People

You have to be able to take advice. Or maybe more correctly, you have to know how to take advice. Receive it. Filter it. Apply it to your own specific circumstance.

These are the central thoughts in Bonnie Gillespie’s latest The Actor’s Voice column titled “Yeah, But….”

Read. See yourself, because you’re in there. Consider. Apply.

That’s the title of a thread started today by Philip Banks on the Voiceover Bulletin Board. Not only has the esteemed Mr. Banks offered some very cogent and challenging questions, Pat Fraley has provided some potent and thought-provoking answers.

Go. Read. Reflect. I’ll meet you there.

Michael Minetree calls it The Monster Sound Isolation Booth and I would heartily agree. At his site, Michael has provided a detailed and inspiring photo journey through the process of building a first class isolation booth for voiceover or instrument recording.

Take the tour starting here. I think you’ll be as impressed as I am.
(edited to update URI of link to new blog structure at Michael’s site)

Thanks to Stephanie at Vox Daily, you can check out a very cool video of three top voiceover guys as featured on ET, via the inevitable YouTube.

Our second day began with a 3 hour session with Dave Foxx, legendary Imaging Director for Z100 in New York City. Dave demonstrated 4 different styles of promos, building each of them live on-the-fly in front of us. It was quite quite impressive to watch him work, gliding from one idea to another and clearly a master at using ProTools.

I had the great fun of being cast as the “serious announcer” for one of the promos he built and Dave was nice enough to send me a copy of the file. The audio file is here, or you can listen using the flash player to the right. The promo is the middle (white) player. (Caution, the subject matter of the promo is a bit racy.)

(Update: The other voices in this promo are Dan O’Day’s daughter, who was at the Summit to help at the Registration table and Norman Ellis-Flint.)
The key quote from Dave’s presentation came right at the start:

If you learn anything at this conference, you owe a solemn debt to pass along to someone else at least some of the things you’ve learned.

Hmmm. Hopefully I’m following through on that challenge right now.
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Our next session, and the final one for this report, was a Voiceover Agents & Casting Directors Panel discussion. Dan O’Day hosted and on the panel were:

Terry Berland, casting director.
Mary Ellen Lord, voiceover agent.
David Lawrence, radio talent and game voice casting director.

The conversation began with a discussion of the changes in the voiceover business in last 20 years:

Technology has changed everything, especially the level of competition has risen. Today everything is global. The casting business might be the part that’s changed the most. Agencies are now often doing the casting work for free, rather than a casting director being paid for that work. Agents even in LA are now almost all working on non-union projects.

Next was a discussion of the differences in the way a casting director casts and the way an agent casts:

An agent usually knows much less about the specifics of a job than a casting director does. Terry cast the voice for the Taco Bell dog, but she was the second casting director called. A talent needs to see he or shee is there to solve the problem of the agent or casting director. They are both rooting for the talent.

Is the golden age of voiceover over?

It depends on who you talk to. Everyone only has a certain season when they are at their peak earning. Now top talent can work from anywhere which means that we are all competing with the top talent for major jobs. The top talent are even competing for the middle level jobs, which put even more presssure on the rest of us. But this has also resulted in a flattening of the rates. The top isn’t as high as it once was. Our attitude makes a huge difference in how well our auditions are received. We have to believe the job is right for us. Also there is no room for prima donnas anymore. Negativity will get you out of a job faster than almost anything else, because there are so many other very talented people who are willing and able to do the jobs. Celebrities are something of an exception to this rule.

Other notes:
Many people don’t realize what a huge market of opportunities are available recording for games.
We have to be able to take direction. This might seem like it goes without saying, but there are a lot of people trying to do voiceover work who don’t know how to take direction during a session. At the same time some of the best stuff comes after the direction is done. While working in a recording studio we have to let go of control and allow the producers, directors and engineers to do their work. Being directable means not only being willing to take direction, it means being able to actually react to it and often the direction is very subtle. So the changes need to be just a subtle.
Terry spoke about how she had at times helped someone with a good voice get through the audition, but she doesn’t do this anymore because at the session these people often can’t deliver the goods. This is where workshops are so valuable, because that’s where we can gain experience behind the mike so we can deliver the goods in the booth.
Suggestions about demos.

