Paul Stefano

The VO Meter… Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hi everybody, and welcome to episode 18 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We’ve got a great episode today. We have the coordinator and executive producer of the VO Atlanta Conference. That’s Gerald Griffith coming on in a few minutes.
But first, we have current events. So what have you been up to recently, Paul?
Well, I had my first audition for my new agent, and that was actually the first of three from last week. So that was pretty cool. All signs point to that being positive.
We’ll see if I actually book it. But sent that off and was pretty excited with the results. And so, you know how it goes.
You don’t hear right away. They collect them. I think the actual due date for the first one was today.
So who knows if it’s even been submitted. But then the agent will submit it to the client, hopefully, and along with other agencies that the client has reached out to, and then they’ll come back with an answer. So hopefully that’s me.
Hopefully I’ll have an answer by next episode.
Well, best of luck, man. I’m really happy that you got that new representation.
Thank you. And then I have my first book deal with find-a-way voices. That was just done today.
So that’s pretty exciting as well.
Very cool.
What’s going on with you?
For me, well, actually, I don’t know. It’s like I’ve had this lull period for a couple of months, just kind of doing my regular e-learning projects. And then I talked about you a little bit before.
I was finding myself kind of going through what I like to call VO ennui. You know, you’re just kind of going through the motions. And it was kind of like starting to become a job and less…
and just finding myself enjoying it less. But then I just kind of like I had some really cool coaching sessions. I kind of like I actually got or joined a Christina Melitsia’s toys, games and mobile app character class.
And that has just been like in just in the first session, I just had so much fun. And I just got some like really applicable feedback and implementable techniques for how to improve my performances. Like for example, I’m a big fan of lead in lines, or just kind of ad libs to make things sound more natural or to kind of warm your voice up before you get into a script.
And she just said, before each line, just go, wow, or dude, or whoa. And then it really like pumps your energy up and you get excited about what you’re about to read. So that was that’s very helpful when you’re reading boring, dry, e-learning corporate PowerPoint slides all the time.
So that was good. I actually got some new audiobook opportunities. I’m still working on a couple projects for Learning Ally.
They asked me to do a… I’m a little nervous because they asked me to try a Syrian accent for one of the books they’re doing. And so that’s a challenge for me.
I want to be respectful of the material, but still evocative of that kind of Middle Eastern accent.
So do you have resources to study that?
Yeah. They didn’t send me any audio references yet aside from… they did send me a sample of the official book that they’d like me to read.
One of my favorite resources for this is something called IDEA, or the International Dialects of English Archive. It’s run by Paul Meyer, who is a dialectician, linguistics coach, as well as an actor himself. So IDEA is a free resource, but he does also have some paid resources specifically for actors trying to work on accents for stage or voiceover.
So I highly recommend that. It’s the first place I recommend if you’re ever working on accents or dialects. And other than that, someone actually posted an audiobook for a German-Austrian accent in the GVA community group I’m in.
And so I was like, I can do the Germans. So I submitted for that again. This is for a book that was actually based during World War II, so kind of sensitive subject matter.
So you kind of have to put your actor’s cap on and be like, all right, again, you just want to be evocative of the accent, not like over the top or offensive or anything like that.
It’s quite a challenge you’re giving yourself going from Syrian to German and an Austrian combined? Or is it an Austrian…
I sent in the audition for the German Austrian, and then the woman was so impressed, she immediately sent me another audition, which not only had another… This one was great because I was just reading the book and it described a tour guide with flawless English, but with a slight Tyrolean accent. So in case you don’t know, Tyrolean is in southern Germany bordering Austria and Italy.
And so it’s got little hints of all three of those languages. So I’m like, and you want a slight accent?
So for those ones, you try and just kind of go… At least what I did was just try and go for a more European sound. I’ve spent some time in Germany.
I have many German friends. And usually, their English is amazing because they learn it from a very young age. But they do have that hints of almost British precision of enunciation when they talk.
And that’s just kind of like the staccato nature of German shining through. But it’s fun. I mean, it’s kind of what I needed was to just jump into a whole bunch of things head first and sink or swim, you know?
That’s pretty cool. Good luck. So, we will have Gerald Griffith, the executive producer of VO Atlanta, coming up soon.
But first, we have a VO Meter shtick from Friend of the Show, Lauri Jo Daniels.
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick.
What did he say?
It’s time for the VO… Oh, nevermind.
The VO Meter shtick? Oh, got it.
Hi, I’m Lauri Jo Daniels. I’m an audiobook narrator, and I’m beginning to branch out into a few other areas of voiceover, but I’m still really new to this industry. Last September was the two-year anniversary of when I decided to actually pursue this as a career, and it also marks the month that I jumped in way over my head and did an audiobook when I really wasn’t ready to.
So I spent the last two years really focusing on learning everything I can and pretty much figuring out everything that I didn’t know that I didn’t know. Of all of the resources that I have discovered over this two-year journey, probably the most valuable resource to me has been attending Voice Over Atlanta. So I’ve now attended the last two years, and I was an ambassador both years.
That’s what Gerald calls the volunteer program for VO Atlanta. Both years, I was able to work registration, which was really amazing for someone brand new because I got to meet a ton of people coming in and registering. Even better was the fact that the first year, I had no clue who anybody was.
I’m terrible with names. So they’re coming through and I’m meeting people and talking to them and having a lot of fun. And then finding out later that someone was the voice of a cartoon my kids love or a promo I always hear or an audio book I listen to.
And I know I never would have gone up to those people had I known who they were because I would have felt really intimidated because they’re so much farther along in their career. Now, any of you who have been in the industry for a while know that that’s just a silly attitude to have because voiceover is probably the most supportive and friendly industry there is. But when I started out, I had no clue that this was a fact.
And even now I’m still pretty intimidated by some people, not because they aren’t friendly, but because I just admire them so much and I’m a bit of a fangirl. So I kind of make a fool of myself if I do try to introduce myself. So a lot of times I just avoid doing it.
Even though a lot of people think that I’m just super outgoing and not afraid of anything, I actually have a lot of anxiety and I’m really insecure when it comes to meeting new people. So there are some people that I won’t make that effort to go introduce myself to because I’m just too nervous. One of those people was Johnny Heller.
I had friended him on Facebook and followed his stuff and I just really admire him as a talent as well as a person. We’d never interacted with each other. We’d never met in person.
And he was at this last VO Atlanta. I really wanted to meet him, but I was really nervous. But on the very first night, as everyone was mingling and having hors d’oeuvres outside, Johnny approached me and introduced himself.
Since that time, I have coached with Johnny. He directed my audio book demo. I’ve attended a couple of workshops that he put together.
And we have had multiple chats. But I still get really giddy and kind of can’t believe it when I think about the fact that I can actually call Johnny Heller my friend. And even though there are plenty of other people in the voiceover industry that I still am in awe of, people that I know and that I can call my friend, but meeting Johnny at VO Atlanta is by far the best experience that I have had in my voiceover career.
And it’s not just the fact that I met Johnny. It’s the fact that he took that time to come find me and introduce himself to me and to talk to me about my career goals. And it changed the entire trajectory of my career because I was ready to throw in the towel until I attended VO Atlanta that year and met Johnny and got to talk more about my career and was reminded how supportive this community is and was given back some confidence that I had started to lose.
So thanks again to Lauri Jo for submitting that VO Meter shtick. She’s a wonderful person. I’ve met her at VO Atlanta and at MAVO before, and she’s one of my VO mamas.
I have several. Not VO sugar mamas, very different. But without further ado, let’s move on to our questionable gear purchase.
Okay, so I think it hasn’t been that long since the last questionable gear purchase, but that doesn’t ever stop me. So I picked up a new shotgun mic based on recommendations on VOBS from George Widom. I really need to stop watching that show during the equipment recommendations.
It’s an Audio-Technica AT4073B, sort of obscure mic, and he mentioned it as a really close match for the Sennheiser MKH416. He said it was so close that he recommended another talent, a client. I think he mentioned the name, but I don’t want to just in case she doesn’t want me to.
One of his clients who uses the 416 and bought this mic specifically to use on the road as a sound match. And George said it’s the closest he’s found as a match to the 416. That’s not a 416.
And I don’t necessarily think the 416 is the best on my voice. I’ve had a, I think I’ve mentioned on the show, a 415 in here, which was almost the same mic, but a precursor to it and only runs on 12 volt power. And it wasn’t the best fit for my booth.
But I’ve really grown to be a big fanboy of Audio-Technica products. And I know, Sean, you’ve used those in the past as well. And it being a Japanese company, you’re a big fan.
So I’m kind of sticking to those and decided to take George’s recommendation and get this mic. I’m not using it right now because I have it mostly for promo and commercial work. And this is the podcast slash audio book mic, but I really like it so far.
I’ve only done a few test reads and I’m sick right now. So that may be accentuating the bass in my voice. So it’s hard for me to tell.
I’m gonna give it a few weeks.
Yeah, I was actually gonna say, I don’t think you’d sound bad, but…
But I like it so far and it’s really forgiving, which the MKH416 and also an NTG3, which I’ve tried in here, aren’t necessarily. They pick up a lot of mouth clicks on my voice and nasal sound. And this new one, the 4073B seems to help eliminate that.
Yeah, and that’s a common misconception, just kind of the way that they market that mic. And it’s easy to fall into that, because these are originally used for film and distance recording and stuff like that. So it’s like they got that laser-like focus and stuff like that.
But if you’re in that narrow pickup pattern, it’s super sensitive. So you still have to address it like any other high-quality microphone. But I’m curious, what was the price point on that mic, if you don’t mind?
Let’s see, I think retail is $5.99. I picked this up for a little under $300 from Poland, of all places. We’re just talking about World War II, curiously enough.
And this was shipped from Poland, a used model. But it seems to be in great shape. I don’t see any scratches or dents and no indication it had any smoke inhalation in the diaphragm.
It seems to be in really good shape.
Well, I’m just glad that you’re able to still save so much, even with the international shipping. That’s great.
Well, I wasn’t including shipping. Sorry, I did pay $25 for shipping. So $3.25 total.
That’s nothing. I spent over $100 when shipping my Audient ID22 from Britain to Japan. And then that didn’t even turn out to be my permanent interface.
So there you go.
So that’s actually it for me, believe it or not. Have you made any purchases this week?
No, I’ve been super good. And I feel bad because I’ve been contributing to all of these. I mean, like, don’t get me wrong.
I’m still gear-lusting after so many different things. And, but I did want to touch on a couple of things because it’s like, so many people are, I’ve seen again and again, like a lot of people asking for what’s an ideal microphone. And the truth is, nowadays you don’t like, especially if you’re starting out, don’t go for like a TLM 103 or a 416, like immediately get something in the 150 to $300 range.
You’ll be fine. And actually one of, I was talking with Julie Williams, who we had on the podcast a while ago. She actually sold her 103, her Neumann TLM 103, a supposed industry standard for an AT 4040, which is about a $300 mic.
You could probably find it for less on Reverb or eBay. And it’s just nice and clear and quiet. And it’s actually a lot of female voice talent use it and been very happy with it.
So don’t feel like that, I mean, we talked about it before, but there is a point of diminishing returns on your investment. So if you don’t have $1,000 to spend on a mic, don’t. Get a decent one for $200 or $300.
And if you want recommendations on those, we have a whole episode about it. It’s episode two.
Yeah, that’s now up to over 450 downloads. It’s our most popular episode.
Awesome, awesome. Cause people keep asking this question.
Yeah.
But so some of the things that I’m lusting after, we are talking about travel rigs and stuff like that. I’ve actually, I currently don’t have a USB mic and I’ve been kind of looking back into it because I do lead a lot of workouts and I do a lot of videos and stuff like that. It would be nice just to have something to plug in to my laptop and like a little less elaborate setup.
And so a couple of options that I’m looking for right now were the iRig Pro, which is kind of a USB, it’s a USB, iOS and Android microphone. It’s one of the only ones I know that’s native Android functioning. And I like that because you could just plug it into an iPad or an iPhone and you’re off to the races.
Only problem is that iRig, not all of their products are really well reviewed. Some people have complained about them crapping out after a while. Another one that I was looking at is the Sennheiser MK4 Digital.
And I was really excited. Or what was that?
Senn had it.
You tried it?
Oh yeah, I had one here. What?
You didn’t tell me.
Oh, sorry. You said the digital.
The digital one.
So sorry. Nevermind.
We both actually use the analog version of that mic. And that’s another really good one for like around two or $300, depending on where you get it. And it means some people even call it the Neumann TLM 101, just because it’s kind of like their entry level.
And some people even like it more than the 103, just because it’s a little bit flatter and doesn’t have the harsh high end that the 103 has been known for. So Sennheiser actually are teamed up with Apogee Electronics to create the sort of internal interface inside the MK4. So that tends to be the biggest concern with USB mics is that they don’t have decent preamps and stuff like that inside.
But I mean, Apogee’s kind of a purveyor and at the forefront of that technology. So that’s a pretty exciting partnership. The only problem, though, is for a travel mic, it’s not very ideal because it’s just like a large studio condenser.
You need a shock mount for it. It’s super sensitive. But yeah, I don’t think it would be an ideal travel microphone just because it is a large diaphragm condenser.
It’s got an open pattern. It’s convenient to plug into a phone or an iPad, but it’s super sensitive. And I don’t think it would fare well in a hotel room with vacuums in the hallway and refrigerators in the hotel room and stuff like that.
But then, I was just watching a video from George Whitham, one of his old NAMM videos, and this microphone company out of Nashville called MicTech, who’s kind of famous for having their own signature sound and having great microphones at affordable prices. They released something called the MicTech ProCast Mio, M-I-O. And it’s kind of like an Apogee mic slash Blue Yeti killer, because it’s got, like the Blue Yeti, it’s got zero latency headphone monitoring, it’s got a USB out and an analog out, an XLR out, and you can actually record to two different sources.
So you could have one hooked, or like the USB hooked up to one laptop, and then the analog hooked up to an audio interface hooked up to another laptop or whatever. So that’d be cool backups for that. And the main reason that I was excited about this is its pickup pattern.
It’s actually got a, what’s it, a super cardioid pattern, just like the 416 or something like that, which is ideal because it does cut down on ambient sounds. So I don’t know, I think I’m going to drop some hints, and maybe that might be a good stocking stuffer for yours, truly. But one last thing that we want to try that’s a little bit different is I feel terrible pressuring Paul to buy new stuff for this segment, but we want to prove that.
It’s true, he twists my arm every time.
But you’re keeping it alive, Paul, and I really appreciate your sacrifice. But we actually want to open up questionable gear purchases to our listeners. So do you have a questionable gear purchase that you’d like to share?
Or something you bought that was a disaster?
Something you bought that was a disaster? Why don’t you write us a story or even send us an audio clip, maybe even using that questionable piece of gear? Go ahead and just send us a comment on the VO Meter Facebook page.
You can also hit Paul or I up, send us a direct message on Facebook, or you can send me an email at.
Sean.vo.com Regularly scheduled segments. Without further ado, let’s take it to the Bodago Call room for our interview with Gerald Griffith.
Hi, everybody. We are joining you from Bodago Call right now with the coordinator and executive producer of the sixth annual voiceover conference, VO Atlanta, Gerald Griffith. How are you doing, sir?
I’m doing great. How about yourself?
Wonderful. I’m so glad you could join us today.
Welcome, Gerald. So, Gerald, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with voiceover or what drew you to the voiceover community.
Well, I actually, like many people, was looking for an opportunity to do something. I had always had an interest in public speaking and things of that nature. And so having been someone working from home and responsible for getting my kids off and things like that, I wanted to maintain some flexibility and somehow came across the idea of doing a voiceover and took a class, an intro to voiceover class some time ago.
And that’s how I initially got involved. And then a short time later, I decided to start a meetup group because I didn’t know a lot of people here in the Atlanta area. And that meetup group eventually grew to a size where people had an interest in doing training and things like that.
And so once we started doing that, I ended up spending so much time doing training and coordinating training that I had to make a decision. Am I going to coordinate sessions and training or am I going to try to continue learning more about voiceover and having some time in the booth auditioning and working on technique? And since my background has been more in planning and logistics and coordinating things, I decided to stick with the planning side of it.
And things have just kind of evolved from there.
That’s awesome. So our next episode actually is going to be about Meetup Groups specifically. Can you tell us if that was an in-person group or was it virtual or a combination of both?
Well, it definitely started off as an in-person group. It was all about the chance for people to get together and start meeting each other. And I wish I could tell you it was still as active as it had been at that point.
But it’s been more or less a lot of focus has shifted toward the conference itself. And it’s not as active in person as it is at this point as it was in the past. But it was a great thing and it’s still grown.
It’s about 800 to 900 people that are officially a part of that meeting group. And I keep them updated with things related to the conference or any other activities here in the Atlanta area that may be of use to them.
Very cool. So I’ve had the pleasure of joining at least two of your wonderful VO Atlanta conferences. Can you tell us a little bit of how the conference has grown and changed over the years?
Wow, sure. The first year’s conference was, as you might imagine, anytime you’re stepping out to do something for the first time, it can be a little nerve wracking and make you a little nervous and wonder how it’s all going to work out. But I do feel fortunate in the sense that I was able to talk to other people in the industry, other coaches and trainers and people who had their own events, and they were willing to give bits and pieces of advice.
They weren’t going to try to help you clone what they were doing, but they were willing to encourage and be supportive in that way to let you know that you weren’t by yourself and that you could do this. And so, it started out that first year. Pat Fraley was my initial keynote, and I was very thankful of, and had a great crew come out.
And I remember that first year, we had about 125 people attend, and I had one person from Bermuda, and I was so pumped up. I was like, oh my God, somebody’s coming from, you know, there’s water in between them and the conference, and they’re still coming. And that was year one, and, you know, one of the things I remember mostly about it was I was walking the entire time.
I literally lost 10 pounds in one week. I don’t know if I slept at all that weekend, but there was a lot of walking going on, and here we are, you know, this year having been year five, we had attendees from 44 different states in the US and 13 different countries outside of the US. Yeah, we were just shy of 600 people this year.
Wow. My goodness. So, this is something that’s a little bit near and dear to my heart because I’ve personally benefited from it.
One of the things that really makes VO Atlanta unique is your scholarship program. So, could you tell people a little bit about that and the different scholarship options you have?
Sure. I’ve been doing the scholarship program since probably the third year, second or third year of the conference. And I do that in conjunction with Anne Gengouza and the VO Peeps program.
And we make it possible for at least two to three people to come out to the conference and be a part of it. You know, the criteria is pretty straightforward. You know, people, they write something, they tell us about themselves and their situation, maybe where they are, where they’re trying to go.
And we also give them a little small script, just, you know, from a performance standpoint, to see where they are. And then there are a team of judges that Anne coordinates to go over and review everything, and they select a winner out of that. I’m not involved in the judging, although I do listen to the entries and everything.
But I can tell you that they’re just some amazing people that enter, and some of the stories, you know, they’ll have you laughing, they’ll have you crying, they’ll have, you know, sometimes feeling very empathetic toward people, and just other times feeling so excited about where people are and what they’re trying to do. And it’s just an exciting program to have. And we do an international, we do a national, and then we offer a youth scholarship as well.
That’s fantastic, so good.
Well, that’s great. It’s just an amazing opportunity you offer people. I know it’s changed the lives of all the winners in profound ways.
But aside from the scholarship, can you tell us other ways people can get involved in the conference?
Well, aside from coming as a regular attendee, we do have an ambassador program where people exchange some time for a discounted registration. So there’s an entry process for that, where they can apply and tell us what areas they want to help out with. We do have a very few volunteers who help out throughout the entire conference duration during their time there.
And those are probably the categories as far as how someone could come outside of the regular attendee process.
So I’m a little bit familiar with the ambassador program. Can you talk a little bit about how that might benefit somebody, or I guess allay some of the fears someone might have about being an ambassador and not being able to maybe enjoy the rest or participate in the rest of the conference like they thought they might be able to? Or is that not an issue?
Well, I think it depends on where people are coming from with it. You know, naturally, there’s a trade-off. There’s a time commitment.
But depending on where a person is and their thinking about coming, there are roles that actually would allow them to be an ambassador and not miss a single minute of the conference. Particularly if they’re in the Atlanta area and they want to help with, say, the load-in where we’re setting everything up or maybe the breakdown where we’re breaking everything down on Sunday. So in those cases, their time commitment is before and after the conference, not during the conference.
So it just depends on their availability and other factors that may factor into that. But there are other roles. It’s an eight-hour commitment for an ambassador, and we generally split it up into four-hour blocks.
So when they go through and review the options, it’ll give them a general description of what the possible roles are. And we try to work around that as much as possible.
Yeah, and I’ll offer up my own experience. I was a volunteer last year, and felt like I in no way missed out on anything that I wanted to do. I’ll say that you, as a executive producer, are more than gracious with allowing people to, like you said, get what they want out of it and still be able to participate.
So I thank you for that, and I’m sure most of the ambassadors would agree that they still got what they wanted out of the conference while still being able to help and feel like they were part of the team.
Right. Now we don’t run it like a… You know, it’s not a fast food restaurant or something like that.
It’s time for my smoke break, Gerald.
We want everyone to have a good time. And I mean, there are obviously things we have to get done, and there are schedules involved. But if you think about it, if you were assigned to work the door, at a particular session, and check for badges and things like that, once that session starts, we, you know, if you’re not involved in something outside of that, we encourage you to just go in, sit down at the back of the room, you know, so that you’re near the door, and watch the session, you know?
You know, observe it and be a part of it, to the extent you can. And then toward the end, you know, you wrap up your time there and you move on to the next thing. So we don’t try to say, well, how many seconds we can, you know, use you or keep you active.
We really want you to be a part of the conference as well. Because outside of that eight-hour commitment, you are a regular attendee. You’re able to participate in everything, sign up for anything, be in the contest or whatever else.
You just have that time commitment. That’s it.
Very cool. So I know this year you started a new program called VO Intensive. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Ah, VO Intensity. Yes. VO Intensity is a bit of an extension of our X-Session program that we do at the conference.
And the big difference there was that X-Sessions at the conference are three hours, which is a good amount of time. But for some, they want a chance to really, really go even beyond what you can do in a three-hour block. And so, I created this concept of VO Intensity where we have a select handful of trainers that come out.
And we did it at the same hotel where the conference will be in classroom settings. And it’s a full-day program, except you have the option of one presenter one day, one coach one day, and one coach on a separate day. So, for instance, this year, you know, you might spend a day doing commercial stuff with Mary Lynn, Wisner, but you might spend the next day working with Dave Fennoy in gaming.
And you have a full day of at least six hours worth of training with each of them. And so there’s much more intense focus on the workshop learning part of it. Whereas at conference, there’s the workshop, there are panels, there are breakouts, there are social, there are karaoke, there’s reception, there’s party stuff going on.
Intensity is really focused on training. It’s about the intense learning experience. And they’re just different in that regard.
Absolutely. And I love that idea of the more narrow focus, because I mean, your X sessions, if you like, just to explain to our viewers or our listeners a little bit, the X sessions are ones that you pay an additional fee to join, like Gerald said, they can be a two or three hour workshop setting. And it can be a little bit difficult to try and coordinate that along with all the other great activities, all the breakout sessions, which are included in your registration as part of your schedule.
So I love that you kind of added some time before and at the end of the conference to really give people that undivided focused attention.
Yeah, we actually have a few X sessions that are actually going to be pre-conference. We started it this year in 2017, and then in 2018 we’ll have, I believe, six sessions that’ll take place early on Thursday, the official start of the conference on the first of March. There are about six sessions that take place because we actually have a lot of people who come in on Wednesday, believe it or not.
In fact, there are so many people on Wednesday that I had to look at my watch when I walked through the lobby because there were so many people standing around for the conference. And I was like, did I miss something? And oh, it was Wednesday night.
People figured out the secret that Wednesday is the best party night.
Shh.
Yeah, because you’re going to be too exhausted for the rest of it to party, that’s for sure.
But yeah, so a lot of people do come in on Wednesday, which means they’re there on Thursday. And for those people who want to squeeze in a workshop early so that they’re not missing any of the breakouts or panels, they’re able to take them then. Or if they want to do the full day type training, we’ll be doing VO Intensity.
And I believe it’ll be in mid to late July in 2018.
Cool, cool. So a bit more of a sentimental question, I guess. You have so many great moments and events that happened during VO Atlanta.
I’m just curious what some of your fondest memories from the conference have been.
I’ll give you a couple. I’m a big fan of seeing just community come together and people have a good time. I come from a big family.
I’m the last of 11 kids.
Wow.
Was always around a lot of people when it was always a big thing for us. And so when I’m at the conference, I’ll walk around, say, during lunchtime, and I just see people connecting and enjoying themselves and having a good time and really connecting at a personal level. Sure, there’s that initial inclination to talk about voice over and things like that, and that’s great.
But then you start to see people talking about, where are you from? Where’d you grow up? Where did you go to school?
Do you have kids? Other things that just connect them at a very personal level. And that, I think, is one of the things that makes the conference so meaningful for people, is that it goes beyond just what you do, and it really opens the door to people connecting at the who you are level.
And so that’s a big thing for me. I often walk in the room, in the back of a room, and I’ll just stand there for a little while, and just soak in the fact that people are here having a good time, and that they’re learning, and that they’re engaging with each other. And then as a parent, my favorite moment is actually, you know, being able to involve my kids in an event.
My son’s 10, and half of his life, he’s been attending the conference, so. That was a little interesting with that. But as they’ve gotten older, you know, to know that they’ve literally had a chance to meet people from all around the world at the conference.
And people throughout the year, they’ll see me posting about them in Facebook and things like that. And so it’s a little odd sometimes, because people have seen so many things about them that when they’re at the conference, they’ll walk up to them and say, hey, Camille, hey, Grant. You know, they’ll start referencing things that they’ve done.
And of course, my kids are looking at them like, who is this person? But I think anytime, you know, as a parent, when you can do something and involve your kids in it, and see them learning and developing and growing and having a chance to meet people that are doing positive things. And I think that is a really, you know, thing I consider to be a blessing and I’m appreciative to have that opportunity.
Absolutely. And I’m sure whether or not they pursue voiceover as they get older, they’ll look back on this and very fondly and just be like, wow, that was so cool of my dad to involve me like that.
I hope. I hope that’s the story. I hope it’s not, man, he drag us out of this thing every year.
VO Atlanta again?
I think for them partly, it’s like they get to eat hotel food or just go swimming or something like that in March type of thing. And it’s interesting because in next year, we have a youth program on Saturday during the conference. So March 3rd is a youth day with Lin-Anne Zager for next year.
And so the kids attend that, but I’m actually going to bring them out of school one day and bring them down to the conference on, I think that Thursday night that the conference kicks off and let them spend the entire weekend there. And so my kids in conjunction with a few other select ones, we’re actually gonna have a youth ambassador program where on that Friday, we’ll get them involved with helping out with some activities, mostly just again to let them have a chance to meet other people in the community, participate in some other things before they spend the whole day on Saturday with the youth program.
Well, Gerald, you mentioned the personal relationships and I can certainly attest to that. I was recently talking to a coach with whom I’m going to start doing some sessions. And the reason I contacted this particular coach is because I spent so much time with them at VO Atlanta 2017.
And I said, because we spent so much time together, I feel like you know me better than almost any other person I could contact right now. So, who else would I call to do coaching with next? And it’s really going to benefit both me and my career.
So, I thank you again for the way you’ve set up the conference and just the attitude that you engender with it.
Well, I appreciate that. A lot of it has to do with the mindset people come with, quite frankly, and in most people’s defense, a lot of times when people go to something that’s networking related, it’s a very short activity. It may just be two hours, it may be an hour and a half.
So, the time they have to actually network and truly network, I mean, not just give them somebody a card or something, but to actually connect in some meaningful way is very short. But VO Atlanta is not a two-hour experience, or a three, or a four, or an eight, it’s several days. And so, I think it takes away that need for people to feel like I’ve got to jump in front of the line, I’ve got to climb over someone, I’ve got to follow someone to the bathroom to get in front of them.
You don’t have to do that. In fact, it’s very, very highly discouraged for people to behave in that fashion. And I think it does just create that space where people can connect.
And I try to add things to the conference as well. We have a conference app that we’ll be using in 2018 where people who are attending the conference will be able to create their profile within the app, and they can actually load their demos within it in their profile. So when someone looks at your profile, if you want to put a picture there, you can put a picture.
If you don’t, that’s fine. If you want to put links to your website, to your Twitter, Facebook, whatever, but then you can upload your voice over demos right inside the app. So, you know, I’ll just use Mary Lynn as an example.
If she were looking for someone for something, and she was like, hey, I’m going to the conference, maybe I can find someone, she can go right within the app and filter down on certain criteria and listen to people who’ve loaded their demos right inside the app. So it’s almost like, yes, there’s the conference, which is already a good opportunity in and of itself. But now, because I’m leveraging technology with that, it’s almost like its own opportunity for you to really be heard by a lot of people.
Multiple times. That’s wonderful.
Yes, yes. And so I’m really excited about that. And it just takes that whole pressure off of someone saying, hey, can you listen to my demo?
Can you listen to my demo? There’ll be a lot of people listening to your demos.
I was going to say you’re actually seguing perfectly to our last question. What else is in the works for the future of VO Atlanta or VO Intensity?
Well, one of the things I’m trying to do with it and moving in that direction is we’ll continue to define our various programs. So we have audio book, animation, gaming. So we’ll continue to increase or help those areas mature so that when someone’s coming and they’re really focused on a particular area, that they can get a full conference experience, even if they just focused on that particular area.
So, you know, audio books, for instance. If all you wanted to do was audio books, because that’s all you cared about, I want to make sure there’s enough content within that program for you to still realize a meaningful conference experience. And so we’ll continue to do that.
I’m continuing to work with agents and directors and producers and get a lot of their feedback about what goes into the conference, what’s meaningful, what’s needed, what do people need to know. And that’s one of the things I talk to them about is, what do you wish talent knew about? And then how do we convert that into meaningful training and exercises so that when they come to the conference, they walk away knowing that, hey, maybe that approach I was gonna take is a wrong one.
Maybe that demo I thought I was gonna produce, I need to rethink. Maybe that training that I have been putting off, I need to go ahead and get. Because I find that talent in general are motivated to do good and to move forward with their careers.
In many cases, unfortunately, they just don’t have accurate information about what they should be focused on. And so, I hope to continue to develop that type of thing where people do leave the conference with a really good game plan and really good information from highly qualified and respected sources so that they can continue to build their careers.
Wonderful. Well, I can’t thank you enough, Gerald. I mean, VO Atlanta is certainly one of the best voiceover conferences out there right now.
And for people who are interested and want to find out more or even register for the conference, where do they go?
VOAtlanta.me.
Awesome. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate you. Thanks for the time.
Gerald, thanks so much. Sean and I will both be attending this year the sixth annual VO Atlanta Conference. And we will see you in just 100 days, right?
You posted the countdown today.
The day is 100 days.
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
Hard to believe, but it’s even more exciting because I know it’s closer.
It’s scary. You know, breaking three digits is like this psychological thing. It’s like as long as I have three digits to work with, I’m good.
I feel like I’ve got more time.
But when it goes to 99, it’s whoo.
I hear that. We’ll keep up the good work, and we will see you on March 1st.
Yes. Well, I think I’ll see you a day before that.
Well, that’s true, but I didn’t want to let everybody know that. They’ll all want me to buy them a beer. Thanks again, Gerald.
Have a great day, sir. Thank you so much.
You too.
Thanks again to Gerald Griffith, the coordinator and executive producer of the VO Atlanta Conference. If you’ve never been to VO Atlanta, or if you’ve never been to a Voice Over Conference, I highly recommend it. There’s something for everything there.
It’s not just for beginners. Honestly, I’ve made friends and connections that are going to last a lifetime. I’ve made friends and mentors.
I’ve even gotten an agent or two. It’s just so great not to be able to work or to meet people who all share the same passion for Voice Over that you do.
If you come this year, you’ll be able to come meet us.
And you can meet us. Say hi. We won’t bite you.
Hard.
Hello, 90s.
But yeah, it’s a wonderful event. And if you can make it in your budget to attend, I highly recommend it. Once again, if you’re interested or want to register, the website is VOAtlanta.me.
Once again, that’s VOAtlanta.me. I’m Sean Daeley with my co-host Paul Stefano for the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Have a wonderful holiday season. And take it easy, guys.
Happy holidays, everybody.
Thanks for listening to the VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com. Come on.

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to Episode 17 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Well, we are gonna get right into the nitty gritty of today, which is our VO Meetup Roundtable, where us and some other In The Trenches voice actors kind of share our stories, get to know a little bit more about us and the people we work with, and talk about how this Meetup Group has benefited the progress of our careers. So without further ado, Paul, why don’t you tell us about how we started our own VO Meetup Group?
Fantastic. So yeah, we’re talking about VO Meetup Groups or affinity groups, another word that I like to use is accountability group. And this is a concept that’s been around for hundreds of years as far as business to business marketing, but we decided to try and make it work back around two years ago now, where a lot of us were interfacing on the venerable Bolton Board, the Voice Over Bolton Board or VO-BB.
Some of you are familiar with that. We’ve talked about it kind of ad nauseam on previous episodes, but specifically Sean, John, John Roorda, who we’ll talk about in a second, and Mike Norgaard were members of that group along with Heather Masters. And we used to post messages and see each other’s faces and after about six months of me rambling on there constantly, I got a phone call from Mike Norgaard, voice talent out of Texas, and scared the bejesus out of me because first of all, I didn’t know how he found my number or why he was calling me.
And basically the discussion was, how are you advancing in your career? And I said, what career? What are you talking about?
But it pointed out that there should be and could be more interaction among people that I had been interfacing with all these months and getting help from. So after speaking with Mike, I decided to try and get together a group of like-minded individuals from the VO BB. Initially, we called it the New Guy Group.
It was myself, Mike Norgaard, Sean Daeley, and John Roorda. And we met virtually every week over… I think initially it was Google Hangouts, but we’ve used various platforms across the different years.
And we just talked about the business. Initially, it was kind of challenging because Sean was living in Japan at the time, and Mike is in Texas, John’s in Indiana, and I’m in Baltimore. So we had some technology issues trying to get us started.
But the point was we were talking every week and really started to grow our businesses by helping each other. And eventually, we added Heather to the group and then Marisha Tapera. And that made us less of a new guy group and we had to change the name.
But I was happy for that because it brought some new variety to the group. And now for a little over a year, the six of us have been talking every week, not always the same number of people. We don’t have any sort of requirements.
