, I noticed that Rodney is starting a 3 week commercial teleclass in June. (on that page, click on the “Commercials” tab. )

You’ll find registration details here.

Kara Edwards can. OK, I guess maybe I didn’t quite get that quote exactly right; but you really should spend a couple of minutes reading Kara’s blog today. Her post Mrs. Flexibility has some very good words for you, especially if you’re tempted to fill your day with lots of low rate jobs just to guarantee a certain amount of monthly income.

When you want something bad enough, and work hard enough, is it possible to achieve the impossible? From the time Bob Bergen was 12 years old, he wanted to grow up to be come the voice of Porky Pig. To read the story, don’t miss Stephanie’s superb review and summary of Bob Bergen’s presentation at VOICE 2007.

One of the great highlights of that evening was learning that a tape Bob made (when he was 14!) talking with Mel Blanc on the phone, still exists. Bob has posted the conversation on his web site.

Adam Creighton is an actor who lives in Austin, TX. We’ve not yet met in person, though I’m hoping to see him when I travel to Austin in a couple of months. Along with lots of other things, Adam blogs about acting and voice acting in a place he calls Ramblings. I visit Adam’s Ramblings often, because he so frequently has things to say that I need or want to hear.

His post called Networking for actors is a perfect example.

Adam writes about how much time and effort he used to put into networking, and then says…

But then I stopped doing it.

Why?

Because I honestly didn’t like how good I was at networking. I got into situations and saw people doing the networking thing, and they weren’t sincere. They were looking at opportunities for themselves, and didn’t give a damn about the people they were meeting. They were superficial. They were exploiters. They were users.

I so didn’t want to be them.

So, Adam did what most of us do. He over corrected. More recently, though he’s started networking again…but with a difference…

Here’s how it works for me.

I meet someone, and we talk. I find out what they do, what they’d like to do, and what makes their day worthwhile. And I talk about what I do, what I’d like to do, and what makes my day worthwhile. And we figure out if we’ve got stuff we want to do together that makes our days worthwhile together.

That’s right, kids, we have a conversation.

And then, independent of whether we can do something together, I try to keep that person in mind when opportunities come up for them, even if there’s no benefit to me.

I encourage you to read the entire post, but leave you with this final quote…

The net-net is I think networking — really effective networking — shouldn’t be exploitative “what can you do for me” usury. It should be relationship building. It should be mutually beneficial. And when it’s not mutually beneficial, it should be beneficial for the other person.

If everyone had that mentality, what kind of cool world would this be?

Very, Adam. Very.