Identify ourselves on the packaging. The demo should be no more than a minute. Voicebank.net has many, many examples of of signed talent. Listen and learn from the best. Long is more than 1 minute. Don’t save the best for last. If we only have 30 seconds of good, then only use those 30 seconds. Mary Ellen doesn’t even listen to CDs anymore. (During an audition, even slating our names is important.) Put your best foot forward. All the time. The demo should demonstrate our range. Don’t let everything sound the same.

I’m going to post the rest of my thoughts about this year’s Summit pretty soon. I just need to pull a few more thoughts together, plus there’s some audio I want you to be able to hear. I think you’ll find the wait was worthwhile.

Meanwhile, a few thoughts today sparked by a thread on the Voiceover Bulletin Board, by the inimitable Philip Banks. And no, Mr. Banks doesn’t need me to carry his water. But, I believe in giving credit where credit is due.

Every day, and I use those words not as a figure of speech, but as literal truth, every day I discover how little I know. Not just about voiceover, of course; but as that’s the subject of this blog, I’ll confine my comments here to that subject.

For example, last week at the Summit two truths were pointed out to me in a matter of a few seconds. The first truth is that I actually am pretty good. The second and more important truth is that because I’ve reached a certain level of proficiency, it’s all too easy for me to coast on what I’ve learned. Right after I heard those two truths, I was shown just how much better I could be if I just push myself past the coasting to something closer to genuine excellence.

Now, in that case, I was learning from Dan O’Day, someone far more experienced and advanced than I am. But, people with much less experience have also recently taught me valuable lessons. Because the learning isn’t only about acting or voice techniques. It’s also about the truth that being a voiceover artist is a business. And you can’t coast in that area either.

You can see an excellent example of what I mean in an earlier post on this blog, about Mary C. McKitrick. Mary has been doing voiceovers for a much shorter time than I have, but her approach to the business side of things is much more advanced than mine. Read her blog. You’ll see what I mean.

And to underscore that lesson, if you’ve read my comments below about the first day of the Summit this year, you’ll see than one of the key points Harlan Hogan made in his session was about this same subject: we have to treat this as a business, because that’s what it is.

Were I to take the time to list all of the similar lessons I’ve learned from just the past year, this post would grow too long to fit on a single page. But, at the end of the day the real question for me and for you is: what are you going to do about it?

This year’s was the 11th annual International Radio Creative and Production Summit. Aside from the first one in 1996, I’ve attended all of them. Each one has been filled with opportunities to learn and develop professionally. And to make connections with like-minded folks who voice, write and produce for radio and various other media. Inevitably, some years are better than others. 2006 stands at or near the top of all of them.

Here are just some of the reasons:

Kristine Oller.Kristine gave an exceptional talk on organzation titled Pursuing Your Dream; Creativity without Chaos. Here are just a few of the highlights from my notes.

Oh, before I begin, in his introduction of Kristine, Dan O’Day read a note written by Pat Fraley. I didn’t get it word for word (and Pat if you read this, correct me if I’m wrong) but it was along the lines of “my income tripled after working with Kristine for a year.”

So, she started with a story about the best archer in a village many years ago; who went off in search of someone who could help him become an even better archer. Months of searching were fruitless. So he began to return home when, as he rode through a forest, he noticed an arrow centered right in the middle of a target painted on the side of a tree. A bit farther, another target, another arrow, right in the center. He followed these remarkable examples of great archery until he came to a small cottage in the middle of the wood. Knocking at the door, he’s greeted by a withered old man. The archer asks the man if he is responsible for these extraordinary examples of archery. He confesses that he is. The archer asks if he would teach him how. The old man says, “Certainly. Shoot an arrow at a tree. Then paint the target around the arrow.” Kristine then explained that is a good illustration of what she does. She helps people figure out what they’re already aiming at, or what they really want to aim at and then organize their lives in that direction.

The 3 greatest problems for us as creative people are: 1. Lack of clear focus. 2. No clear strategy. 3. No momentum. In other words, many of us have a bunch of little flower pots. Each one with a plant in it and we run around day after day trying to give enough attention and water to each little pot. But, this leaves us exhausted and frustrated.