There’s no fees. We just talk when we can. Somebody has something going on that week, like a kid’s soccer game or taking their dog to the vet or traveling.
Obviously, we don’t hold them to it, but we get together as much as we can, and I think we’ve all become better for it. So with that, I want to introduce all the members of the group and let them talk about themselves and their businesses and anything else they want to promote. So let’s start with, well, Sean, you know, hopefully you’ve listened to the podcast before, but Sean, tell us a little bit about your business and how you came to the group.
Well, yeah, actually, you reached out to me via the VOBB and sent me a message that you were trying to get this group together, and I was like, hey, why not? And so, like you said, there were some tech issues and scheduling issues trying to get everyone to meet up because me being in Japan, the local time was tomorrow. So that was a little bit difficult.
But other than that, I think the biggest benefit is just being able to talk shop, like you said, and kind of make sure that you’re on the right path. I mean, we’ve talked about everything in these groups from potential clients or client platforms, like Freelancer or Mandy or what have you, like how to approach agencies or even confirming bad feelings about a client who reached you or a project or something like that. So it’s been incredibly helpful, and it’s something that I always look forward to when I can make it.
And let’s go to Mike Norgaard.
All right, well, I guess I was here as one of the semi-founding members of the group. And Paul and I, like Paul said, I’d reached out to him by phone. We actually used to frequently bid against each other and still do on a certain freelance platform, not Fiverr.
And… Let’s throw that in there for the industry, folks. And I actually had a question about the platform and some technical issues that have been going on and with their accounting and so forth.
And so I called Paul just to see if he’d shared any of those and we began chatting and we had a, I don’t know, probably about a 30 minute conversation. And shortly after that, he said, hey, I’m getting this group together, let’s do it. And so we did and here we are.
In terms of my background, I come from a radio broadcast background, so I’ve worked hard to kind of lose some of that and go warm and friendly and millennial sound, as they say. And I think that this has been a great opportunity. I mean, to me, this is sort of like the virtual water cooler at the office.
I think many voice overs work in isolation kind of from everybody else. We’re sort of in our own little bubble. So to have that opportunity to network and have some professional contact and talk to people who are actually excited to maybe hear the things that we’re talking about, as is supposed to just our spouses all the time, or whoever, and just have that opportunity to professionally network has meant a great deal.
And I think, as Sean said, has really helped grow the career. So it’s been a great opportunity to be a part of that.
Great, thanks Mike. And John Roorda, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Well, I first stuck my toe into the VO Waters just ever so slightly before you did, Paul, in early 2015. At that time, I was in radio sales. I had a background prior to that of corporate training and tech support.
But enough time at a radio station, burning through the phones, people start asking you, well, why aren’t you doing something with your voice instead of selling? So that was about the time in early 2015 when I first ventured out. Very shortly after that, I started seeing this Paul guy over the VO BB like a rash.
Well put.
A nice rash if they’re… And not long after that, Paul reached out to me and asked if I would like to be part of our little weekly get together. And as Mike said, working in isolation in this little box in your basement, you don’t really have a point of reference as to what success is, what other people in a similar stage of the journey are experiencing.
And is that guy on Fiverr or whatever other freelance site really serious when he says that? What? So it’s been a tremendous learning opportunity to see what my peers, what other people in this stage of the game are up to and where they’re at.
And it’s been a huge motivator to see that, yeah, the success really is out there and you just have to reach out and grab it. So it’s been great to see the success that everybody else has been having and that’s definitely helped to spur me along.
Awesome, thanks for that. And Marisha, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Well, I’m one of the most recent additions. I met Paul on a panel that we did with World Voices about rates, rates for people who are just getting into the industry. And the interesting thing for me is that I’ve been kicking around in a pretty part-time capacity since 2002.
So even though I’m technically not new, the as new, I should say, I was absolutely and still feel like I’m absolutely new to working at this at Voice Over as a business, and at the level that I’m hoping to start to work at. So Paul was kind enough to invite me into the fold. And I think the best thing for me has been just this sense of community that’s actually fairly intimate.
It’s really wonderful to have a group of people that have your back. And I think you guys have always been so available to answer questions, to run reality tests with, and then literal testing, A-B tests, that’s one of the, sort of the greatest features of the group. And I think the other thing that I love so much is having people to cheer on myself.
I just get such a huge charge out of how hard you guys are working, how you’re kicking butt, and the interesting ways that you’re finding to conquer obstacles in your businesses. And as John said, it’s such an education and it’s so inspirational and it is really fun to hang up and think, oh, you know, that’s amazing that this person is doing this. I feel proud of you guys.
So yeah, that’s been my experience so far.
Heather Masters, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do in the VO world.
Cool. Okay. Well, I got into VO about three years ago.
I had a theater degree and little children at home and so I had no idea what to do with it. And one day when I was listening to an audio book, I thought, hey, I have a theater degree. Wonder if I could do that.
And so I did, and thus began the journey. And so I started with audio books. I have since transitioned a little bit.
I’m still working on audio books, but I’m working more often on commercial e-learning and video game and character work. Those fit a little bit better with my schedule, so I’m trying to gear more for projects that are not quite so long-term. I studied with Nancy Wolfson of Brain Tracks Audio, who I adore, and that really-
Name-dropper.
Name-dropper, it’s happened. Yes, she’s awesome. And I really feel like she’s the one who, going through her program, really gave me the confidence to feel like, okay, I’m for real, this is for real now.
I have the skills, I’m not just pretending at home with my homemade set up. And so I think that gave me the confidence to pursue, to really pursue, and things have been going wonderfully ever since, so yee-haw.
So Heather, what kind of groups have you been involved with, and how have you found this particular meetup group to be beneficial or maybe not beneficial?
You know, the very first interaction I had with any form of human contact in VO was on the VOBB, which was a real lifesaver for me in terms of getting knowledge. And the people on there are just… they’re fantastic professionals.
They have incredible credentials, and yet they are willing to help nobodies. And they’re so free and so giving with their advice. And that was a real lifeline for me.
And what kind of segued off of that, which was even better, was this guy named Paul Stefano, who… no, I know it’s Stefano. I can’t do it right.
Paul Stefano contacted me and said, hey, I think we’re putting together a group of kind of all the people who are newer so we can help each other out. And I was like, sign me up. And that has been massive for me because I feel like not only are there people who are willing to help me out, but there’s sort of a mutual connection.
And I feel like I have real friends. I feel like if I run into trouble, that I can ask for help. And I’m also willing and able to give help, because these are people I’ve gotten to know and that I really care about, and I love that dynamic.
It’s kind of transformed a little bit from me being newbie, I don’t know anything, somebody, anybody, please help. What do you know? What can I glean from you?
To more of a, okay, we’re all kind of getting our bearings here. We’ve got some experience under our belt. We have got experience in various genres, and how can we help each other?
And I think that’s been massive for me.
Well, great. And I won’t bore the audience with my background, but I will echo the sentiments that I am really happy that we all get together. I’m so proud of all the accomplishments that all of you have made as well, and love just cheering everybody on and seeing what everybody’s up to every week.
So with that, I want to throw out to Sean, who’s going to talk a little bit about networking in general, because he has more experience, I think, in networking in the VO world than almost anybody I know, with the exception of maybe Ann Gangusa. But Sean, tell us a little bit about how networking is beneficial in the VO world.
Absolutely, because I understand for some people, I know even you, Paul, like this idea of like an accountability group was kind of a foreign concept. You just wanted to bring people together and talk show. And so, like, we’re at this kind of interesting time where these meetup groups can take all sorts of different forms.
I mean, as Paul mentioned, I’m pretty active on social media. And that’s kind of like, I mean, these groups are sort of becoming accountability groups in themselves. The only issue is, is there’s like four or five hundred members in it.
So, but I mean, there are some great ones. I know the Global Voice Acting Academy has a free GVA community group. We also have a paid membership group as well.
There’s VO Peeps and Voice Over Pros and Voice Over Camp. And just make sure that you really kind of get a feel for each group. Just kind of that those are the people that you want to learn from and that you’re really understanding what each group is about because they do serve different purposes.
But kind of moving away from social media, we have like what we’re doing because say people who want to get to meet up, they might be isolated from other actors. So they might only be able to do it digitally or online. And now we have all sorts of conferencing apps, whether it be Zoom or Bedolgo Call or Skype or any of the other usual suspects.
And so you can meet up regularly that way as well for either for free or for very affordably. Another thing that I love to do is if you have the option are in-person ones. So this can be anywhere like at someone’s house or at a restaurant or even in a recording studio and those ones are always great because it’s always good to be able to like shake someone’s hand and like get to know, make that personal connection that much more quickly.
So what exactly do we talk about when we have a meetup group? As we talked about before, like they can be pretty much just kind of camaraderie and talking shop and bouncing ideas off of each other. I know that when we first started, it was kind of much more performance based.
Like we would actually all come in with auditions or scripts that we were working on and then we would take turns reading and then practice giving and receiving feedback. And that was also extremely helpful because as we’re all trying to figure out our signature sound and trying to sound natural and not too exaggerated or unrealistic and stuff like that, that was immensely helpful. But that’s one form of group that you can have is one that’s strictly performance based.
And then the other one like we’ve been talking about before and what this group has really turned into is much more of an accountability group where we can set goals with each other. We can even have an element of friendly competition with each other as we’re kind of trying to progress at our own pace. And like Marisha was saying before, just being able to troubleshoot obstacles or challenges we have, whether it’s like, oh, I’m trying to learn this new platform or I’m trying to reach out to this agency or I’m trying to negotiate a higher rate or my signal chain sounds terrible.
What can I do? Just having some friendly people who are just calm and supportive and cool headed and very honest with their feedback has been invaluable. And so it’s been really fun watching everyone move, progress all elements of their business, whether it be the studio tech aspects.
Everyone’s audio sounds amazing, by the way, our agency lists or our client lists or the number of books that we’ve done. And that’s just another wonderful thing about this is that everyone’s experience and expertise is so different. I mean, I know like Mike and Paul do quite a bit of audiobook work.
So when I started trying to do some projects as well, like I just like berated them with questions and still do when I have them now. And so, and it might be like someone might be better at character voices or someone might be better at dissecting a script. And everyone shares all this knowledge, like nobody really bogarts it to themselves.
And it’s kind of like this microcosm of the support of the VO community that we see everywhere, which is like, and it’s just great to have our own little section of it to ourselves, kind of our own little secret, as it were. And then one last thing that like we were talking about networking a bit at the beginning is that you can get recommendations for all sorts of things. Like we can recommend each other to clients looking for a specific voice.
Like I know if somebody’s looking for like for an older gentleman voice, I might refer Mike, John or Paul, or a female voice, I might refer Marisha or things like that. So we’re able to refer people to clients, to agencies, to projects. We might recommend Gear or Voice Over Coaches or all sorts of other ideas.
So it’s a great networking opportunity to get to know the people, whether they be locally or like online, like what we’re doing right now.
Yeah, so whatever direction of a group you want to pursue, I highly recommend you find one, get involved and stay active, and it will really help your career in the long run. So with that, we’re going to conduct this meeting, the rest of this meeting, as we normally do, and sort of demonstrate how we conduct our little corner of the Meetup world, and that’s by talking about what’s going on in our business from the past week, from when we met last, and just go in a roundtable format to give everybody a chance to talk. So we’re just going to do that now, listen along and see how it operates, and then maybe start your own group or join an existing group and see if you can do the same.
So with that, let’s go reverse order this time. Marisha, what’s happening news-wise in your VO world?
Well, I had a very interesting week. It’s so funny. I love you guys, and yet it’s still very hard for me to say this out loud.
I’m not sure why. I’ll be happy to do it. Well, okay, I’m going to practice.
This is one of the wonderful things you guys have done for me. You’re giving me an opportunity to kind of practice being a big girl and talking about these things. I was incredibly honored to be nominated for a Voice Arts Award this year, and so I went to New York.
I decided to head up to New York and attend the event because it seemed like a wonderful opportunity to network and just to enjoy the spectacle. I really was excited to just participate, and it’s obviously something that Joan Baker and Rudy Gaskins have worked extremely hard on, and Anne Gangusa, who was the producer, director, and coach, for the piece that I was nominated for, had also obviously worked extremely hard, and we worked together. And so I really decided to kind of go for it and go up there, and it was a beautiful drive.
The fall leaves were turning.
Oh, come on, what happened? You’re killing me.
Oh, you want to know what happened? Oh, I’m sorry. My goodness, what’s wrong with me?
No, seriously though, I could not believe it, but I won. I won my category.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much. I mean, you guys are just the best. I have to say, Anne dominated that category.
She had five nominations total in that category. Absolutely unbelievable.
What was the category again for our listeners?
Oh, I’m sorry. It was for outstanding narration demo. So this is for a demo that I worked on with her about a year ago, actually.
So at any rate…
And how many nominees in the category?
There were six people in the category. Incredible, incredible people, including Anne. So I just could not be more honored and humbled by the experience.
And it was a beautiful event. So well run, incredibly enthusiastic, and just extraordinary people at this event. And it was an incredible night.
And I had a few mishaps, you know, getting up to Lincoln Center. I had will call tickets, and I just knew it was Lincoln Center, and it was the day of the New York Marathon. So I had already mapped everything out, and I knew I was going to be able to drive, and I drove in with no problem, drove down 42nd Street, and was looking at like these crazy electronic billboards that are now there.
I haven’t been to New York in a while, so it was quite an eye popping experience going up 42nd. Everything was beautiful. Got a cab over to Lincoln Center, and the cab driver said, this is as far as I can take you because we’re hitting the street closures now, but here you are.
So that’s great. And of course, when I went inside, there was no one there. And that would be because it wasn’t at Lincoln Center.
It was at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Which is apparently not the same.
It’s apparently not the same. And despite living in New York for quite a few years, granted that was quite a few years ago, but yeah, I missed the boat on that. And so lucky for me, I had some, those little, you know, hey, your heel, your high heels are hurting your feet, so you can slip on these ballet shoe things.
I had those and I had to hoof it up the street to get to Jazz at Lincoln Center because the streets were closed. But it was, yeah, I got there, got in, and all else was well.
Well, that’s great. Congratulations again.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Not that that’s not enough, but is there anything else you wanted to bring up this week?
No, other than, you know, I did also go to visit one of my clients in New York. The next day, I had an additional day there. Exactly.
No, but seriously, that was a big deal for me also because I really was trying to make a point of putting myself out there and also, you know, trying to build a relationship. And having a face-to-face meeting with my client was an incredible opportunity. I was really lucky that they were, you know, ready and willing to have me in, and I got a chance to have a really wonderful experience with these two production assistants at this production house that I’m working with in New York.
So that was a fantastic experience also. So overall, it was a great trip, and I really have to say that it was… I really am feeling…
I can say I feel very proud of the fact that I showed up for all of that and like got in there and did it. So yeah, that is my story for the week.
That is awesome. All right, John Roorda, what is happening in your VO Corner?
Well, my VO Corner is far less exciting, but it has been a bit of an interesting week on the audiobook front. So I had kind of put audiobook work in general kind of on the back burner. For over a year, I had done a couple of small royalty share products early last year that just flat didn’t sell.
And honestly, that kind of discouraged me from looking at audiobooks as a whole. But after hearing the success that the rest of you have had, I decided to start pursuing it with vigor again within the past couple of months. Just got another royalty share project that went up just a little over a week ago and has actually now outsold the one that has been up for a year and a half in just a week’s time.
Granted, it is a hot and timely topic, Bitcoin, so that’s getting at some attention, but I’ll gladly take anything that I can get. And over the course of the past week, I had another Bitcoin title, which I had actually had to back out of my contract on because it was so poorly written and translated. Even after backing out of that contract, the rights holder came back to me and said, hey, I got it rewritten.
Would you like to take another swing at it? As well as another royalty share offer based on a positive list that the rights holder had had from a per finished hour project that went live about a month ago. So it’s been a busy week on the audiobook front.
So keeping me busy, I’ll definitely take all the activity I can get there.
Awesome. Congrats.
Yeah, that’s excellent. Oh my goodness.
Mike Norgaard, what is happening with you?
Well, I’m glad you asked.
I’m glad that you’re glad I asked.
Well, and I shared earlier and I’ve been sort of ranting on Facebook a little bit, speaking of audiobooks, the ACX platform seems a little bit buggy these days. I don’t know if anybody else has experienced it or not, but the dashboard reporting doesn’t seem to be up to date. I don’t think it’s reporting bounties correctly, and I don’t know if any of you have had any experience with that or not in the last two to three weeks, but something’s not right there, I think.
Mike, did you say that you had been able to… that you’d heard anything from ACX?
I did.
I got an email back from ACX, in fact today, Sunday, that said they were not aware of any problems and then kind of boilerplate standard, this is what a bounty is and this is how it works, definition from there. But I just didn’t know if anybody else had noticed any peculiarities or abnormalities with it.
I have a book that has zero sales since Halloween, but that’s not necessarily abnormal for me.
I’m sure I have several of those as well. That’s not necessarily out of the norm.
I mean, it was released on Halloween. It still has big, fat zero in the column, but yeah, again, this happened before.
I have a book that has zero sales since April 16, so…
Nice.
But that’s about it, just still kind of recording. I did get a fairly substantial per finished hour offer for a book that should start sometime next week. If I can get in touch with the author, he’s…
I’ve been communicating with his staff members, his underlings or whatever, and I think I finally get to talk to the boss this week to put together the final details on this, but they asked me to send in a written proposal and they had selected me to do the project. So that’s good news. It’s a 9-
or 10-hour book starting sometime next week.
Mike, is that one of the longer books you’ve done?
Most of my books are kind of the shorter nonfiction. For me, I found that that tends to be kind of a niche that I work a lot in. Although lately, I would say I’ve been expanding more into longer form stuff.
Three, four, five, six hours. I’ve got one that’s 16 hours. That’s my longest book.
Wow.
And one that’s about 13. But those are the outliers. Those are the exceptions.
How are you finding that? How are you finding transitioning into longer books?
It’s good. You know, for me, I think there’s… I think that there’s sort of a point of diminishing returns in terms of book length on ACX because I think at about six hours, the pricing structure and the incremental increases per hour from there forward, to me, seem to sort of diminish the return on investment.
So if I do anything beyond about six hours or maybe five, depending on the book, usually I’ll want to do those on a per finished hour basis. All of my longer ones are. Because I just don’t…
To me, the way that audible prices from about the six hour point forward, it’s not enough incremental difference per additional hour of audio, to me, to make that worth pursuing a lot of those on a royalty share basis.
And this is why I love our Meetup Group because I never would have figured that out on my own.
I mean, you hear me taking notes over here. Absolutely.
There’s an exception. Recently, I recorded a book that, at the time that it was given to me and offered, was on the New York Times top ten bestseller list. And that one was about seven hours long.
Well, I’ll make an exception there, and had it been 12, I still would have recorded it. On a royalty basis. But again, that’s kind of the exception to the rule.
Typically, with longer books like that, I would be looking for a per finished hour thing. So, moving away from audiobooks, one question I wanted to bounce off the group is that I do have an issue this week with a client who I’m having difficulty collecting from. It was a Voice 123 job, and it was just a short IVR.
It wasn’t anything big. But I’ve been, you know, communicating with them, and they’re, oh, yes, no, we’re happy with it. Oh, one little change.
Okay, no, everything is good now. It sounds great. I’m going to have my billing people go ahead and complete payment for you.
And it’s been, I don’t know, going on 10, 12 days now, and I haven’t heard anything. It’s a little small nonprofit. And I’m wondering, you know, how quickly and or assertively I should be doing some follow-up there.
I don’t think that I would get assertive until you at least cross the 30-day threshold.
Yeah, I was going to say a month.
Exactly, anything less than a month, and I kind of just shrug it off.
There’s a lot of companies will pay, they’ll pay invoicing only monthly. And if you don’t get to that point, then, you know, it’s possible it may drag on, but I would, yeah, like John would say, at least give it a month.
Yeah, the one time… The one time that I found myself in that situation where, you know, I look back, I was 45 days plus, and I realized I hadn’t gotten paid on it yet, simply using the reminder function in PayPal to follow up on the PayPal invoice I had previously sent, that PayPal reminder got me paid within 24 hours.
That’s great. In fact, that’s ironic, because that’s what I was going to say. You know, I could send a reminder, but I’m not sure at what point to go ahead and pull the trigger on that, just to keep things on their radar.
Yeah, I don’t think I’d make a scene about it until at least 30 days, but yeah, 30 days, send that PayPal invoice reminder, and that did it for me.
And check your mail, too, because I had a situation like that also with Voice 123, where they were sending me a check, and I didn’t know that. So I was waiting, I was checking PayPal. I actually sent them an invoice over PayPal, too, and was checking feverishly, and then a check came in the mail and got it that way.
I didn’t even know that until the check arrived. And lately, I don’t get a lot of real mail. It’s mostly, especially around the holidays, it’s mostly catalogs for stores trying to sell my kids’ stuff.
So I throw most of it away, and luckily I was able to find this check.
Oh my gosh.
Well, it may be something like that. Maybe I’ll follow up and just say, hey, just wondering what the window may be, or if you need an alternate. They don’t have my street address because I didn’t put it on the invoice, because I try to encourage online payment when I can just to streamline things.
Man, that’s another gem. I never would have thought of that. My street address is right on the invoice.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I don’t think it hurts to have it there, but typically I’ll put if PayPal doesn’t work, let me know and we can make alternate arrangements. I’m wondering if in advance on these small one-off things like that, if it would be beneficial to clarify specifically the expectation of the payment timeframe upfront.
Absolutely, yeah. I know plenty of philly sectors who include that in their contract, and if I don’t get it by net 60, within 60 days, there will be consequences kind of thing. Or even project must be paid or invoice must be paid 24 hours after audio is submitted or something like that.
I mean, make the terms, get them to agree on it, and then go from there.
You may have seen Rob Zygampaglia on VOBS last week, but he said this before. He says he doesn’t do any work without a written agreement, and that’s probably a little bit further than I would be willing to go, but some people take that route, where they don’t do any work without a written contract.
Well, and with certain clients, I would be comfortable doing that. For somebody who I’m just recording a 45-second voicemail, I think they might really consider that intrusive and overkill to have a signed formal written paper contract for that.
I think it’s interesting that there’s been a lot of discussion of the idea that you kind of do a bit of a statement of work in the exchange, the email exchange where you say, this is what I’m going to do for you. I mean, just that simple email exchange where you say, oh, okay, you know, what do you need, and this is what I’m going to do, that actually does technically serve as a contract. So just adding a line in a response email seems like it fits the bill.
I think the question of sort of trying to set terms, payment terms in advance is an interesting one, and it’s interesting to me to hear you in particular say that that wasn’t something that you necessarily established, because you are trying to follow the lead of the client. What do they need? What are their circumstances?
Some people I know get a deposit or they get in advance payment, and then others are willing to say, okay, well, if you can’t pay on receipt and you’re saying to me that you’ve got some sort of billing department that only cuts checks on such and such a date every month, then we need to talk about that. You need to let me know, and I can agree to that if it’s going to make our work together flow a little better. But you’re right.
It would be nice to know those things in advance, and the question is, can you… Is it reasonable to ask? And I suspect that it is reasonable to say, hey, this is what my…
I think what I’ve been doing recently is if I send an invoice, I’ll say, do on receipt, because I’m just trying to leave it open to them paying right away. But then I’ll say in the email that I’m attaching the invoice to, my invoice is attached, and please let me know if there are any concerns or any issues with the terms, or something along those lines, just to say, hey, this is what I’m saying. And then sometimes people will say, oh, no, those are absolutely fine.
And then it turns out, no, they meant that it’s 30 days. They didn’t really read it or whatever. So that’s a risk that you take.
If you wanted to sidle into that discussion, you could do it that way. Or you could just do what Sean was saying and spell it out. But in your case, it does seem like, especially a nonprofit that has a little accounting department, a receivables department, or a payment department, it’s highly likely that it’s a 30 day net 30 situation.
I just don’t know if at this point it’s worth asking retrospectively for more clarification, specifically about when that’s going to go down.
Yeah, very often the person who hires you is waiting on someone else. They’re in the same boat. But since going back to this idea of contracts, I know a lot of people get either confused or intimidated by it.
It doesn’t have to be an extremely formal document. We were talking about Rob Siglen Paglia. He actually has in his book, Voice Over Legal, like copyable documents that you have permission to use in your own…
That’s right.
But for example, when… I know a couple of us are on the online casting sites, and you’ll have all of these client templates for when you do an audition proposal, that’s essentially a contract. Because they’re like, I’m going to get this to you in 24-72 hours.
It’s going to be free of mistakes or mouth clicks. And I’ll give you however many pickups before you have to pay more and stuff like that. Exactly.
And I’ll do something very similar in my email correspondence. But at the end, I will say, if you agree to these terms, please write, I agree to these terms in your reply. And then that way I have a paper trail to protect myself.
Yeah. One of the things in particular with the freelance websites that are out there that I run into by not always necessarily dictating specifically. And if I’ve got like a long e-learning thing that’s going to be 40 minutes long, usually I’ll break that into three milestones and say, hey, let’s do this one chunk at a time.
You can pay the milestone, I’ll move on to the next stage of the project. So on larger budget stuff, I do protect myself in that way and it seems to work out well. But particularly for, oh, I don’t know, product video narration, explainer video type of things, which are pretty common these days, kind of do a lot of those in their short form.
They’re minute, two minute, three minutes. Then what you get is, oh, I have to go run off to my client and I have to get them to approve this and then they’re going to like it and then once they pay me, then I’ll pay you. As opposed to payment on delivery kind of thing, which to me, it’s interesting.
I got thinking about it the other day and I said, you know, that’s kind of like going to a bakery and saying, give me three dozen donuts and I’m going to go feed them to people at a conference. And if they like them, then I’ll come back and pay you for them. And if they don’t, then, you know, not so much.
You laugh because it sounds ridiculous when you put it that way. But that’s really what they’re doing. I’m going to go feed my client these donuts and see how they like them.
And, you know, if they’re good, I’ll pay you for them. And if not, well, you know, then we’ll have to do something else.
I love that metaphor. And the thing is, that happens in so many… I think that this is a freelancer issue in general.
Every… I think so many, you know, areas of freelancing have this same problem where people are saying, I’m not going to get paid by my client until such and such. And so I’ve got it.
That’s how I’m going to get the money to pay you, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, my goodness.
Well, speaking of…
I’m thinking about it from the other side. Like when I do audiobooks, frequently I’ll outsource the editing and or the proofing and or both. And I wouldn’t dream of not paying the person that does that work at the time the work is done.
And then I’ll get paid by my client on the other side. But I understand that that’s a cost of doing business, and it’s going to come out of my pocket on the front end as the project coordinator for that particular thing. And I’m outsourcing part of the labor to them.
Well, I’m not ever going to ask them to wait until I get paid to get paid. I pay them when they deliver the work. So I don’t know.
Maybe I’m just working from a different frame of reference.
Well, speaking of protecting yourselves, let’s protect ourselves and say that any advice given here is purely our opinion. Please contact your legal professional and or tax professional for how you might approach your own VO business. And with that, let’s give Sean a chance to talk about what’s been happening with him this week.
Oh, thanks. Well, so recently, as some people know, I’ve been getting more work with the Global Voice Acting Academy.
Woohoo!
So as their social media manager, and everyone’s been incredibly supportive of that. So I get to learn a whole lot about social media marketing for my own business. And that’s what’s…
I’ve been talking about this with my friend and coworker over there, David Toback. We get to learn so much about running this larger scale business that we get to pull all of these kernels out and how to improve our own. And so that’s really cool, too.
And so I’m learning all sorts of things about writing copy for marketing campaigns and trying new avenues and different CRMs to try and make things go more… or to make our workflow more efficient and stuff like that. Voicing-wise, I did have an interesting job recently from an international client.
And it was funny because they sent me an email at like eight in the morning. And then I was actually out of the office that day because I was helping… my family has a couple of horses.
And so we go into a nearby city to pick up hay from a local farmer and take… it’s like a half-day trip. But anyway, so I didn’t respond to the email because I was going to do it as soon as I got back.
And then they actually called me while I was gone. And they were like, did you get the email? Can you do the project for us?
I was getting a little intimidated. It sounded a little sketchy, but I was like, yeah, I did it. And then I looked over.
It was like this three-quarter page narration. It was like less than a… it was like a three-minute, four-minute job.
And it was like, all right, will you do 350? And they were like, yeah, that’s fine. But the whole project was like court…
like they were communicating with me throughout the day. Like, are you finished yet? Is it due?
And then all of my questions, though, like, oh, like about pronunciation issues and stuff like that, they were slow to respond to. But I… don’t you love that?
Or it’s like, oh, we can’t… or they were trying to send me phone audio over WhatsApp, which apparently only works in WhatsApp. Which I do not have.
And it was such a stupid mistake because I assumed that it was for this company called MexiCAM. But I thought that since they were trying to reach out to English-speaking markets, they wanted MexiCAM. So I did the whole thing like that.
There was about 10 or 15 sentences with the product name and the title. And then they’re like, oh no, we want you to do it like MexiCAM. I was like, oh no.
And it’s like 10.30 at night at this point. And so I had to do all the pickups. And then I sent it off.
I stay up to like 1.30 in the morning to make sure that I got the OK. And apparently they’re just working on this project all day because it’s like go, go, go. And then finally they’re like, yeah, it’s great.
Thank you so much. And then they call me the next day. Can you just say the word MexiCAM five times?
I’m like, OK. And so I was like, but that’s still within my policy. So I did.
It was just such like it wasn’t a negative one, but it was such a weird like bordering on sketchy experience. But luckily they like they paid in a reasonable amount of time. It was about 10 days after the project.
And I just kind of checked in to make sure they didn’t have any issues. And I wanted to talk about this earlier. Make sure when you ask, when you send reminders that you’re polite like it’s usually there are extenuating circumstances.
So just like, Hi, just wanted to make sure you got my earlier reminder. Make sure you don’t have any issues. And if you need any help navigating my preferred payment system, please let me know.
And if you like your thumbs, send it right now.
I know where you live.
I’ve got a drone outside of your window, right?
So any other interesting stories this week, Sean?
Not too much. Just resettling down after my little, my quarterly vacation. Yeah.
Well, I say that, like, I mean, as everyone knows, I’m in a bit of a long distance relationship right now, but she’s in Hawaii, so that softens the blow a little bit. But while I’m there, I’m still working. So like I brought my travel kit with me.
I didn’t have any new jobs come in, thankfully, because, I mean, it’s not just because you can record when you travel doesn’t mean you always want to or should.
Yes. Oh, my goodness.
It’s just like the stress factor, because we were talking about before, Paul, like how we can be so perfectionist, especially with audio quality. And like, it’s just like, I’m amazed. Like, frankly, I’m amazed at quality I’m able to get in a closet and like recording between helicopters and like millions of cicadas outside my window.
It’s just, oh, my God. But it’s just so nerve wracking to try. And like, so when you get home and you’re back in your booth, and you’re like, oh, this is how it should always be.
Yeah. Booth, sweet booth.
I’ve done both, and I definitely prefer studio sound.
Oh. Well, that’s great. And Heather, what’s been going on for you this week?
I have been pretty busy. I’ve been working on a couple of audio books and trying to get those taken care of, to get everything off my plate so that I can enjoy the holiday season. I don’t know.
We’ll see how that’s going to work out. So I’ve been working on a few audio books. I’ve done a few commercials for projects, for products, commercials for products and video game.
So this week was really fun because it was kind of varied. You know, I got to dip my toe in a bunch of different pools, which I have found really is what I love to do. I’m pretty certain I’m pretty ADD because I love a little…
I’ve got that whole up thing, you know, the squirrel with the dog. I feel like that’s how I live my life. So it’s been a good week.
What’s the dog’s name? Doug? Squirrel.
I love you.
I feel like that all the time.
That’s awesome. So the video game you’re working on, is there anything you can share or not yet?
It is not. I have to say, that’s the hard thing about video games, is I feel like in so many of the other genres, you can like, hey, here’s what I’m working on or here’s what I just did. And in video games, it’s like, I’m working on a video game, and I’ll tell you about it next year when it comes out.
Yeah, it’s a nice problem to have though.
Yes, yes. And I am so thankful because character work is my favorite. It’s where I get to kind of stretch my acting muscles, and that’s creatively just what I love the best.
So it’s nice when I get to throw those in with other areas. So, yeah.
So as far as my week, I have one cautionary tale I’ll share from one of the freelance sites. And I think I shared this in last week’s group, but for our listeners here, I’m going to share it. I took on this job a couple of weeks ago for a big e-learning company in India.
And it’s a decent rate, the low end of what would be a union rate for the e-learning project. But they want me to do the pieces individually. So it’s 10,000 words, I should say.
They told me this up front, that it’s 10,000 words. And I’m one of the characters in this e-learning project. I play Khalid.
Do I sound like a Khalid? So anyway…
I would have thought Ahmed.
So they send me these pieces where it’s a PowerPoint slide. And there’s like three sentences. And they want me to do them piecemeal like this.
And I’m sort of trapped in this loop where I don’t even know what to do about it. So I’m billing them each time at the moment. So I’m sending them invoices for $13, $8, whatever they send me to work.
Because they’re sending me things like every day. And Mike suggested last week, and I think it’s a good one, to sort of set some boundaries and say, just don’t send them to me until you have an hour’s worth. Or I’ll bill you once I’m done an hour’s worth of work.
And I’ll just throw that out to the group again if they have any other suggestions on how to deal with that because frankly it’s kind of driving me crazy at this point.
If you’re doing a lot of small projects over a long period of time, do a bulk payment plan. Because if you’re using something like PayPal or something like that where they take a processing fee, then you’re going to lose $3 right there. And that’s almost a quarter of the fee.
And the fact that you’re doing multiple payments like that means that’s really adding up.
Yeah, well, thankfully this is through, well, I’ll just say, it’s freelancer. And they have their own payment system without a fee attached to it. So in that way, it’s helping.
There’s a project fee, but that’s done up front and it’s already been paid. So luckily I’m not getting charged in the backend for fees.
It’s interesting because just listening to you describe that, the whole idea of batching jobs like that, and again, it’s in any sort of communications industry, makes a lot of sense. I mean, you can just be more efficient and it would seem to me that you’d be able to be more efficient and it would be more of a best practice in terms of just kind of getting warm and getting into your character and being able to deliver more at the same time versus having to kind of ramp up and find the vocal placement and all the performance stuff, much less the technical stuff, trying to match sound and all of those things. So it’s interesting when you’re dealing with a client that does want a piecemeal like that, because you’re just saying, are you guys trying to economize?
