So, we’re back live at MAVO 2018 with Johnny Heller. How are you doing, Johnny?
Very well, thanks for having me on your shindig here.
Thank you for appearing, we’re so glad to have you. So, tell me what brings you to a conference like MAVO.
Well, I’ll tell you what, I got contacted by Val Kelly, who runs this… Gosh, I can’t remember, earlier in the year, to see if I’d do this, and I’ve done… I do my own workshops, Johnny Heller’s Blend Difference Workshop, and the New England Narrator Treat, and I’ve done a lot of stuff.
And she wanted, I guess, somebody to come out and talk about audiobooks, the genre for which I’m best known, and I welcome the opportunity, and I love doing stuff. It’s fun to go share what you know, and meet new people, and give them a… Kind of give them the…
Open the doors. There’s so many people who want to do what we do, in the voice of the world, and some actually should do it, and some actually shouldn’t. But it’s not for me to pick the wheat from the chaff, but to tell them what it’s all about, and then let them take steps forward.
So it’s a wonderful experience, and I enjoy hotels.
And I love the way you do it. I sat through your session in Beale, Atlanta last time, and I still use a quote I heard you say in that session about reading ahead. Somebody asked the question, do you read the book ahead?
And you said, the last person who should be surprised by the end of the book is you. I just love that quote.
Well, there’s real true stories about people who I know, I’m not gonna name names, who have done books, and found at the end that the character that they voiced with whatever accent they gave them was not the accent the author intended and the author didn’t reveal to the end.
I did that actually. One of my first audiobooks, I made that mistake before I trained with our friend Sean Pratt. It was a book about space aliens.
So none of the character names were English, they were almost like Klingon. So I get to this general, and I selfishly assume it’s your man. So I do the whole book, and then I get to chapter nine, nine of 10, and I see the general walks in with her troops, and I said, oh no, yes.
It ruins everything, and you simply have to redo it.
I did, yeah.
It’s a ton more work, only because you didn’t read ahead. There are other books, I did a book, Democracy’s Right and Democracy’s Mike, there’s three books, I’ve done two so far. And I’ll tell you what, I started reading through them, and I came to these wonderful characters, you know, these space kids, like a Star Wars kind of thing.
So you’ve got these generals and pilots and stuff, and it begins with all the stuff about them, a huge backstory, and then they get blown up by three pages in. Every single one. So I have all these character voices.
So I said, screw it. After I realized they’re all getting killed, I started doing any impersonation I felt like. You can have fun with it, but I had to read the head to make sure they, that it’s men, women, or…
If they’re a space alien, then who cares what they sound like.
Of course.
But if they tell you that the guy’s Irish, you can’t be doing Scots. And you have to read the book to know that. It’s the same as knowing the punchline to a joke.
A joke with no punchline is no joke.
So you’ve had your session today. How did that go? What impressed you about the session?
Besides my personal self. I thought, I actually know I was really pleased that they had to bring in like 30 more chairs. I don’t think they knew that people were really excited about audiobooks.
It’s, I think, audiobooks and video games are the two biggest, two fastest growth industries right now in the voiceover industry. So being a part of that, and people were really, really keen to know things. And that’s always, if you know a thing and someone wants to know what you know, it’s kind of exciting.
It’s like, oh my God, someone’s interested in my knowledge of cabinet making. So you share that. So they wanted to know about audiobooks.
They like me. I’m not a worthless guy. So that was kind of nice.
It was nice to see all the people who were interested, and they were absolutely interested. Lots of questions, lots of… You can just tell.
It was really neat. It was really a good experience.
That’s awesome. How about the rest of the day or tomorrow? What are you looking forward to?
Right now, I’m looking forward to dinner.
Me too.
And then tonight, I’ve got a 8.30 till 10 is a workshop on self-direction, which is super important now because as the industry grows with audiobooks, there aren’t directors working with people all the time anymore. You’re doing it by yourself. You need to know.
You need to make some choices and you need to be informed choices. We’ll talk about that. And then tomorrow afternoon, what am I on about?
I think I’ve already forgotten, but it’s something. It’ll be great.
It’ll be splendid for us.
It’ll be splendid. It’ll be swell. Yeah, I’m sure I’ll figure it out before the morning.
Yeah. But it’s not till afternoon anyway.
So you should be fine.
Yeah.
Well, Johnny, thanks so much for coming on with us today and enjoy the rest of the conference.
My pleasure, my friend. Thanks for having me.
Alright.