It is October 29 and snowing in New Jersey. Used to snow occasionally in late October when I was a kid in Buffalo, but never in the 22 years I have lived in New Jersey. To mark this unusual event, below is a repost of a January 2010 entry about snowflakes.
==============================
Came across an interesting story, The Art of the Snowflake, by Jaimie Etkin at The Daily Beast. It describes the work of Wilson Bentley who was the first to photograph a single snowflake. No small feat for a 19 year old self-trained photograper in 1885. He made it his life’s work.
“Every snowflake has an infinite beauty which is enhanced by knowledge that the investigator will, in all probability, never find another exactly like it,” Bentley wrote in Popular Mechanics of his infatuation.
Just now in the middle of doing a voice over job for a well-known major firm. Like most VO gigs, this started with an audition. Producer asked voice talent to submit a portion of the 3-4 minute script. For some reason the copy spoke to me. Decided to record and submit the complete script. Nailed the audition in one take. Got the job.
As usual, when it came time to record, there were minor script changes. Then, the client wanted a different tone in the reads. Several recordings later, every recording is unique. Even when the script is set, a new reading has its own special sound. Each recording has its own character and charm. It is one of a kind. Unique.
Excerpt from Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford University, June 2005:
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart…
…No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
By now you have read about the crisis in Springfield, USA. Fox Television says it can’t continue to produce its long-running animated hit series, The Simpsons, under the current cost model. It wants the cast to take a big pay cut, reportedly 45%.
The Simpsons franchise generates hundreds of millions in profits annually. But not enough, apparently. Seems the producers want to squeeze more profit out of Homer and his gang, and the cast wants a piece of the action.
First run syndication. Reruns. Merchandise. DVD sales. Video games. Feature Films. The Simpsons is a cash cow with many teats.
Voice actors narrating main characters Homer (Dan Castellaneta), Marge (Julie Kavner), Bart (Nancy Cartwright) and Lisa (Yeardley Smith) currently earn about $8 million each per season. The cast tried to negotiate a 30 percent pay cut in return for a portion of the show’s profits.
No deal. No surprise.
Nothing is ever simple with Homer and this situation is no exception. News Corp, Fox Television, 20th Century Fox Television. License fees. Rerun arrangements. Declining viewership. It’s complicated. But in the end it’s all about money. The producers want more. Fox Television wants more. The cast wants more.
Perfect metaphor for our times. Whatever it is, it is never enough. Wall Street profits. Campaign funds. Government handouts. Facebook friends. You get the idea. We are a needy bunch.
In what will be either the season finale or the series finale airing next year, look for art to imitate life with some reference to a labor dispute. The writers won’t be able to resist the storyline. And who better to voice the demands of the Aggrieved and Greedy Everyman?
Homer Simpson is a caricature of the Inner Pea Brain that operates on occasion within each of us.
Just returned from a week at Keuka Lake, one of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. Crooked Lake, locals call it.
Big house on the water. Big porch on the house. Big dining table on the porch. Big group of family and friends at the dining table. Big bowls of spaghetti and meatballs. Hamburgers and hot dogs. Sweet corn on the cob. Big appetites.
Circle of chairs at the edge of the lake. Campfire inside the circle. Marshmallows on sticks above the campfire. Lots of stories and laughs under a blanket of stars.
Dock on the water. Pontoon boat at the dock. Fishermen and women on the boat. Trolling. Jigging. Drifting. Lures. Worms. Minnows. Crayfish. Hooking. Catching. Releasing. Yellow Perch. Sunfish. Rock Bass. Smallmouth Bass. Lots of fun on light tackle.
Walking. Swimming. Canoeing. Boating. Napping in the hammock. Winery tours. Quaint restaurant fare. Local dairy visit for homemade ice cream and sugar cones making for mile-wide sticky smiles.
Before bed, a cigar in a lakeside Adirondack chair, sated.
Watching the sunset and listening to the gentle lap against the shore, filled with gratitude for all my blessings, a summer season ends, perfectly.
In this age of instant communication, where anyone with access to technology can spread an opinion around the world, it is global sport to malign the USA for all its flaws. We are, after all, a big target made all the easier to hit by the hijinks of some of our elites.
So, on this Independence Day weekend, it is refreshing to be reminded of the unique greatness of our country, its values, its promise, its diverse citizenry, and their many contributions to the world.
Enter John Stossel, the Fox Television reporter known for his investigative journalism and his libertarian approach to news and cultural commentary.
Here is a part of his special aired last evening, “What’s Great About America” (You can view the 44 minute special presentation by clicking subsequent Parts at the end of each video).
Celebrate this Fourth of July by taking a moment to forward John Stossel’s opinion about America to a friend or two who might need to be reminded of how blessed are we to call this place home.
We gave Bill Clinton a pass. And Barney Frank. And Charles Rangel. And so many others. It stands to reason Anthony Weiner believes he deserves a pass as well. Unlike others who resign voluntarily, add his name to the long list of politicians who insist on remaining in office after public notice of personal misconduct. Narcissism is a common denominator.
Truth is, we allow these men to stay in office. In not so distant bygone times they would have been shamed away like the others instead of remaining in positions of public trust.
Self-preservation is a powerful motive. But let Mr. Weiner be forgiven and tell him be gone to get the help he needs to heal.
Is it any wonder the headlines scream of a culture gone astray? We are losing our collective virtue. But our national press is too busy investigating Sarah Palin’s emails or ridiculing family values on cable television talk shows to find the time to pursue real social stories. Stories that have consequences for all of us, young and old, rich and poor, of every race and every creed.
Stories like exactly when did self-love begin trumping personal virtue? And who are the citizens among us that behave the values we desire to promote?
Where are our leaders? Our leaders in politics, business, media, religion, and education? Too worried about political correctness to speak out? Too concerned about the ACLU to stand up and confront difficult issues? Too focused on their own good rather than the greater good?
We need to start a dialogue in classrooms, in boardrooms, and in living rooms, to rediscover and reclaim our national virtue in schools, businesses, and government. We need to lead by example and promote leaders of our groups who lead us by their example. And when we make a mistake, let us be forgiven and let us fix it.
The Climb of Life is a dangerous trek. It requires a solid foundation and sure footing to move ahead and avoid the fall. There is an abyss at the bottom of the slope.
At its core, war is loss. Ask any family whose loved one fought overseas and either didn’t return home or returned home with less than a healthy mind, body, or soul.
With antiseptic images presented to us from the war-torn Middle East over the past decade, we can only imagine the horror of war in the safety of our living room. But nearly 150 years ago, America experienced firsthand the death and destruction of war within many of its own cities, towns, and fields.
Yesterday, on the day we honored the memories of our war dead, the History Channel premiered its ground-breaking documentary, Gettysburg.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1832543409
As a young boy, can remember digging for Civil War bullets with my Dad around our home in Sandston, Virginia before it was illegal. It was called the War of Northern Aggression by many in Virginia back then, even nearly a century after the fact. Time heals all wounds, we know.
If you missed the premiere of Gettysburg last night on the History Channel, you can view it on June 2 at 9PM.
If you didn’t see this at The Daily Beast, do watch it now. Time-lapse of the Milky Way shot from El Teide, Spain’s highest mountain, by Terje Sorgjerd. No voice over needed.
What a wondrous world we live on; what a wondrous galaxy we live in.
What would you give to live 1000 years in the future and journey among these stars?
<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/22439234″>The Mountain</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/terjes”>Terje Sorgjerd</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
I say, I say, got to give a hat tip to Geico for bringing back another childhood favorite Looney Tunes character in its latest ad campaign.
Foghorn J. Leghorn, voiced originally by the legendary Mel Blanc, and in this ad by voice actor Jeff Bennett. As a bonus, we get a cameo appearance by Henry Hawk as an unhappy Director.
“Son, I say, I say, ain’t no bird mo’ common than da Unhappy Directa. Dat’s a joke, son, I say, dat’s a joke.” :- )
Today also marks the fifth anniversary of Twitter.
Granted, Twitter greases communication. So does texting. But there’s a problem: you hardly need language skills to tweet or text. Follow a couple of the adolescent icons like Snooki or Snoop Dogg for a day or two to understand.
For all the power of the Digital Age, it is contributing to power failure. Ask any high school teacher and they will tell you reading and writing skills are experiencing a major blackout in Teenville. Grammar. Punctuation. Spelling. The whole grid is down.
If you have kids and worry they won’t acquire the language skills to express themselves in anything more than a tweet or a text, you are not alone. Corporations are sending recent college graduates to remedial English classes. It is a generational crisis.
Some think we should teach to the task. Err, text. Call it the if you can’t beat ‘em, lead ‘em approach.
Fact is, language is a living art and changes over time like all living things. But truth is, if you can’t read, write, and speak basic English with a decent vocabulary, you are doomed to operate somewhere outside the sphere of influence and mastery of life in America. Doesn’t matter if you are a politician or a plumber, you are disadvantaged. Celebrities aside, of course.
So, how can you increase the odds your kids don’t end up birdbrains tweeting their way through school and ending up incapable of creating a usable resume or writing a respectable letter?
Don’t depend on our schools.
Take parental responsibility for making sure your kids develop English skills. Start early at home. Read to them. Ask them to write for you. Start with a sentence. Then a paragraph. Work towards a story. About the first day of Spring. About what they did today. Or what they want to do tomorrow. Edit and correct their work. You can nurture their dreams while you’re at it.
And, invest in their future.
Buy each kid a dictionary. A real one; for their backpack. Show them how to use it and teach them a new word every day. Ask them to teach you a new word every day and fake your delight if you already know it. Here’s a word of the day idea: quidnuck. As in, “Son, don’t be a quidnuck. Look up the word!”
Ooops. Exceeded 140 characters. Will end with two words of wisdom and some texting shorthand:
Our world gets mighty small when natural disaster strikes. The internet speeds images of devastation and makes us all observers of the real-time destruction. The global economy interconnects markets and makes us all participants in the financial after effects.
Looking at the markets trading in the US and abroad, the downdraft in prices reflects not so much panic as it does uncertainty about how the Japanese nuclear plant explosions and the attendant economic damage will impact companies worldwide.
The markets will recover. Japan will rebuild. In the meantime, the people touched by the tragedy need our prayers and help.
Here are a few groups that can use your support to fund their relief work in Japan. Just made a donation to AmeriCares. Pick a group to support. It’s easy. It’s needed.
Celebrate a birthday next week. Wow! So soon? Ah, me.
If life were like a round of golf, to use a simile, my new age puts me somewhere on the 14th fairway. Like previous birthdays on the Back Nine, I am compelled to reflect upon my play in the Round of Life so far.
To reflect is to look back. You act as an observer of the past to better guide your approaching choices.
A quick review of the hypothetical scorecard might show a birdie or two, plenty of pars, a few bogeys, and a couple double bogeys, at least. Let’s say I have played enough holes to groove my swing, but have enough holes left to still improve my score. And although the clubhouse is not quite in sight, I am aware it is just ahead.
Can remember learning how to visualize “looking back” through a birthday present my parents gave me, Jon Gnagy’s Learn To Draw Kit. Couldn’t have been more than 10 years old, or just a couple holes into my Round of Life.
Mr. Gnagy introduced me to the concept of perspective. Watch him demonstrate two-point perspective in creating a Grist Mill scene in less than 10 minutes.