Like, what’s happening here? But yeah, it does seem to make sense to… I guess this is kind of a learning experience, because then you say, okay, you know what?
This isn’t really working for me. And so yeah, future and possibly if we are going to continue to work together, we need to kind of go back to the drawing board a little bit.
This almost sounds like it would be a good scenario for the Upwork time tracker function, where it logs your time to a specific project and takes periodic screenshots, et cetera. I personally haven’t used that in a while. The one time I did use it, it left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth because I wasn’t quite able to track time accurately, just because at that time I was using a separate booth computer.
So, essentially the time that I was in the booth, actually recording, was untracked. But, you know, obviously that’s not everybody’s scenario, so that would depend. I can’t recall if Freelancer has something similar to that available, and if that might be of benefit to you in a situation like this.
Yeah, I’m not sure they do, but it’s definitely something to look into, and I just want to put that out there for our listeners, that if someone tells you they have a multi-thousand hour project, definitely figure out how you’re going to invoice or get paid, because it can be a huge headache. So, on a more positive note, I signed with a new talent agency this week. I signed with the Atherton Group, or Tag Talent, out of Austin, Texas, so I’m super excited about that.
Congratulations. Oh, my goodness.
That is phenomenally huge, and I can’t wait to hear as the weeks and months go on as to how your experience is with them.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, thank you so much. I’m super excited. I haven’t gotten any work yet, but it was just on Wednesday, so they haven’t dumped me yet, I don’t think.
I was talking to Cam Cornelius, some of you know him, on Facebook. He gave me a congratulations, because I was blabbing about it on Facebook. He said, welcome aboard, because I guess he’s on the roster too.
And I said, thanks, I’ll try to have to sink the ship.
Aww.
Ba-dum-bum, pssh.
No, but that is extremely cool. Oh my goodness.
Yeah, and actually Heather, this was signed to them as well. I’ll put that out there as well and say congratulations to Heather.
Congratulations to both of you.
My biggest curiosity, as time goes on with Atherton, is to see the kind of auditions you get. As we’ve had the experience with the agencies that we’re with otherwise, is that some stuff kind of… It has the appearance of getting blasted out to everyone.
As long as you’re a male or a female somewhere vaguely close to that age range. Or not. Or not.
I’ve recently gotten some stuff asking for the surfer dude sound, must have a British accent, et cetera. Stuff that’s just off on another planet somewhere. I’m curious to see if this new relationship is going to mean that you’re getting auditions that are actually more suited to you.
If something’s actually hitting your inbox because someone back there said, hey, that sounds like a Paul kind of gig. I’d love to hear as time goes on the type of auditions you get and how closely tailored they are to you.
Yeah, me as well. Because I’ve had that experience like you described too. And we’ll see how it goes.
They are part of the Voice Agent Alliance. Did I say that right? Yes.
So hopefully that will help. And we’ll see if some good things come. Hopefully they will.
So that wraps up the normal process that we go through with this group. Hopefully you got a chance to see how it works and the dynamics that are involved. And maybe take some ideas away for yourself that maybe you can start an affinity group or accountability group either locally in your hometown or online.
Sean, anything you want to add before we wrap up?
Well, we’re all great friends here. And it’s really cool because we all just bonded over Voice Over and we all have different niches and all that other stuff. But I can’t tell you how much I look forward to these Meetups and how much I learned from just listening to you guys, just being a fly on the wall.
And like Marisha said, I’m always taking notes, like, oh, that’s a great idea. Why don’t I do that in my business and stuff like that. And it’s really great to have that validation and support and encouragement because it’s a little bit of both.
I mean, you got the warm-hearted value, but you also got plenty of honest feedback when you need it. Like, if you’re trying to get people together, I highly recommend it, as Paul said, online or locally, depending on who’s available, where you’re at. But try and figure it out.
Without further ado, I’d like to give our wonderful guests one more opportunity to talk about themselves and how they can be reached via their websites. So why don’t we start off with John?
So I can be reached at johnroorda.com. That goofs everybody up. It’s R-O-O-R-D-A.
If you want to shoot me an email, it’s john at johnroorda.com.
Thank you. Up next, we got Mike.
All right. It’s… let’s see.
My website is voiceovermike.com, mike.com, and the email is easy enough. It’s mike at voiceovermike.com.
I get it. Next we have… Then we have Marisha.
Continuing the theme, I’m at marishavoice.com, and that’s M as in mother, A-R-I-S-H-A, voice.com, and my email is marisha at marishavoice.com.
Thank you. And last we have Heather Masters.
Feel free to contact me on my website, heathermastersvo.com, or shoot me an email at heather at heathermastersvo.com, and you can also follow me on Twitter. My Twitter handle is iheathermasters, which I think sounds like I’m swearing an oath.
I like that. I, Heather Masters, do solemnly swear to limit myself to 280 characters.
I know. Yeah, so that’s where to find me.
Thanks again, everybody, for allowing us to record this mess, because normally we do this off the cuff, and I appreciate you all being willing to come on here and let us record the meeting, and hopefully it will be helpful to our audience out there who want to start their own networking group. So that’s it for Episode 17 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
See you next time, everybody.
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The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to Episode 16 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
All right, today we have an exciting episode. We have booth junkie Mike DelGaudio coming up in a few minutes. But first off, we have current events.
So what have you been up to lately, Paul?
Let’s say a couple of things. I’m finishing up the second book in a series for my Gnome Divox. I don’t really know that word, but Sean Pratt uses it all the time.
I prefer the word pseudonym. But yeah, the second book in a series for him coming out. And three more were released since our last episode.
So that’s really rolling along nicely. And it’s pretty exciting the way that’s taking it off as far as the audiobook work. And also related to the audiobook work, I was recently audible approved or listed as an audible approved producer with ACX.
So that’s pretty cool as well.
Very cool. And what are the requirements for that? Isn’t it something like 15 or 25 titles?
It’s kind of a nebulous target. Nobody really knows for sure. It’s sort of like a double secret probation type of thing.
If you’re an Animal House fan. But the general consensus is that if you have 25 titles, then you should probably go ahead and apply. And the rules are that you have to have, again, nebulous definition.
But the definition is a demonstrated record of success on the platform. So that’s sucking. Yeah.
And truth be told, I did apply once before and was actually rejected because there was an issue with one of my books that wasn’t my fault. There was a cover art discrepancy where the cover art that was initially published or put on the offer on ACX was different from the final cover art that I submitted. So it was sent back to me as the producer as rejection.
So when I applied, ACX said, well, you know, you have this nick on your record, but otherwise you’ve been doing well. Send us a few more titles. And I think they said three more titles and then apply again.
This was all back over like last spring and summer. So I did. And then after about two more months, I was finally at the badge.
Wonderful. Because I mean, like you’ve been doing audiobook work this entire time. So I just like, the fools, they didn’t realize what they had.
Yeah. I have over 40 titles out now between myself and the pseudonym. So there’s definitely a demonstrated record.
Now, what does that mean? I’m sorry, go ahead.
Speaking of nebulous definitions, that Gnome de Vox, I mean, Sean Pratz is playing off of Gnome de Plume, which is like a writer’s name or a pen name. It’s like, it’s the French translation of pen name, essentially, because pens used to be written with feathers or blooms. So there you go.
Oh, awesome. Thank you. Your etymology lesson for the day.
Thank you.
Wait, we need etymology correctly.
Yes.
Yes.
So anyway, what it actually means, again, so there’s debates about that, whether it helps you or hurts you. But I will say, I had a response to an audition today from a rights holder where they said, I like your audition. I took a look at your profile.
I saw the audible approved badge. That really makes me feel confident that you are familiar with the platform. So let’s talk a little bit more.
Haven’t gotten the deal yet, but it seems pretty good.
But it is a selling point. That’s good to know.
Yeah, I was actually glad to hear there was some return on it. So let’s see. Other than that, I did recently sign with a new talent agency as well.
I’m now proud to be part of the family with Tag Talent or the Atherton Group out of Austin, Texas. Pretty excited about that.
Very cool. Congratulations. So did you have to do any special marketing for them or is it just another name on your list?
Well, I hadn’t applied to them before and was summarily ignored. Wish I don’t blame them. It happens with agencies or busy people.
But funnily enough, I was watching Liz Atherton, the owner, on VOBS last Monday. And during her interview, she said… Well, somebody asked her, how do you get on her roster?
It actually might have been me. I forget now. In the chat room, some of the questions.
And she said, well, we only take people by referrals from people on our existing roster. So if that’s something that you can do, then go ahead and submit. They said they really don’t listen to any others.
And that clicked in my head. Well, that’s why they haven’t listened, at least. That was my rationalization and hope at that time.
So I contacted my good friend, Ken Foster. I think you’re friends with him as well, Sean. And he’s actually done a VO Meter stick for the show.
And he’s a member of their roster. And he was kind enough to provide a referral. And within the hour of him contacting them, I got a call from the, or should I say an email, saying, please call us.
And didn’t know what that meant. It was a little nerve wracking. But I made the call.
And Jimmy Cobble, my agent there now, said, welcome to the family.
That’s amazing. That’s so great. And I’m really glad you told me that, because I know several of the talent on their list.
So I might have to buy them a coffee or a beer.
Nope, sorry, they’re full.
Sorry.
There’s no availability whatsoever.
We totally are in the same wheelhouse of voice casting.
Yeah. So that’s my news. What’s been happening with you?
Very cool.
Cool.
Probably the biggest thing that’s happened is I got a new job with the Global Voice Acting Academy. So beforehand, I was kind of responsible for their membership program. I was their member liaison, and I still am.
But I’m also now their social media manager. So I manage our content, I create new content, and help promote our various services through our Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn pages. So, and for someone who spends as much time on Facebook as I do, that’s actually nice to get paid for it.
That’s awesome. How did that come about? Was that something you pursued, or did they ask you to expand your role?
My predecessor, the incredibly talented and very organized Mariel Navalle, was moving into a new business venture with her husband. They kind of moved across the US to the East Coast. And so she realized that having her own VO business and starting a restaurant would probably take up all of her time.
I had already been working with GVAA for about a year at that point, and they thought that I was probably the best replacement for her. So I humbly accepted, and here we are.
That’s fantastic. Congrats.
Well, thank you very much. I haven’t broken anything yet, but that doesn’t mean anything. So social media marketing is hard, and I’ve had to do quite a lot of personal research on how to go about it in the best way possible.
So it’s exciting and intimidating at the same time.
Yeah, I’ll bet. You know who you should contact? I hate to make referrals on the podcast.
No, I don’t. Who am I kidding? You should contact friend of the show, Chris Dottoli.
That’s what he does as well, part time, when he’s not doing voice work.
Excellent. Yeah, I would definitely do that.
Cool.
And we should have him on the podcast. I know we’ve talked about it before. I’d love to have him on just an episode, because I know he helped you with your recent con episode, or your con escapades.
Yeah, that was a lot of fun.
Yeah, he’s a definite friend of the show.
So what else is going on with you?
Well, personally, I made, what is it, my fourth trip to Hawaii in about a year to visit my girlfriend. And you guys know about Rachel, I think, at this point. I mean, we knew each other in college, and then we went our separate ways, and she moved off to Hawaii, and I was like, I’ve never been to Hawaii.
And then one thing led to another, and now I try to make it there quarterly.
Terrible excuse.
Terrible, terrible excuse. But we had a wonderful time. It’s actually about a year since we became a couple, so we got to celebrate our anniversary together.
Aw, woo! Funny story, though, because we knew October was a good month, but our anniversary’s on the 13th, so I was like, would it be better to come on the 13th or for Halloween? And she was like, Halloween.
I was like, yes, I love this woman. And anyone who knows me on Facebook knows that we dressed up as the Joker and Harley Quinn from the 90s animated Batman series, which is my favorite version of those characters. And she did an amazing job with the makeup.
I got nothing but compliments, both in person and online. And we even made a little Halloween greeting where we got to just practice our best Joker and Harley impressions. And considering that most of my friends are voice actors and they gave me some really positive feedback, it was really encouraging.
I enjoyed it a lot.
Yeah, that was cool. I have to admit, I didn’t understand the exact timeframe you were going over, which was a version of the character. I was thinking it was the Cesar Romero Joker, because that was the makeup I recognized most frequently.
Well, it’s really funny, because he is, like… I mean, he spans so many generations. To be honest, I call this kind of like my fusion Joker costume, because the costume itself was based off of Heath Ledger’s costume in The Dark Knight.
But the makeup was much more inspired by the Cesar Romero, the animated series, or even Jack Nicholson’s portrayal in the first Batman film. And then The Voice, of course, was based off of Mark Hamill, with his sort of like, his interesting, graspy, kind of almost British, but not quite, and ups and downs and all that kind of thing. So it was a lot of fun to do.
Awesome. Yeah, that was a cool video. Although I have to admit, I was terrified at first.
It should be. He’s a scary character. I mean…
Well, then you must have done a great performance.
Thank you, thank you. I got a lot of comments from people who are like, ooh, I peed a little.
So we have the Booth junkie, Mike DelGaudio, coming up. I know you guys are excited about that. Some of our fans have clamored for it.
But first, we’re going to have a VO Meter stick from friend of the show, Derrick Dorsey.
See.
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick. What did he say? It’s time for the VO…
Oh, never mind. The VO Meter shtick? Oh, got it.
Hi, Derrick Dorsey here for the VO Meter shtick. I first want to thank Paul and Sean for inviting me on to the podcast. I’m a relatively new voiceover talent, but I’m also a bass guitarist and touring musician of 30 plus years, performing all over the world for the military and civilians alike.
I was the bassist for the alternative rock band Jimmy’s Chicken Shack out of Annapolis, Maryland back in the late 90s and early 2000s. The band had a little bit of radio play and had a few videos on MTV. We also toured the US extensively with other bands, like Stained, Incubus, Fuel, 311 and Godsmack, just to name a few.
A few years later, I was the bassist for the Kelly Bell Band, which is a real cool blues band out of Baltimore, Maryland. Not only did we perform locally and up and down the East Coast, but we also toured worldwide, performing for our US military. When I decided to finally take that dive into the VO world, I admit having a sense of both excitement and apprehension.
But as I explored this voiceover thing a little further, I couldn’t help but notice that VO and my career as a musician had many similarities, which allowed me to draw from my experience and ease my anxiety. What I realize is that to even have a viable career as a voiceover artist, a professional musician, or any field in the performing arts, these few elements are crucial for a chance to be successful. And those elements are talent, passion, coaching, performance, practice, business, marketing, and persistence.
Now, I won’t go through every element that I just listed, but there is a couple that really resonated with me that I like to share. The first one was performance. Now, for me in the music world, it was nothing for me to play to a crowd of 50, 60, or even 70,000 people.
But in the voiceover world, performing for just one person was a scary proposition. I don’t have that guitar to hide behind. It’s just me, the microphone, and my voice.
And that’s where practice comes in and working with a good coach to help eliminate that fear and give you confidence behind the mic. The other area that also had similarities with the music biz is with regard to business. As a VO talent, you are a sole proprietor to your business, so you need to treat it as such.
You also need to file the appropriate tax forms that reflect that. Next is marketing. In VO, you have to have the ability to market yourself in order to get jobs.
This is so similar to the music biz. Now in the music world, for a local band or solo artist, you must be able to market yourself with an effective campaign to get people to see and like your band. You have to promote yourself months and weeks in advance, before and after shows, in order to build that fan base.
To give you an example, Jimmy’s Chicken Shack were able to market themselves so well that they were able to sell 20 or 30,000 of their own CDs before a major label even looked at them. So my point is this, that this is a numbers game when it comes to marketing and VO. So keep that hustle and remain persistent.
And that’s my time. Thanks for listening. And I wish you all continued success in your voice over journey.
Okay, Derrick, thank you so much for that. Funny story about Derrick. He was in a very popular band based here out of Baltimore called the Kelly Bell Band that I was a huge fan of.
I used to go see all the time at local bars back in the early part of the 2000s, even in 1998, 1999. It’s one of those bands that you go out and see and you’re like, these guys are gonna be huge. And they never got quite as big as I think Derrick probably would have hoped, or even I would have hoped, but he’s transitioned to voiceover and we’re happy to have him in the community.
So booth junkie Mike DelGaudio will be with us in a few minutes, but before that we have our questionable gear purchase. So I’ve had a strict no buy policy for the last couple of months, so why don’t you tell me about your escapades?
So yeah, speaking of booth junkies, I made some adjustments to my booth. We talked in the last episode about how I and then you tried to buy a double walled whisper room and eventually decided that was a bad idea. So what I had done was made some adjustments to my existing whisper room.
I think I was just starting that process at the end of the last episode. So that’s done. What we did was add, I had a contractor come over and we added some double walled drywall, not quite two layers, but Quiet Rock.
It’s a brand name that has two layers with a layer of absorbing material in between. And we put that on all the walls except for the door, then dropped a piece of plywood, or a piece of Quiet Rock on the floor with a piece of plywood over it. So I had basically almost a double walled whisper room, but sort of homemade.
And it’s helped a little bit. It hasn’t been the panacea I was hoping it would, but it has dropped my noise floor by about negative three or four dB, which is good. I do still have some rumble issues, which sort of led to me searching for mics again.
And what I decided to do was look for a less sensitive mic for audiobook work, because I was listening to my files, and or I should say my editor that I send most of my work to was listening to my files. And a lot of the notes that came back were noise in the background, hearing noise in the background. It’s all that stupid vibration that’s coming through the expander where I’m talking.
It works great. The expander works great to keep it out when I’m not talking, but when I’m actually doing the reading of the audio book, a lot of it still bleeds in at times. So I’m trying a less sensitive mic that I’m talking to you all on right now.
Familiar theme for the show, this is now an Audio Technica AT4051B. It’s a boom indoor dialogue mic that is used for TV shows, movie, filming. It’s similar to an Octava MK12 or there is a Rode…
Might need to choose a less obscure reference than that one.
Yeah, there’s a Rode K5, or N5 that some people might be familiar with. It’s basically a pencil mic, small diaphragm condenser that you put overhead, most of the time, that’s how I have it, pointed straight down at the source. So it’s in front of me, and I’m talking basically past the diaphragm.
I did some pretty extensive testing with this and my CAD E100S, and the AT875 shotgun that I still have. And this was by far the lowest noise floor with the expander on. I was able to actually turn the expander down a little bit from where I had it for the CAD, which is my entire goal was to have a less aggressive expander and still have the same sound.
And so far it seems to be doing a pretty good job. So I’m halfway through another audio book with it, and, you know, maybe by now we’ll see how it goes. But so far so good.
I was curious how you came upon that, Mike. Well, first off, I didn’t realize that small diaphragm condensers were used for indoor dialogue. Because, I mean, very often you’ll use something like the Sennheiser 416 or a shotgun mic like the Rode NTG3 or something like that on a boom arm.
I didn’t realize they had smaller pencil mics for that as well. And, I mean, Audio Technique is a great company, but what brought you to that particular mic?
So, I was watching a YouTube video by a fellow named Curtis Judd, who’s a videographer and mostly does corporate films by his own account. And he was doing a review between this AT4053B or 4053B, I’ll get to the distinction in a second, and the Rode NT5, which are both pencil mics, and comparing it to his existing NTG2, which is sort of like you were saying, more familiar shotgun mics that people use for overhead booming. And he said he really liked this Audio-Technica and became his favorite based on his tests, because it was easy to position and had the best self-noise and just sounded the best.
So there’s a predecessor, which is the AT405-1, and I bought that because it’s basically the only one I can find. They’re actually quite expensive if you’re looking for retail. The 405-3B retails for about $599, and the 405-1 was the same when it was first released.
So I found a used one at Guitar Center that was a little bit more reasonable, and that’s how I got into my booth.
And it sounds nice. I mean, it sounds very natural, very accurate, maybe a little bit softer than some of your other mics, but that’s kind of what you were looking for.
Yeah, exactly. So, again, I’ll probably not keep it, but for the time being, until I finish this next book, at least, it’s going to be in the booth.
Well, that’s awesome.
That’s it for me, believe it or not.
We would have a segment. I’ve gotten to the point where it’s like I really… and probably my girlfriend has played a part in that too.
She’s like, don’t buy any more stuff. But it’s gotten to the point where I would have to spend a lot more to really get any noticeable improvement. And I can always improve the acoustics and stuff like that beforehand.
I’m pretty happy with the mic interface combo I have right now.
Yeah, it’s true. And I think there’s a valid discussion that we should probably have about… there’s a point where you’re probably hearing more than most of your clients and an audience would hear.
So our friend Mike Norgard brought this up. He’s going to be on the next show with us. About how, at least in my personal case, my studio sounds great and there’s really no point in messing with it.
And he said I probably hear things that most people wouldn’t hear. And I found that to be true when I was recording the local author in my booth. There was a couple of pickups that I wanted him to do.
And it was basically him hitting the mic with his leg, I think, or the mic stand with his leg. And it was a little boom, boom, that thud you get when you have a low-frequency rumble in the booth. And I played it back for him over these monitors I have in the studio.
And he’s like, I don’t hear anything. I did it like ten times. And he said, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
I still hear nothing. So it’s worth mentioning that as voiceover artists and producers, we probably have ultra-sensitive hearing to issues that for the most part aren’t going to matter, especially if it’s behind music or other dialogue on a video.
And it’s funny because, I mean, as you practice doing this more, I mean, it’s something that you develop. Because my ears definitely were this sensitive to it before I started. When I listen to some of my older tracks with like my Porterbooth and my Blue Yeti, I just cringe because I was like, how did I not tell that it was awful?
It just sounded boxy and echoey. It was just ugh. But the funny thing is I still have clients who have that in their stock audio and will reuse it.
I’m like, why? Please let me redo that for you. But like you said, it’s just something that we pay more attention to.
But once you get to a certain standard and it doesn’t have to be the thousands of dollars studio, you can ride that for most of, not all of your career. So there’s other things that you can invest in that might be more helpful to your business, like a new marketing strategy or more training. So it’s just something to think about.
Now, if you like gear like me and Paul do, that’s a different story. But just accept that that’s the reason while you’re looking at new gear.
Yeah, fair enough. All right, so we won’t keep our fans waiting any longer. There’s been a huge response to us even floating the idea of having him on.
And we’re so excited to welcome the booth junkie, Mike DelGaudio. So welcome to the interview segment of this episode of The VO Meter. We are so excited for our current guest because Sean and I have been fans for a long time.
And frankly, can’t believe he actually agreed to come on. But joining us now is Mike DelGaudio. How are you, Mike?
Doing great. How are you?
Fantastic.
Thanks for having me on.
So, Mike, for those who don’t know or if you just want to sort of plug yourself, tell us a little bit about your background in VO and what you’re currently working on in the business.
Sure. Let’s see. I’ve been doing this professionally now for probably five years or so.
And I got into it because, you know, like many people, I’ve heard for most of my life, hey, you’ve got a great voice for radio. And when I was a younger man, a much younger man, I actually thought radio was going to be my career. And then I met some radio DJs and it turns out that it’s a really hard job.
It’s a hard life. And it’s not nearly as much fun as they make it seem when you’re listening to it on the radio. And so it didn’t necessarily pan out.
But I’ve never sort of lost the love for wanting to be behind a microphone. When I was a kid, they used to have infomercials on TV. And they would be, you know, the whole commercial break would be an infomercial.
At the end, there would be a blue screen with an 800 number, and it would say, $495 plus shipping and handling. Call now, 1-800-555-1212. And I was like, that’s the guy I want to be.
That was the guy I wanted to be. I never wanted to be on camera. I always wanted to be the guy behind the microphone that just had that great big voice and was doing the real announcer bit.
And, you know, that sort of, thank God, has fallen out of fashion. But some years later, as the technology allows us to work out of our home studios and actually create professional quality audio, video, movies, whatever it is, it sort of reinvigorated my desire and love for speaking into the microphone. And so I went and met with a coach and found a mentor, took a class, and as luck would have it, I just really fell into it, really fell in love with it.
Had an agent right away who started helping me find work, and it took off. It took off. And at that point, I was still going to the studio for much of things I was hired for.
And I realized I have somewhat of a background in technology. I was a programmer for a long time, so technical stuff was never really terrifying for me. But I realized that there was an awful lot that I didn’t know.
At first, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And then once I actually started to look at it, I was like, Oh my God, there’s a ton of this that I don’t know. I’m going to try and figure it out.
And that’s sort of what prompted me to learn about home studios and to create my YouTube channel about that. And luckily, now that I’ve been able to figure this out at home and set it up at home, it’s led to lots of different work. I’m going to work for Anheuser-Busch next week, and I work on the No Sleep Podcast.
If you guys are familiar with that, I read for the New York Times once a week on Audible. You know, lots of stuff. If anybody wants me to say something, I’m always happy to try and lend my voice to it.
And it’s just I’ve fallen in love with it, sort of re-fallen in love with it, and I try and work just as much as I can now.
That’s great. So you mentioned only five years full-time, or at least five years pursuing it as much as you can. Did you have any training in college or time on the radio?
No, other than college radio. I ran the radio station in college in my junior and senior year, but it was nothing to speak of. It was totally volunteer-driven.
It wasn’t an academic program in any way. I did not have… I didn’t take any classes as a kid.
I took some classes as I got older, and I am lucky enough to be married to a woman who is very involved in the American theater. So she’s very comfortable working with actors. She’s a director.
She really knows how to direct. She is really… I get to live sort of with a coach, an acting coach, which helps a great deal.
She really helps me with script interpretation and line readings and so forth. She’s really awesome at it.
Well, that’s awesome. So one of the things that the audience by now must be getting sick of is me finding people who I have some sort of commonality with. And you mentioned the college radio.
That was at Loyola College, correct?
That’s right.
So that’s here in Baltimore, where I am broadcasting from at the moment. And I went to a school just up the street called Towson State. Probably when you were there, it was still Towson State like me.
And I was on the college radio station there. So that’s sort of where I got my start. And similar to you, I sort of took different paths.
But I’ve come back to it over the last three years.
Your radio station was the station I listened to because my radio station was only on closed circuit. Towson State and Loyola had a very significant size difference. And Towson’s radio…
I probably listened to you quite a bit because I was a big fan of Towson’s radio station.
Well, maybe. I was on Sunday mornings. I turned on the transmitter and was on Sunday mornings from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. So maybe you weren’t listening then.
At least I hope not. Maybe you were having some more fun. So thanks for the information about the background.
But what most people know you from is your YouTube channel and the Booth Junkie series. So let’s talk a little bit about that. How did that start?
Well, as I mentioned, I started to really investigate and try and learn about what I needed to do in order to have the best possible quality sound here out of my house. Because there’s a lot more work available to us if we can work out of the house and we don’t have to necessarily book studio time. And when I first started, I found lots of good studio-related stuff.
How to use a DAW, how to set up a studio. But not a lot of it, for me, was around professional quality voiceover work. There was lots of set it up so you can play music or do music production.
But I was really interested in learning about what VSTs, what plugins do I need to use? How does my preamp need to be set up? What sort of microphone do I need in order to sound like the guys on TV who are narrating television shows, who are the voices of commercials, or doing audiobooks or anything like that.
And I found that I wasn’t finding as much. I’d have to translate what I was learning for music production and translate it over into voiceover. And I was very grateful for all of those people who made those videos.
And I thought, well, I’m going to… First, I started with, I’m just going to document what I learned. I think my first video was how to put together my whisper room, because I could find nothing on how to put together this whisper room that I’m in, that I bought secondhand.
I had no idea. I was like, oh my God, I’ve got to figure this thing out. And I bought it disassembled.
I had no instruction. I had to totally figure it out. And so that sort of had me think about, okay, what else didn’t I know that might help the next person?
And the thing that really got me jazzed about it is I was learning the… My preferred DAW is Reaper. And I put together a whole series of everything I needed to know in order to start doing voiceover in my DAW.
And so I just did a whole series called Reaper for voiceover. And that was just really getting myself set up, getting it configured, what plugins do you need to use in order to do that? My first couple of people who found it were like, why aren’t you charging for this?
And it was really just, I want to pay it forward. So many people put this stuff out for me. I want to put it out for the next person.
I’m a firm believer in good karma. I don’t really charge… I may someday create a master class or something, but right now I just want to put it out there.
Put it out into the world. It’s been very good to me. People are very kind in return.
They loan me their equipment in return. So I believe in the good karma of it. I just want to put stuff out there and help the next person.
You can really sense the passion for helping others in it. And if you’ve never seen the Booth Junkie videos, especially like the Reaper for Voice Over, Mike does a fabulous job of really breaking down this kind of intimidating, or what can be intimidating, concepts and just making it really accessible to people who are just getting started and don’t know where to get started. So I’m curious, do you have an educational background at all, Mike?
Not formal. In a past life and a past job, I was just a corporate trainer. I’d stand up in front of groups and I would train them and create PowerPoint presentations and stuff like that.
So I learned how to become comfortable in front of groups. I also learned things that made my class more enjoyable for me to teach and more enjoyable for the students to take, professional students. And so some of that probably translated back into my videos.
I liked to have scenario-based training. I like to make it somewhat snappy, not overly bland. I try to keep them moving.
I’m not sure. I was still pretty new to a lot of it in my Reaper for Voice Over series. I probably should go back and watch it and see if it still applies.
But I do have some amount of just corporate background in that from past jobs. And that’s how I did it. I just used some of those same techniques that I learned in the 90s when I was making training videos.
I love that style personally. One of the first things I saw from you was the Whisper Room video that you spoke about. And it helped me tremendously because I did the same thing.
I bought it at Whisper Room. Sight unseen. Brought it back here.
Wasn’t even sure I had all the parts. And I said, oh my God, what did I just do? And thank goodness I found your video.
And it helped me tremendously. Put my own Whisper Room up. And yeah, it was really helpful.
But I love the way you have that sort of Ferris Bueller type style of breaking the fourth wall. Although I know you’re talking to the camera anyway. But I love when you have something that you either forgot, like you forgot to bring the mic pop filter in, and you just go and get it in the middle of the video and come back.
I love that style where you’re so informal. It’s really engaging. That’s good.
That’s good. Because many of my videos, I just vamp. You know, I try and research them, but I don’t script them.
So I do vamp and all of a sudden I’ll go, oh my gosh, I should go mention this thing. And I just walk out and I try and edit out. I mean, sometimes they’ll be might…
I might leave the camera running for 10 minutes, and luckily I’ll just try and snip that stuff out. But I want it to feel like it’s you and me talking.
Well, it definitely gets that… It definitely accomplishes that, I think.
Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. I’m glad it doesn’t feel too disjointed.
No, no. I mean, you’re very personable, and like you sound very genuine when you do these videos. And like you said, it’s just like you’re talking to us, and it’s not too formal, and people don’t really get…
It’s just accessible, like I said. People want to listen to you talk or teach them these things.
That’s cool. Yeah, I’ll share a story. We actually were talking…
We weren’t talking about booking you quite yet, and another fan of our podcast reached out to me and said, you know who you should talk to? Mike DelGaudio. And I said, yeah, that’s a great idea.
Come on, let’s do it. And that’s when I reached out to you. So you’re resonating.
Yeah, that’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. I really…
It’s very gratifying to hear. Sometimes what we do on YouTube, it’s a little bit of a vacuum. We get the comments, but it’s a little bit of a vacuum.
You never know if what you’ve made is any good until you put it out there. And there’s some videos I go, I don’t know if I did this well or not. I’m going to put it out there, and hopefully people don’t completely tear me apart on it.
There have been a couple of videos where, like, this was not your best effort. Okay, I’m going to learn for that. I’m going to move forward from it.
But you do… I’m very lucky that in my little tiny, tiny, tiny corner of YouTube, people tend to be pretty kind, because YouTube doesn’t always have the reputation as having the kindest comment section. But I’ve been very gratifying to see.
So tell us a little bit, because like you said, as you got started, a lot of it was kind of sort of archiving your own journey and what you’ve learned and sharing it. But you’ve also kind of moved into this other branch of product reviews. Can you tell us a little bit about how that got started?
It… I have just sort of backed into it by accident. It really…
It wasn’t the thing I intended to do. It turned out that I really liked doing it. And it seems that it resonates with people, because my reviews are not like…
You know, I’m not like Marques Brownlee. I’m not doing these really in-depth technical reviews. I try…
The thing that I try and do, especially with the microphone reviews, which is the part that really seems to resonate with people, is I want people to hear them, and I want people to have a way to compare them to at least something else. And so that’s why I almost always do my microphone reviews with two microphones, and I try and swap back and forth. For me, there was nothing more frustrating than to watch a microphone review, and they talk on some other microphone for five minutes, and then give you 30 seconds of the way the mic sounds.
That’s not enough time for me to judge. I want you to hear the whole thing on the microphone, and let’s just back and forth between something else. That way you have a point of reference, a point of comparison.
And so that’s how I want it to be for me, and so I hope that’s how other people enjoy hearing it. And I try and anticipate, if I would want to hear this particular microphone that I’m reviewing against something else, then I try and figure out of my small inventory, small but now growing inventory of microphones, which ones would sound better against each other. And I try and do the side by sides as much as I can.
But it was really… I didn’t go into it with any intention. It started with other people who were watching my videos, and there have been a few people who have said, I got this thing.
Do you want to try this thing? I’ll send you this thing, and you can keep it for a couple of weeks and try this microphone and send it back to me. And for whatever reason, they trusted me.
Thank goodness they trusted me. I’m a trustworthy person. But there have been a few folks that have sent me, at one time, like $4,000 or $5,000 worth of stuff.
And we’re internet strangers. But I always return the microphone. I always, you know, and I give it back.
But that’s sort of how it has happened. I don’t… more and more companies now want to send me things.
And sometimes I say yes, and sometimes I say no. But it… and I try whenever it’s, you know, something that a company has sent me, I just set it up against something else, and I just talk.
And I try and, you know, I’ll give you the specs, but I want you to hear it. That’s going to be the best way to anticipate. And I always try and say, if it’s good for my voice.
My voice is not yours. My voice is not anybody else’s. I try and say what sounds good for me.
And as people, now that I’ve gotten a whole bunch of them, you can sort of say, oh yeah, I hear these drastic differences. And in many cases, the not so drastic differences between a $200 mic, a $500 mic, and a $2,000 mic. So, I mean, that’s a long way of saying I backed into product reviews.
It really wasn’t my goal, but I’m enjoying making them, and people seem to enjoy watching them, so I’m going to keep doing them.
Oh yeah, I know I enjoy watching them very much, and I like making my own product reviews as well. So I’m curious, is there any advice that you can offer, like camera techniques, or… You’ve sort of touched on it a little bit, but what your goal is when you do a product review?
