With Trepidation I Present “In a World…”

Just what we need, more exposure for the voice over business! So, I am somewhat hesitant to bring this up, but since most of the people who will chance across this post will already be in the business, or already interested in the business, I suppose it won’t do any harm.

From watching the trailer, this looks like a delightfully funny little film about life in the rarefied air of the Los Angeles voiceover market where there is a chance of someone actually hiring you (man or woman, but mostly man) to do a movie trailer.

Lake Bell wrote, produces and stars in the film, with some other familiar real-life voiceover “stars” in the Los Angeles market including Joe Cipriano and Marc Graue. In fact, now that I think about it, this might make a good pilot for a sitcom that takes place in a renowned recording studio in someplace like  - say Burbank – where the charismatic and desperately creative  studio owner – say whose name rhymes with brow… no, wait, scratch that, just what we need, MORE exposure for our business.

Most people know when they watch “So You Think You Can Dance” and “The Voice,” that only a few people can REALLY make it. But most people who see anything about the voiceover business think they can do it. So, no, I take it all back.

But since I did bring it up, here without any further ado – the official trailer for “In a World…”

Advice for Producers is Also Good Advice for Talent

Just ran across this blog post by Marc Scott cross-posted on Voice123. It is aimed at the people seeking voice talent, however it is good advice for both the seeker and the seekee! In fact, as a user of the online casting sites myself, I have a similar set of guidelines as I decide which projects to audition for.

One of the biggies for me is a poorly written script. As a long time award-winning scriptwriter and corporate producer before jumping into voiceover full-time, I wrote many many scripts for other talent to read. A well-written script is ALWAYS easier for the talent to deliver. If you are new to the art of writing a script for someone to verbalize, put your words to the test. Record yourself reading the material aloud before you send it off for auditions. If you have a hard time getting the words out, try to figure out why? Are the sentences too long? Is the script simply a transcription of a white paper? There is a big difference between writing for the eye and writing for the ear. So, when I am deciding what projects to audition for, if I find that a script just doesn’t roll off the tongue easily in a logical and interesting way, then I am likely to pass on the audition. Other factors will come into play of course, but a good script will help you get good auditions from better actors.

“Why Am I Not Receiving Quality Auditions for My Project – Part 1″ Part 2 is on his blog as well.

I’m just listing his points here – jump over to his blog to get the details.

1. Poor Direction

2. Unclear Budget

3. Poorly Written Script

4. Conflicting Information

5. The Kitchen Sink

6. Must Read Entire Script

7. Unrealistic Budget

8. Unrealistic Timeline

9. No Pronunciation Guideline

10. No Script

 

Does This Mic Make Me Sound Fat?

There is no one size fits all when it comes to microphones. No one price range that will guarantee that a mic will sound wonderful with your voice. It all “depends.” It depends on your own particular physical characteristics. It depends on the room that you are recording in.

But it is always SUCH a huge topic of discussion with passionate opinions on what mics are BEST. It gets as bad as the PC vs. MAC debate.

But it is still interesting to listen to the differences (or lack thereof) between the various mics and their price points – and that is why I am forwarding these links.

Poke around on the net and you can probably find more mic shootouts. I am pretty sure there was another comprehensive blind shootout, but I must not be using the right key words. If you know of others, please post a comment and the link.

http://www.vocalimpactmedia.com/SoundStorage.html

http://transom.org/?p=7517

http://recordinghacks.com/2011/02/26/vo-shootout-u87-l36b-cm87-at4047mp/

Cats: Total Disregard for your Studio

I have a love/hate relationship with my cats.

There are four of them. Not quite the crazy lady with all the cats, but please – someone stop me before I get to that point.

All different personalities…

Lista – the little girl. Skinny and skittish. But sit down and she is right there on your lap with her sharp sharp little claws kneading your tummy.

Louie – chubby tuxedo cat. OK, fat. And when he sits around the house, he sits AROUND the house. (rim shot)

Monroe – orange tabby – AKA Mean-roe – still dealing with his sexuality – finding love in all the wrong places – usually with a random article of clothing.

Ding Tut – the new boy – sort of the color of a Dreamsicle – a stocky, adorable, lover – a head butting, paws around your neck nuzzler.

However, leave them alone and destruction ensues. It always amazes me how they can be so peaceful – sleeping – usually on a pile of papers. And then as they wake up  - the papers and anything next to them end up scattered on the floor.

But because they chortle and purr – and their fur is soft and soothing – I put up with them and their total lack of concern for my stuff. Here is Ding Tut sleeping on a pile of papers – and the end result.

                  

 

Memorize? Who Me? I’m a Voiceover Talent…

One of the things that separates a voiceover actor from a theater or film actor is memorization. In VO, we don’t have to memorize. While both are “acting,” the techniques are different. And one of the reasons why not all good stage or film actors can make the transition to VO. And vice versa.

I love the fact that I don’t have to memorize. It goes in my eyeballs, rolls around in my brain for a little while, out my mouth and then it is gone. Sometimes I can’t even tell you what I did yesterday!