Looking back, must have drawn that Grist Mill a hundred times as a kid, wanting to learn how to create a satisfying still life on paper. With practice, I did. And with plenty of trial and error as an adult, I also learned to apply the concept of perspective to create a satisfying life in the real world as well.
Perspective transcends drawing. It is a life skill, assigning proportion to the events of the past in order to allow a realistic sense of the present, and perhaps shape our acts in the future. Perspective informs us that in pursuit of a rewarding life, looking back is a prerequisite to moving forward confidently.
So, where does that leave me as I ponder my next shot into the 14th green in my Round of Life?
As every shot in golf counts, every day in life is dear. Applying perspective to this late stage in my Round, I am mindful the shots and days ahead are still new and full of possibilities, only just dearer now.
This week a supercomputer is competing against past Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in an exhibition match. After the first day of a three day competition, IBM’s Watson is tied with Rutter at $5,000 and is $3,000 ahead of Jennings.
Too bad Watson sounds so flat. Just no vocal jazz or expression at all. Note to IBM: hire a voice actor and give the box of bolts a personality.
But I digress.
What interests me is the steady acceleration of computer technology and artificial intelligence. It is akin to the evolution of a species, only millennia faster.
Already, scientists are genetically altering crops like corn, soybean, and cotton; and scientists breed goats that produce spider silk. Ethics aside, how long before human genetics are manipulated to produce high IQ kids? For the moment, it is only the stuff of novels, and though Robin Cook warned of the dangers in his bestseller, Mutation, it may be Homo sapiens next survival strategy.
Like it or not, the genetic engineering genie is out of the bottle, and maybe not a century too soon. Listening to Watson and his progeny issuing two-note monotone orders would be a kind of lifelong purgatory on earth, causing the true believers among us to pray for an early salvation, playing right into the hands of the bloodless contraptions.
Lord, help us. While You’re at it, appears Rutter and Jennings may need some help soon, too.
Update: Night Two of the IBM Challenge ended with Watson at $35,734, Brad Rutter at $10,400, and Ken Jennings at $4,800.
Update: In the finale, Watson racked up total winnings of $77,147, crushing Jennings $24,000 total and Rutter’s $21,600 score. We’ve seen the future, and it is Watson.
Forgive me for regurgitating the news, but I’m fairly confident the target audience will not have seen this item, so you can share it with any young person in your proximity. Consider it a public service.
The Today Show aired a piece this morning on a growing teen fad called car surfing. CBS did a segment last fall on the same trend.
Car surfing isn’t the only dangerous act kids might be tempted to try. Take a stroll through YouTube and get a gander at some of the other stunningly stupid things kids have done. Notoriety among ones peers is powerful stuff, not to mention the number of YouTube views and a chance to go viral.
Why are adolescents and young adults inclined to take bad risks and make bad choices? Seems it is triggered by peer pressure and has to do with brain chemistry. So says Dr. Laurence Steinberg, one of the authors of a study at Temple University. Read about it here in today’s NYTimes.
If you have teens, suggest they watch the two minute CBS video above. Gently point out the laws of physics apply to adolescents, too. All injuries hurt. Some consequences are permanent. Tell them to close their eyes. Ask them to imagine living fifty or sixty years in a wheelchair. Ask them to imagine living a lifetime with a brain injury.
Also, you might ask them to read about the jail sentence handed down to the driver who killed his friend in a Jackass-like stunt.
They will tell you they are not like that tattooed dope. Maybe not. But you can assure them somewhere at this very moment there is a good kid doing something stupid and reckless simply to impress somebody.
As Dr. Steinberg and his colleagues inform us, peer pressure is very close friends with our inner dumbass.
You can end your meeting with some especially effective advice: tell them if you ever find yourself being pressured by your peers to do something stupid and reckless, dig deep and find your courage.
Then, just say no.
Note: The upswing in car surfing is attributed to the Jackass movies produced by MTV featuring people performing dangerous and often self-injuring stunts and pranks. Despite warnings and disclaimers, several deaths and serious injuries have occurred to teens inspired by the movies and earlier MTV television show.
Looking outside my window this morning, think fictional Pittsburgh TV weatherman Phil Connors, portrayed by the inimitable Bill Murray, has the better prediction.
Okay, maybe he was talking about more than the weather. Maybe Phil Connors was just feeling a little cold and gray himself that Groundhog Day. Monotony will do that to you.
But this Groundhog Day, Punxsutawney Phil got it wrong. Surely this winter will last longer than six weeks. Surely the fur ball is punking us all with false hope for an early Spring.
So, perhaps it’s time for a replacement up in Punxsutawney, PA. Perhaps Phil Connors was right.
Every farmer knows good seed can yield a bad crop. A good crop requires nourishment. Good seed needs tending.
This week MTV premiered its new drama series, Skins, modeled after a British series by the same name.
The show follows a group of misfit teens, and explores issues confronting middle adolescents related to drugs, sex, relationship and family issues. Its actors are as young as 15 years old; high school students; amateurs. The premiere attracted 3.3 million viewers primarily in the 12-34 demographic.
Here is the trailer:
Perplexed at the modern teenage lifestyle promoted by Hollywood?
You are not alone.
The show is widely criticized for depicting graphic sex, illegal drug use, and other inappropriate behavior, crossing the line of common community standards. It is condemned by some as portraying child pornography, in particular a future episode.
Between Jersey Shore and Skins, makes me wonder if we aren’t losing our way as adults along with losing a generation of impressionable adolescents as well, perhaps.
Not even parents can supervise what kids watch on television today. Technology makes programming accessible outside the home and far away from parental oversight. So, what is the answer?
Adult supervision starts with programming content itself. Our Hollywood decision-makers are adults. Imagine many are parents of teens. Content producers of adolescent programming can decide to act like responsible parents and adults first; as purveyors of entertainment second.
We can’t hide kids from the realities of modern culture, nor should we. But we can promote the future opportunities and rewards the world can offer to an adolescent life spent in better preparation to reap them. We can produce programming that does not glamorize bad choices. We can produce Hollywood content with examples of more successful adolescent lifestyles.
To paraphrase a wisdom passed down through the ages, “as we sow, so shall we reap.”
It’s time we started tending our crop.
Update: MTV is losing sponsors for Skins. Apparently there is some concern inside MTV about the future of the show. Read it here.
Life is a test. Each day brings new experiences, new challenges, and new problems to solve.
It takes schooling to prepare for successful living. While most instruction takes place in the classroom, there is other learning just as important as the ABC’s. Unless you get this education as a kid, you are left to learn these basics as an adult, and usually after several failures.
If you are lucky, your parents share these lessons with you. You can get this instruction from other adults as well, like teachers and mentors. Thanks to the internet, kids can also learn from some very successful people.
Take Warren Buffet, for example. This self-made billionaire created a website to teach kids the lessons he considers fundamental to success in business and life. The site was featured on AOL today.
Here’s his video on the importance of learning how to learn.
He calls his resource The Secret Millionaire’s Club. Be sure to visit and watch a few episodes, each less than five minutes in length. Sure wish I had seen these videos as an adolescent and had a chance to discuss them with a parent or mentor. Would have saved me several disappointing grades as a young adult in the real life School of Hard Knocks.
But Like Mr. Buffet said, we are never too old to learn. So I’m watching his lessons now. Call it my review course :- )
(Note: The voice over work is well done, in my opinion. Warren Buffet’s voice and image are a perfect match, courtesy Mother Nature.
Also notice his scripts use good grammar sprinkled with advanced vocabulary words, teaching by example the lesson that if you want to succeed in life, you need to speak intelligently. So, be sure to share this site with young people you care about in your world, and offer to discuss the lessons with them.)
As a boy growing up in the suburbs of Buffalo, I played ice hockey. First as a squirt on backyard ice laid down with a garden hose by someone’s Dad, then as a pee wee on a natural ice rink maintained by the local park employees, finally as an adolescent on the town artificial ice arena built for organized youth hockey. We learned to skate outside, play the game outside, competing mostly at night under the lights. It is the same way professional NHL players learned the game as kids, whether in Canada, the USA, Russia, Sweden or any other place in the world.
Every year on New Year’s Day, the National Hockey League celebrates its roots with the Winter Classic, a game played between two elite NHL teams at an outdoor arena in the host city. This year the game was played before 69,000 fans at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Stadium between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals.
As a prelude to the contest, HBO produced a four-part documentary narrated by the incomparable Liev Schreiber. With an informed, observant and resonant voice, his powerful performance perfectly accompanies the film without overwhelming the viewing experience. It is splendid voice over work and terrific television.
Here is the HBO Preview. Even if you don’t have the time or interest to watch it all, watch a few minutes. You won’t be disappointed. And, if you grew up with hockey, you will be transported back in time. Enjoy.
As a Washington Capitals season ticket holder for ten years in the 80′s, two seats, center ice, row 26, on the aisle, I watched many games between the Pens and the Caps. The players have changed but the rivalry persists. It was a pleasure to watch the HBO series and the Winter Classic.
Here is the first hour long episode.
And, here is a two minute highlight film of the Winter Classic, played in the rain on the first night of this new year. If you ever played hockey or you are an informed fan, you will appreciate the “give and go” at 1:40 of the video. This classic play results in a goal and a hockey tradition: a celebration on ice.
You may have seen this video yesterday. It went viral after appearing in the NY Post and making the evening news in most broadcast markets.
What a voice. What a gift. What a waste. Voice talent Ted Williams reduced to panhandling.
But my guess is this fella never lost his faith, just lost his confidence. Never lost his hope, just lost his way. Never lost his desire to be helpful, just lost his ability to be helped. Until a couple years ago when he got clean and sober.
What a triumph! Should be plenty of voice over work for a guy with his talent. Just needs a second chance.
Well, guess what? He got it.
“The Cleveland Cavaliers just offered me a full-time job and a house! A house! A house!,” repeated a stunned Williams, 71, on local radio station WNCI.
A caller to the show who said she represented the Cavs offered Williams, who shot to stardom after the local newspaper the Columbus Dispatch on Monday posted video of his perfectly-pitched panhandling, a full-time job doing voiceover work for the team and parent company and a free home in Cleveland.
Great place, America. What a wonderful example of both the resilience of the human spirit and the charity of strangers. Read about Ted Williams’s new found good fortune in the NY Post
You never know what tomorrow brings. Miracles happen every day.
Update:the NY Post later reported Ted Williams is age 53. It was further reported that Williams has entered a rehab for alcoholism and drug addiction. He admitted he had relapsed because of anxiety after receiving national notoriety and reuniting with his family. Update 2: In late January, Mr. Williams reportedly dropped out of rehab
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,400 times in 2010. That’s about 3 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 44 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 73 posts. There were 58 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1mb. That’s about 1 pictures per week.