Well…
Free stuff?
I wish I was… The thing I’m learning is the photography part of it is much harder than I expected. I thought the photography part was going to be super easy.
The photography part, and it’s maybe because my space is very limited, and my equipment is pretty limited. I try and use as much duct tape and bubble gum and PVC tubing as I can to try and do this. I mean, I have probably 100 feet of PVC tubing, and I do everything with PVC if I can.
But the things that I’ve learned is the photography is hard. It does require an investment. I still am just using HD cameras.
My cameras don’t have microphone inputs. I have to synchronize everything after the fact. Yeah, and anyway, my camera is outside the booth, and I record to SD cards on my Sony cameras.
It doesn’t go into the computer. I synchronize it all after the fact.
Oh, wow. If anybody doesn’t know how hard that is, that must be a labor of love.
Well, that’s why you see me in many of the videos. That’s why I clap in the beginning. That’s the classic, just synchronize.
It makes it really super easy to synchronize it. Synchronize it that way. And luckily, everything seems to line up.
I’ve got a couple of these little entry-level Sony cameras, but it’s hard to find them with a good screen that flips up to see.
I now have my technique. I do all my video editing in Reaper, the same DAW that I use for all of my audio. It’s all one really straightforward workflow for me now.
So I’ve got my process fairly well wired at this point. But I think learning your tools, and you don’t have to overdo it. My videos are pretty low-fi.
I have virtually no effects. I have no transition. I don’t do motion tracking.
My cameras are always shaky. But I think it’s… I try to make it as good as I can, but I don’t fetishize my photography.
And I think that’s sort of how I come to my own style. I remember… Sorry, forgive me this one tangent.
I remember watching a documentary with the three guitar guys. It was Jack White and Jimmy Page. And I should have prepared this story better.
Anyway, Jack White was talking, and he said, I like to… I play with a Montgomery Ward guitar, and the action is really high. And I like to put my amplifier just out of reach.
I want it to be just a little bit hard to do. And that makes it so that I work harder to do it, and it makes me have my own style, as it were. Because everything has to be just a little bit harder.
Not impossible. But I want to have to work for it. And that’s sort of how it has come to me.
That has resonated with me for whatever I’m doing. And I try and optimize my workflow, and I do try and make things so I can work efficiently. But I do try and make it just a little bit hard on myself so that I have to work for it.
I don’t want it to just be effortless, effortless all the time, especially when I’m creating the videos. I want to have to work for it just a little bit. And I think that’s how my style has evolved.
I don’t know if that makes sense. I don’t know if that makes sense.
No, it does. I mean, you’re challenging yourself and meeting the task. I like it.
I think it’s a common theme among creative people. I just… You may have heard the episode where I went down to Oticon, the anime convention, and we talked to the guys from Men at Arms.
They build these crazy weapons based on video games and anime, and then bring it to the renaissance festivals and other conventions. So the one creator there said, his biggest tip to the fans was, do the hard things first, and the easy things will come easy. Because you challenge yourself to do the hard things, and then it won’t seem so hard the next time you do it.
And it’s a really great sort of life lesson.
That is a great piece of advice. Tackle the hardest part first, because then it only gets easier. Don’t put the hardest thing till the end.
Right, exactly. So you’re an unapologetic gearhead, as are Sean and I both. You seem to be more of a collector versus me who is a flipper.
And I wanted to find out what some of your favorite mics are.
I am not a flipper. That is correct. Some of my favorite mics, and let’s see.
In order of preference, my typical go-to microphone, the one that is in my stand by default, is the Sennheiser MKH416. That’s what you’re hearing me on right now. That shotgun microphone.
Love it. I think it’s perfection for my voice. It really makes my voice exactly the way I want it to sound.
It stays out of the way, but it’s not the perfect microphone. There are some situations where it doesn’t necessarily work. My next favorite is probably the CAD E100S.
Oh, you’re hearing that right now as well from my side.
Oh, very good. If you get one, and I feel bad about this because a lot of people have bought that microphone on my recommendation, but CAD does seem to have a touch of a quality control issue with that microphone where you’re going to flip a coin whether or not you get hiss or you get no hiss. If you get one with no hiss, that microphone is glorious at its price point.
It is neutral, it’s easy to use, it’s easy to work.
It’s forgiving at the same time.
It’s forgiving, yeah. It’s really a nice microphone. If it is silent, if you hear that microphone making a sound, you’ve got to send it back to CAD and you’ve got to be like, you’ve got to fix this because it should be quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet.
You should not hear that microphone at all. And unfortunately, I hear too many people tell me that there’s a hiss.
Well, I felt like you really did us a service with some of your videos because I feel like CAD was a lot more resistant to address the problem until they’re like, or like, look, we’ve got a video showing that this mic is louder than it’s supposed to be. Like, please do something about this. And then I feel like there was just waves of people sending in their mics and actually getting it back.
Well, followers of our podcast know, we have a bit of a spotted history with the CAD E100S. I was someone who, and I was actually living in Japan at the time. So I found a great deal on Massdrop, but they told me it was going to be like something close to two months before I got it.
And then first mic got lost in shipping. Second mic came later than expected, but was, or excuse me, first mic was noisy. Second mic got lost in shipping.
Third mic never got processed, so they just refunded me my money. So it was just a very sour, sour experience. And then about a month or two ago, I just like, I felt the itch again, possibly because of your videos talking about how great it was.
And I decided to get another one just to try it out against some of the other mics I had. And it did sound great, but I just didn’t need it at that point. So I knew someone who did, who we’re also talking to right now, and I sent it to him, and he loves it.
Very good.
The thing I do recommend to people is, if you can find a vintage E100, the one from the 90s, I have no experience with the E100 II or E100 squared. I’m not sure how you pronounce it. But the old E100s from the 90s, with a 9-volt battery in it, I love that microphone, too.
And that one you can often get for like $200. And if it’s still around after this long, there’s a good chance that it’s going to be nice and quiet. You just pop new rechargeable batteries in there, and you’re good to go.
I’ve got two of them. I love them. Because I buy them on Craigslist.
If one comes along on Craigslist, and it’s under $200, I’m going to go buy it just so I have it. And maybe someday I’ll flip it, but I’m more of a collector myself.
That makes two of us.
So any others you recommend, Harley?
Any other microphones I recommend, Harley? There’s one that I don’t own that I hope to own at some point. There’s a studio here in town that I’m in front of this microphone every time I’m in their studio, and it’s the Peluso P87, which is a vintage…
I guess after the patents on the Neumann old vintage U87 ran out, a bunch of people made these 87-style microphones, and the Peluso, I love the way I sound on that one, and it could be combined with their outboard gear that they run me through, but every time I’m in front of that microphone in that studio, I’m like, what is this secret sauce? This sounds amazing. It’s smooth, it’s robust, I sound great, it sounds great when I’m close, it sounds great when I’m six inches off it.
I just love the way that microphone sounds. And it’s like… It’s a thousand bucks.
It’s an expensive microphone. But in retrospect, I would put that up against my TLM 103, my Neumann. I would definitely flip a coin on where my $1,100 was going to go between the Peluso and the TLM 103.
I have the 103, and so that’s what I stick with, but I definitely would have considered the Peluso had I known about it at the time.
Excellent. So what are some of your… I mean, because you’ve reviewed so many different products and so many different microphones at different price points, but you’ve also got some of these more eclectic videos where, say, you’re reviewing a portable preamp or even a handheld recorder.
So what are some of your favorite videos to do and what kind of inspires you to be like, well, nobody knows about this product, I’m going to make a video about it?
I try and review… A lot of the things that I’ve reviewed have been things that I have been trying to find for myself. A lot of the portable stuff has been me…
I often have obligations that if I’m traveling, either for vacation or for whatever reason, that I still have to audition, I still may need to punch in a recording, fix something, or I may need to actually record something. The New York Times doesn’t wait. The New York Times is Friday night, and if I’m in a hotel in Kenosha, I want to record for The New York Times.
I don’t want to say, you have to find a substitute for me. And so a lot of it has been, is there a USB mic that I can take? Is there a portable recorder that I can take?
How can I take this and not put my equipment at risk? How can I take this and not have TSA confiscate it? What can I do?
And so I’ve run through a whole bunch of stuff, and I have not found my perfect secret travel stuff yet. I’ve gotten close. The sound devices stuff is really good.
If you can get past the price point for it, that’s definitely pro-level gear. The Zoom H5 has been an extremely resilient, robust piece of equipment for me. I have not had a ton of luck with any USB microphones.
I’ve got an Apogee 96K that’s sitting on the shelf that I have to do a review for. I’m just waiting to actually use it out in the field a little bit more. But so much of this stuff, there’s a Saramonic little tiny portable recorder that I thought if this works, it’s going to be the greatest device ever.
This little Saramonic supplies phantom power, and it was the size of a couple of matchboxes. And I thought, this is going to be perfect. I can just plug my shotgun microphone into it and I’m going to pack it in my bag, and that’s all I need.
And it turns out that the preamps kind of sucked in it, and so I haven’t settled on it. But to circle back, the reason I do many of these is because they’re something that are trying to fulfill a need that I have. To make my recordings better, to make travel easier, to make my studio life so that I can work and get the sound that I want.
A lot of it is for my own needs. That’s where I come up with this stuff.
Do you take requests, or is that something you might look to in the future? Like a reader comment says, hey, I want to hear about the new RØDE NTG1. Would you do that?
Yeah, sure, absolutely. And I do. I get so many people that say, have you tried the Aston Origin?
No, I haven’t. Have you tried the Aputure Deity? No.
And my response is, if I can get my mitts on one, I’ll absolutely review it. Because there’s lots and lots of it. I kept hearing about the NT1, the RØDE NT1, which I hadn’t used.
And so finally, I did send a message to RØDE. I said, hey, if there’s ever an opportunity for me to use this mic, I’d love to try it. I don’t reach out to companies very often.
I’ve done it a couple of times for companies that I’m really interested in. But under most circumstances, I don’t. There have been some companies that have approached me.
Mostly they’re Amazon sellers. I get them every day right now. Somebody from China is trying to send me their no-name microphone.
And most of the time now, I have to say no to it. But I’ll always… Yeah, if I take requests…
It’s hard, because many times, it’s me outlaying my own money, and a lot of this equipment isn’t cheap. So that’s why I’m always very grateful if somebody sends me something, and I take very good care of it. Anybody who ever sends me a microphone or a preamp or anything, if somebody sends it to me, I take very good care of it, and I ship it up, and I package it very nicely, and I send it back.
But a lot of times, that’s how I do it, because it’s not like this stuff is pouring money into my bank account right now. It’s something I love doing. I’m really enjoying doing it, and as long as I have the love for it, and it gets to introduce me to people like you guys, where I get to talk this business, I get to meet other people, and just sort of spread the good karma around.
That’s why I’m going to continue to do it. But yeah, I’ll take requests, sure. If I can figure it out, I’ll definitely do requests.
Great. What’s next for Booth Junkie? Is it going to be a continuing labor of love, or do you have some plans to make it your entire business?
What’s really next for the channel?
You know, it’s a good question. What’s next for the channel? Right now, to just continue doing it as I’m enjoying it.
I don’t really have these grand designs and turning it into a media empire. I have thought about if there was a way to do the audition and connection between voice actor and company better. I’ve spoken with some people…
Not to actually build a product or anything like that, but I’ve spoken with people about the way the industry is currently being disrupted with some of the pay-to-play websites that are out there. Of course, we all make money, but I do feel like there’s a lack of transparency. I feel like there’s probably a better way to connect voice actors to products in a way that is both ethical and transparent, and everybody can still, in quotes, make money.
Everybody can still make money. That’s why we’re all in business, is to make money. But I feel like there’s a way to do it without some of the consternation that happens in the marketplace right now without going into the whole politics of it.
And I’d certainly like to do that, because it’s something, again, that I have experienced for myself. And I know lots of people, it’s how do I find work? How do I connect with that work?
How do I charge for that work in a way that makes me competitive but doesn’t price me out of the business or injure other voice actors by undercutting the market? How can we do that in a way that works for everybody? And that’s certainly something, that’s where a lot of my interest is for the future.
How can we do that? How can all of us folks back in our bedroom, now that we have our studio set up, how can we connect with the people who want to hear our voices and want to pay us for our voices and how can we lend our voices to their products? And so that’s something that I would like to, I would definitely like to investigate in the future.
Every once in a while I sketch it out. I was a web developer, showing my age. I was a web developer in the late 90s, early 2000s.
I made a lot of websites in my life. And so every once in a while I go back and I’m like, I should just put fingers to keyboard and start to code that. But it’s not where my head is right now to write that code anymore.
But that’s the kind of thing that I’d like to do. I feel like there is a model out there that can help voice actors find work and have companies find voice actors without the issues that are currently surrounding the pay-to-play. I think that’s available to us.
That’s great. I look forward to hearing where you take that. Me too.
Such a charitable soul. That’s wonderful.
You know, I’m not opposed to people making money, but I do feel like there is a lot of swirl and consternation around it that doesn’t need to be there. And hopefully somebody, me, you, them, somebody will find a better model and hopefully it will catch on.
Great. Sean, any other questions?
No, I think that pretty much wraps things up.
Well, Mike, where can people find you if they want to contact you or just absorb your content or hire you?
If you want to find me, just go to boothjunkie.com. That’s just a redirect. It’ll take you right to my YouTube channel.
And so I love for people to watch the videos and hopefully enjoy them. I’m at boothjunkie on Twitter. I’m at boothjunkie on Instagram, although I don’t use Instagram as much as I should.
I’m bad at remembering it. And you can also send me email, mike at boothjunkie.com. And I don’t mind putting that email address out there.
Feel free to contact me. I do try and answer. I get a lot of questions.
I get a lot of questions right now. I do try and answer as many questions as I can. So if you do contact me directly, I will definitely try and get back to you if at all possible.
Sometimes I can’t, but I do encourage people to reach out if they have questions, and I’ll try and help you. Sometimes it will say, can I turn it into a video? And sometimes that’s how it works.
Great. Well, Mike, we thank you so much for being here. As I said, Sean and I are both big fans.
I feel like we are on sort of similar trajectories. The reason we started this podcast was for the very same reasons you mentioned, that we’ve received so much help from people in the VO community. It’s the most giving community I’ve ever been a part of as a business person, and we’re just trying to pay it forward just like you.
It’s the way to be.
So we’ll talk to you soon. Wish you the best of luck.
Thank you. Same to you. Thank you so much for having me on.
And we’re back. First off, I want to say thank you so much to Mike DelGaudio of Booth Chunky. I’ve seen a lot of comments that a lot of people are just like, oh man, he seems so down to earth and so nice.
And it’s absolutely true. He’s just such a real nice guy, and he’s got great advice and just a really good outlook on trying to give back to the community, which is something that we see so often in the voiceover community, and I really, really love to be a part of it because of it. Anyways, so that pretty much wraps up this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We’ve got a lot of great episodes coming up. We’ve got the… or next episode, we have our VO Meetup Roundtable, where we have some other up-and-coming voice actors, or VOs that have been in the trenches, that got started about the same time we did, and that we’ve worked together with over the years, just kind of think tanking new ideas and trying to progress our careers together.
We also have Gerald Griffith, the coordinator of VO Atlanta, the Voice Over Conference, which is coming up March 1st through 4th, I believe. And then we also have some great voice actors and voice coaches, David Rosenthal, my boss from the Global Voice Acting Academy, and Mark Cashman, author of VO, that’s V-O, like as an O kind of thing, which is a great book. And he’s a great coach, so I’m excited to have both of them on.
Yeah, I can’t wait to talk to all of those gentlemen, and we’ll look forward to speaking to them coming in the new year. So for my co-host Sean Daeley, I’m Paul Stefano for the VO Meter. See you next time, everybody.
Have a great day, everyone. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter. Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.

The VO Meter… Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 15 of the VO Meter…
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
So we are very excited because we have our Audiobook Roundtable coming up in a few minutes, but we have an interesting episode for you today because several of our little mini-shows, I guess, our questionable gear purchase, our current events, and our VO Meter stick are all related. So why don’t you start this off, Paul?
Questionable gear purchase.
Okay, well, we always like to start with current events, and current events for me was attempting and poorly to improve my recording space again. So I found this ridiculous price on a double walled enhanced whisper room that happened to be located in Beaverton, Oregon. So obviously that’s a little bit further, a little bit of a distance from Baltimore, Maryland, let’s say.
And I had to have it shipped out here. It was a sale on eBay that I found. And because I’m me, I just went ahead and bought it and paid the money and said, I’ll figure out how to get it here.
It’s a great price. Who cares? I’ll figure out the shipping later.
Then I started to do a little research on just how freaking heavy and big an enhanced Whisper Room is. And one found out that it weighs just about 1200 pounds. And that’s about double of what my current Whisper Room weighs.
Makes sense because it’s almost the same size. The one I was buying is a 3x5x5. And the one I’m in is a 4×4.
This is feet. So because it’s a double walled booth, it makes sense it’s about double the weight. When I started to look at where I would put it in my house, I came across some structural engineering issues.
So queries. Right. It’s something I had in the back of my mind.
I have a local friend who’s a contractor that lives up the street. And we talked about this before, that if I were to build something, I had to be careful of that because I keep my booth on the second floor of my house. Really no other option because the floor, the ceilings in my basement are pretty low.
And plus, because of impact vibrations where people are walking on the floors, it never would work in my basement with my three kids trampling around all the time upstairs.
So I want to back up a little bit, though, Paul, because I remember when you first told me that you got this, my first question was, why? Maybe you already have a booth. And most of our listeners probably are assuming, like, that’s the end game, right?
Like, you’ve got a booth, you’re in. That’s just when, like, that area of your studio upgrade should be done. Is that, like, how is that not the case for you?
Well, I’ve talked ad nauseam about the giant highway in my backyard, and the vibrations from that that creep into my recordings, and they still do. I use an expander on my Apollo Twin interface to keep it somewhat at bay, but I’ve been doing, I’ve been engineering a book for another author, I think I mentioned, and in listening to those files back, when it’s not my own voice, especially, I can hear that vibration creeping in through the expander during the dead spaces, and it’s just annoying. I’d like to be able to somehow end it once and for all.
So that was my thinking anyway. So that’s why I thought double-walled booth, and also I should mention, in doing some consulting with our friend George Widom, he had told me at one point that he thinks a double-walled whisper room would be enough to block all that external highway noise based on what he’s heard in my files. So that was my motivation.
And so people who might not… As you can guess, not all ISO booths or even whisper rooms, which is a brand of vocal isolation booths, are created equal. Of course you’ve got different height and length and size dimensions and weight, as you can tell.
There’s almost a 600-pound difference between the single wall that Paul currently has and the double wall that he was looking into. But what that extra mass does is it increases the amount of acoustic dampening that you have of sound isolation. And so as he was pointing out, it would actually hopefully get rid of those vibration problems that he’s been fighting for almost two years now.
Yeah, to eliminate sound waves from penetrating your space, you need mass, whether it be concrete, wood, lead would be the best, but I’m not lining my house with lead.
And it would save you from Superman.
So the denser the material, the better it is at blocking sound. So back to the structural design. In looking at the code for most US states, every state is different, sometimes even counties have different building codes.
The amount of weight you’re supposed to have on a residential floor, second floor, is about 30 pounds per square foot or 40 pounds per square foot if you’re a little bit more conservative. Or sorry, the other way around, 30 pounds if you’re conservative, 40 pounds if you really want to push it. And doing my math, my calculations, it seems that it would be more like 50 pounds per square foot for this 1200 pound booth on my floor.
And those weights that are based on the building code are usually based on moving weight, not dead weight. So a booth is, in my opinion, is an issue because it’s dead weight. It’s going to sit in one spot forever or until I no longer do this job, which hopefully is not sooner rather than later.
But that’s just dead weight that’s going to sit there forever. So people will argue, well, you don’t panic when you have 30 people in your house for a cocktail party. True, but they’re moving around and they’re getting drinks and they’re getting food, they’re going outside.
They’re not standing in one spot 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. So ultimately I decided this was not going to work. And I called up my good friend Sean and said, hey, you’re near Oregon, or at least closer than I am.
Why don’t you buy it?
And at first, I will say I got very excited. I mean, this was an amazing price for, because like we were saying, a lot of people have gotten these single wall units from either Whisper Room or someone else, and they weren’t satisfied because they didn’t completely get rid of the noise issues, which is why most people get an isolation booth in the first place. So it’s very unfortunate when people have to make that additional upgrade or even sort of like add a room within a room to the existing space to get rid of that extra sound.
But I mean, for me, I was so excited. I thought it was similar enough to the current setup I have that it wouldn’t be too disruptive. So I had the same concerns about weight.
And but after talking to a few engineer friends who were kind of able to like to calm my fears, my dad and I started measuring out the dimensions of the potential dimensions of the booth. And we just couldn’t find anywhere in the house that would have been an ideal working space. I mean, if I wanted to be surrounded by like the furnace vents in the laundry room, then yeah, I could have gotten the booth and put it in the basement.
But I’m like, the whole point of having that office, that studio space, is to sort of have like a very creative, conducive atmosphere, you know? Isn’t that what we all want who are trying to pursue this full time? So, unfortunately, after a lot of hemming and hawing, I realized that maybe now is not the best time to put a booth in here.
And I mean, my house in rural Washington is pretty much quiet 90% of the time. So I don’t have a lot of the noise issues that say someone in a larger city might or who’s near a freeway might have.
Right. So, the worst part about this whole thing was that I had already put my booth on for sale on a couple of the voiceover groups and on Craigslist. Some of you may have seen it.
This is very telling of your personality in general, Paul, or both of our personalities that we handled this.
I got some people’s hopes up, including our friend of the program, Bob Johnson, who is going to come on and talk to us in a few minutes about the experience as part of our VO Meter shtick. Shtick.
Okay, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick.
What did he say?
It’s time for the VO Meter… Oh, never mind.
The VO Meter shtick?
Oh, got it. So we are here with Bob Johnson on the VO Meter shtick, and I’m here to talk about, or talk more about the ridiculous booth purchase that never was, because Bob, as I think we talked about in the intro, was on the other end of the transaction, or at least supposed to be, where I had posted my booth for sale and was going to sell it to Bob who lives not too far from me. It looked like a match made in heaven, and then I done went and blew up the whole thing.
So Bob, I wanted to first apologize in front of the whole world, or at least our 3,000 listeners, and say I’m sorry for reneging on the deal, but as you’ve heard, it just couldn’t be helped.
You absolutely do not have to apologize, but it is kind of Johnson luck. Have the opportunity to get a nice whisper room at a decent price, and then all of a sudden, it devolves into a discussion on floor loads and things like that. So, we learn a little bit more in the industry, and I am still looking for a whisper room, so to speak, but no, you absolutely do not have to apologize.
Well, it’s funny, it actually sort of became a value add for the entire industry. I’m not sure if you followed Sean’s post in Facebook, where he was asking people about structural load in his house, and other people jumped in and said, wow, I never thought of that. And that thread has now grown to like a hundred responses with people adding…
I did see that, and again, after talking to you about it, and then seeing Sean talking about it on Facebook, I’m thinking, wow, maybe this is something that people do need to pay attention to. And again, I’m the same way. I didn’t really think about floor load or things like that.
I’m fortunate that I record in the basement. Again, the only thing I was worried about, of course, I wasn’t worried about it, my wife was worried about the aesthetics of our basement with a whisper room in it. So that devolved more into how can we spruce up the whisper room to make it look more amenable to our downstairs area.
Yeah, I think Sean admitted in the intro that that was part of his decision, too, that he’s living with his parents. He’s much younger than you and I, and he’s back with his parents while he sorts out what he’s doing long term, and they weren’t too keen on having the big black monolith in their living room either.
I did agree that we could put a window box outside of the whisper room as well as a welcome mat, and I’ll put some plastic trees around it, so at least it’ll look like a little, as I call it, my retirement home.
Well, that’s fantastic. Well, I will certainly keep an eye out for other deals. As fans of the show know, I’ve actually done this before.
This time last year, almost. Sean and I had almost an identical discussion where I purchased a booth and was trying to unload it onto him as he was coming back from Japan. And it’s because I was looking for one up in the northern part of New York, and I actually put friend of the show, Patty Gibbons, onto it, and she ended up buying it.
So that story worked out. Hopefully there’s still some way we can work things out for you and see how it goes.
No, I’m okay now. And again, I’m just looking for the whisper room specifically. You know, just to improve the room tone a little bit, but also in my quest to upgrade microphones as well.
I tend to do this in a stair step method. I don’t want to go high end microphone, but not have the proper sound area for it. So I’m fine with where I am now.
As we said on the phone, you know, it’s not a priority for me, but at the same time, I think many of us, especially at my level, are always looking for a little bit more to improve. And that’s why I like listening to the VO Meter. I’ll give you guys all a shout out as well.
As well as a voice over body shop as well. I mean, you learn so much from that. Some of it’s really technical, some of it’s baseline, that it helps a little bit of all of us in the industry learn and continue to develop.
Well, thanks for the kind words. And it sounds like you have taken some of that stuff to heart, talking about not getting a good microphone until you have the space to record it. We’ve been preaching that, and George and Dan preach that as well.
Just makes perfect sense. But tell us a little bit, Bob, about your professional resume and the environment you do record it in now. We’d be curious to hear.
Actually, I’ve been in the voice over business for about 10 years. I kind of started differently from most people. I was already in the federal government, in the Intel community, and used to do a lot of their classified narrations, documentaries, e-learning.
So kind of started from the inside. And then when I retired three years ago, I decided to do much more on the outside, which has proven a little bit more difficult than I thought.
We’ve all found that out.
Many people in the voice over world. For me, it was more the technical side though, because I was recorded more of a classified nature, everything I did was in a studio. So to actually step out from that world and have to create my own studio environment in terms of recording, editing, mastering, and all of that, that’s proven to be much more difficult.
But at the same time, something that I’ve actually enjoyed learning how to do. So right now, I’m surrounded by AuralX panels in a five-foot cove inside of our downstairs in our basement area, which actually is a great recording area because I have three solid walls. So really, I only have to fill in one that I use with some AuralX paneling.
I have two four-foot AuralX panelings that I use behind me. And the sound floor and the noise floor is usually pretty good. I do get a little bleed in from either whatever is happening outside, whether it’s the pressure of the house or the temperature of the house.
So in that way, with a whisper room, I want to be able to control that just a little bit more.
Well, Bob, like I said, I will still be on the lookout for you, see what we can do. There’s always deals popping up, and hopefully we can work something out for you. But I do appreciate you being on and sharing your story with us.
No, and you don’t have to apologize. And again, I thank you and Sean for all that you do for the voiceover world. And I always look forward to tuning in to you guys every other week and Voice Over Body Shop, as well as Julie Williams.
I mean, I listen to her podcast. So there’s a lot of people out here who are not really that active on the Facebook posts. But at the same time, there’s a lot of people on the sidelines who learn quite a bit from you guys.
Fantastic. Well, we’ll try and keep up the good work.
All right. And I appreciate the apology, and I appreciate you looking out for me.
All right. We’ll talk to you soon, Bob. Take care.
Thanks. Talk to you later.
Bye. Later.
So Bob, once again, my apologies. I’m glad you’re still a friend of the show and willing to talk about it and talk to me. But in the end, it all worked out because Bob is pretty happy with his recording space at the moment, and I was able to get my money back from the person I purchased it from on eBay, more importantly.
And last I checked, it’s gone off of eBay, so it looks like he must have sold it, and probably for a better price than he gave me. So, as they say, all’s well that ends well in love and more.
Well, we both had learned a lot from it, I think. I mean, like something I’ve learned from you, Paul, is to always have to be on the lookout for not just incredible deals on boosts, but on audio equipment in general. I know you’ve frequent your local guitar center and have been able to like gotten some incredible deals on mics and interfaces that way.
So it’s good to have like your sort of finger on the pulse if you’re looking to upgrade, because you can usually save quite a bit of money if you’re a little patient and persevering.
Yeah, indeed. So my plan now is to sort of retrofit the existing booth I have, because the other thing I thought about is that one of the worst experiences of my life was lugging this whisper room into this second floor all by myself. And I don’t want to do that again.
So at least I’ll try and reinforce what I have in here. Maybe either some extra MDF that I can buy myself or some plywood and see if I can at least mitigate the sound enough that I can expand it out with the Apollo and hopefully we’ll be done with it. Stay tuned.
Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I think, like, I’ve hired you out for narration projects and thought it sounds fine. So, like, so I think we both kind of realized that maybe we were trying to solve a problem we didn’t necessarily have or just was trying to find the wrong solution for it.
Yeah, it definitely could be the case.
All right, so that pretty much covers everything for questionable gear purchase and VO Meter schtick, but we don’t want to keep you guys away from all of the awesome information you’re about to hear during our Audiobook Roundtable. Now I have to give some credits to Paul. He really did his homework and gathered some people at the top of their game.
We have some A-list narrators like Scott Brick, Sean Pratt, Andi Arndt, some Audiobook Producers like Steven Jay Cohen and Debra Deyan. And we just got a really nice, well-rounded panel who’s just filled with so much experience and insight into the Audiobook industry today. So without further ado, let’s take you to the Zoom room.
Welcome everybody to episode 15 of The VO Meter. And we are so excited because we have our Audiobook Roundtable. We scheduled this some time ago, and we are so excited to have a distinguished panel of Audiobook narrators, producers, and even coaches.
And we want to get right to it. So starting, going clockwise, I guess, on my screen. Why don’t each of you tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got started in the business?
So Andi, would you please start?
Well, my name is Andi Arndt, and I am a narrator and producer and coach. And I have a background in both public radio, and I say public radio because public radio tends to value an authentic voice more than a morning zoo, boomy voice. And I also have a background in theater.
I taught acting and voice at James Madison University theater and dance department for 12 years. So to me, theater plus radio is like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup that adds up to audiobooks. So that’s how I got into it.
I mean, that’s not the actual first job I got, but that’s the background that I have.
Fantastic. And Debra, Debra Deyan.
Oh, hey there. Yes, I am a producer in Los Angeles and been in the audiobook business since 1990. My husband, who’s since passed away three years ago from ALS, Bob Deyan and I got into the business together after we were first married.
He worked in radio and he had an extremely long commute once he decided to marry me and move to where I live. And so in those days, he used books on tape and recorded books, were selling an abridged book, like taking a book and abridging it down to three hours and having two cassettes in a package, 45 minutes on each side. And they were also doing unabridged books on a rental basis.
So Bob wound up getting a copy of This Present Darkness, authored and read by Frank Peretti. And he listened to it in the car and came home shaking the package and said, oh my God, this is what we’re going to do. And so I sat and listened to it that night with him and he said, well, I don’t know how we’re going to make this or how it’s made, but let’s figure it out and let’s be part of this thing.
It’s going to be big. And I said, okay, so we studied the package and it said that it had been produced at Mark Rau Studios in Burbank. And so we called, Bob said, oh my God, I know that guy.
I met him at a party, you know, so he called him. You know, this was over the weekend. And so we called him on a Monday morning and Mark actually remembered who Bob was.
And he didn’t think he was crazy for asking him how we were going to make this thing. So Mark taught him his craft for six months. And then Bob went off on his own.
And thanks to Jessica Kay, you know, who at the time owned the publishing mills, she helped us to buy our first equipment. And we then built her, you know, little by little for it, or actually, you know, took it off her invoice. And the rest is history, you know, back in those days, it was reel to reel, you know, machines and razor blades and blue tape.
And then the digital age didn’t come until much later. So, yeah, it was a lovely start. And we were young in our 20s.
And it took about 18 years of going to bed every night and wondering how in the world we actually paid our rent before audiobooks hit, you know. We didn’t even find a name for audiobook until 1994. It was a committee of people who decided that it would be an audiobook rather than a recorded book or a book on tape or whatever, you know, people were calling it, all sorts of things.
Well, that’s fantastic. Thanks for that backstory. And Sean Pratt.
Let’s see here. I was in Washington, DC in 1994 doing a play at the Shakespeare Theater. And one of the actors in the cast was an audiobook narrator.
David Hilder is his name. He’s a playwright now in New York. And one day we were in the green room and I said, what do you do when you’re not working?
And he said, I do audiobooks. And I was like, wow, that’s really cool. I wasn’t really interested at the time.
I was just more curious. I was working off Broadway at the Pearl Theater as a company member and doing classical theater around the country. But about two years later, I moved to Washington, DC.
And he introduced me to Grover Gardner, who is a real icon of our industry. And I tell people that the main reason I got into audiobooks was I was tired of hanging sheetrock because I had lined up all this theater work to see me through when I got to Washington, and it all fell through. So I really wanted this thing to come through.
So I set up an appointment with him at his house. We talked and had a really great day-long discussion about books. And he cut a little demo, and he said, I’ll shop this around, maybe send it to a few people, see what happens.
And Grover is a very good friend of mine, and I always joked that if he had known what was about to happen to him, he probably should have thrown me off his porch. Because I was so desperate to get something going, you know, I saw the potential immediately, just as a performer. You know, I’d grown up and showed business like, oh, I could do this at home, I could make good money.
It’s really interesting. It’s challenging work that I cajoled and, I don’t want to say bullied, but I’d show up at his house in the afternoon, oh, I just happened to be in the neighborhood with this bottle of scotch. Would you like to have a sip and let’s talk about audiobooks?
I pestered the poor man to death until he finally contacted Blackstone and BOT, Books on Tape, and said, oh, for the love of God, give me something. This guy’s driving me nuts. And Blackstone and Books on Tape were my very first two clients.
And I started narrating at his place. He had some booths that he would rent out for time. And that was the beginning of it.
That was 21 years ago, and 935 books.
My goodness. Wow, thank you so much.
My name is Steven Jay Cohen. You can find me online at stevenjcohen.com or the new business name. It’s now spokenrealms.com.net.
And there will be a.org eventually. All those things are happening. It used to be under the title, Listen to a Book.
And we’re doing a whole sort of pivot rebranding with that. How I got started in the business. I actually came up in this business.
Well, I came up in stage and sound, actually. So my first professional work was, well, where a lot of people in New York, who would be trying to make it in the theater would have a day job working, driving a cab or waiting tables, my day job was doing lights and sound. So I was auditioning part of the time, and then I was behind either the light board or the sound board, the other parts of the time.
And so I’ve kind of been doing that work all the way through. I did that on Theater Row and up into Symphony Space and did some work on selected shorts and some other pieces there before life kind of took me in lots of different directions. And maybe about, yeah, about nine years ago now, could be 10, some people who I was still doing some sound editing for said, you know, we had a lot of fun when we would act with you on stage.