The place of clear focus is our central passion. What do we really want to do? What we must do is bring all of these little flower pots and consolidate in one large pot everything that feeds our central passion, our focus. And, then eliminate those things that don’t. We can then evaluate new opportunities as they come along in light of this focus: Does this opportunity feed my focus? Or distract from it?

Once we’ve identified our focus, we need to develop a strategy that moves us forward toward that central passion, that focus. She used the example of “doing a mailing.” Many voiceover people put a mailing together, and send it out; but without any sort of strategy for what follows sending out the mailing. Calls? Emails? Additional notes? When? How often. Etc.

If we prepare our strategy, taking one step at a time, and planning in advance, we’re going to be in a much better position of actually reaching our goals, hitting our targets.

Another key point: Organizing is mainly a process of removing the stuff that’s clogging our lives, our rooms, our whatever. It’s not so much about moving things around, it’s about removing clutter. And as we do this, we free up resources, energy and time to concentrate on the key things we should be doing as well as on the even more important things like family, recreation, recharging.

Last notes from Kristine. She described the process of networking as being like creating and connecting dots. If you meet someone at a seminar like this, and send a “follow-up email” that makes a dot. If a few months later, you send another note asking how things are going, that’s a second dot. Now you can connect those dots with a line. Do this with a number of people and eventually some of your lines with various people will intersect. And those places of intersection are where referrals and references come from.
I can’t really present an adequate description of how powerful and inspiring Kristine’s presentation was. If you ever get a chance to see her in person, do so. Better yet, contact her yourself and see what Kristine Oller can do for you.

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Dan O’Day. Also on Friday, Dan gave us some very practical and usable ideas for how to get a script started when you can’t think of anything to write. Top notch stuff that continued on Saturday. About which, more later.

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Harlan Hogan. The final delight of the day was Harlan Hogan, one of the very best male voice actors. Highly successful for 30+ years, Harlan has given voice to scores of highly recognizable ad campaigns, including “It’s the cereal even Mikey likes,” “Hey, Culligan Man!,” and “When you care enough to send the very best.” Here are my notes from his talk.

Luck and timing, Harlan Hogan says, had much to do with his success. He says he was described as “remarkably unremarkable.” Back when he was starting, one of the things that was distinctive was that he decided to treat his career as a business.

What is it that we voiceover people do? Actually talking into the mike is only the payoff, taking about 2 percent of our time. Getting the work is the real work of the voice actor. Performance. Promotion. Business management. Creating job opportunities. Voice and voice related services and products, this is what we provide to our clients. He said, we need to constantly ask ourselves: “What do I have that’s unique to this market?”

Treat business as a business. Boil each goal down to something essential. Because so much of the day is at home now, with the exploding growth of home studios, we have more time available to search for work. But the downside is that we miss out on the great stories that happen when people get together. Don’t say “no” to everything. Don’t say “yes” to everything. Remember, we’re building a business.

Voicebank is a computer based company in LA that connects clients with potential talents. It’s also a great resource for learning how working professionals prepare their demos.

Either embrace the change or go away. Because just about everything is changing about the voiceover business due to the technology explosion. Competition and competitiveness is growing. We can work from and for anywhere. So now we’re competing with everyone in the world. In such a world, there will be lots of roller-coaster moments.

We have to make good choices about how we get, keep and expand our work. Harlan spoke at lenght about the decision making process called SWOT. Divide a piece of paper with two lines, one vertical and one horizontal. Label each quadrant. Strengths. Weaknesses. Opportunties. Threats. Create tactics to deal with each. Positive and negative. Using this method puts something on paper that might otherwise be kind of vague. Funnel the information created by SWOT, to create the tactics needed to reach our goals.

Ask yourself, “What is the situation that exists for me at this time?”

External issues. Threats. Opportunities. Internal factors. Strengths. Weaknesses. Flexibility is required. The same successful strategy doesn’t work when the situation changes.