The busiest day of the year was March 9th with 53 views. The most popular post that day was Perspective.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were the7msnranch.com, bigextracash.com, ow.ly, blogger.com, and en.wordpress.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for seeds of imagination, tom donovan voice over, solar system birth, joan baker voice over, and birth of solar system.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
Television has a way of marking holidays, and Christmas makes for the biggest mark of all. Shannon Donnelly at The Daily Beast has collected 25 clips from some of the best holiday television episodes. Here’s my favorite from A Charlie Brown Christmas:
(Note: Isn’t it interesting how only a few decades ago, Charles Schulz was able to be so politically incorrect, much to our delight. Makes me wish for the good old days when we took other things more seriously than ourselves…)
Watch the rest of her Classic Holiday TV Episodes including Homer stealing a Xmas tree, Jerry Stiller introducing the new holiday Festivus on Seinfeld, Roger Miller doing the voiceover in Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, and Adam Sandler singing The Chanukah Song on SNL, among others.
One special Christmas, Santa brought my brothers and me a Lionel Train set; not many components: a small transformer, a simple oval track, a faux steam locomotive, a coal car, a few box cars, a tanker car, and a caboose. We set it up with our Dad that morning and ran the thing forever, it seemed.
Talked about a larger layout, but we never got around to it. Sports competed for our attention; adolescence beckoned with pretty girls; the big dream of a tiny world was soon forgotten.
What we had in mind, though, looked something like this…
How about that elephant, the hot air balloons, the parachutes, the sunflower field hiding the lovers, Romeo beseeching Juliet, and the monkey on the roof? Somehow the English language voiceover with a German accent works.
Good to know there were at least a few boys who kept their big dream of a tiny world alive after so many years.
With a hat tip to the film Inception, here’s a seasonal commercial masterpiece, courtesy of Coca-Cola. You might never think about Snow Globes the same way again.
Would like it better, though, if Coke had used words and employed me. So, Voiceover Actor Aspiring has no choice but to pledge his allegiance to Pepsi. Diet, of course. No calories.
Nothing personal. Just hope it doesn’t piss off Santa and he doesn’t start goofin’ with my globe :- )
Wind power drives voiceover. Air moving out of the lungs, over the vocal chords, into the mouth and past the tongue and lips. Energy expended to make sound.
What about wind power captured and transformed into a source of energy? Old idea, you say. Okay. But there is a pioneering Cornell University professor who has a new twist that may make wind power more practical.
This video, Turbine- Free Wind Power, was commissioned by the NYT Magazine as part of its 10th Annual Year In Ideas issue. Written by journalist Andrew Tolve, who does a fine voiceover job as well.
After you’ve watched the video, scroll up or down and explore the other ideas highlighted this year by the NYT Magazine. Then, go to the bottom of the page and click the 10 Year Retrospective to see the Best Idea of Each Year and some of the other selected notables.
Words, the ones we choose to express our thoughts, our fears, our desires and the myriad of other human states of mind, are the currency of most social commerce between us.
Voice over is about words. Moreso, how the words are spoken to communicate the message. But what if there were no words? What if we only were able to observe a person to fathom their state of mind?
Some videos don’t require voice over, just fitting music.
Consider this a public service post.
On December 21, 1988 on the drive home from a Christmas party, I was stopped and asked to take a Breathalyzer. I refused and was charged with DUI. Luckily, I didn’t hurt anyone else or myself that night.
Never had another drink. Not because I couldn’t, but because I knew I had driven under the influence plenty of other times and might again. You see, I was not always a responsible drinker. Too easy for me to have a few drinks and get behind the wheel. Decided the best approach for me was no more drinking.
Not suggesting you stop drinking. Telling you my holiday story only as a prelude to the video.
It is hard to watch, but you should watch it, especially if you ever drive after drinking even a couple.
Consider passing it on to your family and friends.
The old cliche “Familiarity breeds contempt” doesn’t apply to branding. Branding is about creating awareness and mind share through affiliation. The more familiar, the stronger the affiliation. So, it is only natural that expensive national advertising campaigns often employ celebrity voices.
At the top of the voice over world, the sky is full of stars. Hollywood stars. Check out Mr. Peanut putting some hurt on The Nutcracker, courtesy of Robert Downey Jr. Be sure to click through the other commercials to appreciate the keen voice over competition.
Talent, luck and a thick skin. So said veteran voice actor Nancy Giles on a recent CBS Sunday Morning telecast about what makes for a successful career in the voice over business.
Missed it? Watch and listen now.
Notice all those celebrity voices? Mighty competitive, indeed. My experience is more like 50-80 other voice over professionals compete in my category for every quality job posted on Voice123; maybe half as many for studio auditions in NYC. As for voice over being a $12 Billion dollar industry? Well, let’s say I’m still working on my 1/100th of one percent market share.
So, if Michael Douglas, Tom Selleck, and Gene Hackman insist on doing voice over, fight fire with fire, I say. Will be doing my first on camera acting in a small indie film. Part was written for me by a friend, the film maker. Done my table read. Memorizing my lines this week. Shoot my scenes this Sunday.
When Voice Actor, Aspiring was an undergraduate, a gambling-crazed bartender at the local college dive tried to talk me into becoming a jockey. Just because I rode a few stable horses in high school, mucked a few stables in exchange for rides, and loved to hang on the rail at the track. Luckily, I was too big (come to think about it, I did ride a thoroughbred stallion one time in my life. Fresh from the track to the farm. Let’s just say it was an uncontrolled experience).
Churchill Downs hired Mark Johnson, an Englishman, as the new track announcer last year. Announcing is real-time voice over. You speak what you observe on the fly. It is in-the-moment performance art without edits. Like the horses and jockeys who ride in the Derby today. There are no do overs.
He got to call the great upset by Mind That Bird in his first Derby. Unfortunately, Mr. Johnson failed to notice the surprise winner until midway down the stretch. He missed the move up from the back of the pack entirely. Ooops.
The late Luke Krytebosch must have rolled over in his grave.
Today, my money is on Ice Box. If the track is muddy, Noble’s Promise.
Tune to NBC at 6:24PM to hear Mark Johnson say.…………..Annnnnnnnnnd…They’re off!
Let’s give D.C. Douglas the benefit of the doubt. You know the guy. He voiced the tag lines in several GEICO television commercials, a very lucrative voice over gig.
He was fired by GEICO after backlash about a voice mail he left at Freedom Works, a Tea Party group. He asked “what (are) the percentages of people that are mentally retarded who work for the organization and are members of it?” He also wanted to know how Freedom Works will “spin it when one of your members does actually kill somebody?” He asked for a reply and left his phone number in the voice mail.
Wow. Not sure what to say about his comment, so will only ask a question. What can we learn from his experience? Easy answer.
While we have a right to our opinion - and a First Amendment right to free speech in this country - we need to exercise common sense when we express it.
Life is full of choices. Choices are ripe with consequences.
Here is a popular commercial with the late voice over artist Don LaFontaine. D.C. Douglas does the voice over work at the beginning and end of the ad.
As a kid, I was not the best geography student. My 5th grade teacher told me I lived in the Wonderful World of Donovan.
The WWoD was about a square mile bordered by my home, Lincoln Park where I played baseball, Blessed Sacrament School, and the local convenience store where I hung out with my pals drinking RC Cola under a shade tree on hot summer afternoons as we entertained each other with stories and jokes. Not much mattered outside my own neighborhood back then.
So I paid special attention to a rebroadcast of a PBS program on Elbert Hubbard, the founder of the Roycroft artisan community in East Aurora, NY. East Aurora is 30 miles southeast of my boyhood home in Buffalo. A century ago, Roycroft was considered a destination, and must have been an idyllic place, too.
A force of nature, Elbert Hubbard built the Roycroft brand into a contempoary style of the time. Like all forceful things, seems he had his share of collisions. He left his wife and family after a 15 year affair, and died aboard the torpedoed ocean linerRMS Lusitania with his former mistress and then second wife, Alice Moore Hubbard. Roycroft Campus lives on as his legacy and one of less than 2,500 National Historic Landmarks.
The PBS program was narrated by Liev Schreiber who used his rich voice with measured tones to tell the story of Elbert Hubbard and Roycroft without influencing the listener’s experience by overly expressing his own emotional reaction to the script. It is masterful voice over work.
Joan Baker must have aced her writing classes as a student. She has a wonderful way with words.
Good writing begins with good thinking. So, no surprise Ms. Baker herself contributes one of the more valuable insights in her anthology about the voice over business, Secrets of Voice-Over Success.
Nestled within the story of her personal voice over journey, Joan explains how she combats the dreaded Boogie Man for all performance artists who audition; rejection. Her simple bromide? Stop thinking of unsuccessful auditions as rejection. Think of successful auditions as selection.
Joan points out what we all understand but sometimes fail to appreciate: voice seekers have a voice in mind when they invite auditions. Think of it as hankering for a certain kind of cookie. If it is your voice in their head, you are selected. Otherwise, their search continues. In either case, any audition is an opportunity to ply your craft to the best of your ability.
Just finished my first year in the business. My ratio of auditions to jobs was 12 to 1; not bad for a rookie. There were times when I would go well beyond 12 auditions without being selected for a job. Just as hard as the Boogie Man tries to discourage me with a slump, Probability Man encourages me to keep working.
You see, as I imagine Joan Baker was a pretty good writing student, Voice Actor Aspiring aced his statistics classes in graduate school. So, I know the Law of Large Numbers says every “unselected audition” puts me one audition closer to my expected average and next job.
And if I practice my craft every day and do my best on every audition, my average might just get even better.
Came across this video about the formation of a new solar system; sun, planets, and moons. It is a compilation of photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The video was produced by NPR and is narrated by Science Correspondent Robert Krulwich.
Hear the amazement in his voice? Wonderful narration. After you watch the video, click on the image to the right and be amazed, too.
Who is he talking to? Science writer Micheal Benson. But, Krulwich knows we’re eavesdropping.
Returned home yesterday after a visit to the Bronx Zoo.
Got a call from a prominent NYC Voice Over Agent. Asked me to come into her office today to do an ISDN audition for a “Hollywood client.” Said the gig is for a lead voice over role in a new animated film!
Told her I was unable to get into the city today. Volunteer every Thursday at the local hospital. She said, no problem. She had a better alternative the client preferred anyway. Asked if I can fly out to their Hollywood Studio on Monday to read in person for the Casting Team, including two of the Executive Producers and the Director! Told me I will have to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement.
Yikes! This is the Big Time!
Reminded her it will be the day after Easter and it might be difficult to get a flight from Newark Airport to LAX. She said it won’t be necessary. A car will pick me up at 11AM sharp. The studio will have one of its private jets pick me up at Morristown Airport! Will put me up at the Beverly Hills Hotel! Fly me home on Tuesday. Told her, “Wow!”
You just never know when your dream might come true…
Intellectual property licensing fees might replace a bigger part of an eroding manufacturing tax base in the US economy. If it weren’t for rampant infringement, that is. Yet, Congress turns a blind eye.
And, infringement is not a new problem. Take the recording business.
In reading Joan Baker’s The Secrets of Voice-OverSuccess, she reminds me that Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and produced musical recordings on cylinders at his New Jersey Complex. To discourage piracy, he used a Voice Over Announcer to introduce the song on each cylinder as the property of Edison Records, and personally signed each cylinder box.
Unlike patent infringement in the high tech sector or copyright infringement in the music and film industries, piracy is a rare occurrence with online voice over auditions, but it happens. Some voice over artists include an audio watermark to protect an audition submitted online to an unfamiliar Voice Seeker. I prefer to simply omit a word from the script so the audition can be evaluated by the Voice Seeker but is unfit for commercial use (some Producers and Clients reject watermarked auditions out of hand). This is not a problem for the vast majority of potential clients.