Have you ever thought about getting back into acting and coming back to this side of the mic? And I did what I needed to do and ask people a lot of questions and said yes to a lot of things and slowly found my way into working with some independent publishers on ACX and from there into some of the other publishers and built that out and slowly worked from there towards becoming a publisher and distributor on my own. And that’s what Listen to a Book and what is now Spoken Realms is about.
Awesome. And finally, Scott Brick.
When I got started in the business, mumble mumble years ago, I can tell you the day, it was June 10th, 1999, when I did my first job at Dove Audio. There’s a very different landscape. You could get in back in those days without doing a demo.
You could just go in and audition for someone if you knew, you know, if you had some kind of connection to the people who were doing the auditions. A buddy of mine from UCLA that I played baseball with every Saturday, Bob Westall. He was working for, he was working for Stefan Ridnicki and Gabrielle Decure, who now do Skyboat here in Los Angeles.
They were running Dove Audio at the time. And so he got me an audition. And I thank God for Bob every day.
I’ve taken him out to so many dinners. And you know, I thought you drink for free around me from now on, because I wouldn’t have a career otherwise. Stefan and Gabrielle gave me my first job.
I did a couple of short stories for them. And that day, Dan Musselman, it was Dan Musselman, who is the executive producer of Penguin Random House Audio here in Los Angeles, he was leaving Dove Audio. He used to work with Stefan and Gabrielle.
And he had been hired away by this company called Books on Tape, which wound up being bought by Random House Audio. And he said, hey, it’s your first day, it’s my last day. I’m going off to make audiobooks for a new company.
Gonna go build a studio, why don’t you give me a call? And he gave me his card. And I thank God for that.
I have every day since because, I don’t know, 850 some odd books, I’ve probably done easily over 500 of them have been for Dan.
So thank you everyone for your personal history getting involved with audiobooks and a little bit of an abridged history of the audiobook industry itself over the last 20 years. So now is really an interesting time for audiobooks because I feel like they’re more popular than ever before. Everyone’s listening on their commutes or when they’re doing their errands at home.
And everyone is interested in pursuing it from all walks of life. So I’m curious, based on your experience, how do you recommend someone new to the business try and get started today?
Well, the first thing I get in email, at least an email a week, if not more, from people literally around the world. Some who have English as a second language even, who are interested. And I kept getting asked about this for years and years.
And so finally about maybe 10 years ago, maybe I guess, I made a little video on my YouTube channel. And on it I have what I call the test. So when people contact me, I say, go take the test.
And if you pass, then contact me and we’ll talk about something. And basically the test is, you know, get a book you like, set up a small space to work in, a confined space, and read out loud for two to three hours a day for 14 days straight. And, you know, and if you make a mistake, start the sentence over.
If you hit a word you don’t know how to pronounce, go look it up, you know, and read it to someone, don’t just mumble your way through it. And I say, if you can pass that, then you might have the temperament to be an audiobook narrator. Because I found over the years that not only in show business, but in audiobooks, it’s not the talent factor that’s, to me, the deciding thing.
It’s their temperament. Can they direct themselves? Can they stay focused when they’re working by themselves?
Can they work in a confined space? I get emails all the time from people who’ve taken the test, who say, thank you so much. Now you’ve inspired me.
I’m going to go on to ACX and see what’s there. But I also get emails from people saying, I took your test and you have absolutely positively convinced me that I never, ever, ever want to do this for a living. And I feel like I’ve done a good service as a coach.
I’ve saved them a lot of heartache and money. And so that’s what I do. That’s what I do.
And anyone expresses any interest. I’m like, go watch the video, go take the test.
Anybody else have a comment on that?
Yeah, this is Andi. I actually am in the process of selecting a small number of students to start from scratch with this fall because I put something on my Facebook page, my narrator page saying, you know, I’m going to take a small number of students and here’s how to apply and what to send me. And so the first test is actually, do they meet that deadline?
Because we have to meet, you know, it’s a deadline driven business. So if they can’t meet a deadline for me, then they’re not ready to put out a shingle and say, I really do this professionally. So I heard from a handful of people, and actually two of them are like, Debra, I’m going to be sending them your way in short order.
They’re like really amazing. Yeah, I was so impressed. I’m really excited to work with them.
And another one is fine, I think, talent wise, but was talking about wanting to sort of make extra money on the side doing audiobooks. And my perspective on things is that it’s not an extra money on the side kind of endeavor. It takes so long to get any traction, to get a foot in the door, to get your name out there, that it just takes a higher level of commitment than that.
Excellent. Debra, any thoughts?
Yes. Sean and Andi are absolutely amazing teachers and coaches, and I highly recommend them. We actually have a school as well, Deon Institute, and PJ Oakland is a teacher out here in Los Angeles.
And he does a great job teaching intro, intermediate, and he does a dialect class, and he’s just terrific, just terrific. So I recommend that people that are new to the business, they really need to get into class, they really need a coach, they really need a business coach. There’s a lot to this, and Andi’s right, it takes a lot of hard work to get your foot in the door and to get rolling.
It takes a lot of effort, a lot of marketing effort and a lot of going to events and being involved.
It really takes having a personal relationship with the different publishers and the different producers. It’s not enough to just hang a shingle or work off of the ACX system and think that you’re doing it. There’s a lot of work involved.
Nowadays, obviously, totally different landscape, and it is vital that you have a demo nowadays. My advice is to learn as much as you can before you go into the booth, because especially if you’re coming at this from another type of voiceover, you exercise different muscles in every different type. I work with DJs a lot, people who have spent their time in radio for decades, and they assume that they can just keep using those same muscles and those same skills when they do an audiobook demo, and it’s totally different.
I would say, whatever ability you’re able to learn, sometimes financially you can’t afford to get a coach, but there are so many free resources online, YouTube videos, you can watch interview shows. VO Buzz Weekly is a marvelous gift to any kind of voiceover artist, whether you want to get into audiobooks or promos or what have you. They interview professionals in every aspect of voiceover.
So you can watch a two-hour interview, hour and a half video, an hour and a half a video of hearing people who do it talk about the craft. Then go into the booth and sit down and create your tracks. You know, start sending out submission emails, query letters basically, and just one little word of advice.
Make sure to link directly to the page with your demos. Don’t go to your main page and then have them click again to get to the demos. You never want to be more than two clicks away from that person hearing your voice.
Wow, that is really insightful and something I had never thought about before.
Yeah, people lose so much interest so quickly. And the more clicks that you make them, the more hoops you give them to jump through, the quicker they’re going to lose interest.
So, Scott, a lot of our listeners are new to the business. That’s why we asked that first question. But a lot of the people that we talk to that are just coming in look first to ACX as a way to sort of get their foot in the door or maybe start in the business.
Do you see ACX as still a viable option to either start in the business or even to continue a career in the business?
I think, and this goes contrary to my initial thoughts about ACX, when I first heard about ACX years ago, and I think a lot of veteran narrators, let’s say, people who are already into their career, a lot of us shied away. Jeffrey Kafer, when I remember taking him out for a drink afterwards to say thank you, and he gave me the best advice. He said, if you are not using ACX as a way to put out royalty share books, you are leaving money on the table.
So I have absolutely revised my thinking on it. When I took the advice that Jeffrey Kafer gave me that night, it had an immediate financial impact on my career and my bank account. I think it’s absolutely a viable way to get in.
And I say this as anything derogatory about ACX, I say the same thing to people who work for one company all the time, even if it’s a major publisher. Always have an exit strategy. And by that, I don’t mean stop working for them.
By exit strategy, I mean a way to transition from working full time in this realm as you’re cutting your teeth and getting your sea legs under you, whatever metaphor you want to use. Once you’ve done that and you’re ready to work with the major publishers, the independent producers, what have you, always have a goal in mind about how to transition out. And absolutely, you can break in at ACX and you can make your career and your finances thrive on ACX.
Steven, how about you? We were talking about new people to the business approaching ACX as a way to break in or get their foot in the door. Is that still a viable option or is ACX still a viable option in general as a way to promote your audiobook business?
And what other ways are there for narrators to seek out work for themselves?
What I’ve noticed over time with ACX is that in the beginning, when the platform first opened up, there was a huge backlog of demand that simply had no place to go. Couldn’t figure out what was going on, and suddenly there was this marketplace. So there was a lot of really high value product that suddenly became available, and it was like panning for gold during the gold rush.
Whereas now, anyone who looks at ACX and is purely looking at it as a place to audition is missing at least half of what’s really there. Whether or not what’s sitting on ACX right now is something that you think is worth auditioning for, what ACX gives you by having an account is your own personal publishing platform. So you getting out and going to things like writers conferences or other things and being the one audiobook narrator in the room, you get to actually have the conversation and when the person says, and how are we going to distribute this, you have the answer in your back pocket.
So yeah, there are other things that are coming out now. And part of that is the longer that it goes on where Audible is the largest player, the more people start talking about alternatives. But also, the longer that goes on, the harder it becomes for somebody to build an alternative of scale, something that can handle that.
And we’re seeing some of that with Kobo coming on the scene, and we’re seeing Findaway, which for a long time was a business-to-business back-end system. They were responsible for a long time for moving audiobooks outside of Audible. In many cases, Findaway was responsible for how those books made it into the libraries, or make it into the little kiosk in a truck stop, and all different things like that.
Findaway was responsible for a lot of those other pieces, and now they’re turning around to be a place with their voices division, where they’re trying to reach out to authors. So it’s going to be interesting looking in the next couple of years as these different alternatives start to crop up, because the talk, when you talk to independent authors, is about what alternatives are there to Amazon, the parent company behind Audible. That’s really what I see is that when people simply look at ACX as a place to audition, they really are missing most of the value that’s there.
One thing that often does happen, though, is people will come to me and they’ll say, I want to do this through what was Listen to a Book. Of course, as of today, probably many of you have seen this, we’re going through a rebranding and moving the content under the new business name, which is Spoken Realms. The audio production network is what was Listen to a Book.
If you still have old links to listentoabook.com that still works, but you can go over to spokenrealms.com, spokenrealms.net, and see what’s going on there as the content is being migrated and things show up. But often people will come to me with a project that’s actually more appropriately an ACX project, and they’re kind of surprised when I turn them back towards ACX because I understand some more of the ins and outs of the platform and can point out where by doing something else, they may be leaving important information, data, money, something on the table. And, you know, the last thing I would like to do is just, you know, you come to me and I take your project and then six months down the road, you figure out there was something better.
If there’s a better fit, I’d rather focus on that. So really, what was Listen to a Book that’s now Spoken Realms, we’re focused a little bit more on projects you cannot do through ACX. So whether that means you’re working with material that is not available as an e-book that you can claim is your own.
So that could be you want to do a public domain work. It could mean that you have a script that is not originally a book and you’re trying to get it into the same marketplace. It could be that you want to do something that doesn’t fit for a different reason, like you’d like to do a dual narration piece, but you’d like to do it as a royalty share, and ACX doesn’t have a mechanism to pay to narrators.
So all of those kinds of projects are the kinds of things that can be done through spoken realms, through the audio production network, that you cannot do through the other platform. Personally, with what I’m doing and how I like to work, it made more sense to try to… You know the square peg in the round hole metaphor?
When I built the system that I built, I built a square hole so that way you don’t have to try to shove that square peg into the round hole. So when somebody comes to me, if they’ve got a round peg, I say, you really want to go over there.
I would say if you go on to ACX right now and look under just the wide open, how many producers have listed themselves there, it’s like 46,000 producers, which is really, really daunting. But then you start to look at the samples that people have uploaded, and the amount of not following directions that weeds out, I don’t even know, maybe a third of those people right off the bat, is stunning. Like people who put a car commercial demo up on ACX, or they’re reading something and you can hear a dog barking in the background, or there’s just not a sense of market with a lot of the people who’ve listed themselves there.
So you can really give yourself an advantage by thinking about who’s looking for narrators, not car companies, and what are they looking for, and what is your… If you work with a coach to know your brand, your niche, your sound, then you can actually leverage your ACX profile in conjunction with networking with authors who write in the genre that you might be interested in. Then they have a reason to go look at your profile and not just the entire ACX site and go, eh.
Excellent. Sean or Debra, any thoughts?
That’s really good advice.
I think so too.
Well, the other thing I would say, one of the things that I do personally and that I teach my students and I’ve taught… I’ve used to teach classes on the business of show business for years at acting schools and with acting groups. And I said, you know, it says, you know, your question is, is it still a viable option?
Well, that implies that you have a goal in mind. And a lot of people get into show business without a specific goal. And I stress to my students that they pick…
I always pick five goals for the year. And I work those goals throughout the year, and then at the end of the year, I can then see, well, how did I do this year? And that’s the only yardstick I use for my own success.
I don’t judge it against anybody else. And so what I try to tell them is that oftentimes, when they get to ACX, they may not know what ACX can do for them. They may have an overblown sense of what its possibilities are.
And I try to sort of lower those, especially with my narrators who come from a performance background. I tell them initially they should be thinking of ACX like if you’re an actor doing summer stock theater or black box theater, where you’re going to work your butt off, you’re not going to make any money, but you need the resume credit, the experience, the connections. And that’s just part of the learning curve.
You know, I said, yeah, go ahead and audition for the per finished hour stuff, but just know that your recording and your experience level now will be going head to head with someone who’s got 30, 40, 50, 60 books on there. So, you know, you should be thinking about, in my opinion… Now granted, you want to do books that are of a certain quality.
You’re not going to just take anything that comes your way. But you should be, to me, more focused initially, if you’re a raw beginner, on getting the experience, you know? So some of those books may not be, you know, they ain’t all Hemingway, but at least you’ll have the experience.
And so if you start out looking at ACX in that direction, and then as you get more savvy as a narrator, savvy as a business person, and savvy about the site, then you can begin to start picking and choosing and navigating the possibilities that are out there. But initially, you know, think of it more as that, you know, like I said, working in a black box theater in Brooklyn for ten bucks a show or something. It’s a learning experience more than it is a revenue stream.
Well, excellent points, everyone. It really helps kind of… So apparently, yes, ACX is still a very viable if misunderstood option for people who don’t realize the potential value it could have for them and their audiobook business.
And so, Steven, I love that you went into such detail because very often you find that as narrators grow their careers, they often become publishers in their own right. And so, a lot of people assume that, like other areas of voiceover, audiobook is all about the performance, it’s all about the voice, but the truth is that there are a lot of other skills involved, particularly technical skills. So I’m curious just how much technical skill is required to start, and is it really essential to have a home studio for people trying to get involved with audiobooks?
Yes, unless you live in New York or LA.
Simple enough.
I know. Anyone else want to weigh in?
All right.
Let’s phrase it a different way. How many of, in this case, Andi and Sean and Scott, how many of you actually still work from home and what percentage of your work is done in your home studio versus at a production house or a publisher?
Well, I don’t live in New York or LA, so I have done all but two of my books from my home studio.
Yeah, from my experience of the 930-something books I’ve done, probably a handful, maybe five in 20 years, because it was just an accident of geography. I became an audiobook narrator based out of Washington, DC., which is arguably one of the nexus points of audiobook narration because of Library of Congress and Learning Ally, and they needed narrators there, and out of that was the natural pool of talent for the audiobook companies when they were looking for home-based studio narrators.
So I started out working in a studio, my own booth, from the very beginning. So I’m really an autodidact. I taught myself everything I needed to know over the successes and failures of doing that on your own.
So you do need it for that reason, because that’s also where the industry is headed. It has been heading for many years now. The other thing too is, this gets back to say like demos on ACX, you do need to have a quality studio.
So the sound booth itself has to meet a certain standard. The equipment needs to be a certain standard. And there’s ways to talk with people and get that to that standard.
But also things like demos. Whereas in commercial VO, you go into a studio and they do all this really cool, sexy stuff with music and sound effects. And you have a really great producer who puts it all together for you.
In audiobooks, ultimately, you need to be doing your demos on your own mic in your own space, because that’s what they’re hiring in the end. Because if you went to an expensive studio in New York to get a really cool audiobook demo put together, you know, and then suddenly the quality of your studio where you do the book is radically different, it’s a bit of bait and switch. So yes, having your own studio is part and parcel with the industry, except, like Andi said, if you’re in LA or New York.
I never advise somebody to leap into a voiceover career, and first thing you do is get a home studio. I always say, test the waters. Make sure you have enough work to justify this expense, because depending on how intricate or detailed and really involved you want to get, you’re going to be spending a thousand, five thousand, I know people who spend a lot more than that on their boots.
And why do that if you don’t have the right skill set, or you’re the best in the biz, but nobody will listen to your demo? I mean, I hate the idea of spending all that money in your studio lying fallow, basically. So what I always say is, even though it might mean less profit up front, if you’re getting your per finished hour fee and it’s flat, there’s no leeway, there’s no wiggling room, that you spend part of it and you find the cheapest, best option for you to use somebody else’s studio.
And you use part of that per finished hour fee to do that. And then when you start getting those phone calls and emails a lot more often, and the publishers or whomever you’re dealing with is knocking on your door a lot more, especially when they start making inquiries like, hey, I’m curious, do you have a home studio? Ever thought about putting in a home studio?
Let that be your sign. Yes, go out. But it’s the same way that I always say, people ask me what kind of microphone, how much should they spend?
Should they pop for a really expensive one up front? Say, get one that makes you sound professional. And then at some point in your career, when you want to be taken seriously, when you want to be taken seriously as somebody who’s moving on to the next level and working for the majors, that you invest more, and you invest a little more into a better microphone.
Again, I hate the idea of somebody going to a great deal of expense up front. And the same goes for the technical side of things. It depends on how steep the learning curve is.
I know just enough about the technical aspects of audio to be dangerous. I knew that the learning curve, that’s not where my skill set is. So, you know what I want to do?
I want to rely on the people who really know their stuff. I want to rely on the best in the business. And there’s a part of me that’s just like, hey, you know what?
I’m an American. I get a lot of benefit by being a member of society. And I don’t want it all to go one way.
I don’t want to just take the benefits. I want to give some, too. So I hire editors, and I hire proofers, and I hire engineers.
You know, I can… If I focus on what I know how to do, rather than spending money on training, or spending time on, you know, watching a ton of YouTube videos, if you want to, by all means, do it. I know a lot of narrators who do, and they thrive on it.
Simon Vance loves playing around, you know, and doing his own editing. That guy, God, that’s an extended yawn for me. So it makes me happy that I’m hiring people, and I’m putting money into the economy, that I’m helping my associates, my peers, the people who really know their stuff.
I think it is all dependent on the person. What is your learning curve? What is your level of interest?
Also, what is your level of fear? I work with a lot of retirees who are trying to, as they come to take my classes, they want to reinvent themselves, and they don’t want to have to spend a lot of time or money because maybe they don’t have a lot of either one of those. I said, well, then don’t.
Do as much as you want and try working with others to get you to the next step.
Yeah, and to add on to where Scott was going there, and this is an open question for the room, how many people in this room knew how to fix a car or build a car the day they got their driver’s license? Still don’t. And this is the thing that most people think about.
They think, oh, I’m going to do everything. That’s the right way to go about it. When I first moved to the area that I’m in and I was doing some of this work, first thing I did was I contacted every studio in the area to see if anyone had actual experience either recording voiceover or spoken word.
I found a couple of studios that were semi-local. At least one had ISDN who said that sure, I could advertise that I’m an ISDN talent, and this is how I schedule time in the studio. And I work with him on and off to this day, not because I need that anymore.
I’ve got stuff set up here, but because we’ve become friends and we send work towards each other at this point. So there’s that component. And a lot of people make the mistake of trying to figure this all out at once.
And then when they go back to listen to their early work, they wind up with that cringe-worthy, oh my God, oh, you know, they have that feeling about what’s happening there. And this is one of the things… So when I…
I’ve called ACX a pay-to-play, but then people point out to me, you don’t pay a fee, so why do I call it a pay-to-play? I call it a pay-to-play because a royalty share, in a lot of ways, is them asking you to gamble whether or not you’re going to make money. You know, it’s a stock market.
And you’re paying your time.
You’re paying your time, right, your time and futures based upon your labor. And so people say, well, it’s not costing me anything up front. They’re not understanding that part.
There’s a lot of people who will do their first book without pre-reading it, and then only find out in Chapter 19 that the character they’ve been doing with that high squeaky voice is described as having a rich baritone. And they have to go back and re-record because there are things like that. So finding local studios, going into your local libraries and getting to know the reference librarians who are incredibly helpful because when you need to look up pronunciation…
Those are people who look up things for a living, and that doesn’t cost you anything, and neither of those things actually cost you anything. And when you are working alone, when you start working by yourself and you’re going to plan to work in a padded room talking into a little stick, you need to create those outside connections to the world. And so now there’s two local libraries near me, and when I walk in, about half of the reference librarians know who I am, and they’ll ask me, what book are you working on?
Because I need pronunciations of local names, of things like that, and they’re happy to help. So there are ways to plug in to the community around you to get things done. And again, going back to the, I didn’t know how to fix a car when I first got my driver’s license.
Why, when I get my first microphone, would I be expecting to do that? So absolutely, find a local studio, do your jobs there, but invest at that point in a very basic kit, and actually talk to those studio people as well as the online forums, people that you trust, anyone who will talk to you about equipment, and you’ll be able to get kitted out in professional equipment at home that you can use for quick auditions, because the thing that a lot of voice over people don’t really remember is that you don’t need the perfect space for most of your auditions. You need the perfect space for your job.
There’s an understanding that the audition is, you know, they’re listening for your delivery. They’re not listening at that point to say, ooh, his studio is noisy. If you’re the right person, they’ll hire you, and you’re pointing out that you’re going to be recording that in another studio.
So having an audition-grade studio, let’s call it that, at home when you start is a lot cheaper than running out and trying to figure out if you need a $10,000, $8,000, $12,000 booth in your home.
Can I also… there’s something else I’d love to point out, because the idea that our fellow narrators, our brothers and sisters, I think are being taken advantage of in one particular way, and it drives me crazy. This isn’t a thing about the technical aspect of audio, and yet nevertheless, it is something that can so easily be outsourced and solve one of your problems.
Some publishers, they will have, you know, they’ll offer a job, let’s say they’re offering $200 per finished hour for a book. Okay, great. You take the job.
Then they tell you, oh, you know what? If you want to do all the research yourself and handle that part of it, we’ll make it $250. Or $225.
Let’s say it’s $250. And what do we do? Like lemmings, you know, like sheet.
You know, we go, great, I want that extra $50. And what a sucker’s bet that is. Oh, my God.
And I understand, my friends are, you know, the publishers in some cases are my friends who are making me this offer. And I’m looking at them going, oh, my God, you’re so taking advantage of us. Because think about it, right?
You’re getting, let’s say, $50 extra per hour, per finished hour. You know, if you’re making $50 per finished hour to do the research, but you’re making $200 per finished hour to do the narrating, why don’t you pay somebody $25 an hour to do that research for you? And you make $200 an hour in that same hour on a different book.
It’s outsourced. Please, God, you know, I haven’t done my own research in close to 10 years now, because I can make more doing what I know how to do.
And Debra, you work with producers and narrators within your award-winning studio. What percentage of your work is done with narrators in-house versus in their home studios?
Yeah, yes. You know, we’re in LA. We’ve got two studios in LA.
One has four booths and the other has five. We run them seven days a week, double shifts. So we’re doing quite a bit of work in our studios.
But Sean is absolutely right. The industry is moving towards home narrators. Of all the work that I receive from clients all over the world, 80% of it I’m still hiring a home narrator to do the work in their own home booths.
20% of the work that I’m doing is done here in my studios or in studios in New York, London, Toronto, big cities. Authors wanting to read their own books are still coming into studios. They obviously aren’t going to have their own home booths.
Celebrities, actors like Broadway actors, we hire a lot of those. So those people are recording in studios in New York or here in LA. But yeah, if somebody is serious about doing audiobooks and they don’t live in Los Angeles or New York or London, they really have to have a home booth.
It just is the way it is.
Yeah, and I would also add that I have done shorter form voiceover work. And when I was doing a two or three minute commercial and my neighbor was using a chainsaw, I could, you know, quick fit it in when he went in to have a drink of water. But if I’m trying to do an eight hour book, which takes me the better part of a week to finish, and my neighbor’s having a chainsaw party, I got a problem.
Yeah, that makes sense. So we talked about doing work in a production house, like Deon Audio in LA. How does a narrator who’s looking to partner with such a business contact them?
Or what’s the best way to market yourselves to production houses?
Yeah, in regards to production houses and publishers in general, everybody on their web, all the publishers have on their websites exactly how you can become a narrator for them and work for them. Every single publisher operates differently. Sometimes that can be frustrating for actors, narrators to navigate, but it’s really, really clear on every single publisher’s website how to contact them, how to upload your samples, how they work, how they hire.
I’m really clear about how I do it. All they would have to do is email me debradbra.deonaudio.com, and we have a very clear set of instructions on how… People don’t…
There’s kind of a bit of a myth about ACX. People seem to think that they have to have some sort of… A bunch of credits in order to get my attention or the attention of the publishers.
It’s absolutely not true. And sometimes it’s really frustrating because somebody will have… Will work really hard and get 60 credits or something crazy, some big body of work on ACX.
And will do all these kind of royalty share kind of things and do a bunch of free work and thinking that if they do a bunch of free work, that they’re going to somehow build up all these credits and get my attention because they have a lot of credits. I feel sorry for people who are misguided that way because I would have listened to their sample without any credits to their name, and I would have decided whether I like them or not based on their sample. So I don’t know about other people and whether they feel like they need you to have a bunch of credits or not, but I can tell you from my perspective, I do not.
I know what I like. I know within a few seconds of hearing you read, if I want to hire you or not, it’s that simple for me.
Excellent. So sort of going on that question, Debra, do you critique demos for people who might not, who are just asking for feedback, not necessarily wanting to be hired by you?
I’ve never done that, really, because people that are contacting me want me to hire them. So I do critique a lot of people’s demos, but not for the fun of it.
Oh, I see. So everyone’s pretty much… Is this hireable?
Is this bookable?
Yeah, if they’re contacting me, they want a job. And rightly so. We’re the world’s largest producers of audiobooks.
I stopped counting. I had produced 15,000 titles four or five years ago, and I just stopped counting. We do thousands a year.
If they’re calling me, they’re looking for a job, and I don’t blame them. They should be calling me.
So what is sort of the etiquette for contacting a production house or a publisher? I mean, you mentioned that they all have their own idiosyncrasies, but since you are a producer yourself, what do you look for when someone reaches out?
I’m just simply looking for somebody to write me an email that says, Hi, I’m looking for a job, and how do I go about working with you? And we write back very clear instructions on exactly what they need in order to be asked to be part of the roster. And then once they’re asked to be part of the roster, we start looking at them as a possibility of someone who can be hired.
Somebody has to be on the roster in order to get hired, because it’s just too complicated for us otherwise to remember who you are and it’s just better for us. We have five casting people working here, and that’s what they do 40 hours a week. So it’s too hard for us to meet somebody at a party or whatever and to remember who they are.
It makes much more sense for us that if they give us their headshot, their bio, their demo, then once we have a marker for them, a banner, then the relationship part starts. I saw somebody at a mixer or somebody participated in APA speed dating or some other form where I somehow see their face over and over and they become ingrained in my memory and hiring them and for them to be able to stand out. And that’s what Sean had talked about, your brand, and who you know.
Andi had said knowing who you are and how to market yourself and what your brand is, and that’s all true. You have to stand out somehow.
Absolutely. You can approach anybody. You the narrator, be bold.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined. Let’s put it this way.
Think about it from this perspective. Every single one of those publishers and every single one of those independent producers, Deb can tell you, you know, Deb Deyan can tell you that they are always looking for new talent. Always.
They may not have the time based on the, say, the budgets, the timetables, the deadlines that they’re dealing with on a certain project to go find somebody right now, but they are always on the lookout. It is always on their radar. It is always on their radar.
Find the new guy. Find the new woman. And you, basically, you do so by writing a query letter.
Do a Google search. Query letter. I used to write them when I was writing magazine articles all the time, and I had to approach a new publisher.
And I would basically say, this is who I am. This is what I’ve done. You know, attached are some clips of things, you know, attached are some articles I’ve written in the past, or in this case, you know, you’ll see a link here to books that I have narrated already, and those obviously are ones that you’ve done on ACX, or, you know, whomever you start your career with.
And you say, I think I would be a good fit, because, and you point out that, you know, well, Blackstone Audio, they don’t do a whole lot of young adult. They do some, but they do a whole lot of, you know, whatever it is. You point out, you know, I’ve noticed you do a lot of romance.
I’ve noticed you do a lot of erotica. If you’re talking to Random House, you say, I know that Listening Library, I know that your Listening Library imprint does, you know, by far the most young adult books in the industry. And you find these things out by doing the research.
And you basically, you’re showing them when you send an email like that, or a letter if you want to get old school. You’re showing them not only that, with your links, hey, I do what you do. When you show them that you know about their company, and you’ve taken the time to research it, that you know about the industry.
You’re basically saying, I’ve done what you do, I do what you do for a living, and I can help you. Look at all these other people that I’ve already helped. It is in your best interest for me to help you too.
That’s the subtext of your letter. Write a very good query letter, have somebody read it, vet it for you, make sure that your spelling and grammar are perfect, because you know what? This is the publishing industry.
And start submitting. Now, you may not get traction with Simon and Schuster. I’ll tell you, I’ve been doing this for coming up on 18 years now.
The first 15 years of my career, they wouldn’t answer my phone calls. I should say that. They were always very polite, but they were like, Yeah, we’re not looking for anybody right now.
And then finally, I started working with them. Remember, the same thing happened with Harper. I only started working for them less than a year ago.
Remember that every person that you were approaching, every company that you’re approaching, always keep in mind, this is still an audition. And when you do your first, when they give you your first chance, whether it’s one of the voices in the multi-voice recording or a short story in the collection that they’re doing, whatever it is, remember that that first job, you may have booked the job, but you haven’t booked the publisher yet. You haven’t booked the room.
You haven’t booked the casting person. They’re waiting to find out how you execute the chance that they’ve given you. And I always say, keep that in mind with every single new person you’re approaching.
And I think if you go into it with that intent and with that knowledge, things usually go well. They definitely go better.
Fabulous points. Wonderful. Any thoughts on that, Steven?
I think when you’re doing that outreach… I’ve heard people do this, and people have a hard time really celebrating the work that they’ve already done. They tend to minimize.
And so writing that query letter can be a very hard thing. But I want to point out that if you look at any ACX book, not a single one of them claims that ACX is the publisher. ACX is simply the platform, in that case, where you as a narrator have connected with a rights holder, and the book has gotten done.
So you have done zero books for ACX. You’ve done a whole bunch of books for some independent publishers. And so if you’ve done 12 books for eight different rights holders, then describe it that way.
Talk about how you’ve done something for this indie horror label, and for this LGBT label that does mysteries and other things like that. Realize that all ACX did was introduce you to somebody who needed a book to get done. You’ve done zero books for ACX.
You have done books for these independents. And yes, when you talk to people, you’re going to do that with as much confidence. Your portfolio is you, and you want to be hired.
This isn’t about you being a shrinking violet, but this is about you saying, Here’s what I can do, and here’s how what I can do can be a service for you.
Andi and Sean, any advice on approaching publishers specifically?
Sean? Well, it’s a complicated thing. I mean, just as Debra has her philosophy, other publishers are different.
You know, there was, I won’t name names, but at the recent APAC conference, there was a casting director at one of the forums who said, Don’t send me anything. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want emails from people.
I don’t want anything. And you’re like, well, how do you find new talent? You have to be…
Debra’s taking, in my opinion, the correct approach, which is, I come from the theater background. I grew up in the theater. And like it or not, if you’re in casting, for a theater or casting office in general, you’re going to be inundated with talent, trying to reach out and trying to say, Hey, I’m new.
Pay attention to me. I think I could be an asset for you in some way. And so you have to be open.
That’s just… It comes with the territory. It comes with the job description.
So that being said, learning about marketing and advertising, the nuances of that, about putting together a resume, about showing them some of your reviews, about having a very good demo to showcase your talents, learning the nuances of that are tricky. You know, it’s not something I can answer in a… in just a quick response to this question.
It takes finesse, it takes time to learn how to package yourself, your brand, what are you special at, and so on. But all those pieces are out there. You can learn all of that stuff, not only from coaches, but it’s free on YouTube and on the web.
There are videos and articles and things you can actually spend the time to read and learn from that teach you how to craft an image, how to craft a good resume or a good demo, and how to get it in front of the right people.
I have a, like, don’t do this type story that’s not a very long story. I was at a networking event, an industry event, and I was speaking with somebody who hires narrators from a particular publishing company, and we were talking about something I had produced that he listened to that had not anything to do with what he produces, just something he personally likes, and we were talking about some funny parts of the book and blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden, someone came and broke into our conversation, so there’s already, like, lack of sensitivity to the fact that two people are having a conversation, and just started talking about himself and shoving the business card in the guy’s face, and talking about, well, I want to do business books.
I want to do all these business books, and I just wanted to say, do you realize that the person you’re talking to never, ever produces any business books? And if you had done your homework, this would not be a connection you’re trying to make. He’s in a totally other part of the industry, and this is not a good match for you, and you made a really bad first impression because you just interrupted a conversation that we were having.
And that man’s name was Sean Pratt.
It’s like if we were at some kind of… Yeah, I didn’t want to blow his cover. He was having a bad day.
Thanks a lot, Andi.
He’s so considerate.
I wasn’t saying it was you.
He does a lot of business books.
So, I guess if you go to a networking thing, pretend it’s dating, right? And, if you see two people talking, don’t break in and start French kissing that one other person. It’s like, common sense.
They’re having a conversation. Wait your turn. And, who is that person?
Do you need to meet them? The first networking event that I went to, there’s this summertime thing that’s a lot of fun. The first time I went to it, the host of the event sends out the guest list the night before.
And you better believe I was on Audible looking up all these people. What do they record? You know, I was completely stalking people.
And what I found was that there was somebody who narrated a book set in the town where my daughter was born in China. And I was like, oh my gosh, I read that book. I love that book.
So now I can talk to that person about that book. And there’s one person I can talk to tomorrow.
So the theme is it’s not different than marketing yourselves in any other business.
Right. Do your homework. Be savvy.
Yeah.
And I love that you had such a proactive approach to it. Because yeah, I mean, with any new business endeavor, there’s a level of unconscious incompetence where you don’t know what you don’t know. But there really is so much research and sort of building of a skill set behind the scenes that you can do before you make a fool of yourself like that.
