What’s In YOUR Pocket?

A lot of my creativity stems from a childhood (the first one, i’m in my fifth) where magical transformations required little more than cardboard boxes, masking tape, some glue, and a lot of love and encouragement.  And it’s especially fun when I get to play, even at my age, with like-minded creative types who take on the challenge of limited budgets with, literally, what is at hand and what comes to mind. 

Case in point:  this locally-produced tv spot for Lewis Advertising, realized through the creativity of Nancy and Rod Rich, of monkeybravo.com (and they invited me to play!).

 

Done with computers?  Well, yeah, partially.  But before that part, it was almost literally a “seat of the pants” production.  Nancy bought two identical pairs of slacks for each of the on-camera people, then cut up one pair and stretched the fabric over a double thickness of foam core with a hole just big enough for me to wiggle my hand through to the pocket entrance. These were clamped to c-stands and I performed each “pocket” separately, using a monitor (muppet style) to get my eyelines right. Each “pocket lining” was a separate tube-sock style puppet sewn up by Nancy with real coins glued to flat buttons which she then sewed onto the characters.  She even thought to have the goofy one fixed with different size and color coins that wobbled to make him look a little more offbeat.

On location, Rod videotaped the people first.  Then the pocket sections were set up, one at a time, and shot under the identical light. Back at their studio Rod and Nancy matched up and sized the insert shots, matted them over the master shots, and blended the edges in the computer so that it looks like the actors’ slacks and the puppet segments are one and the same. They also matched any slight shifts or movement by the live actors so they wouldn’t have to do it over still photos. 

I performed to my own pre-edited voicetrack played from a boombox, which they later synched up to the video edit from the cd. Fellow VO talent Donovan Corneetz had contributed the voice of “Pocket #2″ via mp3 from his own studio a week earlier.

It’s this kind of high-level imagination that can make even a low-budget production shine. How low? Well, I ain’t tellin’…but nobody was “out of pocket” too much on this creative project.

with directors like these, who needs enemies?

Wow, it’s been awhile.  So much for my resolve to post more often.  Still feel like I’m talking to myself most times, but then someone does take notice and it makes my day.

I guess maybe I HAVE been getting more work lately.  Downtime does seem to equal more blogs around this place.

During some time devoted to cruising other people’s blogs, though, I came upon a piece about online auditions which I credit to a dude calling himself “the voice cat”, over on voices.com.  He was offering thoughts on how to use clues in a job description or script to guide your choices in voicing the audition.

While there were many valid ideas, there was one set of client instructions that really caught my attention…for the wrong reasons.  Voice cat didn’t comment on it, so i don’t know if he even noticed, but it spoke volumes to me about online auditioning:  don’t always assume the person looking for voice talent knows more than you do (my quote, not his).  Here’s the lifted direction:

“Energetic but not too over top. Needs to be exciting yet trusting and believable. Looking for either a woman or a man, preferably with an English accident.” — (italics are mine - rg) –

Gosh.  Is this is a request for a badly-done Brit dialect (in which case, I would have been a natural for the gig)…or some strange direction asking the talent to sound like a person in the UK born out of wedlock?  …or someone about to crash a Rolls Royce into the Thames?

I wonder what kind of responses the client got?

 

“Tell Ya What Ah’m Goin’ To Do…!”

If it had happened this week instead of last week, I would have written it off as an April Fool’s joke:  a major company had a lapse in customer service…and gave its customers a rebate before many of them even knew there had been a problem!

When was the last time you ever heard of such a thing? 

Video-Rental giant, Netflix, suffered a huge meltdown in its website which cut off an untold number of subscribers for well over a full day.  In case you were unaware, Netflix’s whole business is based on the internet.  So, DVDs which had been scheduled to be mailed out on a Monday didn’t go out until Tuesday. 

No sooner had the problem had been fixed, than the company sent out mass emails apologizing for the disruption of service and offering a 5% rebate on everyone’s monthly subscription fee. 