So, what about the few Voice Seekers who do object? If Thomas Edison were a voice over artist, doubt he would care. Imagine he might say you have to protect the fruits of your labor and provide for your family.
Makes you wonder why Congress isn’t protecting the nascent intellectual property industry, the fruits of our new economy.
Attended the final performance of Riverdance at Radio City Music Hall yesterday, courtesy of two beautiful redheads. What a dazzling production of music, song and dance, both Irish and ethnic, by a Boyne Company cast led by dancers Liam Ayres and Catrina Coyne (although the voice over narration throughout the show seemed disjointed).
And what an impressive theater; first time inside the place for me. You can see why it is considered one of the premier stages by performers around the world.
It was a gorgeous spring day in NYC, in the upper 50′s, and the walk to Rockefeller Center from Penn Station and back was delightful.
After the show, treated the group to dinner at a Chinese restaurant and couldn’t resist the fried dumplings and sweet and sour pork. Later at home just had to cut myself a piece of chocolate chip banana bread before hitting the sack. Paid the price with a bout of acid reflux into the wee hours.
Need to be more careful with my diet. Got to keep my vocal chords healthy. There aren’t many VO job specs for “raspy voiced old man.”
Kate McClanaghan wrote a nice piece at Voiceover Universe about the importance of knowing how you are perceived by others; your voice, your presence, your brand. Your voice over type. My voice over Coach emphasized the same concept and suggested several archetypes that fit me.
As my voice acting experience grows, so does the emotional range of my natural voice. As Kate suggests, embracing your primary type with comfort and confidence is the secret. Nothing wrong with stretching and developing my range to other types, but my natural self decides the vast majority of my audition choices.
Knowing myself shapes my life as well. Took some years to get it right. Today hard won wisdom prevails. Still enjoy doing things outside my comfort zone now and then. But like voice over, my choices are guided by knowing who I am and what I can do. Naturally.
Remember Richard Thomas, who was highlighted in my last post? Here is something else he said about voice over:
“…it’s a fluid process in which you concentrate on tiny increments of inflection, pace, and emotion. It’s like making a miniature or mosaic. It’s about working at the molecular level.” – Richard Thomas
Wow. Voice over as atoms. And I thought it was only about giving life to the copy. Turns out, it’s as much about mining the basic elements to give personality to the life, and reaching out with my voice to connect viscerally with the listener.
Imagine some voice actors do this instinctively. Me? Will be putting more effort into preparation. Better marking the copy at the key words and phrases. Planning the perfect pitch to communicate the emotional nuance intended by the copywriter for the target audience. Then, rehearsing my performance and listening for these essential subtle sounds.
No surprise that in voice over, like much of life, success starts with small things done well.
===============================================
Note: There are certain books worth reading carefully not because the content is difficult to understand, but because the content is rich with information and insight. One such book is Secrets of Voice-Over Success, and the gems are provided by some top voice over professionals. So, if you’ve already read the book, get ready to be reacquainted. If you’re new to this text, stick around a few weeks. Will be sharing some of the ideas and experiences from the pros that resonate with me.
Been reading Joan Baker’s Secrets of Voice-Over Success, a digest of experiences and advice offered by some successful voice over actors.
Early in the book, a comment by Richard Thomas, who does the Mercedes-Benz work, connected with me. Despite a long and distinguished stage, film, and television career, he is a relative newcomer to voice over and considers himself an apprentice.
A voice over novice? A learner of the trade? Just like me?
Unlike me, Richard Thomas brings a lifetime of experience connecting to an audience. He appreciates the puzzle.
When doing a voice over job, establishing an emotional connection with trust, empathy, and a fellow feeling between his voice and those who hear it is what he strives to achieve, concluding:
It would be a wonderful thing if I allowed my voice to really come from my heart – that as an actor but equally as a person, my voice was in me, yes, but I was in my voice, too.- Richard Thomas
Allowing my voice to come from my heart. Free of ego and expectation. Releasing genuineness and authenticity. Emotionally connecting with the listener. Worth mastering, this skill, both in voice over and in life.
NASA released some new images of the Earth. Got me thinking about our different worlds.
There is the inside our head world, past, present, and future. Our family world. Our work world. Our social world. Our community world. You get the picture. The list is long.
We are a universe of worlds, each cosmos with its own stages and players, acts and audiences, plots and props. We are a collection of living theaters, our own Broadway Galaxy.
It helps to get some perspective when one of our worlds changes, gets bigger or smaller, better or worse, by our own act, or the act of another, or an act of God. Just imagine all the fortunes playing out here right this minute.
So, persevere if broken; be humble if blessed. Like the heavens, there are countless worlds within and between us, yet undiscovered and unexplored, each full of stories not yet told.
The internet is like a worldwide brain. It makes available the collective experience of others to teach us almost anything. Or reteach us, in some cases.
Still plenty to learn about voice over, but nothing to relearn yet. Was fortunate to train extensively with one of the top voice over coaches in NYC before ever doing an audition. It was an advantage to learn voice over fundamentals the right way at the start. A personal coach makes a difference.
But there is plenty of information on the internet about how to do voice over. From articles in online industry journals, to YouTube tutorials, to helpful tips shared by experienced VO pros on blogs and forums, there is no lack of quality instruction about how to do the work. So, if you need to relearn the basics, the essentials are only keystrokes away.
Fact is, there is almost no excuse for not learning or relearning how to do just about anything the right way in the internet age.
The collective worldwide brain has a big IQ. You are part of it. It is part of you.
We all experience the blues on occasion. Sadness is a normal human emotion like its more popular and desirable cousin, happiness.
Not to make light of serious setbacks in life, voice over work has its own ups and downs.
When you get on a bad roll of auditions without winning any work, it can be depressing. In voice over circles, the usual prescription is to put it behind you. Once an audition is done, let it go. Good advice.
But what if your mind keeps wandering back to those auditions, and you dwell on them to the point of feeling down? Is this to be avoided at all costs? Psychiatrists call it rumination, the act of rethinking and revisiting events that are the source of our sadness. Convention says rumination exacerbates dejection, although two experts think depression has an upside.
Too much of anything is not good and that includes rumination. But reviewing unsuccessful auditions does afford me the opportunity to determine what areas are candidates for improvement. Might be a piece of equipment, my audition choices, script preparation, mic technique, voice work, or client relations. On experiencing a slump, rather than fighting the sadness by forging ahead without reflection, allowing for a little gloom becomes part of the resolution when rumination results in thoughtful evaluation.
To tweak a famous voice over, you can’t fully savor the thrill of victory without ever dwelling on the agony of defeat.
Just about to celebrate my birthday. Another one. Relentless, these things.
As a kid, every birthday opened a new vista. At six, off to school. At eight, Little League baseball. At 12, a paper route. At 14, first love. At 16, a real paycheck. At 18, college bound. Those were the days.
What new vistas beckon in the not-too distant future? Social Security and Medicare? Waiting rooms and insurance forms? Senior Discounts and Early Bird Specials? Sound more like horizons than vistas. Either way, my aging continues, gratefully.
Decided long ago the key to aging well is aging gracefully, and aging gracefully is about acting your age. In my case, no wild all nighters. No “Wazzuuup?” greetings. No hair dye. No cosmetic surgery. No extreme sports. No trophy wife. No Baby Daddy. Nope. Not happening. None of it.
Thinking more of acting like a big kid with an adult brain. Call it youthful spirit bridled by hard-won wisdom.
Acting your age applies to voice over as well. For me, no Millennium Generation squeaky voiced soprano jobs or Gen X nonchalant riffs. Will be sticking to my sweet spot, the middle age and senior male jobs. Friendly. Trustworthy. Approachable. With a sense of humor.
Figure with any luck, me, Bridges, Selleck, Spacey, and Harris can corner the market.
There is humor in every enterprise that only those who do the work can capture. This comic by Voice Actor Jeff Kafer got a grin out of me.
When you do a studio audition, you rarely get any feedback. Perhaps a polite, “That was nice. Thanks.”
When you audition through an internet site, you might get a one liner like, “Finalist” or “Considering” or “Not Likely” or the worst, “You Will Not Be Considered.”
Sometimes, your audition results in a job. You exchange a few emails and have a phone conversation or two with the Producer and Director. You do the work. Put your heart into it. Submit your final product. And, hear nothing more.
You submit an invoice. Get paid through PayPal or a check arrives in the mail, usually without any follow-up.
On occasion, after you’ve been paid, you discover the client did not use your work. Some other Voice Artist did the job. Client changed their mind. Wanted a different sound. It happens. Talk about feedback.
As American Idol and America’s Got Talent teach, performance art is not for sissies. It takes a thick skin. Same goes for voice over. Rejection abounds. At the moment, my average is 17 auditions for every job. Feedback is infrequent. If you have a high need for validation, you have to find it some other way. Me? I bite my lip and cash the check.
Heard a voice over promoting the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. It was broadcast throughout Canada. Wondered why there was no call for me to do the gig???
I mean, come on.
Grew up in Buffalo, the sister city of Toronto. While not a genuine Son of Eh, consider myself a close first cousin from just across the Peace Bridge.
And, clearly, the guy who got the job occupies the same niche, the Mature Every Man. You know the sound. Friendly. Trustworthy. Credible to all.
But who can compete with a true Canadian surrounded by his countrymen, eh??
Pretty darn lucky for Donald I’m a Yank who doesn’t do on camera work :- )
Tiger made a much anticipated televised statement about his personal problems. Expectations were low. How did he do?
He was humble. He owned up and took responsibility for his behavior. He blamed his acts on temptations created by his money and fame. He said he felt entitled to those shameful pleasures because he worked so hard to get to his position. He said he stopped living the lessons he was taught by his parents. He said he drifted from the beliefs of his Buddhist faith.
His voice sounded sincere and his manner appeared contrite. His words seemed to be his own. He apologized to his wife first, her family and his family, his business partners and employees, his fans, and the parents and kids who view him as a role model.
He said he wants to be a better man. He said he wants to live a life of character and integrity. He put the pressure on himself to live up to his words. He said he will continue his therapy. He said he will return to golf, he just doesn’t know when.
All of us make mistakes. Some of us make amends. Not many of us commit publicly to change. He deserves a second chance like anyone else.
A Brit artist created a gallery installation and invited his peers to trash their failed pieces. He calls it Art Bin. Got me thinking.
Decided to replay my 2009 voice over auditions. Heard some winners. Heard some okay efforts. Heard some stinkers. Can’t be your best every day. Got me wondering.
Where do all these auditions end up?? Are they still sitting in the email files of Casting Directors, Producers, and Voice Seekers around the world? Usually there are 50-70 other voice over artists submitting mp3 files for the same jobs. That’s a lot of auditions. Got to be plenty of less-than-best efforts for every gig.
Early last year auditioned for a characterization of a Pink Flamingo. Yep. Pink Flamingo. On replay nearly a year later, my audition sounds like the Vlasic Pickle Stork in the midst of severe intestinal distress. Didn’t get the job. Imagine that particular audition was retained by the Casting Director and is retrieved for entertainment purposes at office social functions.
Too bad voice over actors can’t cull voice seeker email files. Trash our worst auditions in an Audition Bin. Would keep us busy. Too busy to produce any bad auditions. Or any good auditions.