When I was doing on-camera work as a spokesperson, I used teleprompter or ear-prompter, so I wasn’t memorizing either.

But a dozen or so years ago, I auditioned for a live “radio show” that was going to be done on stage. After the run, I had been bitten by the “acting” bug. It was wonderful to actually feel the the audience. As a voice talent, I do so much of my work alone in my studio with no one listening. You don’t hear people laugh, clap, hoot, or cough – or hearing aides squeal. The closest you come in VO is being in a studio or ISDN session. There at least you get response and interaction.

So, after the run of the “radio play,” I auditioned for a show that consisted of several short plays. I was cast in two of them and suddenly had to memorize!

And so I did. And that play led to another and another and another. Right now I am in the last two weeks of rehearsal before “Vanished” opens here in San Diego.

My techniques for memorizing have advanced over the years as I incorporated some of my voiceover tools to help. I record my scenes reading all the parts. Then I silence all my parts and save the scenes as separate files. I save all of the files on a CD or in my phone and listen and talk back as I go about my daily tasks. As I learn the lines, I test myself by listening only to the tracks without my lines. If I hesitate, then I can go back to the tracks with my lines and remind myself of what the playwright actually wrote.

So, as we go into the last two weeks of rehearsal, I only have a couple of little spots where the right words are not flowing, but I know where they are.

And the ability to memorize can be incorporated into my voiceover business. There are times when just a little bit of memorizing can help you get off the page and bring a little bit more you to the project.

 

Down Time: Duties or Dilly Dallying?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t spend hours and hours in my booth, unless I am recording an audio book. Most of the time I am NOT in my booth. When you do mostly spots or short corporate pieces or eLearning, your time in the booth is probably a lot less than the time you spend catching up on Facebook.

But what should we be doing with the time we are not recording? My thoughts on that have changed over the years. And god help the person who has to unravel the mess I am leaving behind because of this change in attitude.

I used to be a lot more organized than I am now. You would think that with advances in software to make our lives easier, that I would have things a lot more together than I do. I have Outlook and Act and Quicken Home and Business (just abandoned QuickBooks after a few years of confusion).

But I am SO far behind in cleaning out my Outlook folders and adding people to my Contacts and then to Act. And now with Quicken Home and Business, I need to do a slightly different process for invoicing that isn’t quite as intuitive as QuickBooks, but at least I don’t keep getting error messages because I try to fix something. Quicken is like your check register – very forgiving. QuickBooks is for bean counters. I am an Artist, not a Bean Counter.

My priorities have shifted over the years. Since taking responsibility for my mom as she fights the desperately horrible disease called Dementia, my personal time has infringed on my work time. And guess what! Worlds did not collide. I did not lose my house. The bills are paid.

Part of this is due to years of being in the business and being reliable. Years of being at the ready. Years of nose to the grindstone. And perhaps that is the lesson I needed to learn. That at some point, all the legwork you do will carry you over when you want (or need) to do something else instead of work. You can’t abandon your networking and marketing of course, but after establishing yourself, you should be able to take some time to do something fun, or maybe not so fun, when necessary.

I still spend far too much time at my computer. But I LIKE the computer. I like to read and type. I just spent far too long looking at cool animal pictures following a link from Facebook – and do NOT send me a link to Wimp – I will be lost for hours.

So, what do I do when I am not recording? Well, most of the time I am not dilly dallying.

1. Social Networking has risen to a top priority (or addiction – I’m not completely sure!)
2. Watering my plants and tending the garden
3. Playing with the cats
4. Taking a walk and getting away from the computer
5. Getting back to the computer to work for a professional association
6. Checking in on my mom in her Memory Care Community
7. Volunteering
8. Doing some art
9. Invoicing (hmm, that seems to be a bit low on the list doesn’t it? I should move that up.)
10. Going through my old email folders and trying to get people in the proper database and then actually touch base
11. Reconnecting with friends

Oh gosh, the part about getting more exercise and getting a kayak – that should be on there too. I’ve never had TIME for toys. Now that I do, I need to train myself to actually get them and use them!

If you are just getting started in this business – I offer you my deepest condolences. With the way the world has changed, you are probably facing a double whammy: fewer clients to start with – who want to pay less and less money for what you do. This is NOT just a voiceover thing. It is pervasive in every industry.

So if you ARE just starting out, find your niche. Know what you do best. Dig for the people who want to buy what you have to sell. Don’t sell out to the lowest bidder.

Oh, excuse me – gotta run. I’m late for an Art Opening!

Are You Hopping Mad about Auto Hop?

So the latest invention in the quest by people to skip the very thing that keeps their TV programs on the air is an ad eraser embedded in new digital video recorders sold by Dish Network. Just turn on Auto Hop and ads automatically vanish. TiVo on steroids.

Here’s an article in the New York Times that goes into more detail.

So, how do I feel about that – as a voice talent whose income includes payment for doing announcing for TV Commercials? In some ways, a lot like the chief executive of CBS who wonders how he will produce shows like “CSI” without the support of the advertisers running the commercials. Or maybe a bit like News Corporation who has decided not to run Dish’s DVR ads.