So what I’m curious about is because some of you either work with students or hire narrators or do both, what kind of skills or mindsets do you look for in a narrator or a student?
What I’m looking for is temperament. I always interview my… When someone reaches out to me, I have them fill out a questionnaire and I review it first.
And if I see… I’m looking for a background, preferably with some level of performance, because, like it or not, performers just do better as narrators where they have an acting background of some kind. There’s a general statement.
But I like to… I always interview my potential students. I want to get a feel for them.
I also tell them what to expect when they work with me. I’m a strategic coach. I’m not a tactical coach.
A tactical coach… You can learn a lot from a good tactical coach. Someone like Johnny Heller is an excellent tactical coach.
Scott Brick is too. Isn’t that right, Scott?
Sean Pratt, you are a master of the transition. I tell you what I do. What I look for when I’m…
When I’m basically auditioning talent, trying to figure out, you know, who would be a good fit. I don’t do a ton of it, but what I do, I want to make sure that, you know, obviously it’s the right voice for the authorial voice. Does it match?
And… is when I listen to somebody’s stuff, I listen to several samples, and I make sure that their style changes with each author. Because every author has a unique authorial voice, and we, you know, we shift what we do to match it.
You know, my version of… of The Red Badge of Courage shouldn’t sound like the Nelson Demille books that I do, right? They’re both fiction, but they are by no means the same kind of fiction.
So, you know, the Vampire Detective series that I did for Blackstown, the Charlie Houston books, they don’t sound like any other books that I did. So, I basically look for… and I can see it in…
when I’m working with a student in the studio, in the classroom, and I can hear it when I listen to samples. I know when a narrator is connected, when the narrator that, you know, the person I’m working with or listening to has connected to the text, because you know what? It is axiomatic.
When we connect to the text, the listener does. It’s 10 times out of 10, 100 out of 100. And that’s the moment where you reach them and where it becomes personal for us.
And I always listen for that. Is the sample that they’ve sent me, does it show that? I think we need to pay attention to that when we’re clicking.
I think we need to pay attention to that when we’re choosing the samples that we put up for streaming on our website. That it’s a section of the book that really choked us up, or that we really connected to and were able to make it funnier, because, oh God, this has happened to me. Because it’s those moments that make people go, oh wow.
And the very first time this ever happened was with Alex Hyde-White. I knew I wanted to work with him, because in class one day, he read an exchange in a book about Truman Capote. And there was somebody in his life, I want to say that he called Big Mama.
And Big Mama said, I love you, Truman. He says, no, you don’t. Big Mama said, no, Truman, I absolutely love you.
And he said, no, you don’t, you can’t. She says, what do you mean, I can’t? And he says, because nobody can love me.
And he did it, and he was so… God, he just connected to it. I don’t know how to…
and I don’t want to imitate it. But I went, oh my God. And I gasped when I listened to it.
Because that was the moment. And I knew that when he said that, he was remembering a time in his life when he felt like that. Because I’m telling you, everybody who hears that line remembers a time in their life when they felt unable to be loved, unworthy of love.
And I went, that’s the moment. He connected? Great.
I want to connect with him. I want to work with him.
And Steven?
In my case, when I’ve had people coming to me, I’ve had more success casting people whose work I’m more familiar with than just their demo sample. And sometimes, it may be that I have only heard the demo sample, but then I’ve actually had enough interactions with the person that I have a sense of who they are. Because sometimes you can have a really wonderful demo, but sometimes that person has a hard time delivering on a regular basis what they delivered that one day in the studio with the director right there with them.
A good example of a wonderful match that works in this way is not a case where I was casting a project that came to me, but I had listened to Johnny Heller’s The Education of Littletree, which, done with Crossroad Press, it was beautifully done. It was just so amazing. And the next day after that was done and it was reflecting upon how that story went, I just kept saying to myself, he would do a wonderful Huckleberry Finn.
And so the next time I was in a place where I could mention that, I reached out to him and I said it and he thanked me for it. And about nine months later, he said, I really want to do that Huckleberry Finn. So we made it happen.
And so what will happen for me is it’s either in direct interactions with people or it’s the fact that I’m an avid listener of audiobooks myself. And so I’ve had authors contact me to help get their stuff done and I start running through people in my head who I’ve listened to who feel like they would fit the project. So in a lot of ways, I’m doing that work the same way Scott is because the memory of those feelings is like, ooh, I’ve really got to call Sarah Moller-Christensen.
I really have to call Tim Campbell. So it’s when you hear about the project and the passion of the project from the rights holder’s point of view, sometimes that right fit of a narrator will just come back up because of the direct experience of having experienced their performance.
Yeah. And so the idea is that a tactical coach deals with what they have right in front of them. You’re doing the read.
They say, do this, try this, try this, do a different thing. And that’s not how I work. I work as a strategic coach.
My stuff is about here’s the concept, here it ties it to the material. Now go away and you have to teach it to yourself. I walk you through that and answer questions and give them examples, but I come from the school of thought that you only really learn something when you have to suffer through it on your own, as it were.
And so when I talk with them, I’m giving them a heads up about what to expect when they’re going to work with me, and I can tell immediately whether or not they’re going to be receptible to that. The other thing I’m looking for is a certain level of temperament, a realistic outlook about what they could be doing, how long it’s going to take. I get this question a lot.
Well, if I work really hard, do you think I’ll be making X amount of dollars in a year? And my response is always the same, which is this is show business. There is nothing that is certain.
And if you actually encounter somebody who tells you a dollar figure, then you should put your wallet in your pocket and get the heck out of there because they’re about to scam you. You can work six months and make a fair amount of money or work six years and just limp along. There is no structure.
And I want to make sure they know that going in. I want to align their preconceptions with reality and also introduce them to the way I teach. And then, I guess lastly, it’s just a matter of temperament.
Do I feel like they have the temperament not only to work with me, but to hang in there and do this? I keep coming back to that word, but I’ve just been in show business a long time. Talent is not the ultimate arbiter of your success.
It really is about that tenacity, that temperament. Can you hang in there? Can you stay focused on it?
I’ve had a lot of friends who were very talented who left the business. They just couldn’t handle this other part of the… the other demands of temperament and tenacity.
Jumping off from that, I think, Sean, I would probably be more of the tactical type of coach. Most of who I work with are people who are already working narrators who have run up against a problem. For example, women wanting to strengthen their menu of male voices that they do or people feeling like they’re in a rut or they’re maybe exploring a genre that they think I’m familiar with, like romance, for example, and they want some coaching in that genre.
But this week, looking at these possible new students, I was looking at much the same thing, for sure, and I had them make me an MP3 that was just two minutes. The first minute was, tell me about yourself, and the second minute is, read me something. So I wanted to hear if there was a difference between their connectedness telling me about themselves and was there a disconnect when they started reading, because ideally, I want to feel like they’re telling me a story, not that they’re holding me at arm’s length and lecturing to me.
So I was listening for those kinds of things. But usually when I coach, I start my session with working narrators by saying, you tell me what we’re going to work on today.
And that’s fundamentally different from what I do. I have a curriculum. Every time we meet, it’s a new idea, there’s a structure, and also as we move through the stuff, I go back and say, well, are you working with this concept now?
Are you working with this one? And there’s a great deal of value in both kinds of coaches. But Andi put her finger on it.
If you’re going to work with a tactical coach, you need to be a savvy enough student to know what you need to work on. You can’t expect Andi to know your weak points. That takes time, a long time to figure that out, back and forth.
So if you’re going to work with someone who has the skill that Andi or Scott or Johnny has, or PJ as well, if you’re going to come in and work on accents with PJ, you should find out which ones, where is your weak point, and know that’s what you want to work on and focus on. Because there’s only so much you can pack into a 60-minute session.
So awareness of self is certainly a useful skill to have in that situation. So Debra, you’re much more in the hiring professional narrators rather than working with students. What kind of skills do you look for in the narrators you work with?
I’m really looking for an acting background. I really, really love hiring theater actors. You know, I’m looking for people to give me a sample of what they love to do.
Because I think, you know, what Sean was saying is, you know, people either stay in this business or they don’t. They either have it for the long haul or they don’t. And I find that people have to love this thing in order to stay in it for the long haul.
And I can tell you that my husband, Bob, who’s now gone, that he and I love this with every breath. You know, we jumped out of bed every day and, you know, love this thing. And we were just, you know, poured to the bone for almost two decades out of sheer love and out of knowing that it was going to be big someday.
We just knew it. We just knew it. I think that that’s something that I’m looking for.
And when I hear somebody greeting, I just hear it. I hear the love in it. I hear the theater background.
I hear something more than just the talent when listening.
So let’s flip the table a little bit. When someone is looking for a coach, what are the qualities they should seek when they’re shopping to maybe be their first coach? Or like Andi said, if they’re looking for some sort of hurdle to overcome as an established narrator, what are the qualities in a good coach?
I was looking on a platform where you can look up any subject and take a course about it, and I wondered if that platform had audiobook lessons. And so I entered audiobooks, and indeed somebody had put up a course, and I looked her up on Audible, and she has two books. So, you know, I wouldn’t want to learn from somebody who has barely done the thing I’m trying to learn how to do.
So I would look up their professional reputation. I would look up what other people have to say about working with them as a coach. I would see if they offer a group workshop-type classes, which tend to be less expensive because the cost is spread out over, you know, 10 to 20 people instead of you working one-on-one, and try them in a group environment.
And then maybe if you feel like you would work well with them one-on-one, approach them about the one-on-one coaching. But prepare to settle in for regular coaching. It’s definitely not the kind of thing where you just, like, it’s been an hour and you’re like, yes, I’m ready to do all the books.
I couldn’t have said it better, Andi. Absolutely.
Well, I would just… There’s one thing I would say is that in general, Andi put her finger right on it. But that being said, learning to be a coach is a different skill than learning to be doing what we do.
There’s a… When I decided that I wanted to coach, I’d been doing workshops, and they were a lot of fun. I had a great time doing them.
But I’d done workshops, like I said, on general show business topics for 20 years. And I felt like I needed to learn how to be a coach, especially because the kind of coaching I wanted to do. So I talked with friends who were coaches in different, you know, other walks of life, who coach people on different kinds of things, and got ideas from them.
I read books. I practiced and built slowly over time my own skill, because especially with audiobooks, it’s mainly a self-taught experience. And so if you master the craft, whether it’s audiobooks or woodworking or gardening or whatever, that’s one thing.
Learning to teach it is a totally different skill set. You have to learn to go, all right, what is this thing I’m doing intuitively? Let me isolate it.
Let me describe it. Let me give a name to it. Let me create an exercise to show a student how to use it.
And then how do I respond to what they do and teach them in the moment? There’s a number of steps involved. And so I’ve seen some narrators, or I’ve been in the room with some narrators, who have a great deal of experience as narrators, but they didn’t come off as very good coaches.
They weren’t very articulate. And it’s that old Einstein quote about, if you can’t explain a complex idea simply enough, then you don’t understand it well enough yourself. And I’ve seen on occasion someone who has years of experience, they need to go and learn how to be a good teacher.
So there’s… I think… So getting back to the bigger question, ask around.
That’s what private messaging is for on Facebook. Ask other people or start a thread. Say, hey, I’m interested in working with such and such a coach.
If you have thoughts or opinions, please contact me privately and let’s talk about it. I encourage my students when they contact me. I give them a list of former students and I say, do your due diligence.
Don’t just take their word or a couple people’s words for it. Go find out some from other people. In fact, I…
At the end of my meeting with my prospective students, I don’t allow them to say yes or no. I say, go away and take 24 hours and think about this. There’s no special two-for-one sale here.
There’s no you get a pony. I’ve laid out what it’s like to work with me. Go think it over and then if you’re interested, then send me an email.
And also that’s a nice sort of, I think, a graceful way for them to really think it over. And if they realize it’s not for them, because I don’t take brand new students. I mean, people, they have to have several books under their belt because, in my opinion, narrating non-fiction well is just more difficult than fiction.
And if you don’t have any experience at all as a narrator, the stuff that I teach is going to leave you just running in circles. So I want to give them a graceful way to acquiesce and say, you know, I don’t think this is right for me right now. So those are some things to think about too.
Excellent responses. We hear some of the same themes over and over again. You need a very specific temperament of tenacity and perseverance to really…
or just passion for audiobooks. It’s not a quick, rich scheme by any means. And you might be shooting yourself in the foot if you’re not fully invested in it.
So with that, I just wanted to thank our wonderful panelists for coming today and give you the opportunity to say goodbye, promote your services, maybe even provide contact information for people who might want to get a hold of you.
Sure. You can find me online at seanprattpresents.com or send me an email directly at SeanPratt at comcast.net. You can follow me on Facebook at SeanPrattPresents or on Twitter at SP Presents.
I’m always available to be contacted through any of those platforms.
I’m Debra Deyan, owner and producer at Deyan Audio Services. That’s spelled B-E-Y-A-N, audio. You can send me an email at Debra, D-E-B-R-A, at D-E-Y-A-N audio.com.
I’d love to have you on my roster if you’re ready. And we certainly have some great classes and coach available to you through the Deyan Institute. You can follow us on Facebook, Deyan Audio.
You can send me a personal friend request on Facebook. I’m under Debra Deyan, D-E-Y-A-N.
You can find me on the web at andiarrndt.com and there’s a contact form right there on my website to send me a message. My narrator page is on Facebook at Andi Arndt narrator and my Twitter is at Andi underscore aren’t. So I’m happy to hear from people with questions or help in any way that I can.
Very kind of you to ask. My website, you can go to scottbrick.net or brickbybrickaudiobooks.com or scottbrickpresents.com. They all go to the same place.
You can reach me through my website. You can, you know, if it’s teaching related, shoot me an email at scottbrickteachers.gmail.com. And yeah, connect with me on online and social media as well.
And finally, Steven.
And you can find me at stevenjaycohen.com. You can also find the newly reorganized business at spokenrealms.com and.net. If you go to both sites, you’ll see some slightly different points of view on what’s there.
You can find me on most social media with my full name spelled out, steven with a V, jaycohen.com. That counts for Facebook, Twitter, and almost anything else you can imagine. If I’m on it, usually that’s the handle that’s there.
I love that name, by the way. Spoken Realms. It’s fantastic.
Well, thanks again, everyone. Like I said at the beginning, we were so excited to have this discussion, and you guys did not disappoint. We thank you all for your time and your wonderful services.
Thank you.
Oh, thanks so much.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
So that was some fabulous discussion. We want to thank all of our guests once again. We can’t thank them enough for being with us and donating their time.
So our audience can be more clued in about the world of audiobooks.
So I don’t know about you, Paul, but I mean, this really got me more motivated to more actively pursue my own audiobook work. And so some of our listeners might be wondering ways that they can get involved too. So we have a number of events coming up, some as soon as next month.
So a lot of our narrators or members on the panel today are a big fan of fellow narrator named Johnny Heller. And he’s got a retreat, an audiobook retreat coming up in October 13th. So that’s actually going to be in Rhode Island.
And you can… I’m not sure if registration is still open for it right now, but this is an annual event that you should really look into because it gives you a very… It’s not so much like a very large conference atmosphere.
Like you’re actually at a sort of resort retreat with maybe less than 50 people who you can really network with and get to know better and improve. And it’s just a wonderful opportunity to kind of improve all aspects of your audiobook and voiceover career.
Steven did say it was called the New England Narrators Retreat.
Yeah, it has a couple of different ones. There’s also Johnny Heller’s Splendiferous Relaxathon. It’s kind of an inside joke among the narrators.
But usually it’s called Johnny Heller’s New England Narrator Retreat. So you can find out more information about that event at Johnny Heller’s website. That’s johnnyheller.com.
johnnyhelleralloneword.com. And definitely check that out. I had the pleasure of meeting him at VO Atlanta last year, and he’s an incredible character as well as narrator.
Well, the other big event that most narrators would want to mark down their calendars is APAC, and that’s the Audio Publishers Association Conference. And that is on May 31st, 2018 in New York City, the location to be determined. But that is part of the Audio Publishers Association, which is an organization I highly recommend everybody join if they’re serious about doing audiobooks.
There are special events that only members can get into at APAC. So definitely look into that. If you want to join the APA or, like I said, Audio Publishers Association, it is at audiopub.org.
Definitely check that out. I think all of our panelists are members of that association.
And certainly advocates of it.
Yeah, exactly.
And you don’t have to be a member to go to APAC. So if that’s something you’re worried about, you don’t have to be. But like Paul was saying, you do get some extra perks for being a member.
And you even get some discounts for the registration of the event itself. So definitely look into that if you’re really serious about pursuing audiobook work full time.
So that pretty much wraps up this edition of the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We want to thank all of our guests for the Audiobook Roundtable. Scott Brick, Steven Jay Cohen, Debra Deyan and Andi Arndt, and the irascible Sean Allen Pratt.
So thanks again to our wonderful panelists today. We learned so much, and I feel so invigorated, and I’m going to start narrating some chapters right now. So on behalf of our guests, Paul and myself, I hope you all have a wonderful day, guys.
Bye, everybody.
Thanks for listening to the VO Meter. Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vomete

Hello, everybody, welcome to a very special edition of The VO Meter Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. I am here with a very special announcement from Everett Oliver at myboothdirector.com. Everett, how are you today?
I’m well.
I am excited to be on your show, so thank you so much for inviting me. Last minute, but this is going to be fun.
This is gonna be great. So for those of you who don’t know, Everett is a legendary booth director that has recently, or maybe not so recently, you tell me, has branched out to have his own consulting business called myboothdirector.com, where you can dial him up and have him direct you as if he were standing right outside your booth for an audition. It’s fantastic.
I’ve used it several times. And I’ll let Everett tell you a little bit more about it and why you should contact him.
Yeah, well, I’ve been booth director for about five years at one of the local talent agencies here in LA. And I have really good connections with actors once I really get to know them. I love to pull performances out of them and help them really, really book those jobs that they feel like, oh, I’m not sure, or they need a little bit of oomph or help just for me to listen and say, okay, you might be missing a little bit of energy.
So I thought, why not me create this, everybody needs some sort of direction when it comes to auditioning for your auditions. So I basically direct you from where I am. I ask that the actors send me a copy of the audition and send me their first pass.
So at least I know where they’re going. And I set it up while I’m on Skype or use Zoom. And then I just really, really connect with you as a performer and get the best performance out of you.
Sometimes I have the actors send me the audition so I can hear it on my end, just so that I can either close the gap here or there or turn up the levels just a little bit louder. Very little, small little glitch, just so that I can edit everything for when I hear it on my end. Because I like for you as the performer to keep everything rolling.
So that way, in my head, I say, okay, send me everything. I can make the cuts really for you and I’ll send you back the final product. So that’s what I do.
Awesome. Talk to me a little bit about your style, because I’ll be honest with you, I was first introduced to you on an interview you did with Chuck and Stacey on VO Buzz Weekly. And to be honest, you kind of terrified me, because everyone was saying how brutally honest you are.
There’s no holds barred. And I think at one point you even said, you’re not happy unless the performer walks away crying.
Well, no, it’s more or less, I travel a lot through the different markets in different regions. And so the style that I have really developed for myself is that I love to know the performer. I need to know whether or not maybe you’re schooling.
I need to know a little bit about maybe your family. You know, little stuff about your family. Not much, you know, your in-laws, who you connect with, who you might have a conflict with.
I’m more or less a person to tap into you. So once I tap into you and I know you, then I can go ahead and pull a performance. My traveling, I can go ahead and sense, oh, which regions is right for you as the performer.
So when I’m going ahead and I’m directing, I’m listening, A, for your acting. I’m listening for, are you that actual character? That or, you know, are you selling that product really well?
Are you very conversational? And that’s how I direct. And then I go into your regions and I go, you might not be right for the region that you are auditioning for.
And I am brutally honest and I really tell the actors, why waste your time? That I know that I live in a number one market, I’m from a number one market, and you’re auditioning on two of the number one markets and you’re just not gonna make the cut. Because I’ve seen and I’ve heard, oh, I’ve worked with tons of actors on both coasts and I can tell and I’m like, mm, you might over enunciate too much.
You might not be right for the California market. You might be right for the New York market because everyone on a certain coast speaks a certain way and I’ve picked that up in my travels. So yeah, so I am really brutally honest, you know, and I tell it like it is.
And I think actors should know. And I’m not mean.
You can say that. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this because I think sometimes that is the impression that comes off when you’re in an interview. When you were on VOBS, it was a similar thing.
I’d already worked with you at that point, so it wasn’t the same. But I gotta tell you, I would have never called you if I hadn’t talked to you or seen you on another interview after that VO Buzz Weekly. But I’m here to tell all of our listeners and viewers that Everett is a sweetheart.
Absolutely, absolutely best at what he does, but will also help you along the way. So even though he’s brutally honest, and you probably should want that as a performer, you don’t wanna waste your time like you were saying. Everett is great to work with and I can’t recommend him enough.
So tell us a little bit about the event you have coming up in DC.
Okay, so I’m gonna be in DC October 14th at, I wanna say Clean Cuts. I’m gonna be teaching an animation workshop. We’re gonna have fun.
I’m gonna give tons and tons of copy. I’m gonna go around, a little bit around the room and I wanna hear people talk. I wanna know a little bit about them.
That’s like my style. So once I get a little bit, know a little bit about them. I’m gonna give them tons of information about the voiceover industry.
It doesn’t matter what levels that you are, beginner, medium, intermediate. You need to know stuff about your markets. You need to know about the agency, how to get agents from different markets.
You just need to know as a performer, the business side of the business, which actors sometimes just forgets about. And then also, I’m just gonna just give you a copy. I’m gonna pull performances out of you.
So it’s gonna be fun. I’m gonna have a lot of energy. I’m gonna be bouncing up and down like I normally do.
I’m looking forward to it. DC is a new market for me, so I haven’t really been to DC since I was about maybe 15. So it’s gonna be a little fun.
Friday night, I’m gonna be at the Tenley Bar and Grill. Is it Bar and Grill? So it’s a meet and greet.
So just come out, you know, tang, get to know me a little bit. I want to get to know you a little bit, just to loosen up the mood a little bit before we actually work one Saturday. So, but it should be fun.
I’m totally looking forward to it. You know, hopefully it won’t be cold. I’m not interested in cold weather.
We’ll see that.
We’re actually in the middle of a heat wave right now. I’m, you know, I’m just outside DC and Baltimore. So it’s going to be 90 degrees most of this week.
Hopefully it’ll cool down a little bit actually by the time you’re here. We’ll see.
Absolutely. Yeah, because we’re not dealing with 80, 90 degrees here in California. So no.
So all of my friends and listeners who are tuning in right now, please come on October 13th to the Tanley Bar, October 14th to Clean Cuts. Get some great work done with Everett and find out what a nice guy he is. Honestly.
And they can register. Right. And you can register on myboothdirector.com or you can email me as well at Everett A.
Oliver at gmail.com. And any information or questions that you have, may have about the session or whether I’d be willing to definitely, you know, email you back. But like I said, it’s going to be lots of fun and lots of information.
And usually people will come out of my workshop, they come out very, very satisfied. It’s very helpful. And they’re able to take their career to the next level.
Big smiles too. I’ve seen your picture from the event in Toronto. Everyone’s smiling ear to ear.
Yes. And yeah, and my clients who have worked with me, they have said, oh my God, if I didn’t book them on one project, they’ve used the stuff that I’ve taught them to something else and they’ve booked. So, and that’s the key issue.
I know that everyone constantly, constantly wants the books, but I want you to learn and raise your bar. I’m going to make you raise your bar and I’m going to stretch you. So if your range is here, I’m going to bring your range down here so that you know you can do those type of characters that you think in your mind that you can’t do.
Well, we’re looking forward to it. Thanks again for being here on the VO Meter and we’ll see you on the 13th, Everett.
See you soon.

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hi everybody, and welcome to Episode 14 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
I’m Sean Daeley.
And I’m Paul Stefano.
We have an exciting episode planned for you guys today. I know Paul went to his first anime convention, that’s pretty cool. But before we get to that, current events.
So Paul, what have you been up to?
Well, let’s see. I’ve been doing some e-learning with the large e-learning company I signed up with a few months ago. I was actually picked up in Voice Over Extra, my blog post that I did about it, where I was talking about how July was a really successful month for me.
There was some Facebook chatter amongst some pros that July was their worst month ever. And I chimed in on my blog saying, you know, I think it might have been my best ever because I have these two projects from the eLearning company and then a third that is pending. And they were both completed and I wrote a little blog about it.
And thankfully, or I’m thankful to John Florian for picking it up and once again featuring me on Voice Over Extra, so that was fun. And I’m in the middle of recording four audiobooks for myself in various stages of completion. One’s in the can, one was released today.
Another one is being edited by one of my editors right now. And I’m recording a local author as well in my studio. I think I mentioned I did that once before, but we’re doing it again.
So how did you advertise your studio? How did authors know to find you?
Well, it’s all word of mouth. The first one was a friend of a mom whose kid I coached in soccer. She told me about this book and it was really successful in paperback.
So I reached out to the author and said, do you want me to do your book? She said no, but I want to do it. And I brought her in and re-recorded it and it’s been doing pretty well so far.
And then this next one is actually my pastor at my church. He and his associate wrote a very successful book. It was in the top selling list for religious books on Amazon.
And I asked them same thing, do you want me to do their book? They also said no, but also because they wanted to do it. And my pastor is a really dynamic speaker.
So I’m actually glad he’s doing it because we’re about halfway through it now. And he’s fantastic. He came out of the booth one day and I was like giddy, like a little child.
And I said, I knew you would be good at this. I’m so proud of you. So I just basically did all through word of mouth.
That’s awesome. That’s very cool.
So that’ll be out in the next couple of weeks. I think we’ll probably finish at the end of August and hopefully have it released before the end of September. And then I just finished my rebranding with help from our coach, Sean Pratt, and launched an entirely new website, put it out yesterday, and the response has been fantastic.
Yeah, it looks great.
So if you haven’t had a chance to check it out, please go to www.paulstefano.com and let me know what you think. What’s going on with you, Sean?
Well, it’s that time of month again. I’m gathering…
That time of month…
Where I’m super, super moody and I can’t get any work done, but I met for my regular e-learning clients, duh. Oh, of course. What do you think I met?
Every second or third week of the month, I’ll get the scripts in. I go over them, make sure there are no errors, and then I send it out to three or five different narrators from… First, it used to be all over the US, because Paul, you’ve done it for me before, and kind of same thing with Word of Mouth.
I’m like, hey, my friend Sean is looking for more voiceover actors, and so I grew my roster that way. And then we got a request for more international voices, because he wants to try people who… He wants to challenge our listeners with accents that are technically English, but might be more difficult to understand, like say New Zealand or South African or Scottish.
I’m seeing a lot of demand for South African recently. I don’t know what that is. Are you seeing that too?
A little bit, yeah. I don’t know where… It’s a well-kept secret, I guess, because I see all the requests, but none of the actors.
Yeah, exactly.
So there you go. But yeah, so I’ve been working on that. I’m working on my first official audio book for Learning Ally.
So…
Oh, cool.
Yeah, so it’s actually The Giver by Lois Lowry. I mean, a lot of people in my generation might have read that when they were in high school, as recommended rating and stuff like that. And I know I got made into a movie with Jeff Bridges a couple of years ago.
So excited about that. I actually visited my aunt and their family for my cousin’s wedding last weekend in Montana. And she’s a teacher and a principal and spent decades in the education system.
And she is just so giddy. And she’s like, my nephews are narrating The Giver. It’s so happy.
I’m so proud.
That’s awesome.
So I told her I’d get her a free copy when I’m finished. But so that’s all I’m working on right now. Actually, we just got a really cool elevation Q&A webinar for the Global Voice Acting Academy with David Rosenthal.
So every month we have these two Q&A sessions where you can kind of pick the brains of Christina Melizia and David Rosenthal who are just very, very talented voice actors who have with decades of industry experience between the two of them. And we had a big turnout for this webinar because there was a bit of an upset this week when we were recording the podcast because a certain pay-to-play site aggressively bought a certain voice agent network. We don’t want to talk about it too much in this episode because it would completely ruin the focus and has nothing to do with conventions.
So we’re just going to leave it right there. But there’s plenty of resources online that you can learn and figure out what the debacle we’re talking about is. But anyways, so yeah, speaking of conventions, tell us about your experience, Paul, because I know this is kind of like your first one at this kind of con, right?
Yeah, so first of all, I don’t know if we mentioned yet, it was Otakon, which is a Japanese anime-focused convention in Washington, DC. I was a little bummed because up until this year, it was in Baltimore, and somehow the local tourism board lost it, and they’re now in DC for the foreseeable future, but this was the first year in DC. So it’s still not too far away.
It still takes me about an hour to get down there with a drive or maybe an hour and a half on the train. But I went down there, and we actually had a co-host on site, friend of the show, Chris Dattoli from New Jersey. He came down and was doing a panel discussion on voice acting for the convention, and then in his spare time, he helped us by doing some interviews and then some co-hosting.
So it was a lot of fun. There was a lot to see. As far as the convention itself, it was kind of mind-blowing for me, really, because like you said, I had never really been to a quote unquote con before, and just walking in the door, the moment I saw 5,000 people dressed in costumes, you know, all the cosplayers, it just was completely overwhelming.
So I spent the first maybe hour just wandering around all the rooms by myself to see what was there.
Just like slack-jawed?
Pretty much, yeah. And I am not a cosplayer because honestly, I barely even knew what that was before this week. Although I do like to dress up.
And you could say that maybe I was a cosplayer 20 years ago. I think, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I was actually the mascot for my university. So…
Oh yeah, you did tell me that before.
I dressed up in a furry tiger suit and got in front of tens of thousands of people. So in some ways, I’m like an old school cosplayer.
You did it before, it was cool. Oh man, I know a bunch of anime fans are just groaning at that one, Paul.
Ha ha ha.
Interesting note though, cos I realised it’s called Otakon. So the Japanese word otaku actually is essentially nerd or geek, or someone who obsesses over one kind of nerdy geeky thing.
Oh really, okay.
Yeah, yeah. So that’s probably where…
So it’s geeked on.
Essentially, yeah. Sometimes it’s used in a pejorative way, but I feel like nowadays, and especially for non-Japanese people, they kind of use it as a term of endearment. But I just thought that was interesting.
Yeah, so we had some great guests that were actually on the show, and some that we didn’t get a chance to talk to. We did talk to Man at Arms Reforged, which is a web show that they build weapons based on video games and anime shows, and they actually create the real weapons. They’re based here in Baltimore as well, which is kind of cool.
They work for a company called Baltimore Knife and Sword in their spare time, and then they do Man at Arms Reforged. So we may have some fans that have seen that. Have you, are you familiar with that show?
I fricking love that show. So I went, actually, like, think about me. I haven’t done it in a while, but I have a sword collection, actually, of like, this was especially when Lord of the Rings films were coming out, and so I got a bunch of those.
And I just loved reading fantasy books when I was a kid. I remember going to like Germany when I was 18, and we went to a castle, and in the gift shop, they had like a functional mace, and I was like, I don’t need any other souvenirs. I’m just gonna get that.
Yeah, I was a huge fan of the Man at Arms show. Back when it, before it was reforged, it was a different guy based out of California, I think.
Yeah, exactly.
And then they only did one season, and then they moved to the Baltimore one. And these guys are great, though. I mean, they do all their own voice overs, which I’m sure you talked to them about, and they use a lot more modern machinery and engineering techniques to sort of craft these weapons.
But it’s still really awesome to watch.
Yeah, they were awesome. And we did talk about the voice overs, and because they’re local, I offered to help, gave them a business card, little two-for-one deal. So you’ll hear that in the interview.
Some good stuff there. And then we talked to Vic Mignana, who was an anime voice actor. So the focus basically, at least in my mind, was to go there and talk to the voice actors and see how they got into it and what they were getting out of the anime side of things.
Man at Arms was kind of a bonus because I didn’t actually ask to interview them. So you have to put in a proposal and they tell you who you’re granted access with. And Man at Arms was sort of a last-minute thing where they said, we have some openings for Man at Arms who wants to talk to them.
And Chris particularly was like, yes, we want to talk to them definitely. And it turned out great because they were awesome guys.
Yeah, yeah, I would be stoked about that. And I never, that’s the funny thing about cons is sometimes you never expect who the guests are gonna be because they’re kind of like obscure or like you just don’t know what the draw is gonna be. But I’m so happy you guys are able to do that.
Yeah, so then, like I mentioned, we talked to Vic Mignana, we talked to Jamie McGonigal, we talked to Stephanie Shay and Chris Neosi. And they’re all voice actors. You may know them from some of their anime shows.
And then a lot of them are doing more, I don’t know if I should say more traditional because it just seems that way to me, but…
Western animation.
Yeah, they do some Western animation commercials as well. And then, let’s see, there’s some audio that we have coming up with a panel discussion on voice directing, voice acting directing, and some people that do directing for anime. We heard from Tony Oliver, Lex Lang, and Michael Sinternicholas.
And those guys were all great. I actually got up to ask a question, and so did Chris. So we hear that audio where we played that back.
And then there was a panel that I went to by myself. Chris was, I think, setting up for his own panel with Toshio Furukawa. Oh, I forget the other lady’s name.
I have to look it up.
So these were actually Japanese voice actors? Some of the latter ones?
Yeah. I thought you might know this guy.
Well, in case some of our listeners aren’t familiar with some of the earlier names, Vic Mignona is probably most popular for playing Edward Elric in Full Metal Alchemist. And he tends to play a lot of short blonde teenage superheroes. And then Stephanie Shay, I think I knew her from a show called Bleach, which is basically like Dragon Ball with swords.
But anyways, she played one of the female protagonists, Orihime. And then you’ve got Lex Lang, who’s a voice director and producer, does a lot of impressions and ADR looping work. And then some of the other ones I wasn’t familiar with.
You were mentioning Jamie McGonigal and Tony Oliver.
Yeah, they’re both pretty famous. Jamie and Tony both have done a ton of characters, even some more traditional cartoons that have been on. Jamie was like five different characters in the Pokemon series, so that was cool.
And then that panel that he was on with Michael Sinternicholas, he was Leonardo in one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, so…
Yeah, he actually plays Dean Venture on the Venture Brothers, if you’ve never watched that. Sort of like a dark interpretation of Johnny Quest.
Okay, cool. So I didn’t get a chance to sit down with him in person, mostly because I didn’t know who he was and I didn’t ask about it. But maybe we’ll have him on the show sometime.
I’ve actually reached out to him. We’ll see if he responds.
Cool.