That is the problem.
To create winners, by necessity we create lots of losers. Failure is the proud sibling of Success.
A young artist just down the road photographs unusual landscapes. What is more unusual is he creates his subject matter before he focuses his lens and clicks the shutter.
Matthew Albanese builds worlds.
Let me give a boost to this fellow New Jerseyan by way of a Daily Beast article written by Tali Yahalom.
Albanese puts great effort into building his models. Not unlike the effort it takes to build a voice over business. Both are front-loaded, in my case with countless hours spent practicing, learning sound engineering skills, auditioning, and marketing.
Like me and a lot of voice over talent, Albanese is his own marketer as well. Spread the word. Network. Self-promote. Trial and error. No agent. No representation.
No surprise either, he believes his work is worth more than he is able to earn. Don’t we all?
Building a world from a dream is not easy. You have your own experience, no doubt. You know.
Brings to mind what I used to tell my young staffers in a bygone corporate world, and what I remind myself of each day in my brave new world. A simple dictum.
Schools closed today because of snow. Decision was made a full day before a flake even fell. Awoke to a 4-5 inches. In Buffalo, my boyhood home, they call this a dusting. Forecast is another 4-6″ before midnight.
Do I grab my shovel or wait for the Plow Guy to dig me out? If I wait, what to do on a day trapped indoors?
Could stick with the day’s theme, still do some digging of my own in the comfort of my home.
Dig out from under the piles of paper. Dig through the audition inbox and outbox. Dig around receipts and tax records for my voice over business, and put my CPA’s tax prep package together. Then, could dig through the dirty clothes and do laundry. Could dig through the fridge and check expiration dates. Dig through a cluttered closet or two. Lots of potential dig sites to do. Hmmm.
The New Orleans Saints won Super Bowl 44 and hearts across America with a combination of skill, effort, and imagination, with an assist by Lady Luck.
The high-risk, you gotta be kiddin’ me, onside kick to begin the second half could have bounced differently, after all.
The fickle and mischievous Ms. Luck aside, the Saints multi-season quest for greatness capped by their Super Bowl victory reminded me of a post made months ago. A lesson worth revisiting for this voice over artist and anyone else with a dream.
Before voice over artists do an audition, they usually do a sound check. Before Tiger Woods plays competitive golf again, he will definitely do a gut check.
Read yesterday that Woods is rumored to make his return to tournament golf at the Accenture World Match Play Championship in two weeks.
Tongues are wagging, and the press couldn’t resist asking one of golf’s all-time great players his opinion about Tiger’s return.
“I’ll let the cat out of the bag,” Watson said. “Tiger has to take ownership of what he has done. He must get his personal life in order. I think that’s what he’s trying to do. And when he comes back, he has to show some humility to the public.”
Tiger could do a few voice over auditions. Learn some humility fast.
That famous Pennsylvania groundhog came out this morning, took a look around, saw his shadow, then dashed back into his underground den. Punxsutawney Phil predicts six more weeks of winter.
Brrrummer. This voice over artist is a springaphile. Nothing like the first hint of a warm breeze in the still chilly air of late March.
There is an upside to Phil’s prediction, though. It gives me plenty of time to redo a new demo reel. Good thing, too.
Easy to get distracted when the weather changes and Mother Nature beckons. Long country rides with the top off. Hikes at the river. Trout season. Golf. Lots of choices.
It’s all about anticipation. A new season. A new demo. New sounds.
For now, it is back to the triple tasks of writing copy, selecting music, and recording tracks. Then, mixing gingerly to find the magic.
As an aside, another voice over actor suggests a demo reel needs to be brilliant to be useful. Oh Lord, make me a genius real soon, then. If this is asking too much, please make my reel genius instead. Ok by me. Either one will do…
As for Phil, let him sleep. In his dreams, he’s anticipatin’, too.
Came across an interesting story, The Art of the Snowflake, by Jaimie Etkin at The Daily Beast. It describes the work of Wilson Bentley who was the first to photograph a single snowflake. No small feat for a 19 year old self-trained photograper in 1885. He made it his life’s work.
“Every snowflake has an infinite beauty which is enhanced by knowledge that the investigator will, in all probability, never find another exactly like it,” Bentley wrote in Popular Mechanics of his infatuation.
Just now in the middle of doing a voice over job for a well-known major firm. Like most VO gigs, this started with an audition. Producer asked voice talent to submit a portion of the 3-4 minute script. For some reason the copy spoke to me. Decided to record and submit the complete script. Nailed the audition in one take. Got the job.
As usual, when it came time to record, there were minor script changes. Then, the client wanted a different tone in the reads. Several recordings later, every recording is unique. Even when the script is set, a new reading has its own special sound. Each recording has its own character and charm. It is one of a kind. Unique.
Last Tuesday, the Democrats took another beating, this time in the runoff Massachusetts Senate race. President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid braced for the consequences to their legislative agenda, notably the end to the 60 vote majority in the Senate, and the likely end to any meaningful health care reform this year.
But no one escaped unscathed. Senate and House Democrats calculated the damage to their individual re-election prospects while Republicans are still licking their wounds after being rebuked in the last election cycle.
If only the pols would listen.
When I get a voice over job, I listen. I take on the assignment for the client. The client or their agent, a Producer or Casting Director, tells me what they want to hear in the read. I am their paid employee for the job, and take my orders from them. You bet I listen. Carefully.
Right now, the majority of Americans are telling politicians they are worried about jobs. The majority are worried about government spending. Americans are worried about taxes and immigration and national security. If politicians were listening, they would know most Americans are not so worried about health care reform just now.
One thing for sure. If voice over talent were in charge, things would be a lot different around here. Yessireebob. Voice over actors know how to listen. No waxy build up impairing our ability to hear the high notes.
We’ve all said it, I imagine, at least once in our lifetime, true at the moment or not.
A New York Times Opinionator blog post, The True Answer and The Right Answer, is a tortured lament about this interesting quandary. When confronted with a choice involving consequences, does one give the right answer instead of the true answer as a practical (if not self-serving) response to secure a positive result or avoid a negative outcome?
“You have at least one year of voice over experience?”
Tell me what I want to hear? Tell me what I need to hear? Tell me what I have to hear? Really?
Or is it a question of honesty? What is honorable, fair, and good? An ethical issue? Is it a matter of virtue?
What about the guilty defendant who pleads “Not Guilty” at arraignment? A perfect example of a system that calls for the right answer and not the true answer because our legal system presumes innocence until proven guilty, you say.
So it is with our quandary, perhaps. Our culture presumes honesty until proven otherwise.
And therein lies the rub. If you say the check is in the mail, it better arrive in a few days. And, if you say you have the voice over chops to do the work, you better be able to deliver the goods should you win the job.
By this reckoning, it is the right answer only if it is proven to be true, even after the fact.
Here are a few groups that need support to fund their relief work in Haiti. Just made a donation to AmeriCares. Pick a group to support. It’s easy. It’s needed.
Epic fantasy. Spellbinding cinema. Perhaps a tad too long, but a great movie experience nonetheless.
So, how was it possible hardly a soul was in that theater just miles outside NYC at 8:30PM on a Saturday night, I wondered while sitting through previews of upcoming films.
Then, the movie started. The reason was soon apparent. The audience was thin because we were viewing the 2-D version and everyone else was at the sold out 3-D showing! Call it an educated guess.
The critics say Avatar has transformed movie-making. Written and directed by James Cameron, he used bleeding edge technology to blend animation and graphics with traditional Hollywood story-telling and created a compelling cinematic masterpiece.
Can’t wait to put on those goofy glasses and see Avatar in all its intended splendor. A second time. What marketing genius. And, think of the sequels.
I presumed Avatar used off camera voice talent for many of the major animated characters. I was wrong.
A kind reader, AliceInMovieLand, left a comment and quote from the Writer and Director himself, and a video link that demonstrates the process (you have to watch this!) :
“James Cameron says, “I think the thing that people need to keep very strongly in mind is that this is not an animated film. These actors did NOT just stand at a lecturn and do a voice part and then animators went off for the next two years and created the entire physicality of their performance. [...] Ever nuance, every tiny bit of the performance that you see on the screen was created by the actors. They had to run, they had to leap, they had to fight, they had to do all the things that you see them doing in the film.”
So let me get this straight. Just in case there is an open call for voice actors in the sequel, I need to bone up on my character and dialogue skills AND my RUNNING, my LEAPING, and my FIGHTING??
Just heard a news report that over 2M people who are out of work have stopped looking for employment. Worse, these folks are not part of the 10% unemployment rolls.
Whoa.
Looks like there could be a whole new pool of Voice Talent soon. Maybe the VO Biz needs a Stimulus Package of its own to get ready for the rush?
Call Congress. Tell them a vote for Voice Over Funding is a vote for Full Employment!
Winter has arrived in the Northeast. First the snow, and now the cold.
Only fitting I am under the weather; this is day 5 of the 7-10 day curse. Hard to do voice over when you are sneezing and coughing. Too bad I can’t advertise my condition to Producers and Casting Directors. Would nail that NyQuil ad with just the right pitch.
Only 75 days until the March Equinox and Spring; couple-three days to complete nasal relief.
Time ran past me like a sprinter last year. Tried to keep up and did for a while, but didn’t finish some of what I intended at the starting line. Undone deeds, an oxymoron. Thank God for a new year, and a new race.
Despite the blur, lots to be grateful for in 2009: the great fortune to be living free in the USA, a blessing every year, as is my health; the anchoring support of family and friends, the staples of my life; a new venture and my first voice over jobs, a sign of things to come it seems. By any reckoning, it was another good year.
What is in store for the year ahead? Don’t know, and that is the wonder of life, isn’t it?
Do know this, though. Will work harder to be mindful of my daily acts, mindful of my dreams and goals, mindful of my connectedness to others, and always mindful of the fiercely fleeting nature of time.
Competition is fierce in voice over. Only the fittest succeed at the highest levels, and only the fit survive at all.
As the amount of voice over work expanded with television advertising on cable and satellite channels, internet ads, animated games and audio books, the occupation experienced its own evolution as well.
When what was once the purview of anonymous “scale” voice talent, mostly from the ranks of radio announcers, developed into a genre of storytelling, it attracted trained actors. And as the ads became more sophisticated and expensive to produce, so did the desire to employ bankable talent, the celebrity, an icon of the contemporary culture. Sports stars, Hollywood stars, celebrities of every venue have dominated the national voice over business in the past decade at least.
Things may be about to change, though. Turns out ethical indiscretions by celebrity spokespersons pose serious problems for advertisers. So much so, at least one Harvard Business School professor foresees the decline of celebrity endorsements.
To scale voice talent this might seem like good news. It could only help thousands of “neutral, natural, folksy Every Man” voice over artists like me if Jeff Bridges, Tom Selleck, Ed Harris, and Kevin Spacey would get a little jakey, commit an ethical boner or two, and be dropped by advertisers.
Fact is, celebrities who do voice over are professionals and most are beyond youthful bad acts and career-ending publicity. They carry ads like they carry films and television shows, and produce advertising results like they produce Nielsen ratings and box office revenues. Celebrity voice over talent set a high bar for the rest of us. They occupy the top of the food chain for a reason. They are the models.