Ruthless and relentless self-promotion, constantly. Why? Because when we’re looking at two more more products that are similar, name recognition is important. And casting most of the time it’s a matter of eliminating not choosing. Therefore, promotion works even in the world of auditioning.
Kinds of promotion: advertising – focused, consistent, situational. Trash and trinkets can be effective, but if we do so, it should have value, useful to someone. (Key quote: “Voiceover isn’t about how I sound, it’s how I make people feel.”) The trinket needs to have something to do with the business and be unique. If we give something away it should mean something to the person getting it.

Giving. Hustle, but don’t be a hustler. In other words don’t just be about “me.” Give not to get something back. But an amazing amount of time something good will result. Giving needs to be continuous. Planning out the promotion. What’s the image I’m trying to create. Situational. Build a human bond, not just a business bond.

Demos once were like a resume. Then people started building demos in their computers, faking stuff. So agents are now suspect about demos. The genie is out of the bottle. The value of having a demo has dropped. This is why auditions are required. Killer demos just don’t “do it” anymore. But have a professional engineer tweak things.

Work for the long haul. Think in terms of building a business with repeat customers. Invest in promotion, but look for the opportunities to give.

Here are two books by Harlan Hogan, both highly recommended.

1. The Voice Actor’s Guide to Home Recording

2. VO: Tales and Techniques of a Voice-Over Actor

Thanks for reading. I’ll write up my thoughts about Saturday shortly.

The first event of the International Radio Creative and Production Summit for 2006 took place this afternoon, an event closed to everyone except those of us that Dan O’Day calls “Repeat Offenders.” (People who’ve been to at least one previous Summit.) There were about 40 of us in the room.

The guest of honor was Howard Hoffman, who works at Imaging Dirctor for ABC Radio in Los Angeles, and has also been doing more and more voiceover work in the last 10 years.

This first session every year is always an open-ended discussion with topic ranging from here to there and back again.

Here are some of the key things I thought worth writing down:

1. If you now or ever have worked at a radio station, you might imagine that working at a Los Angeles station would be much better. It’s not really. The same pressures, demands, difficult sales people, etc. are there. Most LA radio stations have copy written by the account executives, just like at most radio stations in smaller markets.

2. Because of the satirical use the “classic announcer voice”, there are at least some radio guys are doing well even in voiceover work in LA these days. Howard said his voiceover success, such as it is, is the result of dumb luck and good timing.

3. Don’t say “no” for someone else. Let them do it, and at least some of the time we can be pleasantly surprised when we’re not rejected. This comment was made in the context of someone’s comment along the lines of “Oh, they’d never want me anyway, so there’s no point in asking.”

4. On the other hand, we hold the power of “no” regarding our own work. Probably goes without saying, but we can always turn down an offer we don’t like. Never allow someone else to push you into doing something that you don’t want to do.

5. The greatest value of the Summit is often the stuff and conversation that happens in between the sessions. This was an obversation made by Dan O’Day, but really it could have been made by almost anyone who’s been here before. The opportunities to talk with other, like-minded, people is truly invigorating.

By the way, if you’ve every thought of attending this event, there are folks here from Europe, the Far East, and Australia, as well as North, Central and South America.

I first met Howard Hoffman briefly when he was part of a panel discussion on station imaging at the first Summit I attended in 1997. He struck me as a really decent guy with a load of talent back then and my impression of him today simply reinforced that impression. He is a really decent guy with a load of talent.

(Update: Here’s just one piece of the audio Howard that brought with him as example of his work. Enjoy!)

That’s the title of a delightful book by Gary Owens. And on YouTube.com you’ll find this delightful interview with Gary about the book.

Both are well worth your time. Click the title of the book for How to make a Million Dollars with Your Voice, on Amazon.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet Gary twice in the last five years. He’s truly a wonderfully nice man.

(Update: Another very nice man, my friend Charlie Glaize, is the one who pointed me to this interview.)

Mary C. McKitrick is one of my heroes. I don’t think she knows this, but I am so impressed with her persistence in her efforts to market herself in the voiceover business. A perfect example of what I’m talking about is captured in this post on her voiceover blog, MCM Voices Voiceover Blog.

Read. Absorb. And Mary will become one of your heroes too.