And they did this without it being demanded of them.  In fact, they did it before many of those affected even knew there had been a problem!  (I knew, because I spend way too much time online!)

Now since I’m at the lowest subscription levels, this amounts to very little in money.  But…

Again:  when was the last time you ever heard of such a thing?  And more to the point for Voice Actors (another business entity doing business online), when was the last time  you ever did such a thing? 

True, it’s still best to make a great first impression.  And it’s best to always strive to deliver your best.  Still, when you know your service has slipped…even a little bit…what value could you place on having your clientele realize you’d corrected a problem before they knew it existed, and sent a little “thank you” along with your apology?

Like another big company is fond of telling us:  “Priceless.”

– over and out – 

A Voice in the VOID

Okay, so far, my posts have all been of the “Giant Economy Size”…with “economy” applying to everything but the verbage.

But this time I’m pulling a page out of the Bob Souer notebook and simply posting a link to something that really says it all.

If you feel adrift, isolated, and totally becalmed in your career, this piece from “The Casting Corner” blog may speak to you as directly as it did to me.  Now all I’ve got to do is…DO something!

Radio Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

Peter O’Connell, in the VO business under the title, audio’connell, recently hit a nerve dead-on when he wrote about the demise of careers in what used to be known as radio broadcasting. I just had to join the list of those who had already commented with their experiences. And of course, since I seem unable to just knock off a short, pithy phrase and move on…it almost turned into a blog post of my own. In fact, after the fact – it did.  Submitted below.

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To borrow from the title of another story, “Radio Doesn’t Live There Anymore.” At least, that’s what I tell people who want to know how to get into radio.

There is no “radio”. There are only “satellite relay groundstations”.

Though I was never a rocker, my youngest years were spent in the company of Radio Personalities. During college I learned about what I had missed when radio had been Radio, but even in the 50s through the 70s there was still that element of entertainment in just about all the formats.

Similarly, I was never a good “DJ”, but it didn’t bother me because I was having too much fun in the production room and as a copywriter. And later, with my award-winning spots and my on-air characters on the morning guy’s long-running shift, I wound up with more real air-time than the poor “jocks” who put in all those hours of time/temp/and/call letters.

After 20 years, the business dumped me before I could dump it, but it really did me a favor, because I made the lateral move from production guy/non-DJ into production guy/voice actor. Through good times and lean, I’ve been at it for more than 15 years now… still having more fun on my worst days than the guy, regardless the level of talent, who’s making minimum wage watching over the computer.

And the ones who aren’t just watching the computer are fighting for on-air relevance, since the day the money-men figured out it was also cheaper to just open the phone lines and let the audience run the program…or worse — BE the program!

No, when people ask how i got into the voice business, I usually say something like, “I’ll tell you, but you won’t be able to do it the same way…it doesn’t exist anymore.”

Who knew then we were working in anything even remotely resembling a “Golden Age”?

– over and out –

“if you let everybody play…”

I doubt I’ll ever need a job-search website which only specializes in $100,000 a year minimum salaries…but this spot created for a company called “the Ladders” absolutely captured my attention the first time I saw it.  And it sums up the way I feel about the voiceover business in its current state.  (I hope the youtube link isn’t pulled before you can see this!)

Watch the spot, and just subsitute a person with a microphone for anyone holding a tennis racquet.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qb2c1gTKoZs

That little :30 tv commercial completely reflects my feelings about the de-volution of the performing arts in general…from writing, to radio, to television, to music.  The day some genius discovered you could create radio profits much, much cheaper by just opening the phone lines and making the audience provide the material was the day Radio (at least the Radio I cared anything about) died.  Television and other media have, in my opinion, likewise suffered.   The longer it continues, the more the audience feels absolutely entitled to “be the star”.  This commercial puts a perfect visual on that phenomenon for me.