Maybe he’ll remember me for my panel question, because he was really helpful there.
Excellent.
And the final two I wanted to mention were Toshio Furukawa and Shino Kakinuma. They are both actually living and working Japanese voice actors and actresses. And they are married, which I didn’t know.
So during the panel discussion, there’s some funny stuff with those two, although they don’t speak English, at least not enough to be conversational. So they had an interpreter. Oh, okay.
That was interesting, where the fans would ask the panel questions, the interpreter would send it back and forth, and then spit it back out to us. So you’ll hear some audio from that too. But Toshio, or Furukawa-san, as they were calling him, I guess his most famous role is Piccolo from Dragon Ball.
Is that right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that’s one of his most famous roles you might know him from.
But all in all, it was really cool. We got some absolute gold from some of the guests as far as how to be a voice actor. And the theme that you’ll hear is that it really is about acting.
We didn’t prompt these people, and you’ll hear that every one of the people we interviewed brings it back to being an actor, taking acting classes, continuing to take acting classes. Over and over again was a theme. And it was good to have that backed up.
That knowledge to be reinforced, because we hear that from our coaches all the time. And it’s good to hear that from working pros that really is the key.
Wonderful. Well, I’m glad you got to experience that. Cause I know, like, I’m a big comic book geek.
So it’s kind of, like, it’s almost tradition to go to that every year. And as you mentioned before, it can be a great networking and or marketing opportunity for aspiring voice actors.
Yeah, so we’ll have to get you East side, East Coast side next year. So we can both go.
Next one, next one.
Maybe we’ll even be panelists ourselves.
You gonna buy my plane ticket?
Maybe, I don’t know, we’ll see. Or maybe I’ll come out to Seattle.
Yeah, that brings up a good point, because there was like a voice actors panel, very much like the one that Chris hosted, but it was actually some local Seattle voice actors. But I was kind of, like certain things were a little cringe worthy, because like, yeah, they’re actors at the top of their game and stuff, but they were a little disconnected because they got started like 20 years ago. So like they’re recommending like, well, this great blue snowball mic, it was just like, we can do auditions with that all day long.
I’m like, no. Well, it’s just a different perspective, you know? And that’s, I’m like, yes, once you’ve built a relationship with your agent, they will care less about your audio quality.
But when you’re getting started, you need all the help you can get to set yourself apart.
Or maybe it just doesn’t matter. George and Dan on VOBS are fond of saying, it’s not the microphone, it’s the acting, or is the acting stupid? And that was backed up at Otakon also when we talked to Jamie and Chris Neosi, Chris Neosi, Jamie McGonigal.
Chris Neosi literally did not know what microphone he uses in his studio. He said, if one of his friends set it up, he has no idea what it is. And Jamie, similar thing, he said he had a Sennheiser, and he didn’t have any idea which one it was.
And I said, is it a 416? He said, I don’t know. And I said, is it tiny like a shotgun?
And he said, I think so. But these two are at the top of their game, at least in anime, and it doesn’t matter what mic they use to them.
We should just end the podcast now. We’re doomed.
I know, really.
So that’s actually a great point. And I think it’s a hilarious time to bring up our questionable gear purchase.
So Sean, what did you purchase since our last episode?
Well, I’ve been trying to be good and avoiding any major three digit purchases and above. So I was just kind of, I was picking up a little things to kind of make my workspace a little bit more ergonomic. So I got like, it’s not very exciting at all, but I got this laptop stand that you’re supposed to use to kind of, basically you can put it on a table, it raises the height of the screen, so you’re not tilting your neck down.
I spend hours of editing almost every day. And so I’m noticing that my whole posture is really starting to bother me with all this tension in my shoulders and my neck. So I wanted to fix that.
And I was actually trying to get it so I could place my audio interface underneath it. Oh, cool. Because from the pictures, it looked like it’d be plenty of space.
Like that’s what it’s for, is to kind of free up desk space and allow like your laptop fan to vent underneath the laptop. So that’s kind of a flaw of many laptops, is like if you just put it on a flat surface like you’re supposed to, it heats up, because there’s no ventilation from underneath. So that’s what I bought that for.
But unfortunately with it underneath, I can’t really access the controls on the Crayon. So it’s more of just kind of like a storage thing when I have it out, but when I’m not using it directly. Other than that, yeah, nothing too exciting.
What about you, Paul?
So I’m an idiot, as everybody knows, and I went and bought another Audio Technica 875R, the short shotgun. For those that are keeping track, this is the third time I’ve bought this mic. And the reason I did this time is because I was having a session with our good friend, Everett Oliver, who is amazing, by the way.
Everybody should go to myboothdirector.com and hire him right away. He helped me with some auditions for an agent, or two agents, actually. Just knocked it out of the park.
I couldn’t believe the difference between what I was about to submit, the crap I was about to submit, and how it was after he was done with me. But one of the things he said was, you need to stand during the auditions. And he said, are you standing now?
And I was like, because I didn’t have the camera on. I said, no. He said, do you have the ability to stand?
I said, no. Because a couple of months ago, I made the choice to sit all the time when I’m recording, which 90% of the time works out for me. But Everett scared me, so I went and bought the shotgun mic again because it’s the best one I’ve ever had in here in the standing up position.
So I put it right back where it was eight months ago, and it’s in my standing space now in the booth. So next time I have a session with Everett, I’ll be happily jumping up and down in the standing.
So was the CAD that you’re using, did that not sound as good in the higher up position? Was it just bouncing off the ceiling or something?
For some reason, it doesn’t work in that same position. Maybe because it’s too close. Right now, it has a little more room to breathe.
It’s kind of in the middle of the booth, and I’ve always placed the shotguns, whether it be the AT875R or the Sennheiser 415. I’ve always had it up in the corner, and that’s the only place I can get those to sound right. So I think I’ve mentioned this booth has very specific sweet spots, and I know where they are.
So in order to make that work for Everett, I had to get that same mic again.
Well, at least you’re not afraid to buy it again.
That goes back to what we talked about, know your voice, and I know that works for me, even though I went on this crazy…
I was like, then why did you sell it?
Because I’m crazy. I didn’t think I’d need it again. So this time I’m going to keep it.
No, I won’t. Yes, I will. I’m going to keep it this time.
I really want to keep it this time.
Your little gear demon is like materializing as we speak.
I know, it’s crazy. But other than that, that’s really the only purchase. So I didn’t really go too crazy.
No, I’m proud of you.
I didn’t buy an interface this month.
Well, I didn’t actually buy this, but I got to do a review of the newest version of the vocabooth2go.com Carry On Vocabooth. So their 3.0 version. And I was really impressed with it.
The only real complaint I had about the previous unit, and this is kind of a similar flaw in a lot of those portable acoustic solutions, is that there was no great treatment behind you. So they made these sort of framework with their acoustic blankets. Like they added an additional piece, and you can just kind of put it over the lip of the booth and like, boom, no more reflections.
I admit like it might not be the most comfortable solution, but if you’re traveling a lot and you want to have a consistent sound, or you absolutely can’t dedicate a space in your apartment or what have you to like a full booth setup or even a blanket or closet booth setup, it’s a great option. And one I heartfully recommend.
Awesome. I forgot to mention during the current events, I actually had a deal, Ali of the owner of vocalboothtogo.com here in the studio a couple weeks ago. Yeah, he asked me to help him out with some testing of a new product they’re working on.
I don’t think he’s ready to announce it. Actually, he mentioned it on our show and it’s still a prototype. It’s called the Mobile Voice Over.
It’s all he’s got so far. He doesn’t even have a complete name. Is that the glove one?
No, it’s different than that, although it might be an evolution of that. It’s to house a cell phone or a really small camera or pocket recorder. So for like field recording, so we basically put it on top of a tripod and wrapped it around the phone.
And the idea, he really wants to market it to YouTubers, people who want to travel really light and are constantly doing quick recording to improve their… Audio quality, yeah. Streaming, yeah, their audio quality.
So the thing he mentioned was people who are doing makeup ads or makeup selling.
There’s a surprising amount of those videos on YouTube.
Right, and it made sense when he said, he said, and they’re always doing it from the bathroom, so it sounds terrible. So we actually went into my bathroom and recorded it here at the house and then did a control sample without the MVO and then when the MVO wrapped around it. And it was a really big difference.
I never would have thought about that. Yeah, it’s interesting.
I think there could be a huge market for that, for people that are just looking to improve their quality because it’s a really quick setup. It was just wrap it around the phone and markedly improve the audio.
So that’s like using that actual phone microphone to record?
Yeah, we used the phone microphone and basically treated that, treated my phone with this mobile voice over unit. And it was pretty cool.
I’d like to hear it with some of those, like those little thunderbolt, or not thunderbolt, the lightningbolt microphones that they have out, like from Shure and Rode and stuff like that. I wonder how that…
Oh, the ones that plug right in like a headphone?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that would be cool. I’ll tell you what, we don’t want to get too far into it, but it was really good for the high frequencies, which is not unlike the carry-on vocal booth. It didn’t do much for the lower frequencies.
So we actually took it outside, right in front of the highway, on my deck, where I have, if you listen to the podcast, you know it was notoriously bad for sound. It’s the entire problem I have. So the highway was still there, but what we did find out was that it was really good at eliminating the crickets.
So we had a ton of crickets when we were recording, and they were really loud without the the MBO unit on there. And then without it, the crickets were completely gone. So it did a really phenomenal job at eliminating certain frequencies, and it could be really helpful for some people.
Yeah, I know. I know sometimes you’ve got no other option other than using your phone to record an audition, so that could be helpful. So that pretty much wraps up everything for questionable gear purchases, but we really want to get to the audio footage from Paul and Chris’ ventures at Otakon.
So without further ado, let’s have that sweet con footage.
Okay, everybody, welcome to episode 14 of The VO Meter. We are live at Otakon 2017, and I’m here with Chris Dattoli. How you doing, Chris?
I’m doing well, Paul. How are you?
I am great. I’m excited about the show. Joe, what are you looking forward to most?
I’m looking forward to the most. I’m looking to the voice acting panel that I’m gonna be hosting on Friday night, which is tonight, around 7 p.m. I’m gonna give out a lot of tips about, you know, people who want to get started in voice acting, give some valid information, where to find coaching. And I’m also looking forward to that other voice acting panel that’s happening on Saturday around 2.45 with Lex Lang and Tony Oliver.
And we are actually interviewing Lex Lang on Sunday. So that’s one of the things I’m excited about. We are having interviews with Lex Lang, Chris Neosi, Stephanie Shea, Vic Mignona.
I don’t think I said that right. We’ll get to that later. And there’s one more I’m missing.
Oh, Jamie McGonigal.
Jamie McGonigal, yes. I’m actually looking forward the most to interviewing him. I’m a huge, huge fan of him.
So once again, we’re here at Otakon 2017. Can’t wait for the show. And we’ll talk to you all after our first interview.
See you then.
All right, so we are here with Matt, Bill and Ilya from Man in Arms Reforged. And we are talking about their experiences at Otakon and the show itself. And we’ll get into a little bit about the business of actually forging the material.
So first of all, guys, tell us how you got started. Was it first an interest in metallurgy or was it more an interest in video games and creating the materials for that?
Sheesh. You asked us the long question. Well, I think all of us started working with metal a long time ago.
I was a teenager. He was a kid. Bill and I have been working together for 19 years or something like that.
But as far as the show comes, I mean, our base business is Baltimore Knife and Sword and we make stage combat weaponry, some custom weaponry as well, and have been doing that for 30 years. The opportunity to do the man in arms of the show came up three and a half, four or so years ago now. And we’re all nerds in our own right, whether it’s video games, anime, or we all have our different areas that we love.
So it was pretty much a no-brainer once we got all the details worked out to go ahead and do that show. And it’s a really unique opportunity for us because we’re not just making weapons, we’re not just making a TV show. We get to interact with the fans so much with that show and really bring their favorite things to life.
So, I mean, this answer of how we got started could be quite breathy, but in the long run, we were friends with Tony Swatton, the guy who did the original show. After he decided to not do the show anymore, the fi media looked around the whole country for what knife makers and sword makers could do that show. Since we do six items in about eight days, that’s a tremendous amount of work to do in that short period of time.
Most shops and the custom knife makers can’t do that. So pretty much everybody pointed their fingers at us and we kind of just went from there.
That’s awesome.
Yeah.
In the business now, is it mostly producing for the show or do you do a lot of work to supply the materials locally?
I’d say it’s not, most of our business is not for the show, absolutely. We film about three and a half to four times a year for Reforged. Like I said, we do blocks of six.
So they come out for about 10 days. The crew takes two days off, but we’re filming for eight days and we film six episodes. So they come out every two months or so.
In the meantime, we’re making stuff for Renaissance festivals. That’s pretty much what we do.
What are the similar ones that you supply to? Obviously the Maryland one. What are those festivals?
We’re in almost a hundred different shows annually.
Colorado, Texas, Arizona, California.
Yeah, we’re everywhere. So it’s pretty… There’s only a handful that don’t have our weapons.
Legacy Forge is one of our big dealers that goes to all the different renderers, but we’re primarily wholesaling at this point.
And now you mentioned you get yourself, you do some voice over.
Well, doing the voice overs for the show, which if you watch Carrie and I both, like the first season of Reforge, we were awful at it. I mean, just bad. We’re pretty good in conversation talking to people, but when it came to that, it was like, and now Ilya does this, and now Ilya does…
So it took a while. It took maybe even three, four seasons before I started really taking some notes, taking and listening to different podcasts. Actually, people talking about voice overs and just the whole theory behind it.
Be more conversational. You don’t have to say, this is happening, this is happening, because they can look and they can see that that’s happening. So…
You’re doing it right?
It sounds like you might have.
A little bit, not anything professional. Of course, our producers all have had our input. Sit up straight, talk a little deeper.
That was one of his things. I talk a little deeper. I don’t stutter as much.
Little things like that. So that’s been a whole nother thing we’re learning. Because, I mean, obviously, learning as a craftsman, that just comes naturally.
That’s what we’ve done our whole life. But then, literally, having to re-teach myself how to talk is kind of funny. It’s been a fun ride.
It’s a whole new world, as most of our listeners know.
I think it comes easier for him doing voice overs and stuff, just because he has a natural accent, actually. That actually helps a little bit.
Well, in part is that, when I was growing up in Russia, they always make us talk to the class. So you do your homework, you go to the board, you write down the homework, proving that you actually did it, and explain it to the class. In language classes, it was always the case, you have to memorize a poem overnight, and say it out loud to the rest.
So public speaking was a big part of the curriculum. Second part is, anytime you’re in a setting where people expect a certain quality of an explanation, you have to learn how to speak. It’s not what’s in your head.
What’s important is how you deliver it very often. And consequently, having an accent allows me to hide some of the speech defects or technique defects. And since English is not my first language by far, it is fairly easy for me to separate myself from what I’m saying in my head because most of my thoughts are still in Russian.
And okay, this is how I’m going to say it. All right, accent a little bit here.
And he can turn that accent up, and he does often turn that up.
And then I show him my shaft.
But, and for me, what actually is fairly hard in talking in English and talking for the show is if I’m doing research, and the research is audio books from England, I start unintentionally imitating some of the pronunciation. I cannot help it. Oh, we all do that.
It messes it up. And then Matt always makes fun of me. Why are you saying it like that?
I don’t know. This is how you say it, and I’ve been researching a lot. And when you find out…
A lot of us voice actors will go around mimicking people we know, or just in the mall. We’ll trail people, not too close, and mimic them. So we had that voice in the back of our heads.
Everybody here mimics John. I’ll weld her at the shop.
Everybody has a different voice.
Aw, man.
So where do you record the actual voice overs? Do you have a studio? Do you do it in the shop?
We have… Because I have to say, the quality is really good, actually.
Yeah, the shop where we’re doing most of the filming is about a couple hundred yards away from where we do the voice overs. We actually have a church building that’s been converted into another kind of workshop that we don’t really usually film in. If you see me doing the AutoCAD on the computer, we do the voice overs right next to that computer.
Okay. It’s not always the best place because there’s no sound deadening room kind of thing, but I’ve got pretty nice microphones and stuff, so it usually turns out pretty well. We usually only have to do one take.
They fix it in post.
And sometimes…
That’s what we say.
Sometimes they get to edit together and the voice over that we may have recorded for that process might be too lengthy, too short. So, you know, Carrie and I are just… Even sometimes Ilya will just re-record something on our own and send it over since the equipment stays there.
So, it’s cool.
I want to ask about your projects and the craft work. What would you say is the most difficult piece you’ve ever made to date that you can talk about?
Well, this is a multi-layered question. If you’re talking about difficulty in terms of how detailed a piece has to be and how 100% right on it has to be, so far it’s been Excalibur from Kings of Avalon. I’ve spent one month engraving the blade on it pre-building because you can’t do it any faster than that.
That’s how long it takes. And it’s been 16 hours of engraving straight every day for a month. So that one is the most difficult in terms of, all the work is finicky and finicky work is maddening.
It drives you insane because it’s all small. You work one inch per day, blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth. And at the end of it, your eyes just don’t want to be in your head anymore.
They just want to run away because you’re abusing them. In terms of how physically straining something is, let’s say Optimus Prime, it’s a pretty big sword. It was a sponsor build, so everybody was a little bit stressed because it’s a big sponsor for the media company, means it has to be 100% right, but it also has to be big, it has to be impressively big.
Right. There’s multiple levels just to complexity of our builds. Sometimes it just is the sheer size of something, whether that means huge or small and tiny and detailed, like all of that goes into it.
Or like any katana build.
Yep.
For example, any katana build is absolutely insanely hard. And the reason is because there’s a whole school of craftsmen right now who are like, ah, you didn’t do that right.
There’s a point where you’re not allowed to slack and there are certain things that other craftsmen will pick up that we also have to include there, even when the regular viewer won’t. The other thing is the ways of appreciating that specific type of sword require us to always fight with the lighting guy, always fight with the director of photography. No, you have to get this at this angle.
Well, I know what I’m doing. We also know what we’re doing. So that’s always hard.
It’s always stressful for everybody, especially the beauty shots on those things, because it’s a different type of sword appreciation school. And we also always have to have that conversation with everybody. Always have to stress ourselves over polish, which was never quite as good as we want to, so on and so forth.
So I myself dabble a little bit in craftswork, primarily leatherworking, but still I worship your guide show quite often. I love the work you guys do. So do you have any advice for those who wish to partake in this, any words of encouragement or any professional advice you can give?
I mean, there’s tons of advice.
What was your favorite piece?
I mean, one of the things about the show, and I hate to kind of flip this question a little bit, it’s just been a great opportunity for us. We get emails, comments on the YouTubers saying, hey, you know, I’m not a blacksmith. I know I’ll never be a blacksmith, but you guys inspired me to go grab granddad’s sewing machine and start sewing it.
I mean, that’s just awesome. I feel maybe five years ago, I just felt like, wow, this generation coming up, nobody’s working with their hands anymore. Nobody’s making anything.
And since the show has come out, and other shows like us, just the whole DIY YouTube phenomenon has really, I think, brought that back in cosplay. I mean, cosplay is amazing. I just got back from San Diego Comic Con, and maybe a half a percent of the people were there in costume.
But you come back on the East Coast, and over half the people here are in costume. Most have been made by themselves or with help with a friend. And it’s just a great thing.
My biggest advice is, whatever you have a passion for, do it. There’s a video out there probably showing you how to do it. Just start and work with your hands.
Whatever you… There’s gonna be something you’re good at, you know?
For me, I’ve gone from working with metal and working with cosplayers. Working in stuff I’ve never worked with, but using some of my same tools, tools with leather and other stuff, and just keep pushing, keep learning, keep trying different things. What works when it’s leather, it’s certain thicknesses of leather don’t work doing certain things, but you can also take a big chunk of leather, boil it in hot water, and make it rock hard.
And another thing, we have cosplayers and stuff come up to our booth at conventions like this all the time and say, wow, check out my prop that I made. It might be a prop with a sword that we also made. They’re like, wow, you guys did it so well.
I just made mine out of foam. It’s real crap. And I look at it and I’m like, how did you do that out of foam?
I try to do some of that. I cosplay as well sometimes. It’s harder for me sometimes to think how to make it out of foam than it is to go grab a piece of metal and grind it to shape, or forge it to shape.
So it’s all, I appreciate all of it.
Yeah. One advice that will be helpful long-term, if you specifically stay with it, don’t do what you’re already good at ever, because the odds are you will not learn anything. Pick things when you’re within your respective discipline that are incredibly hard and learn how to do those.
Do things because they’re incredibly hard to do, and you will fail 100 times. You will fail. You will feel like you’re not worth anything, like your hands grow out of your ass.
But from that experience, first of all, you will actually land at least 70% the way there. So if the end goal is 100%, you’ll get to the 70% no matter who you are. Those 70% will teach you way more than anyone else who hangs out with you has ever tried to learn.
So if it’s leatherwork, pick the hardest leather braiding, leather stitching techniques you can find and learn those. If it’s metalwork, pick the fiddliest or most complicated detailed projects and just be prepared to crash. But the end result will be rewarding.
Absolutely.
Well, Ilja, Bill, Matt, thanks so much for joining us today on the VO Meter.
Thank you.
We really appreciate it. Tell our listeners where they can find your businesses.
Yeah, AllMe channel on YouTube. That’s where you find the Man-at-Arms Reforged Show or baltimoreknife.com to check out our regular products.
Great. Thanks again, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Okay, so we’re back live at Otakon 2017. We just finished our interview with Man-at-Arms Reforged.
What did you think of those guys, Chris?
I’m a huge fan of the show. I love those guys. I also love the advice Ilya gave about doing what’s hard.
That can be used for so many things. Voice acting, forging, what have you. And it was very inspiring to hear him say that.
Yeah, definitely on point. I found that myself. Even doing this podcast, just jumping into things, feet first, things you’re not familiar with and maybe not necessarily comfortable with.
But starting with the things that are hard will definitely help you along your way to learning more and expanding your craft.
Absolutely. Do the hard things first and then the easy things will seem simple, so we’re second nature.
So coming up, what’s our next interview? We have Chris Neosi on Saturday. That should be fun.
That’s right. We’ve got Vik Minyata too on Saturday as well.
And we will see you following those two interviews.
We’ll see you then, guys.
We are back at the VO Meter. Chris, pronounce your last name for me before I screw it up.
No problem. It’s Neosi. It’s like Neo from The Matrix and then the letter C, Neosi.
Okay. Without getting too personal, I’m guessing you’re a Paisan like Chris and I. Yes, of course.
Names have been butchered our entire lives.
That’s all right. Too many Italians, too many Chrises. We got to do something about this.
Yeah, that’s how it works. So tell us how you got started in the business. Was it something you always wanted to do?
So, funny story. I’m first and foremost still to this day animation. And I took an interest in voice over way back in the day when there was this little website called TV Tome, which is now defunct and kind of turned into a different website.
But I kind of learned about, oh, like, all these voice actors that I grew up with, wait, the guy who played da-da-da on this one show is also so-and-so on this other show? Whoa, my mind is blown. I’m in, like, middle school, like, slowly becoming this, like, encyclopedia of all this weird, trivia stuff that my friends can attest to.
I’m a walking, talking, like, rolodex of voiceover stuff. And I got interested in it originally kind of from almost the casting perspective of, like, who would I get to voice all my cartoon characters in my shows and movies and games I’m gonna make someday, you know? And then when I started making my own cartoons, I, you know, didn’t have access to voice actors until, like, way later when I was learning there was kind of a whole community on the internet of people that were interested in doing it professionally.
And now a lot of them are working professionally, people that I’ve known for years now. And so I was kind of aware of that world and I started to, I guess, sort of teach myself, like, enough of a standard of what made good and bad voice over, especially when it came to anime, where, you know, there are lots of great dubs and some bad dubs. So I kind of determined that difference myself.
And then I went to a convention, much like this one, where two different ADR directors were basically holding sort of a contest thing. I entered it completely on a whim at last second. I was like, yeah, why not?
And I ended up winning it. And by winning it, I got my first audition, which was for Pokemon. And I didn’t think too much of it.
I didn’t think I was going to make it into a career or anything, but I went in for my first audition. This would have been like 2009, I think I did it. And they said, hey, so I know that we like owe you because of the contest, but I wouldn’t really call you into this show if I didn’t think you were good.
And I was like, oh, okay, maybe I could do this. And then after that, my second audition ended up being my first job that I booked. It was a character called Cory on the Diamond and Pearl season of Pokemon, had about five episodes.
So my first job was a great starting point.
That’s a great way to start.
Yeah, especially with a show I grew up with for like 10 plus years. I’m like, oh my God, I’m on this. Now all the people who made fun of me for liking Pokemon and middle school pay, I made a paycheck on it.
I was like, I don’t have problems. No, it was a great first experience. The director was awesome.
The producer was great. Everybody was super cool, and they worked really hard on the dub of that show, still to this day. Yeah, and then after that, I wasn’t really sure if I was going to keep doing it, but more opportunities came up.
And then when I moved to California about three years ago, I had a lot of help from other people in the business out there that kind of took my name around and started taking classes a lot more. And then now I blinked and suddenly I’m here and I’m in Sailor Moon, and I’m like, what happened? What is my life?
So is that long-winded enough of an answer to start with?
That’s excellent. Now for animation and character, do you feel it’s important to find sort of your niche in it, or is it you want to try out different things?
I think that the first and foremost most important thing to do is just to have a strong grounding as a performer. I think that unfortunately a lot of people get this misconception of like, oh yeah, you got to just like… It’s either like, oh, I have to find my niche, like what’s my archetype that I’m always going to get?
Which yes, that does happen a lot, you know, unfortunately. But even on the opposite side, some people, oh, I just got to learn how to do a billion voices. And I’m like, you can either do a billion voices and be really good at character stuff, or you can have just your one voice and like the different, you know, kind of facets of that.
But you still have to have the good acting to back it up. And a lot of people, unfortunately, skip that step because they think of the voice part of the voice acting, even though the second part of the word is better, as Scott McNeil would often impress people. So that’s why, again, when I moved, the most important thing I got was taking classes.
Like Richard Horowitz, who’s the voice of Invader Zim and a billion cartoon characters. He does this amazing six-week course that just really breaks a lot of bad habits out of you. It gets you to completely change your line of thinking.
I’ve met a lot of veterans that understandably get frustrated that new people coming in don’t even take the actor’s journey. It’s just like, oh, I just like cartoons and video games. I want to do this.
I don’t care about acting. And it’s like, well, you should, because if you want to do this as a career, that’s what it’s about, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I mean, in terms of… I think that it is important to, like, you know, stretch your range and not be, you know, like, nailed down to one particular thing. I think it is important to show that you have a lot of range.
Because I mean, even if you’re just playing one character and that character has a lot of range in and of itself, you have to be able to know… Sometimes even… I’m surprised when, like, I’ll get auditions for something and it’ll be, like, one scene of a character and then I’ll find out later that they’ll be like, oh, they’re going to be screaming and yelling and dying and all these crazy things.
And I’m like, well, thankfully, I’m prepared for that, but my god, if you got someone who was only good at doing that one side of them at the time, you know, they might fall flat. You never know sometimes. So, yeah, being prepared with just, like, as much performance experience as you can have.
This is coming from someone, by the way, who’s never done theater, never done radio. I don’t have a traditional acting background. I’m an animator, but I taught myself enough and learned enough from other people to be able to know enough of what I’m doing, as I would hope from the amount of stuff I’ve done by now.
So nobody’s found out that I’m not an actor yet. Fooled enough people. They haven’t caught you yet.
No.
So you mentioned the courses with Richard Horvitz. What other things do you do to train yourself?
Well, in terms of vocal stamina, I sing. I don’t consider myself a singer, but I do sing, which I think is important for just maintenance and expanding your vocal prowess in terms of, I guess, just stamina. I said that already.
I also… I haven’t done this in a long time, and I do honestly miss it, but I used to play a lot of… And you can do this also with books and comics and things.
I used to play a lot of video games that didn’t have any voices, like RPGs and things from N64, Super Nintendo era. And I just do all the voices. Especially little exercise, little advice for anybody out there.
If you and someone of the opposite gender want to play a game together, and you do all the boy parts, and you do all the girl parts, or sometimes you can even switch off. I’ll play this girl, and you play that boy or whatever, and just experiment around. Even if you only wind up by the end of that playthrough of that game or reading through that novel or whatever, if you only end up with maybe one or two fully fleshed out character voices that like, oh, I’m actually pretty good at that accent or that personality, or oh, I just came up with this thing off the cuff.
I don’t even think about it. Just come up with weird stuff for all these characters off the cuff, and you’ll do great. And then you might have some cool material to put on your demo someday when you make that.
Maybe even record it.
Yeah, yeah.
USB mics are ubiquitous.
Stream it. Hell, go nuts with it. You can do lots of fun stuff with that.
Going back to when you said when you moved to California, and a lot of professionals recommend you, when you actually went to the animation studios, what professional advice can you share with people when going for an audition and meeting all the big leagues or a director?
Well, I’m actually kind of sad to say that since going to California, I’ve really only ever had a very small handful of in-person auditions since then. Most of the stuff that I was doing before I got my agency, I’m with Arlene Thornton and Associates, along with a lot of other great folks, people Sean Chammell, Kyle Ebert, Keith Silverstein, Steve Blum, Debbie Derryberry, Mona Marshall, a lot of really, really talented folks.
Oh, those people.
Yeah, them, man. Never heard of them, you know, whatever. Yeah, now that I’m with them, I get a lot of my auditions through them, and sometimes they’re right down the road for me, so I’ll just go there and I’ll record with some of the engineers who are wonderful.
I love doing auditions in person, or at least with somebody to give feedback, like if I can, because it just feels much more kinetic. I’ve learned to do auditions from home without being miserable, because I used to hate it. But, and, you know, the fact is, most stuff is done that way these days.
But in terms of, to actually answer your question, it’s just really important about staying professional, knowing when to ask questions, because asking questions can be helpful in showing that, like, you know, you are invested in care about what it is that you’re doing. But also not being too, I don’t want to say fanboyish, but like, you know, or fangirlish. Being too much of a fan and being too, like, asking a billion questions and not knowing when to turn it off and just focus on the job at hand, you know.
And also being prepared. Sometimes they might be like, okay, that was good. You got anything else?
Which might mean, like, yeah, that’s okay, but try something different. Because we like you, but maybe we don’t like that voice that you did or maybe we’re not entirely sold on it yet, you know. That’s something I learned from Ben Diskin, who’s been doing this since he was basically in the womb.
Not a joke. But, yeah, I think that just, yeah, being prepared, maintaining a professional attitude, and, you know, and just being cool. Really all you need to work in any business, no matter what, is being cool and being good.
Because if you’re good, you get the job done. If you’re cool, they want to work with you. And then being cool, that could mean any number of things.
Just being cool in whatever way that you are cool and natural and not being a tryhard.
So tell us about your home studio. You mentioned doing some auditions from home. Do you have a fully set up studio or do you…
It’s a closet. It’s a closet with a preamp and a chaotic eyeball.
Really?
Yeah, I forget what type of microphone. And it was all set up lovingly by my good friend Ben Diskin after my basically kicking and screaming of not wanting to make my closet into a booth. He basically just did it, and then it’s what I’ve been using for all my home auditions since then.
And it’s quite nice.
What’s the percentage of time you do auditions from home versus going to the studio or your agent?
Probably like about 60-40 home to agency. Just because out of convenience. Even sometimes my agency will send me stuff to do from home.
And I’ll just do it that way if I have to. I’ve gotten used to it. It’s not my favorite, but it’s like you got to adapt with the time.
All right.
Well, Chris, it’s been a pleasure. We appreciate your time. And I look forward to hearing more from you.
Yay. Look forward to Sailor Moon Supers or Unvoicing Pegasus. That’s coming out soon.
If any of y’all are big old school anime fans and stuff, love that show very much. Thanks for having me, guys.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
So we’re back at the VO Meter with Vic Mignana.
Excellent. You nailed it. He shoots, he scores.
VO Meter. That’s kind of cool, as opposed to a VU Meter.
I like it.
Very cool.
Thank you very much. And we are talking about how he got into the business. My first question, really.
How did you get into the business, and was it something you always wanted to do, or was it something that…
It’s noon. That means it’s noon, everybody. That’s my gratitude alarm.
I set an alarm that goes off every day at noon to remind me to be grateful for my life.
That is fantastic.
Yes.
Yeah, that’s really positive.
So we’re going to take these two, three seconds right here of silence.
I can do that.
Thank you. You know, I never intended to be a voice actor. I’d been acting since I was very young.
And I just loved acting. I loved performing. I did a lot of singing, and musical theater, and stage plays, and got into it anywhere I could.
But I never intended for it to be a career. It was just something I enjoyed doing. You know, it’s like if you play the guitar, you know what I mean, or whatever.
And you never imagine that you’re ever going to be a rock star. You just like playing the guitar, or drawing, or whatever. So about literally 18 or 19 years ago now, I was working in Houston, Texas.
I was doing video and film production work and writing music professionally for ad agencies and producing records for people. I do a lot of music work. And a guy that I was working with on a video production said to me completely out of the blue, I don’t even know why, we may have been imitating people or making little funny voices, or whatever.
And he said, hey, you’ve got a lot of acting experience, don’t you? And I said, oh my gosh, yes. I’ve been acting stage, theater, on camera since I was young.
And he said, you ought to go and audition for this place here in Houston, called ADV Films. They buy these Japanese animated shows and they dub them into English, and they’re looking for actors. He didn’t say they’re looking for voice overs.
He didn’t say they’re looking for announcers. He didn’t say they’re looking for DJs. They’re looking for actors.
And that’s all I heard. I heard, oh, they need actors? Well, I love acting.
So I went and auditioned, and I got cast as Vega in Street Fighter II. And I did it. I didn’t know what to expect.
I’d never done it before. And I did never expect to do it again. I thought it was a one-time weird little thing that somebody asked you to do.
Never really thought about it again. And like two weeks later, they called me, and they said, hey, we’ve got another Japanese anime show. Do you want to come and do a voice in it?
I said, sure. And more and more and more. And at this point, anime was very small.
It was very much of a little niche thing. And so I didn’t even know what they did with these shows after we finished. I thought, I mean, I assume they sell them somewhere, right?
They distribute them somewhere. They got to make their money back. I didn’t know what they did with them, what happened to them after I voiced the thing.
I thought it was a fun. It was yet another outlet for acting. And it just grew from there.
And I, after that, somebody invited me a couple years later. Somebody invited me to an anime convention. And I was like, wait a minute, there are conventions for this stuff?