Everyone in the chain is trying to figure out how to snag the eyeballs (and dollars) of the consumers. Consumers who seem to be starting to turn away from paying for cable or satellite and are looking to the Internet. My niece watches TV shows on her laptop whenever and wherever she feels like it. When I do watch TV, it is still from my easy chair in the living room without a DVR, so I tend to see mostly reruns of Bones, Law & Order and NCIS.

I would miss commercials, not only because I get paid to record them, but also because for me they are a source of education and sometimes inspiration. Not that I am a TV junkie, but part of the whole TV watching experience is studying the spots. I realize that the vast majority of the TV watching public probably doesn’t really care for commercials (except during the Super Bowl), but maybe they haven’t really thought about how their TV shows are currently being funded.

The operative word in that last sentence? “Currently.” Everything changes. Eventually.

I wish I had a crystal ball. It would be nice to see what the new business model(s) might be. I’d like to be prepared for when the current one goes away, and with it part of my income.

Matching Your Delivery

The other day I had three sessions in a row with repeat clients for whom my delivery is just slightly different. Pacing, placement, energy, warmth, etc. just a bit different for each project.

One client found me 3 or 4 years ago because they had lost track of the voice they had been using and wanted a voice match. Actually, they THOUGHT I was the same person and after I told them that I wasn’t, they asked me if I could match a sample they provided. I did and we have been doing updates every 5 months or so. This voice is in a slightly different place in my head than my usual signature sound.

Another project was 3 word changes and a new paragraph for a project originally completed about a year and a half ago. The read on this was soft and comforting.

And the third project that day was the 4th iteration of an eLearning project where I needed to match the other half-dozen projects for the same company in brisk tone and perkiness.

I keep everything in folders on my hard drive of course, just for times such as these. All it takes is a 2 or 3 second listen to what we did before and I slip right into that particular zone.

Most of us do this, of course. Really – it’s simply part of our jobs. Something we need to do to keep our customers happy. Remarkable only in the fact that it was three repeat clients with three different approaches.

In Between Sessions

I wish I could say that I was so busy that I had back to back sessions every day and had to squeeze in the bookkeeping, marketing and plant watering. Well, I’m busy enough that I make a living doing this voiceover stuff without the back-to-back sessions. And even if I don’t have projects stacked up waiting, I still have a hard time getting all the other stuff done. But there is simply no way I can actually organize a day with any strict rules on when I am going to do anything.

The day started out like a typical Tuesday. Walk down to the coffee shop for my 7-8 AM solve the world’s problems group, but the phone rang and I had to race back home to get the car to drive out to my mom’s Assisted Living Community to call off the Paramedics. You would think after 7 months of seeing what a cold damp morning does to my mom’s hip pain, they would be able to figure out that she needs a pain pill, not a trip to the ER. By the time I got there, she was calm and on her way to breakfast.

So, morning email check and related paperwork was delayed for a while. So, what am I doing posting to the blog? Well, because I can. My time management theory is much like the chaos theory.

Through this seemingly crazy unorganized world I live in, I seem to end up getting things done. So, if I feel like posting to the blog, I might as well!

Getting back to my typical Tuesday. I have a session coming up at 11:30 today – a repeat client – a nice little project for a museum. We’ll do phone patch on this one and I just printed out the script to see if there are any surprises. But before that, I updated my class blog, did a little MCA-I work, read my email and got the notice that my first title on Audible has just been approved by the author, approved a couple of Facebook tags on some photos from a toga party this weekend, replied to a couple of emails and thought about watering my plants.

Next up, write some checks (personal and business) and get a couple of invoices out for February before we get too far into March. Oh, and then there is the tax appointment later today. I should probably do a once over on that stuff too.

So, I guess in a way, I am grateful that I don’t have back-to-back sessions. When would I have time to get everything done?

Happy St. Valentine’s Day Massacre!

I couldn’t help myself, I had to send out a press release announcing the opening of the Mob Museum in Las Vegas, because it includes a couple of videos narrated by myself and my friend Scott Gentle. Both videos were created by Northern Light Productions out of Massachusetts and are examples of what good video should be – from the visuals, to the editing, to the sound.

I had the good fortune to narrate a longer documentary produced by Northern Light Productions called “Weapons of Mass Disruption,” which tells the more than a little disturbing story of cyber warfare. The script was superb and such a pleasure to read.

Anyway, here is the release about the work we did for the Mob Museum. I can hardly wait until my April trip to Las Vegas so that I can check out the museum for myself.

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“Mob Museum” Brings Voice Talents Terwilliger and Gentle Together

Today’s opening in downtown Las Vegas of the Mob Museum, the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, brings together the Mob and the Law. It is also where voice talents Connie Terwilliger and Scott Gentle deliver inspired narration for two of the Museum’s key exhibits.

Produced by Northen Light Productions in Massachusettes, Gentle’s narration is featured on the “Bootleg Wars” video that supports what will likely be one of the most popular exhibits – the actual brick wall where the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre took place. Terwilliger’s voice is heard on “Web of Deceit” – a fascinating look at mob violence, corruption, conspiracy and murder.