To be on the air, behind a mic, in front of the camera, or celebrated in print…there was once a certain level of ability, talent, experience, even (dare I say it) class and style expected.  Otherwise the efforts were derided as substandard, like jokes about the National Enquirer, or the “Goat Gland” broadcast mavens of the 20s, or “Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour”…now known as “American Idol”.   Now, anyone with a computer and the price of an internet connection can level the playing field…and that’s not always necessarily a good thing.

[Perhaps it's a bit disingenuous for me to write such things, here at my keyboard, posting it on the internet...but I doubt my own humble blog is taking eyes away from professional, established writers.]

What can professionals do about the invasion of our “playing field”?  Probably not very much.  But at the very least, we can still keep putting out quality work and pointing out the difference…even to an audience that’s so busy copying us (badly) that they may not get the message.

– over and out –

Huh? Depression May Be Good For You???

This might well be my shortest post, because I’m not really sure which way my opinion falls on this idea…but I freely admit it got me thinking.  Maybe it will do the same for you.

A British study (which earlier stirred up controversy over the effectiveness of anti-depressants) has also suggested that depression…not necessarily clinical depression, but ‘depression’…might actually be good for you.  Since most creative people I know have had at least some experience with the subject, I wondered if it might be valuable to post the news story from the BBC here as well. 

Here’s the link:

The gist of it seems to be that in its most basic manifestation, depression can spark something creative in reaction…or provide the “kick in the pants” to do something about it, and thereby bring about an improvement in life.

I don’t know if it qualifies, but in a current period of creative and financial lows this week, I finally made good on a decision to begin study with voice coach Nancy Wolfson.  The cynic in me says this will either provide a remedy to the creative and financial lows…or start a whole new cycle of them. 

The part of me who finally made the decision to try something different, and then read the BBC news story, is rooting for the first option.

Take a look and see what you think.

– over and out –

“Booth Mentality”

Contrary to what others might think, voiceover people don’t get into this business because they’re lazy.  Well…maybe some of us are actually lazy, but that would be the case no matter what we got into.  Point is, doing what we do well actually does require a lot of work.  It’s just a different kind of hard work.

And yet, regardless of the level of drive or devotion, there can reside even in the best of us a baffling condition I’ve begun calling “Booth Mentality”.  I was reminded of my own affliction as I read a post from a respected talent in the UK.  He had just been hired as an offstage announcer for a live television program, and commented on the welcome shift in his comfort zone it was likely to bring (I hope I’ve paraphrased him correctly).

As I read that, I thought of the many times I’ve performed as part of a live event or broadcast with few, if any, slip-ups.  Why?  I don’t know…except perhaps that part of my tiny brain knew there wasn’t going to be any “oops…sorry…take two” if I messed up.  So I didn’t mess up.  But if you had put me in a recording session doing the same material…could I guarantee the same uninterrupted performance?  Probably not.  We’d fix it in Post.

“Booth Mentality”…just a lazy little bug I can’t seem to exterminate.

As dated and “cornball” as a lot of it sounds today, the announcers and voice actors who worked in radio back when it was Radio (whether in news, comedy, drama, or the “soaps”)  had something a lot of us don’t even think about, simply because we don’t have to.  But I wonder, at least in some cases, if it didn’t make them better performers.

Radio actor Mary Jane Higby wrote a book about her experiences called “Tune In Tomorrow“.  It covered a lot about how network radio worked, but the story I remember most concerned commercial recording sessions toward the end of the era.

This was pre-audiotape.  Anything that wasn’t part of a “live” broadcast had to be, literally, cut onto a record.  That master disc would then be duplicated and sent out to stations.  And there might be a dozen or so different commercials on each record. 

According to Ms. Higby’s account, everyone required for all of the spots assembled in the recording studio at the same time.  Because the master disc could not be edited, every actor, musician, and sound effects man was required to stay the entire length of the session, and the commercials were performed one after the other, pausing only long enough to give the engineer time to create a “dead groove” to differentiate the cuts.  They stayed  because if anything went wrong with any of the commercials being cut — the recording stopped…the disc was scrapped…and the whole thing was started from the top!  Not just the commercial that was ruined…but the whole…blasted…session!!!!!