And I went to the convention, and I met people from other studios, Funimation in Dallas, studios in LA, studios in New York, and they asked me to come and do stuff in their shows. And so I did. And next thing you know, it’s been 18 years, and I’ve done over 300 different animated series and video games, and I never charted this course.
I never strategized. How am I going to get into the voice acting business? I just…
door opened. Seemed like it would be fun to do, and I kind of stepped through it. I had no idea where it would ever lead, and here we are.
Which is why I have a gratitude alarm set. Kind of a full circle, you know? Because I didn’t plan this.
I didn’t, you know, I didn’t send out hundreds of demo tapes and knock on doors and try to get into studios and auditions and scour the internet for… Nothing. A door opened and I kind of stepped through and I had no idea where it would lead me, and it led me here.
So I am among all people most grateful.
It’s not an uncommon story, actually, among voice actors, especially those that started before, say, the last 10 years.
Oh, it is uncommon. You’re right. It is not uncommon at all.
Most of the voice actors I know, with the exception… I probably have a hundred friends that are voice actors, and I can think of two that did not do any actual acting before they started into voice over. I mean, like, voice acting was literally, for most of us, was literally just another avenue to express your acting love and passion.
So yeah, it’s a very common story.
Do you have any suggestions for those that are maybe starting out now? Because the landscape has changed quite a bit, especially with the advent of the internet.
You know what? It really has changed a lot. And I hate to be one of those people that kind of is a downer, but the reality is, because it’s so big now and because so many people want to get into it, it’s hard, a lot harder than when I started, you know?
Like when Henry Ford started making cars, there weren’t a lot of people making cars. Not a lot of competition. And when I started, with very few exceptions, there just wasn’t a lot of anime readily available, and there weren’t a lot of people doing it.
And you would never expect Houston, Texas, why in the world would you ever think that somebody would be dubbing anime into English in Houston, Texas? You think entertainment, you think LA, New York, right? Houston.
But I was in Houston when that happened, and so I was very fortunate. I often tell people that if I were to try to get into it today, I probably wouldn’t ever get cast. I would probably not even be good enough or whatever, you know?
But I was fortunate enough when it was small. Now it’s a lot harder. There’s a lot more competition.
But that’s the nature of almost any creative endeavor. If you want to wash cars, you could probably get a job tomorrow. If you want to, you know, make burgers, if you want to fix plumbing, things that there is a specific skill set to do.
You know the skill, you get the job. It’s really that easy. But when you start talking about creative endeavors, acting, singing, writing, drawing, dancing, whatever, you know what I mean, name it.
There are so many people who want to do it and so few opportunities in those fields that it’s a lot harder. And you need a lot of tenacity. You can’t be somebody that gets discouraged easily.
That’s for sure. If you’re somebody who is easily disappointed by not getting what you wanted or things not working out right away, then creative fields are not the thing for you. And they’re unpredictable.
You can be a big superstar today and then tomorrow nobody will hire you. And what happened? Yesterday I was really good and nobody wants me.
You never know.
I wake up every morning extremely blessed and grateful that I get to do what I do.
But if you’re interested in getting into the business, into this business, one of the main things you need is acting experience. As we talked about a minute ago, that’s one of the commonalities with most of us that are regular working, veteran, have been doing it over and over again, is that before we ever got in front of a microphone, we were acting. Some of us have college degrees in theater or drama.
So acting experience is the key. It’s not about making funny voices. It’s about playing a character and playing the character authentically and believably so the audience buys into the character and the story.
Do you call yourself a voice actor now, or do you just not even go there with that terminology? Are you still just…
I’m a voice actor. I’m certainly… But I’m an actor first.
You know, a voice actor acts with his voice. I mean, you’re still an actor. I’ve often said the operative word in voice actor is actor.
You know, I’m never going to get cast to be the drive time DJ on a rock station. You know, I just don’t have that kind of a resonant voice. You know, 25 past the hour.
I can’t… That’s not me. But I can play certain characters.
And that’s where the acting comes in. I certainly would never want to discourage anybody from it, but just know what you’re getting into. Be prepared at things…
You’re not going to just move to Dallas and start working for Funimation. That’s highly unlikely. It’s not impossible, but be realistic.
The parents out there would hate me if I didn’t tell their kids, be responsible, learn a trade, figure out how you’re going to pay your bills and take care of your bills and have a place to sleep and some food. Feel free to continue to pursue your dream. But be realistic and go into it responsibly.
Mick, that is just an absolute goal that you just gave. We did want to get into one quick question about your work because we do have some fans.
Oh, sure. Absolutely.
Is the majority of the work anime or original animation? And how is recording for each genre different?
The vast majority of my work is anime. And you know what’s interesting is that most people, even in the business, even people that do what they call pre-lay, even people that do original animation will tell you that anime is the hardest kind of voice acting because it’s not enough to just give a believable performance. You have to do it within a very strict, finished confines of mouth movement and the flaps of the character.
You don’t have the freedom to do the line however you want. That makes voicing anime much more difficult. It’s actually much harder.
And it doesn’t pay anywhere near as well. It’s nowhere near as highly regarded. A lot of people in the voice acting business consider anime kind of the redheaded stepchild, so to speak, of voice acting.
And yet people who have done both will immediately tell you that it’s a lot harder than original animation. I have done some original animation, one that I’m working on right now, Ruby. Great show.
And it is so freeing because I can perform the line however I want. I don’t have to pause right here because the character stops talking, and I don’t have to race through the last part of the line because the character goes real fast. I don’t have to perform the line very loudly because the character’s facial expressions are so big that you have to match what the animation did.
Pre-lay, original animation is much easier and more freeing, and it pays a lot better. But I’m predominantly an anime voice actor.
Excellent. Thank you for that. Well, Vic, I think we’re out of time.
I’m so sorry that our time went so fast.
Well, you’re a popular guy.
You are. I appreciate you guys taking the time to chat.
We appreciate having you.
Thank you so much.
So we’re back live at Otakon 2017 with Stephanie Shea, and we are going to talk about the VO industry. How you got into the business is my first question. I’d like to know, for our listeners, how you got into the business and maybe what they could do if they’re looking to get into the business as well.
Well, they cannot follow how I got into the business because I have a very strange, unique story, I guess. I was a fan, and then there was a startup that was starting an anime company, and they didn’t really know anything about dubbing or anything. And then they were like, oh, you have a mass communications degree, and you’re also an actor.
Why don’t you come and do our dub, do our English production wing? And so I was hired as a producer. It was like 23, maybe.
I didn’t know how to do anything. We got two licenses. It was Tenchi ni Narumon, I’m Gonna Be an Angel, and Furikuri, and those were my first two titles.
And then because I worked there, I auditioned for roles, and then I got cast, and that’s kind of how I got started. So it’s…
Where is your degree from? Because I had that same degree.
UCLA.
Oh, cool. Mine’s from a local school here at Towson University.
Mascom, that was my degree. Yeah, so that’s kind of how I got started. So I can’t really recommend.
Get a job as a producer in a startup anime company.
So from a voice director standpoint, what advice can you give to those starting off in professional attire and how to condone themself in the booth from a voice director perspective?
I think the most important thing is to be an actor. Take acting classes and to take improv classes and do as much training and work experience as possible. Because I think right now there’s a trend to use newer actors and younger actors and actors from the fandom.
And having worked and listened to demos and listened to auditions, the thing that I have… I think that my biggest kind of gripe with that new crop of talent is that they’re not actors and you can hear it. They’re really good at mimicking sounds, but then they don’t take direction well.
Most actors don’t really prefer line reads because they like the process of exploring and discovering and creating a character. I find that the newer actors just want to be told how to do it and they want to mimic you. So I think one of the things that if you go to a panel with original animation voice actors, when they’re always goofing off doing things, they have created a character and they embody the character and if you wanted them to do a scene and to improvise and to do whatever in said character, they’re able to do it.
It’s harder for dub actors because they’re kind of doing an adaptation of another character. But I find it even harder, like I find newer actors struggle even more because all they know how to do is parrot a sound. So yeah, my advice is to actually get acting background and acting training and it doesn’t have to be voice acting specifically because I think the core elements of acting, your motivation, your wants, your needs, your psychological state, all of those things are really important when creating a character and voicing a character.
I’d also suggest for people who are really nervous and insecure to work that stuff out. Like don’t… be a professional.
Don’t bring that into the booth with you. If you need to get therapy, then get therapy. There’s nothing wrong with that.
And if you need to take class, then get class. I don’t understand that I’ve encountered some newer actors and they think, oh, well, I’ve been in a few shows. I don’t need to take acting class.
I still take acting class. Anytime there’s an acting class, I jump at the opportunity to take it because I don’t think as an actor that I’m ever going to be at a plateau. The arts is something funny.
You can always be better at it, which is what is always appealing to me at the arts. You’re never going to be like, oh, well, I’m now an expert in this field because there’s so much to explore. If you’re an actor that’s like, I don’t need to take class, that makes me wonder how serious you are about the craft and how serious of an actor you are.
What kind of acting classes are we talking about? What’s the best resource to start out? We have a lot of listeners that I know are approaching this from a second career.
If you don’t have that theater background and it’s too late for you to go back to your undergrad, what’s the best resources to take acting classes?
I think it’s going to vary depending on where you are, but for me, I didn’t get… My degree is in mass mutations. I didn’t get a theater degree.
UCLA at the time had a strange thing where you are allowed to double major, but certain majors you couldn’t double. You have to pick a more major major. It had to be a prominent major, then you had a second less prominent major.
But then certain majors, that one had to be your prominent major. And so if you were an acting major, that one had to be your prominent major. If you’re a mass comm, that one had to be your major.
So I could not double major in that way. So I think you can take whatever classes that are available. I will look up and I ask my actor friends for their opinion on stuff.
You can look at community college courses and just open the yellow pages. I think that if you’re unsure about a teacher or a class, ask to audit. They should be able to audit.
So that means that you sit in one class for free and you observe. You don’t get to work, you don’t get to perform, but you get to see other people perform and you say, is this something that I can get something out of? It can be theater, it can be scene study, it can be improv.
Music lessons also really help because you’re using your voice. You get to learn about your instrument. Music also gives you a better sense of timing.
And specifically with anime, you have to match lip flap. So having a good sense of timing is good. Knowing how to use your breath is good.
So yeah, beyond that, there’s also voice over classes as well, specifically for voice over. But I really do think that any sort of… If you have no background at all, then any sort of class should help you.
And then as you learn more, you can get pickier and pickier.
Again, for the voice directing, what are some skills you look for when casting?
As a director? So directors don’t always get to pick who they want in their cast. Sometimes they get a say, sometimes they don’t.
But as a casting director, if you’re talking about anime, there’s things that I look for. One is vocal type. Does the vocal type match the Japanese?
Because that’s the trend nowadays, that they really want it to sound similar to the Japanese. Same voice type. It doesn’t have to sound like exact voice match, but just is it low or high?
Is it textured? Is it nasal? Is it clear?
Things like that. So that is one of the most important things. It’s kind of like when you cast for a movie, if someone doesn’t look the part, then you don’t consider them.
If the role is for a Latina character and this person doesn’t look Latina, then they’re kind of not going to fit the bill. That’s like the vocal equivalent of that. And then beyond that, you want to look for what are they doing with the…
Does it sound real in the moments and the lines? Does it sound pushed and faked and very like high school theater acting? Is it very on the nose?
I like to listen to see if this person has ideas. Is it very generic? Are their reads very generic?
Or is it fresh and exciting? Do they have a sense of presence of the body, which means that if this is a line that’s called out, is it called out? You like to…
For voice over auditions, all you’re hearing is audio, so you don’t get to see what’s going on. But it doesn’t mean that as an actor, you don’t have an idea what’s going on, right? You should know if your character is sitting or standing, are they walking around, and it should sound like they’re walking around if they’re walking around.
It should sound like they’re sitting down or lifting something. All of that should be in the voice. If it all sounds the same projection, the same energy, the same just words on the page, it gets really stale in voice over, and I think that’s what makes it sound kind of dubby, where everybody’s talking at the same level, and everybody’s like, there’s no difference between someone who is sitting right next to you and your energy level, how you’re talking, to someone who’s a little farther away, like across the room, to someone who’s even farther away.
I’m not shouting, but there’s a little bit of extra something. All of that has to come into play, and I need to hear that the actor is aware of that to make it real and to make it a real entity instead of just a disembodied voice.
I think we’re close to running out of time, but along the lines of directing, do you prefer people who focus just on anime when you’re directing them, or do you have a preference for people who have a wide variety of acting backgrounds?
I do not actually look at that when I’m casting. I just prefer good actors, and if that person is a good actor and they’ve only done anime, great, so be it. If that person has done a lot of stuff, great, so be it.
It does make me nervous sometimes if the person has only done anime, because usually anime is the easiest to get into, right? It’s much harder to book an original animation job. It’s much harder to…
I will… So I guess it could give me pause, but as long as the audition wins and the audition is good, I’m fine with that. If I’m getting an audition and I’m on the fence and I look and they’ve only done, let’s say they’ve done a lot of commercials, that would make me worried, because commercial, you use your voice, but there’s not that much acting in it.
It’s a different type of skill set. It’s definitely a VO skill, but it’s not necessarily… I would be worried that if I brought them in, they wouldn’t be able to deliver.
I would be nervous if I got an audition and they’ve never done… If they’ve only done other acting, they’ve never done VO because the experience might be a little strange to them. They might not be able to match the lip sync.
But then I weigh in and I just say, is this audition good enough that I will work extra hard to get them where they need to be at that place? There’s always risks when it comes to it, but I would never say never to anybody who’d never done anime or to anybody who has only done anime.
And anything you want to promote before we go?
Let’s see. I guess Gundam Seed, the redub of the remastered, is coming out. That’s awesome.
The other thing that I want to give a shout out to, but this is for US audiences, but hopefully it will come to US., is we worked on the dub of Napping Princess, which is an amazing movie. And then we also worked on A Silent Voice.
And A Silent Voice is a movie about bullying and there’s a deaf lead in it. And I was fortunate enough to be able to cast a deaf actress. So I don’t think it has a US distributor yet, but it is a really, really important film.
Maybe someone will inquire and sign on to distribute.
Yeah, that would be awesome. And then I think your name, Blu-ray, comes out this fall.
Stephanie, thanks so much for your time. Enjoy the rest of the show.
Thank you.
I want to play the voice of the witch that appears in the Disney movie, and I’m practicing. I can do it anytime.
So I really want to do an old lady. So my image of an old lady doing this is the queen’s old lady form in Snow White. So every day I’m practicing that.
So I’d like to do a sample right now.
I agree that the major change throughout the years was the shift from analog to digital.
For example, when we recorded the first episode of Sailor Moon, that was the first time everyone, all the voice actors got together, and there was like 20 people. It’s the first time seeing the film, and it’s the first recording ever to happen. But to finish one episode, we only spent like 2 hours and a half.
So we are back at Otakon 2017 with Jamie McGonigal, and we are going to talk about all things voice acting. So welcome, Jamie. Thanks for being here.
Thanks very much for having me.
Of course, thank you. So Paul and I are both voice actors. We’ve done commercials, e-learning.
What advice can you give to do the transition to anime?
There’s something very different from doing commercial voice over to voice acting in the anime or any kind of animated features, cartoons. And the acting is different. It’s creating a character.
So I think frequently people say, hey, I’ve spent my life making up silly voices, and I do a great job with it. And those are the people who come into the booth, and they’re sometimes great, and they have something to offer. But I would much rather hear in a booth someone who started out as an actor, someone who has that background as an actor, and can bring that element of being able to create a character to the role.
It’s not about silly voices. The operative part of the term voice acting is acting. So I think the best advice I can give is to get as much experience as possible acting.
And that can be on stage. It can be in your living room. It can be being an extra in a film somewhere, just as much experience possible before you step into a booth.
Directors always want to see… It’s easier for a director to make you be smaller. I’m a stage actor by trade originally, and so I could go into a booth and do a damn musical in front of you if you want me to.
And make the character huge. And Mike Sinoniklis, for instance, has directed me in a lot of things, and he’s great at taking that huge character and making him intimate enough for the microphone. And so that’s, I think, that stage acting, any kind of acting experience you can get is helpful.
Great. So you mentioned acting and directing when you’re in the booth with a director like yourself. What can folks do when they’re self-directing, because so much of the world is going that way now with self-submission.
What can you do when you’re self-directing? Some tips you can give to get that performance.
Self-directing. I think you have to watch as much as possible. You have to figure out what you’re trying to get out of yourself.
And if there’s any opportunity for you to bring someone else, whether it’s your boyfriend or girlfriend or a mom or dad, to come in and give a listen, a lot of people maybe don’t have directing experience, but they know what they like to hear. So having an extra eye is always really, really good, or an extra ear in this case. Yeah, I think that’s…
I definitely advise to, if it’s at all possible to have someone else come listen and give you feedback, and someone that’s honest, that’s not just gonna say, oh, you’re great, honey. That’s awesome. You’re wonderful.
You know, that’s the mom approach is, it would be good. It would be good to have some sort of critical eye or ear.
That’s funny you mentioned that. I actually wrote a blog about that a couple weeks ago. That I had my nine-year-old son sitting outside the booth because he was being punished and wasn’t allowed to play any video games.
If I said, just sit and watch me work, okay? So I was in the booth. And the performance was so much better because I knew he was there listening.
He had the headphones on. And just having him there with almost no experience or critique, just having someone there that I knew was listening to me, helped tremendously.
Yeah, and honestly, kids are the best critics and the best and worst critics in the world.
Oh yeah, when I came out, he told me he was bored, which gave me all the direction I needed.
Yeah, I mean, I remember doing in college, the best training that I ever had was doing children’s shows. And you have an auditorium of 2006 to 12 year olds. If you’re not holding their attention, you are gonna hear the creaky seats.
And the best compliment I ever had, I was playing kind of a, actually very scary character for a children’s show, I thought. I was like Jack Pumpkinhead from Wizard of Oz, but it was like a different Wizard of Oz story. And it was a terrifying character.
And there was one little kid in the front row, and I looked at him and he was holding his program over his face. He couldn’t look at me. And then I was cleaning up the theater afterwards, and I find his program on the floor with an actual hole chewed through it.
Like it was bite marks. You could see the bite marks through the program. I was like, yes, I did well.
So touching base on the voice director thing, what advice can you give to any actor when stepping in the booth, seeing a voice actor for the first time? What advice can you give for handling that situation?
Any actor seeing a voice?
Maybe their first session in person, as opposed to doing months, years of self-submitting.
Oh, okay. Yeah, and just listen. It’s the director, trust the director to do what they need to do.
It’s okay to mess up. You can be overly critical of yourself in a booth if you’re not giving the director precisely what they want on the first take. That doesn’t make you a bad voice actor.
So don’t be overly critical. Listen to the director. That’s, you know, they’re there to guide you through this.
Obviously, with ADR, with any kind of animation recording, usually they make it pretty easy for you. You have a script in front of you. You have the, usually the animation in front of you.
You have the three beeps in your ear before you’re supposed to start. So it’s pretty easy once you’re in there and once you have the job. The tough part is auditioning, and that’s 90% of what most actors have to do.
The job is auditioning. The job is not actually getting on stage or getting in a booth. And yeah, I think just trust the director, listen, trust yourself, and don’t be afraid to make big, stupid sounding choices.
That’s what gets noticed when you are, here’s my musical theater background that allows me to go into a booth and be completely crazy. And my first four kids’ role was Zoda in F-Zero, and they wanted me to play a villain. And I see this big purple guy with this yellow tube coming out of him, and they said, we just want him to sound crazy.
And so I just started screaming basically, and he was, you win the dollar prize! Just, I don’t know where that voice came from. It’s nothing I’d ever practiced, but obviously, it’s something that got me the role.
And then the tough part then was making sure that I still had a voice at the end of a two hour recording session. But yeah, trust yourself is the biggest one. Make bold choices and trust the director.
Awesome. So we have a lot of gearheads on this show, especially the hosts. We go through a lot of equipment trying it out.
Do you have a home studio currently? If so, what’s it made up of?
I have a Sennheiser mic and in a… This is strange. So in our house, we live in a bungalow in Hyattsville, not too far from DC.
And underneath the eaves of the house, it’s a very small space that I pretty much can only sit down in. And it’s quiet. It’s super, super quiet.
It’s carpeted on the floor and parts of the walls. So it makes it easy for me. But yeah, I have a Sennheiser mic.
I don’t know what brand it is or anything like that, or what style and model it is. It’s something that a friend gave me.
Is it like a shotgun?
Yeah, it’s a shotgun.
Okay, so it’s probably the 416.
Sure. I wish I was more of a gear head. Mike Sinternicholas is the biggest gear head I know.
Yeah, so if you chat with him, he will know all of those things.
As you’ve said, and actually everyone has focused on, it’s the acting. It’s the acting stupid, you know? It doesn’t matter the equipment.
If you’re good, you’re good.
Yeah, that’s absolutely. I mean, you can use your built-in Mac microphone if you need to. And frequently, if I’m traveling, I’m not traveling with a studio, but if I’m in San Francisco for work, or something like that, I don’t have a studio in front of me, and sometimes I have to count on what I have on my MacBook if someone says, hey, I need this audition tomorrow.
So yeah, it’s the acting stupid, absolutely.
We sat here yesterday with Chris Niosi, and he didn’t even know what kind of mic he used. Didn’t even have any idea. Doesn’t matter.
He’s working with it.
Yeah, exactly.
Absolutely.
So what style of director do you feel works best with actors? Are you more tough-loved? Do you like to work with the actor to make sure they understand their character?
What do you feel works best?
I think every actor works differently with different directors. It depends on the actor. It depends on the director.
For me personally, I like someone who can be as detailed as possible. I don’t mind doing a hundred takes if that’s what’s necessary to make the character great, but I need someone to be specific with me. And sometimes they don’t necessarily pick the right word.
Sometimes they say things like make it gayer, and that’s the most utterly inappropriate direction I’ve ever received, because voices aren’t gay. Shouldn’t be an adjective. Yeah, exactly.
So it’s a problem. That’s a problem. And then I’ve had directors say, make it more purple.
And I’m like, that’s not a thing I can do with my voice. And in those cases, sometimes you can tell they’re not necessarily seasoned directors, and you just say, yeah, okay, I know exactly what you’re talking about, and then you just do the same thing again. And they’re like, yeah, it’s brilliant.
But yeah, directors, tough love versus a soft hand. I think gentle, gentle, but precise is my favorite kind. Mike Center-Nicholas, hands down, best director I’ve ever worked with.
Excellent, thank you. Yeah, my pleasure.
Jamie, we’re out of time, unfortunately. We thank you for being so gracious, and have fun with the rest of the show. What’s left of it?
Thanks very much, thanks for having me.
Get training, that is the most important thing. You wanna work on your craft before you go and dive in any equipment. You learn so many things.
We’ll go over coaches later on, but that is by far the most important thing. Before you invest in a mic, in a booth, in anything, you have to work on your craft. It’s sort of like you’re buying tools to be an electrician without learning how to be an electrician, right?
Yeah, and in training, they’ll teach you techniques and ways to use the microphone or be able to use your body to create these amazing voices that sound like they’re at work in World of Warcraft versus the little accountant that’s sitting there trying to steal all of your money from your bags in an MMO. There are people that play both of those kinds of roles, and that’s only through training that they really get to discover how to reach those characters and really bring that forth through the script. So training is very important for that.
But as we were mentioning earlier, business cards, they’re useful, but to an agency or to anybody in the business, this is great, but what they really want to hear is your demo. They want to hear what you sound like doing these particular types of roles.
There are actually USB business cards that another voice talent gave to me. I’m like, here, here’s my card, and that’s actually a USB chip. You plug it in your computer and my demos are on it.
So they’re a little more pricier than your average business cards, but if you’re giving it to an agent or a big marketing firm or Anaplex or what have you, that’s a good idea.
Also, if you’re treating this as a career, you have to think of stuff outside of just your voice now. Now you have to think about your equipment. You have to think about how you’re going to market yourself, how you’re going to make people aware that you exist as a voice actor and you want to get going somewhere.
And also figuring out the difficulty to charge people because that’s not an easy charge to find. It’s not like something you can just quickly Google and have the best prices available, especially when you’re not signed on with an agency or with a union. You basically have to figure out your way for yourself.
And of course, getting representation. We’re going to go over all of this and break it down into each one. What are the most important traits that voice directors look for in voice actors or actors in general?
The most important traits that voice actors and directors look for?
Wow, it depends on what they’re playing, but for me, it’s first of all, confidence in acting. It’s not enough to sound good. You have to have something behind it.
Honestly, I tend to go for people who are more calm, who are not nervous at the audition, who tend to come and just kind of give me what they have, even if it’s not right. I know if they’re that calm, I can take them where they need to be. If they’re too wrapped up, then I can’t really move them where I need them to go because they’re too worried about doing a good job, and the minute you start worrying about doing a good job is when you start doing a bad job.
I know for me, if the actor is malleable, and we can actually form the character a bit together, that’s very good. If they’re not too rigid in the sense of they have a preconceived notion of what that character should be, sometimes an actor will come in and go, well, I have a feeling I know what this is gonna be. And so first we say, okay, let’s hear what you got.
But if it’s not the right for the character, then it’s very important for that actor to be able to switch it up and be very flexible with what they bring to the part.
I look for a lot of money. It’s a pay to play thing. If you give me a lot of money, you can have a part.
I’m so kidding. If everything they said to Yes And and Piggyback, directability is huge. I’ve had people come in who are perfect for the role, but then they cannot be redirected.
So if they just happen to have the wrong idea about a certain line or scene, you can’t fix it. And that means you can’t fix it.
Well, also in anime, a single change in a read in episode one can absolutely affect the last episode in the series because that’s the way the stories are written. So you gotta be… You know, sometimes the actor won’t understand.
Well, but it’s perfect.
This, yeah, that’s great, but that character attribute needs to be different in order to make the end work. So that’s part of what we are. We’re story…
We’re the guys that are in charge of making sure the story gets told.
That’s a very good point. We are the crafters of the storytelling.
Thank you very much.
Hi, everybody.
Hello.
Nice for being here today. Tony, you mentioned making the actors comfortable is a big part of your job. What can actors do before they get to you in the booth to make themselves comfortable, especially if it may be their first time in a directed session?
I have a whole four week class about that.
Where did I sign up?
It’s called How Not To Voice Act, by the way. Getting out of your head, How Not To Voice Act is the name of the class. It’s, I don’t know.
I wish I had it. I wish, look, if I could write a book and give you the 10 steps to feel comfortable on by yourself, it’s stuff you have to do before you get there. It’s a matter of getting comfortable with yourself, which is a really hard thing to do as an artist, to be just comfortable being who you are.
When you get in the booth, the things that you don’t want to be thinking about is how do I sound? Am I any good? Is the producer or director like me?
Am I doing the best job ever? All of those things are performance killers, okay? Because they put you in here.
You need to be acting from here. The best thing to do is figure out how to turn this off so that you are just there when you’re focused on that, the words, the script, and what the feelings are. And if you can focus on that, the rest of it kind of melts away and there’s less to be nervous about.
So when I got cast as Leonardo for Ninja Turtles, I thought it was a mistake. And for the first entire season, I went into every session thinking I’m gonna be fired. Not helpful.
And I talked to a couple of people like, you’re crazy, what are you talking about? I’m like, okay, I’m crazy, that’s not helpful. But it was miserable, and I could have cost myself the role.
The thing is, when good people cast, it’s not just for a vocal type, it’s for something else that you bring and no one else really can. There’s something real specific about the way you play a hero, not just I’m a hero, but what kind of hero is that? Like when, Optimus Prime, when Peter went into audition for that, his brother was like, who I think was in the military, was like, what are you doing today?
Yeah, he’s like, well, I’m auditioning for a truck. He’s like, what, a truck? He’s like, yeah, he’s like the leader of some robot race, and he’s like their leader and his hero.
He’s like, well, if you’re gonna go in there and be a hero, don’t just be some truck. Be the best goddamn hero you can be. So he goes in there with Optimus Prime, and like it was kind of revolutionary, and it was great, but he did something that was…
He’s such a, I met him a few, about six months ago.
He’s the dad of one of my wife’s colleagues.
Yeah, so there’s that thing. So if you can trust that you were picked for a reason and it wasn’t some grand mistake or a prank, then that’s step one. The other thing that I learned, and this is a rule for me, hopefully you’ll have a wonderful director like one of us, but if you have a hard ass like some people, then do this for yourself.
Never say sorry. It puts you in the wrong mental state. Don’t go, oh, if you get a redirection, it’s an opportunity to make it better.
Maybe you did something that makes it worse now.
Maybe the response is, oh, great, thanks. Yeah, thanks for the input.
That’s my rule. So say thank you, not sorry. If you wanna say sorry, go, thank you.
And it will literally just like, even just forcing yourself to use those words will change your mindset and make you ready to play.
It’s a really interesting, changing mindset is really important. And one of the things that I do teach is that if you wanna change a read, you have an emotion that director says, I need something different. If you try to just change the way it sounds, it’s just not gonna quite do it.
I went with this to a director, I was eight, nine takes, I’m still not getting it. So finally, I just kind of set back to basics, let me think differently. So I’m gonna feel this and just let it come out.
And then, well, that’s the take, we got it. So it’s just by changing a thought, I was just automatically changed the way it came out of my mouth. So I guess the last little bit of advice is don’t try so hard.
As actors, we make it really hard on ourselves. We try so hard, and then trying is the head stuff. You need to be feeling.
Love me, love me, love me.
We’re all sick though.
All actors are insecure, pretty much. That just comes with the title of act.
It’s a coping mechanism.
Okay, everybody, we are back live at Otakon 2017. It’s Paul and Chris, and we are wrapping up. So Chris, what were some of the highlights of the conference for you?
I loved our interview with Vic Mignotta. He gave out such valuable tips, and he’s really an inspiring man, just saying every day at 12, he just stops and gives thanks for everything that he’s done, and thanks for how far he’s come, and so many great things. And what he gave us was pure gold, and I loved him.
I loved meeting Stephanie Shea and Chris Neosi, seeing a fellow geek like myself, seeing someone who it’s really inspiring to see someone young get into the business, and knowing the same attributes that I have can really succeed.
Yeah, that’s awesome. For me, it was eye-opening, because I had never really been to a con, quote unquote, before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. So I walked in here, and my mind was immediately blown seeing all the cosplay people, all the artists’ alley, the exhibitors downstairs.
It was just amazing to see the scope of the convention, and that was the most impressive thing for me. And then as far as the interviews, I think the big takeaway was that each and every person, both in person and then on the panel discussions where we sat in, they all mentioned being an actor and taking acting classes.
Absolutely.
And you’ve worked with coaches, I’ve worked with coaches, that’s what they tell us in person, but it was really good to hear that reaffirmed by the people who are at the convention and successful in the business.
Yeah, it’s almost like they’re trying to tell us something.
Yeah, you think it got through the thick skull of you and of me, I’m not sure.
I think so, maybe a little bit.
So I’ve actually signed up for some acting classes at a community college. It was one of the things that Tony Oliver mentioned yesterday and it’s been canceled three times.
Really?
I don’t know what it is. It’s my local community college in Baltimore County. I’m gonna try again in the fall.
I tried the winter semester. I tried the spring semester. There wasn’t enough interest.
I think it was just me. Maybe I was signed up. So if you’re out there, especially in the DC metro area or the Delmarva area as we call it, sign up for the freaking classes because I wanna be involved.
Yeah, if you’re ever up in Jersey in the Freehold area, there’s actually improv classes that I signed up for at a local theater there off on Main Street in Freehold. So I’m actually starting those around September.
Awesome. And I was so inspired that yesterday I went home and I immediately contacted Sarah Jane Sherman out in LA. I’m not sure if you know her.
She used to be a casting for Disney. And I signed up for some classes with her. So we’re gonna go with some character development classes probably as soon as next week.
All right, excellent.
So I’m definitely inspired. How about you?
Oh, I’m definitely inspired. I signed up for Tony Oliver’s classes for September up in New York. Already?
Yeah, I just signed up for him last night.
You sound like me.
It’s really reassuring to say like, you know it’s difficult to get in, but if you put your best foot forward and if you focus on the acting part, you could do it.
Awesome. Well, thanks everybody for joining us at Otakon 2017. And we’ll see you in the next episode.
We’ll see you then.
Wow, that was great. I mean, you guys did a great job with those questions. That’s really, really cool.
And I love how just again and again, you hear the actors emphasizing that voice acting is acting. So like again and again, do not think about like obviously voices and being able to do different voices is important, but is not the most important skill. Like it’s acting, it’s voice acting with a capital A.
And get excited about it. I know Chris and I were both inspired. Chris mentioned that on the spot he signed up for classes with Tony Oliver because he got that bug planted in the back of his head.
And so did I. I actually came home on Saturday and immediately emailed Sarah Jane Sherman, who I think we’ve talked about before, to take some acting classes with her. I’m starting next Tuesday and…
Very cool. Does she do Skype or…
Yeah, she does Skype, because she’s in California now. She’s actually from Maryland, but now she lives in California.
Well, when you work for Disney, they want you nearby.
I couldn’t convince her to come back home. Yeah, we’re doing it by Skype. We start next Tuesday, so that should be fun.
Very cool. Yeah, I love going to cons. It’s definitely a very reinvigorating event for people like us.
Yeah, I think we should try and do that again. Maybe book ourselves at another conference, maybe even San Diego next year. We’ll see.
Baby steps, baby steps. But hey, I love Emerald City Comic Con, man. It’s the biggest one in the Northwest.
You know, I’ve actually never been to Seattle, so maybe I should plan to come out to that one next year.
Yeah, cool.
That would be awesome. But coming up…
Oh yes, we got some exciting announcements for next episode.
Yeah, we are going to do an audiobook roundtable. We have confirmations. We haven’t actually scheduled it yet, so pending everyone’s schedule being open, we have confirmations from Stephen J.
Cohen, Sean Pratt, Andy Arndt, and Scott Brick. Nice. And Deborah Dion from Dion Audio.
So we wanted to mix in a producer, a production house in there as well. So it should be fantastic.
And what a production house. I mean, Dion Audio prides itself on the quality of its narrators and their projects. They’ve won numerous awards for all of their productions.
So I can’t, I’m super excited about this. Like, and I don’t even do audiobooks yet.
Well, maybe you’ll be inspired a little bit more.
I’m sure I will.
But until then, this has been Paul Stefano.
And Sean Daeley.
For The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We’ll see you next time.
Have a great day, everybody. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter. Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.