A lot to be learned by mimicking our models. Mimicry is a well-established survival strategy.
Received an email last week inquiring about my interest in doing a voice over for a television commercial on the controversial and still evolving health care reform legislation pending in Congress. Impressively, the Casting Director asked if I would be comfortable doing the job given the position of the spot on the abortion issue.
Got me thinking about the significance of choice.
Life presents us with choices every day. Usually, we recognize the big choices because the consequences are serious; seriously good or seriously bad.
Then again, sometimes what we think are important choices turn out to be not so important in the end, and sometimes the most insignificant choice on its face can be life-changing. Choices we make can transform our reality instantly or put us on a path to longer-term effects, positive or negative.
Easy choices. Hard choices. Smart choices. Dumb choices. Our choices not only define our character and shape our personal narrative, our choices largely determine our life experience.
That day, this Casting Director presented me with an easy choice.
For well over a decade, Tiger Woods and his management team at IMG have carefully cultivated an image of a man in control: in control of his golf game on the course, in control of his public behavior off the course, and in control of his brand name around the world.
Tiger Woods is the endorsement Golden Goose.
He is dedicated to pursuing acclaim as the greatest golfer of all time, a label worn alternately by Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus at sometime in each of their impressive careers. As much as these legends were admired for their golf achievements, each was esteemed for a sterling public profile as well. Good husband. Good father. Good family man. Tiger Woods was following in their footsteps. Until recently, that is.
Hard to be perfect, and just as hard to live up to a perfect image. Nothing new about sirens, and nothing new about straying spouses. Easy to let your guard down and allow curiosity to get the best of your better judgment. Keeping marriage vows is hard work. That’s why we admire those among us, especially celebrities, who do it.
Infidelity? Domestic violence? Driving while impaired? Tiger Woods denied these as malicious rumors, and the public may never know the real story about the events last week. It remains to be seen how any of it will affect Tiger Inc. We are forgiving of our superstars.
To be fair, Tiger Woods is part of a celebrity generation subject to almost instantaneous scrutiny and disclosure. He and every other luminary is a moment away from a Twitter post, cellphone photo or YouTube video documenting any undignified pose or behavior. It is the price of fame today.
But Tiger Woods has no one to blame but himself, whatever the truth. Despite world-class reputation management, Tiger revealed he is less than the wonder boy projected to the public. Tiger is human; humans are curious by nature. And, you know what they say about curiosity.
Speaking metaphorically, mixing a couple classics of the genre, with a nod to fairy tales and especially Alice, if this Big Cat gets any curiouser, he might lose the ability to lay more Golden Eggs.
Note: the Florida Highway Patrol subsequently announced it issued Tiger Woods a traffic citation for Careless Driving, a moving violation subject to $164 fine and four points on his driving record, if convicted. The FHP said no evidence warranted a criminal charge against Mr. Woods or his wife.
In the midst of the Civil War and less than a handful of months after the carnage at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address to dedicate a national cemetery at the Pennsylvania battlefield in November 1863.
In his dedicatory remarks, President Lincoln implored the “Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation.” He also declared Thanksgiving a national holiday as a reminder to citizens of the “blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.”
Nearly a century and a half later, we give thanks today for all our blessings, large and small, not the least of which is the good fortune to be part of this great nation.
A friend who owns a successful home staging business is relocating out of state. As a going away gift, I created a few ads for use on radio, television, and websites to promote her business at the new locale. Truth is, it provided a great opportunity to practice my copy-writing, voice over, music selection and remixing skills as well.
The project got me thinking about the act of staging. There is something to learn from the home staging business, perhaps.
Shakespeare wrote,“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…” This metaphor refers to the roles we play during various stages of life; a different context and meaning than staging, but related. Like stage acting, the act of staging is not about reality. Staging is about perception, ours and others. As the Bard suggested, we interact with the world through the multiple roles we play, be it parent, child, spouse, employer, employee, teacher, student, teammate, neighbor, sister, daughter, citizen and a myriad of other possibilities. As we perceive ourselves acting out our roles, so we project ourselves to others. Positive or negative, competent or incompetent, caring or uncaring, how others see us in each role starts with how we see ourselves.
Staging is more than clearing out the indoor clutter and dressing up the exterior, then. Staging presumes a motive to achieve an end. In home staging, the object is to sell the home. In staging ourselves, the purpose is to put our best selves forward. As perception is 99% of reality, a little thoughtful staging of our person can help us to achieve our goals.
Bear in mind staging, like all things in life, can be honest or not. It starts with intention. It depends on character. So, if you do decide to stage the roles you play in your life, be sure to stage right.
It’s about finding a sound that matches the job. Like a well-tailored suit fits a particular physique, a well-cast voice fits the words and the images of the story it tells. It brings context to the content.
Case in point: Philip Bosco narrating The Crash of 1929 for The American Experience Series televised on PBS.
Give a listen and do get past the introduction. You will be rewarded with a compelling 50 minute recounting about an historic 20th century national financial crisis; perhaps, even a heads up for an early 21st century replay?
Been enjoying Ken Burns’ latest film airing on PBS, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. His choice of subject matter ensured an audience, and his production delivered a masterpiece by treating the history, the people, and the parks with the depth each deserves in a rich style that is signature Burns.
Wow!
Part of the success of the film derives from the wonderful narration. Accompanying dramatic natural landscapes and interesting historical photographs, Peter Coyote weaves a spellbinding story spiced by character voice overs provided by some well-known and not-so-well-known film and voice over actors. Here is a list of the credits:
Narrator
PETER COYOTE
With
ADAM ARKIN
TOM BODETT
PHILIP BOSCO
TRINA CARMODY
TIM CLARK
KEVIN CONWAY
ANDY GARCIA
MURPHY GUYER
TOM HANKS
DEREK JACOBI
GENE JONES
JAMES KYSON LEE
JOHN LITHGOW
JOSH LUCAS
CARL LUMBLY
AMY MADIGAN
CAROLYN McCORMICK
ALBERT McFADYEN
YUMI MIZUI
CAMPBELL SCOTT
LEE STETSON
MARCUS LOVELL SMITH
GEORGE TAKEI
JOHN TRUDELL
SHO WADA
ELI WALLACH
SAM WATERSTON
Someday, God-willing, let me move an audience with my voice over skills the way these pros move me.
You can visit the PBS link in the first paragraph and play the videos to hear Peter Coyote and the other voice actors.
You may recall Susan Boyle as the surprise wonderstar on Britain’s Got Talent earlier this year. An unknown singing talent who, when given the chance, stepped up and performed to international acclaim.
Talent. Opportunity. Performance. Success.
Did you happen to see her guest appearance on the finale of America’s Got Talent this week? She did a single from her debut album, an old Rolling Stones classic, Wild Horses.
Wow. What a performance!
Each of us has natural talents. Each of us is given opportunities in life. Each of us will discover and test our gifts to one extent or another, privately or publicly.
Talent and opportunity aside, it’s our desire, determination, courage, and resilience that mostly decide if we develop our innate gifts, for profit or even just the simple joy of sharing our special skills with others.
Anything to be learned from Ms. Boyle’s adventure, then? Here’s my learning: Keep working at it.
If you sing, keep singing. If you draw, keep drawing. If you do voice over, keep auditioning. You never know when Fate will present you with a special gift of her own: Your Big Moment.
Yikes!! Did you see Serena Williams meltdown on prime time television Saturday night?? In the heat and waning minutes of a tough US Open tennis semi-final, in which Serena was behind and about to lose her match to Kim Clijsters, she lost her composure and berated a line official after a call. If you believe the on-site accounts of her tirade, Ms. Williams dropped the F-Bomb and threatened the official with bodily harm. What is most disturbing is not her emotional outburst, though. It is her lack of remorse and feeling any need to apologize.
But allow me a moment to address prevention.
Since starting voiceover and editing my tracks with Audacity Recorder/Editor Software before submitting work to clients and auditions to prospective clients, I’m fully appreciative of the value of editing. Moreso, I’m acutely aware of the “real-time editor” in my everyday life: Mr. Brain. We know words are powerful. We know words affect both speaker and listener. We know you can’t take words back. All good reasons to “engage brain before operating mouth” as the saying goes. Mr. Brain can be a tough editor if consulted by Mr. Mouth prior to pronouncement.
Clearly, Serena failed to use her real-time editor before confronting the line judge. I fail. You fail. It happens; to my point:
Grace is often elusive in the pressure of the moment. We are human, after all. But Grace has no time limit. She can be found on reflection. We are empowered to say, “I’m sorry” for a reason. We are capable of amends well after any event in question.
It is only a matter of Mr. Ego consulting with Mr. Brain, in search of his always generous cousin, Miss Grace.
Note: In a second statement today, Serena Williams apologized, gracefully.
“Yikes! You are going to produce your own Demo Tracks?”
This is the reaction most Voice Over professionals have to the idea of “do-it-yourself” demos. It is considered a blunder.
As a trained studio painter, I enjoy taking an idea from concept through to a finished product. Voice over is not so different. Truth is, part of the fun of doing voice over for me is experiencing this creative process. Deciding how to interpret the script is only part of it. Selecting the music to support the voice over, and engineering the mix to produce a high quality audio track is both interesting and challenging to me. Creating my own Demos fulfills this artistic need, and gives me control of the end result, much like producing a drawing or painting.
As practice, made a few “full script” demos earlier this year, including a couple with music and sound effects, for a commercial, promo and an audio book. Booked two jobs based on these demos, in part.
Just signed a license to gain access to an extensive music library, so I’m ready to experiment with “segmented demos” that highlight 4 or 5, ten to fifteen second, “partial scripts.” My goal is to produce a new 90 second Commercial Demo, a 60 second Commercial Demo version, and 90 second Narration, Audio Book and Promo Demos.
This will be a challenge, will involve learning new skills, and will take some time. Lots of failures and frustration; in the end, success and lots of satisfaction. All part of the creative process. All part of my personal voice over experience. All part of the fun.
Here it is July 29, and this is my first post of the month. Yikes!
The season distracts me. It calibrates my circadian cycle and fortifies me against darker days. Summer recharges my battery.
Something about the strength of the sun. Something about the fresh morning air. Something about the energy around me. People, all out and about, enjoying the summer weather, doing their favorite summer things at their favorite summer places. The beach. The lake. The mountains. For the less adventurous, the pool, the patio, the porch. Golf. Tennis. Hiking. Camping. Swimming. Fishing. Gardening. Picnics. Outdoor Chores. You name it. Lots to do; hardly enough time. Before we know it, the leaves turn, the winds blow, the trees get naked, and the snow falls. We hibernate in heated homes for much of the winter, venturing out to work, to buy groceries, to see friends in their heated homes, to eat meals in heated restaurants.
Hard to get your mind focused on a subject worth posting about in the midst of summer days.
Same goes for voice over. Auditions, but fewer of them. The summer beckoning with recreation. As the Good Book says, “To every thing there is a season…”
So, get distracted. Enjoy your summer. Recreate. Most of the rest… can wait.
First we dream, then we do. One without the other is lesser.
After several months, Coach seemed to tweak my training sessions. We still spent the bulk of our time on my practice recordings and her critiques, but each hour now included a discussion about what it would take for me to compete and succeed at my new dream to be a Voice Over Actor.
