Archives for December 2021

The title above says it all. Or does it? Welcome to another addition of questions voice actors ask on Facebook! Today’s entry appeared in the Voice Over Pros Facebook Group The question about which microphone to use for voice over comes up A LOT. Whether or not to use one or both of these particular microphones, the Sennheiser MKH 416 or the Neumann TLM 103 comes up nearly as often. Heck, even I’ve used them both and done reviews on them. You can check out my review of the very similar MKH 415 here :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEuEAkMn6i8

So, because these two mics have become ubiquitous in the voice over business, people tend to get snarky when talking about them. Me too. My answer in the post was “Either, neither, or both”. Sorry, I couldn’t resist! In fact, I did take my own advice once upon a time. I DID own both microphones individually. Then, at the same time. Then decided neither one of them worked for me and resold them both!

Here’s the thing about microphones. They are VERY subjective. What works for one person may not work for another. In fact, what works for one person in a specific booth or recording space, may not work for the same person in a new booth. This is what happened to me. In my new Studiobricks booth, I can no longer use a shotgun mic. Of course I no longer use the TLM 103, but that’s a whole other story!

Your best bet as a new or aspiring voice talent is to rent or try as many mics as you can in your recording space until you find the right one.

Today’s interesting cry for help comes from the Facebook Public Address Announcers group. Someone asked if they should always announce the score at a basketball game. The reasoning was basically, who really cares? If they want to know the score, they should look at the scoreboard. Later in the same week, another announcer stated that they were no longer going to announce substitutions on the mic because there were too many and it was becoming redundant.

Now, I’ve been a public address announcer off and on for over 15 years. I’m also pretty old. Not quite a boomer, but late Generation X. As such, a lot of questions on the internet have me asking WTF? As an announcer, your ENTIRE job is to announce what is going on in the arena or on the field! Why wouldn’t you want to do that? Sure, you can argue that some people overdue it, getting all hyped up and spouting off nonsense just to hear themselves talk. The names of the players and the score, however? That’s the most basic of things to announce.

Firstly, accessibility. There are probably people in the arena who are visually impaired. Or patrons who have low vision or may be just flat out illiterate. They deserve to know what is going on too. Secondly, pride. At the high school and college level, and I’m sure even at the pro level, the parents, aunts, uncles and friends of the player are there to cheer them on. They deserve to hear their players name! Finally I would argue that with all the technology we have at the sports venues now; when every person has their head buried in their phones, PA announcers are more important that ever! A kid may not see the basket their brother scores because they didn’t look up from their candy crush game. They will, however, hear it.

Just do your job!

You know that axiom about Sales? The one that says, it takes 5-10 touches in order to close a sale? What that means is in order to get a client to buy in on something, you need to “touch” them 5-10 times. That can mean a meeting, an email, a phone call, or just a casual conversation. The same holds true for networking.

I was reminded of this today while attending a local Baltimore Networking group meeting I belong to. In this particular group each business person has a chance to introduce themselves and ask for referrals. That can mean an industry or market they are hoping to reach, or a specific company. I asked the group for referrals to any authors who may be interested in doing an audiobook. Either with me as the narrator, or with them narrating while I engineer and record.

Now here’s the thing…I have been asking this same question to this group for weeks. I think 4 previous times to be exact. Today, the colleague next to me said “Oh yeah, I have a client who is an author, here’s his information”.

This same colleague has been at all the same previous meetings where I asked for this referral before. In a few cases he was sitting next to me, as he was today!

So I contacted the author today and he said he HAS thought about doing an audiobook and would love to learn more!

Was my colleague holding back on me? Mad at me? Didn’t trust me enough with the referral? Probably none of those things. There was probably just something small that had this client jump to top of mind when I asked for the referral to authors today. Maybe he just paid an invoice, or sent a Holiday gift. Whatever the reason, today was the day persistence paid off.

Sometimes it really is that simple.

Oh, boy has something crazy happened in my voice over career. I have heard of this happening to other voice actors, but this is the first time it has happened to me.

So…I get an email from a VO colleague. They tell me I they received an email from their voice acting agent that included a voice reference. This is pretty common in audition listings. Usually it’s a clip of a famous Hollywood actor that matches the specs they are looking for. The idea is the casting company, or agent sends auditions only to the actors on their roster who sound like that person. In my case, I get Ryan Reynolds, John Hamm, or Sam Elliot.

In this case the reference sounds like me. So, my friend asks, “Is that you?” I take a listen and IT IS ME! It’s my narration demo done by Terry Daniel at Universal Voice Talent. It’s gotten me a lot of work over the years and landed me with several VO agents. Except…Not THIS agent.

So I ask my friend if they wouldn’t mind referring me to their agent. After all, if they are sending out auditions with MY voice, maybe they’d like to work together? Seems reasonable right? My friend says SURE!, reaches out to said agent who agrees to take a call (really email what is this 1992?) from me. I contact the agent and they said they’d love to take a listen to me, and to please read this audition copy they included. I do that, and 10 minutes later I get a reply saying that while my voice sounds competitive they already have too many voices that sounds like me. Not uncommon in the industry. Especially in a competitive market like New York, where this agent happens to be.

I accepted that…for a bit. Then I got to thinking. How did the agent get my demo to begin with? Also, if a company is sending my demo around, maybe they’d like to work with me? I then emailed the agent asking those questions; basically the equivalent of WTF?

The agent said, you know? You are right, send me and audition of that same script I sent out to my roster and I’ll be happy to submit you to the client. Then guess what…crickets

So, not only can I not get hired on 9 out of 10 auditions that are looking for Ryan Reynolds, John Hamm or Sam Elliot, I can’t get hired when they are looking for PAUL STEFANO! I was sitting in my Studiobricks soundproof booth, at the microphone, coaching myself on how to sound like ME!

Again, this is not uncommon in the voice over industry, and my podcast partner from The VO Meter, Sean Daeley says this in fact a career milestone, but boy is this frustrating!

Can you relate?