To add extra drama to her story, Ms. Higby let it be known that in one session, she was the last voice in the last commercial on the record.

Wanna talk about “pressure”?

It’s extra humbling to me as I recall so many instances where I couldn’t put a dozen words together correctly in a simple sentence…saved only by the skills of a gifted and sympathetic editor…usually me.

To that point, it was somewhat comforting that the esteemed UK talent admitted to a similar affliction in his past.  And at least one other participant in the discussion marveled that the same thing had happened in his own career.  Whew!  I’m not the only one.

What wonders might we achieve…and how much more time might we have to achieve them…if we could just get that voicetrack done right without having to rely on take two…and three…and four…or (borrowing from Firesign Theatre) “take…six hundred”?

Flu shots?  No, thanks.  I’ll take my chances.  But if anybody knows of a vaccine for Booth Mentality…save me a place in line!

- over and out -

“all that jazz…” (what was lost is now found)

[Writer's Note:  the piece below was the second attempt at a web log entry I made, September 2007, and the first one to get some attention and comments...largely due to its recommendation by Bob Souer on his Voiceover Boblog.  When I had to switch web hosts early this year, the few posts I had (and all their comments) were wiped out.  I managed to find backup copies of all but...you guessed it...one of the pieces people were still trying to link to.  I even tried various phrase searches on Google, and putting out the word to anyone who might have copied it for posterity.  Nada.  It took the invervention of that same Bob Souer, who finally thought of looking for places it might have been "cached"...and bingo!  Whether it was worth all the effort is not for me to say.  But the whole experience does point up the obvious advantages of having as many friends as you can make in this...or any other endeavor.  Thank you again, Bob.] 

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As mentioned earlier, I’m in the confusing state of working in my (voice muffled here) decade of radio and related fields…yet still learning what seem to be the ever-evolving tricks of the trade.

One of the hardest things to wrap my tiny brain around lately is the concept of narrowing the focus of what you present to potential clients.  In putting my latest voiceover demos together, there was the constant urge to cram as much variety into the commercial demo as I possibly could.  After all, I should show someone my true range, right?  Why run the risk of not being considered for a certain style just because my demo focused mostly on another, right?

Evidently, not many experts think so.  And at first, my “experienced” self rebelled against that notion. 

In the end, the only way I could make myself understand the concept (even if I’m still grappling with it), was when I remembered a story about a jazz musician told to me by my much-missed friend and mentor, Paul Montgomery.

Paul was known to thousands for over 20 years in Raleigh, NC as “Uncle Paul”, a kiddie show host persona he inherited as a staff announcer/performer on local tv in the 50s.  But Paul was also a brilliant jazz player, and brought a lot of that sense of fun to the keyboards of a hammond organ or grand piano as part of his show.  By the time I joined the cast the program was in its last few seasons and bounced around the schedule as news and talk shows came to dominate the morning.  But he and I hit it off immediately.  And it was invaluable training in how to ad-lib…in character…since we never had the luxury of (or budget for) things like scripts or rehearsal time for our daily half-hour shows.  While I am not a musician, Paul said working with me and my puppets was like a good jazz gig.  He said we could “read” each other like jazz players do…that if he threw out a line, he would never know what he’d get back but it would be something he could verbally play off of. 

For many years…though not nearly enough…Paul taught me a lot about classical music and mainstream jazz.  Our lunches and record buying trips were full of his stories about radio, early tv, studio hijinks, and especially jazz musicians.  He could tell you the name of almost any player in a recording just by the sound of a solo.  Some of his stories he got during phone calls from musician friends such as George Shearing.  Others he picked up in conversations with performers as they stopped by during a tour, such as Clark Terry, George Duvivier, Marian McPartland, and Lionel Hampton.