Coach talked about the changes in the business brought about by technology; how the internet opened up VO work to anyone with a microphone and a personal computer. It was no longer the exclusive domain of agents and their actor, broadcaster, and voice over clients. A new marketplace was growing, and voice seekers looking for VO talent were increasingly posting jobs on voice over internet sites, inviting auditions. You didn’t have to wait for the phone to ring. You could help yourself.
Coach used the experiences of others to make her points, and the consistent theme throughout was self-motivation. Those who failed depended solely on others for their voice over work, and those who succeeded made it happen largely by their own initiative. “The winners hustle” Coach said.
It was hard to miss her message. My voice over experience would be decided by my own actions or inertia, and my desire to succeed would drive my behavior. Reminded me of a famous baseball player.
Pete Rose was part of the Cincinnati RedsBig Red Machine. His dream was to be a great ball player. Rose ran out every ground ball. He dove for line drives. He attacked home plate shoulder first. Pete Rose was a self-motivated player. Whether his team was winning or losing, he played hard every game, and got his uniform dirty. They called him “Charlie Hustle.”
Desire, full of promise, looks you square in the eye and asks, “How bad do you want it? What are you willing to sacrifice to get it? How hard are you willing to work?” All questions we confront in our lives whenever there is some challenge between us and a significant goal.
We will get help along the way, of course. Most of us stand ready to help each other fulfill our dreams. It feels good to help others succeed. It is hard-wired into us.
But truth is, if our dreams are achieveable, it is mostly up to us to do the achieveing, assisted or not. Great success in life may be the result of a team effort, but we still have to play our position.
In my VO Dream, the crowd is rooting for me, helping me along. Tommy Hustle is playing hard, and his uniform is dirty.
As a skilled singer can demonstrate, the voice is a musical instrument, capable of producing magnificent sounds, evoking rich moods and emotions.
The voice operates the same for voice over as it does for singing. Air passing the vocal folds in the throat is then shaped by the larynx, tongue, mouth, and lips, producing sound.
So, I was pleased when Coach told me there was a natural musicality to my voice over reading. Little did I realize she would soon grow weary of my song.
“You’re starting to sound the same on every read” Coach said after several training sessions.
Coach didn’t care for my pentameter either. “There’s not enough variety to your cadence or your beat” she said. “It’s sing-songy.”
It was time to change my tune.
“Come on, gimme some Jazz” Coach said.
Voice over as Jazz. Now, there was an interesting idea. Couldn’t play any Jazz on my voice instrument worth a damn yet, but I understood the concept.
Months later, I was relating the story to Coach’s Sound Engineer. “After awhile, when you look at the words, you see notes. You see music” the Sound Man told me.
It was one of my most valuable lessons.
In voice over, the words are given to us by the copy writer, and the Voice Talent needs to hit the right notes in the right chord to create the intended emotion or mood. The trick is for the Voice Actor to see the music in the copy.
The voice as an instrument, creating music, evoking emotions and moods, got me thinking about how I sound to other people in my everyday life, away from prepared copy. In real life, Mr. Mood is the copy writer. He writes the script of what words I say and how I say them.
We all have our own Mr. Mood, and write our own copy. We all play our own voice instrument. And, the music we play evokes emotions and impacts all the other Mr. Moods we encounter in our day. It’s the power of our unique voice.
Our own brand of Jazz. It’s what the people in our lives hear from us.
The term The Invisible Hand was referenced by Adam Smith, an 18th century Scottish philosopher, in a late book of his work, The Wealth of Nations.
It had to do with the consequences of risk aversion in some merchant traders who preferred to trade locally rather than in foreign markets, for their own security.
Nowadays, his metaphor is assigned to all manner of things, good or bad, economic or not.
Some say Mr. Smith was a deist who also believed a benevolent God steers the Universe to maximize our happiness; that the world is pretty much perfect, all of us happy, but our nature makes us think we will be happier if we are wealthier; leading us to work to become richer through “the mechanisms of exchange and the division of labor.”
Remember those security-conscious merchants? Presumably, an invisible hand pushes them unintentionally beyond their borders in pursuit of greater wealth, and consequent heightened feelings of happiness. For my purposes, let’s assume this is true.
What does this have to do with voice over?
As I was waiting for my lesson with Coach one day, it occurred to me only months earlier I was plenty happy, retired from the world of work, minding my own business, enjoying the good life.
Then, bam.
I’m back at the Morristown Train Station in the early morning, buying tickets, commuting a couple hours to and from Manhattan Island, and walking the Big Apple Canyons, again.
As Coach counseled at our first meeting, voice over is not a hobby. Not if you want to succeed at it. It is work, plain and simple. Voice over requires daily attention and honest effort.
And so, it appears some invisible hand is hard at work on me, nudging me beyond my borders and through the thickets of the Voiceover Forest. Simply doing its job, I suppose.
Can’t wait to experience those blessed, blissful, joyous sensations ascribed by some to Mr. Smith’s ideas. And, the abundance and prosperity in store. Just imagine.
Back in my working days, one of our most successful Sales Executives gave his new recruits what he called his ABC Speech.
The memory came to me as I was thinking about an early training session with Coach. I recounted for her a conversation with a friend who asked if he would ever hear my voice on national television.
“And?” Coach queried me without posing a question, demonstrating both the power of inflection and teaching by example.
“I told him, “Too soon to say.”
“Wrong answer” said Coach. “In this business, you have to think you are the schitz.” Let’s assume my spelling is incorrect and Coach was not schooling me with a Yiddish slang word.
“You have to walk into an audition like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t” she continued. “And when you’re finished, you have to look like you nailed it.”
“Confidence is everything. Let ‘em hear it in your voice. Be the schitz” she said.
Didn’t need to look up the word to get her meaning, but did today out of curiousity. The Oxford Dictionary Online produced no results, so consulted a more likely source.
There it is, definition #7 in the Urban Dictionary. Synonymous with shidizles, so the book says. Gotta love a lady who stays current with the kids.
Coach’s word for swagger seems a natural outcome of my former colleague’s ABC Speech.
Attitude. Belief. Commitment.
That success starts in your head. That success flows from your heart. That success derives from your determination.
And after you succeed at what is important to you, an abiding confidence accompanies you into any room of your choosing. You can just swagger on in like you own the place.
Sometimes, we make hard things harder than they need to be. Often times, succeeding at hard things can be as simple as Attitude, Belief, and Commitment.
Whether or not you decide to swagger after you succeed is purely a personal choice.
Voice Over Actor, Aspiring was never much of a dancer. Imagine me either too inhibited to fully let go, or too free a spirit to follow a routine when my better judgment fails to keep me firmly planted in my seat, sitting still.
Come to discover, voice over is a lot like dance. As a voice actor, you follow a script, much like a dancer follows prescribed steps. You infuse your reading with energy and emotion, like a skilled dancer pours into a performance. And, most importantly, both voice over and dance require freedom and discipline practiced simultaneously. Oxymoronic at least, a worthy challenge at best.
Though never much of a dancer, chances are I’d be adept at the Latin ballroom classic, Cha Cha.
You know the one. One step forward, two sliding steps sideways, one step back. Rinse and recycle, in reverse.
As with most complex skills, voice over improvement is incremental. After a gain in technique, performance increases but then plateaus like dancing the Cha Cha, one step forward, two steps sideways, one step back, until more practice and new learning take the voice actor to a higher level.
One of these days, Voice Over Actor, Aspiring is going to give up ballroom dance steps altogether. Gonna get me a Big Hat and some Stripes and “busta move” instead, and learn the voice over equivalent of “da advanced hip hopFunk Move.”
The late John Denver wrote a metaphor for life. It applies readily to my voice over training as well. This particular day, Coach was unimpressed with my performance. She was taking the chisel to me.
“You’re just saying the words” she said. “You sound unfamiliar with what you’ve already read. Build on the copy. You have to speak with experience and read with knowledge. Let the listener hear it in your voice.”
Coach explained when you mention anything a second time or more in voice over copy, the new reference must build on the previous mention. It must sound familiar.
She suggested the trick was to “read ahead” and “grab the next several words or a phrase” so when you come to say it, there is no surprise. There is knowledge, instead. You are able to frame it with an inflection of familiarity.
Likewise, this is true when you read something in the copy that requires an unspoken reference to something mentioned earlier in order to make sense or give it the proper import or context.
Building blocks.
On my good days, Coach is cutting new facets and polishing up my ability. On my bad days, Coach is chipping away at my rocky efforts trying to help me reveal my talent.
Gem or rock, “on” day or “off” day, the potential for learning something valuable always exists. Some days just require a different approach and little more effort, perhaps.
That day, Coach was a sculptor patiently shaping a stone, and doing her best to bring out the builder in me.
If you’re living, you’re breathing. If you’re breathing and you’re lucky, you’re able to speak. And, if you’re able to speak, some of it will be in public.
My public speaking started as a kid in The Great Books Program,discussing some assigned text at a local library with a handful of other grade school hostages, purely for parental entertainment, progressed to platform training for several years as an occupation, and ended with requisite remarks to gathered coworkers in my management jobs. You’d think I might have mastered how to speak and breathe at the same time, wouldn’t you?
You would be wrong.
Didn’t take long in my voice over training to discover I was reading copy without any thought to my breathing. The first several attempts at reading long narrative passages left my voice sounding weaker as the script went on, and me wanting more air in mid sentence.
Not only was I breathing into my upper chest instead of engaging my diaphragm through my belly, I was not regulating my breathing in conjunction with the script.
Fact is, voice over takes my breath away. It requires planning and rehearsal. Marking the script with the “breaks” for breathing avoids my tendency to keep talking until there is no more air. Gotta have air to make noise. Gotta make noise to do voice over.
Living. Breathing. Speaking. Easy to practice without much forethought as to what we are doing and why we are doing it, what we are breathing and why we are breathing it, what we are speaking and why we are speaking it.
Before you know it, just like voice over, you’re all balled up and out of air.
Great word, precious. What is precious, is highly valued. What is highly valued, is not to be wasted.
Traveling to and from NYC for voice over lessons created two hours of serious down time. Accustomed to reading on the train during my commuter days, I slipped back into this old habit easily. Bought the 2008 edition of the anthology, The Best American Short Stories, and enjoyed reading several. Then it dawned on me. There was a better use of this precious time.
Paying for voice over lessons with a top VO Coach who was generous in her observations, comments and suggestions about how to improve my skills, why not tape the sessions? Review each lesson on the ride home; review it again on the way into the next session to get mentally “prepared to learn.” This may seem elemental to you, but Voiceover Actor, Aspiring can be a little slow on the uptick.
Found a SONY digital recorder the size of a butane lighter for less than $40 at Best Buy. Couple AAA batteries and I was in business. Coach had no objection to me taping our sessions. The payoff was immediate on the first ride home. Reviewed my lessons many times since as a refresher on the basics and to rehear Coach’s comments. Invaluable.
In one session, Coach said I was treating the entire copy as too precious. There’s that word again.
“If everything sounds precious, then nothing is precious. You fail the copy writer.” If Coach were a Southern Girl, she might have made a pun and told me I was making a “precious mess” of the copy.
As a Voice Actor, she explained, my job is to find the high value words and messages, and to give them the currency they deserve in my reading.
Got me thinking about all the parts of my life that are precious to me. People and things to be given the currency they deserve. People and things not to be wasted. People and things to be protected against a precious mess. Probably a short story in there. If only there was more time.
Early in my voice over training, Coach helped me understand that a personal attribute I always believed to be a strength was really a liability and a hurdle to learning voice over or any other endeavor.
“Why are you making that face?” she asked.
Coach was referring to my I Can’t Believe I Did That face. It is a head-shaking look of disapproval that often follows my failures. The same puss I make after missing a short birdie putt. Call it my signature expression whenever I screw up something important.
“You are too hard on yourself” Coach said. She was right. My desire to be perfect had given Mr. Subconscious the role as my harshest critic instead of my biggest fan.
Lots of ways to interpret and read a piece of copy. There is no one right or perfect way. And all VO professionals make mistakes reading copy on occasion. Laugh out loud bloopers aside, most pros correct an error quickly and move on without missing a beat or making a comment about their performance at all, error-free or not.
It was time to change the script and give Mr. Subconscious a supporting role to the lead actor, me.
The answer had to do with focusing on the copy instead of the voice inside my head as I read. Took a few sessions to build a better habit, and Mr. S still has role confusion from time to time, but I’m on the road to recovery.
When I was listening to myself read a promo copy for Coach, it sounded okay. Until she played it back to me. Deja vu.
No lift offs. No landings. No energy. Just one slow taxi down the runway. Never got off the ground. Coach offered little in the way of critique.
“Do it again.”
And so it goes for a solid hour. I record a promo or commercial. We listen. Coach makes observations and suggestions. Then, Coach speaks the same command at least once for each piece of new copy. Her tone is always encouraging.
“Do it again.”
A long ago graduate school lesson comes to mind. Adults learn best by doing. So, it only stands to reason if we “Do it again” we learn better. Coach must have read the same textbook.
Call it repetition. Call it practice. Doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s how we learn any complex skill.
It’s how we learned to memorize our multiplication tables. It’s how we learned to read and write, and how we learned to ride a bike. It’s how I will learn to do voice over and sound like I’m talking to someone instead of reading words off a piece of paper.
Aren’t these familiar questions we ask at times in life?
When Coach told me early in my training we needed to find my voice over “archetype”, it seemed like another opportunity for self-discovery and re-invention. Turns out I was right about the former, not so much about the latter.
“Agents” she said, “do not want versatility. “
Coach explained voice over agents group talent by category. Traditional Announcer, Character Actor, Young Edgy Smart Alec, are examples. This allows the agent to readily match a voice talent to a client job.
“Knowing your voice identity and understanding how it fits in the mix of types is what enables you to work on developing a personal style within your category” she continued.
And personal styles are what distinguish the talent, one from the other. It all made sense.
“So, let’s find your niche.”
After several readings of different kinds of copy, Coach suggested I was a Regular Guy Next Door, with attributes of a 30 Something Storyteller and Lite Announcer Type, peppered by Dark/Edgy Bad Boy potential.
Apparently, in voice over you need a primary identity, but it is okay to be a little bit crazy.
Hearing voices, archetypes, multiple identities. The fog is lifting. The truth is bared. This voice over gig is sick.
Which makes it possible that maybe over time and with some work, Young Edgy SmartAlec will show up one day out of the blue and want to join my team, too! Who knows?
Not the hallucination of voices that torment the psychotic, or the voices of people you chat with on your cell, and not the voice you hear inside your head when you are having a one-sided conversation.
I’m talking about voice overs.
After Coach judged I could make a go of voice over, my hearing grew acutely tuned to the voices that accompany commercials, promos, and public service announcements. They are everywhere on radio, television, and the internet.
But what does a voice sound like? And what does a voice look like?
A couple of years ago, NPR Commentator Brian McConnachie asked listeners to describe their impressions of famous voices in a series, Vocal Impressions. Talk about an “aha” moment for a voice over rookie. A quick read of the descriptions of Mick Jagger, Eleanor Roosevelt and Elvis Presley makes clear that voices – and voice overs – touch the experiences of listeners.
It is easy to recognize this skill in the professionals who book the bulk of local ads, national campaigns and narration. Their voices evoke our imagination and call out old memories.
So when you are hitting the fridge during the ads between shows, transfixed in front of the plasma screen I sit, hearing voices and listening carefully for the magic, anxious to cast my own spell soon, and wondering how others might describe my sound, someday.
[If you are coming into this real-life adventure late and didn't start from the beginning, let me set the stage for you. I'm in the office of a famous NYC voice over coach who will evaluate my potential for the work. Just finished my first read, and I'm upbeat].
“Hey! Not bad!” Coach said with a grin. “Let’s listen.” She played the recording of my reading. Faster than it took to record the copy, and a millisecond into hearing it played back, Mr. UpBeat gave way to his cousin, Mr. UpChuck. Yikes!! Was that monotone really me? My voice sounded flat and slow. Way flat and way slow.
“Not too good” I said.
“Why do you say that?” Coach asked? “No one is a natural at voice over. You need training to do it.”
She came up beside me and took a pen to the copy sitting on the lectern next to the mic. “Before you audition or record copy, identify the purpose and the audience” she said. “What point of view will you bring to the copy? What opinion about the message will the listener hear in your voice?”
Point of view? Opinion? There was more to this voice over stuff than I imagined.
Coach scribbled notes on the page and explained a lift-off and landing, the turn and the tag, marking examples in the text. She talked about the importance of saying the client’s name or product in the recap “with love in your voice. Let them hear you smile.”
“It’s never about you” Coach continued. “It’s always about the copy. It’s about doing service to the copy writer.”
After a couple more readings and more conversation, I saw body language cues our Evaluation Session, timed at one hour, was about to end. I screwed up my courage and asked the inevitable question. “So, what do you think?”
With no discernible hesitation, Coach rendered her verdict. “You can do this” she said. “It will take some work, but you can book jobs.”
“Tell me, how did you end up here?” asked Coach. I explained about Lucy and her reference to Coach’s reputation “as one of the top VO instructors in the business,” and someone who could evaluate my voice over potential.
“And, what do you want to accomplish in voice over?” Coach asked?
“Don’t need to work. Don’t want to work full-time” I said. “Just want to work at it to supplement my income.”
Oh, the naivete…
Coach explained voice over is highly competitive. “Everyone thinks they can do voice over, and it’s not true.” She talked about learning the craft, cutting a demo, and shopping it around to get an agent. “There’s plenty of work available, but most of the VO talent who make money “at it” hustle and work hard.”
“Let’s hear your voice.” She handed me a page of copy. “Read this for me. Into the mic.”
So, I stood and moved to the microphone. Coach pushed a button at her desk, and cued me to begin. Real copy, only a couple lines. An Orange Juice commercial.
FLORIDA OJ
Sometimes Mom’s need a little help getting their families going… That’s why Florida Orange Juice should be part of every morning…. Florida Orange Juice….The best start under the sun.
So I read the words, creeping deeper into the Voiceover Forest, oblivious.
Months later it occurs to me, OJ was instructive copy for my first read; both a simile for voice over and a reminder of what brings life to words. Just as an orange may look good, a voice may sound good, but it’s what comes from the inside that gives rise to the value of each. In voice over, as with oranges, it’s all about The Juice.
As if the competition isn’t tough enough for a newcomer, the first thing you discover in The Voiceover Forest is the Voice Talent is grounded in acting and broadcasting. This is especially true of the major markets on either Coast. We are called Voice Actors for a reason (more about this when we get deeper into the woods).
The Theatre District, around Broadway and Times Square, is the heart of the performing arts in NYC. Around this hub, starting with the 20′s in Chelsea, up through the 30′s past Madison Square Garden and the Garment District, and into the 40′s of lower Hell’s Kitchen , many of the top studios, talent agents, and acting coaches conduct business.
My Voiceover Coach, a venerated icon in the trade, has an office and studio located in the Film Center Building, a short distance from Penn Station.
A brisk walk, sign in with the guard, up the elevator, and open the door. Greet the assistant, fill out some paperwork, turn over a credit card, and compose myself for the evaluation.
In a few minutes, meet Coach, a delightful woman, who exudes a NYC sensibility full of energy and intelligence that puts me at ease immediately. Into her office, to the couch across from her desk, and the conversation begins, “Tell me, how did you end up here?” In the corner, a microphone stands, waiting…
Worked in lower Manhattan for over a decade, and commuted by train into NYC daily until 2001 when The Fates provided me with an unplanned retirement. I was 51 and blessed.
But you can only spend so many hours learning to relax before you get bored and find yourself ready for something new to do. So, seven years later when Lucy (the name has been changed to protect the innocent) recommended I try voice over and provided the name of a VO Coach in the city, it was back to the Morristown Train Station for me.
The same guy who sold me monthly commuter tickets for 12 years was still there to sell me an off peak round-trip ticket that first day into the Voiceover Forest. And, the woman who used to sell me a NYT, a WSJ and a cup of coffee each morning was so surprised to see me she kindly offered a free cup of joe and some conversation.
You gotta admire NJ Transit. A brand new double decker commuter train arrived exactly on schedule, and I was off to the Big Apple again. My train was about to leave the station on the way to a new career.This time reinvented as Mr. Voice Over, aspiring.
Life has a way of guiding us to paths we might otherwise pass by, at least that’s my take on The Fates. And so it was with this…
“You have a great voice.” Sure, heard this many times over the years. My voice resonates with some people; must be the pitch or register. So, it was no surprise to hear the daughter of my new girlfriend make the same remark last fall. What was different this time was what she said next. “You should do voice over. ” Wow. No goof. She was serious.
As only The Fates might conspire, the young woman, (a flame-haired beauty and aspiring actress in her mid 20′s) worked for the top talent agency in NYC. Come to find out, she was the assistant to one of the top Voice Over Agents at the firm! “If you like, I can ask my boss to recommend a Voice Over Coach and you can get an evaluation.”
“Why not,” I thought. “Can’t hurt to try. How hard can it be, anyway?” And so, at the edge of the Voiceover Forest, the journey was about to begin.
You ready to hike the hills and valleys of the Voiceover Wilderness as experienced by a newcomer to the highly competitive VO Biz?? It’s a journey, not a day trip, so let’s get started.
Lots to tell about getting this venture up and running. Lay the foundation and invest in the business. Practice the craft and audition for gigs. And, don’t forget marketing.
Like any other enterprise, I’m discovering it’s mostly about working hard, working smart, and wanting to succeed.
Will begin at the beginning: how I stumbled into the Voiceover Forest without a compass. Next time.
e it his life’s work.
He was humble. He owned up and took responsibility for his behavior. He blamed his acts on temptations created by his money and fame. He said he felt entitled to those shameful pleasures because he worked so hard to get to his position. He said he stopped living the lessons he was taught by his parents. He said he drifted from the beliefs of his Buddhist faith.
Got me wondering.
When Coach told me early in my training we needed to find my voice over “archetype”, it seemed like another opportunity for self-discovery and re-invention. Turns out I was right about the former, not so much about the latter.
reading. Faster than it took to record the copy, and a millisecond into hearing it played back, Mr. UpBeat gave way to his cousin, Mr. UpChuck. Yikes!! Was that monotone really me? My voice sounded flat and slow. Way flat and way slow.