I could write a short book about the years I was blessed to know Paul Montgomery, but I suppose I ought to save that for later and get back to the tie-in with my current learning curve in the voiceover biz.  It became a little easier to understand when I remembered a story he told about a “young buck” who had just been hired by one of the great swing bands.  During a performance, the new guy stood up for his solo and, though very skillful, was all over the place in his range and phrasing.  When he finally sat down, a veteran player who’d been with the band for years leaned over and quietly said, “Hey, man…you don’t have to blow everything you know in one solo.”

Another story involved someone describing the great Count Basie, and his economy at the keyboard.  “It ain’t that he don’t play a lot of notes,” the observer offered, “it’s just that the Count knows which notes not to play!”

And that’s the closest I’ve gotten so far to “getting it”. 

Perhaps that helps you “get it” too.  Maybe it doesn’t make any sense…and that’s okay, too.  As a reward for slogging through the preceeding, I’ll leave you with one more story courtesy of “Uncle Paul”.

It seems many musicians like to step out for a little “refreshment” in the breaks between sets.  In this story, one particular fellow returned to the bandstand so “refreshed” he could barely walk straight.  The performance resumed with a tune in which he had a featured solo.  The man got up, put his trumpet to his lips…but he had the horn turned around backward and was frantically trying to make music blowing into the bell instead of the mouthpiece.  Oblivious to what was going on, he finally gave up, sat down and nudged the player beside him saying, “Take it, man…my lip’s gone!”  

– Over and Out – 

the nicest people you’ll never meet

This evening, while enjoying some in-studio conversation with the lovely and versatile Leanne Heintz (a wonderful voice talent just now starting to extend her VO reach via the internet), I was bragging again about the Voiceover Bulletinboard, or www.vo-bb.com. 

Leanne had come over to record an audition at my place and had some questions about computers and home recording and microphones that I could answer…and many more I couldn’t.  Naturally, I pointed her to my best information resource:  my friends at vo-bb.com. 

Moreover, we had just finished talking about “blogs”, and I had mentioned how much help I had gotten just by asking my friends on the (…all together now, say it with me…) vo-bb.com.

Since joining a conversation about the exchange of blog page links, I doubled my exposure just today to other voice talents and those who read their pages.  The only reason I even had a blog page to trade links ON was because of several friends I met on the board.  And out of this huge support group, I have only met one of them face-to-face since corresponding on the vo-bb (and yes, Bob survived the experience)!

There are other online gatherings of voice talent, although everyone pretends ignorance of such things when we’re on that internet gift of Deirdre “D.B.” Cooper.  Some are very comforting and helpful in their own way…like the one Julie Williams established over at www.voice-overs.com.  Some groups are more like squabbling one-upmanship contests with just enough helpful information and good natured members to keep you coming back.  But the vo-bb.com?  To quote Robin Williams quoting Quasimodo:  “Sanc-tu-aryyyyyy!”

I told my friend Leanne she should be using the board not only for information, but for companionship while she’s feeling stuck at home doing a masterful job taking care of her young kids (one of them, a great little guy named A.J., is a Downs’ Syndrome baby).  I told Leanne about all the ego and rancor that isn’t allowed by the divine Ms. D on the vo-bb.  I told her it was a lifeline for those days when we listen back to an audition we’ve just cut and think, “Who am I kidding, really?” 

I do have hopes of traveling sometime in the future, and meeting some of these “names” at voiceover workshops.  I’m preparing an 8×10 glossy from some of the sample headshots Kara Edwards recently posted, so I can get her autograph in person someday (and not just because my young son, Ricky, loves Dragonball Z).

Meanwhile, I continue to tell anyone I can about this terrific, helpful, silly, serious, baffling, and bountiful group of people who are mostly names and avatars on my computer screen.  Good friends, nay, great friends I’ll probably only know through the portion of their personas they freely share online.

Oh…and I also told Leanne I was trying to make myself write shorter posts.   Looks like I blew that one.

- over and out -