Uncategorized

We’re back live on the floor at MAVO 2018. It’s Sunday, and I’m now joined by JJ Surma.
Hey, Paul.
How are you doing this morning?
I’m gonna be way better after I have this coffee, which we stocked out, and now both… So, cheers. Both actually gotten ourselves to where we need to be, holding a nice cup of coffee on a Sunday morning.
Agreed. So, tell me what brings you to a conference like this. This is your first time at MAVO, right?
It is.
So, I actually met Val via email and phone a long time ago, in fact, and I take no credit for her success. Her success is all her own, but she actually sought me out. I’m the Creative Services Director of Cumulus DC, so I was a production director for local radio stations, and somehow we got connected.
She sought me out by email, and we ended up on the phone, and at the time, I think she was a French teacher?
And she was…
She still is.
Yeah, she still is, okay. She had this voice, which when I heard it on the phone, kind of put her above the level of email exchanges I have with the basic question, how do I get in the voiceover? Because I hear that a lot, and so I have a sort of a stock answer that I give to people, and it’s a generous answer, but it’s a stock answer.
And then when I got on the phone with her, I was like, holy goodness, you do need to do animation. And it’s funny because I was actually trying to find a parking space at this school for my daughter’s dance recital, and there were no spaces. So as I drove around for like a half hour trying to wait for someone to leave so I could park and see my daughter’s dance recital, I had all this time to talk to Val.
And so we ended up on the phone for like, I don’t know, a half hour, and we had this great conversation. And then a couple years down the road, she was like, hey, I’m doing this conference. And I wasn’t in the best place with Voice Over at the time.
I was in one of those valleys that Rachel Naylor just talked about, and I was kind of feeling negative. So I didn’t come. And Val, to her credit, had stuck with it.
This event has grown. And finally, I’ve gotten to be here, and I’m so excited, not only for the possibilities for myself, but for my friend, and to see Val go from, hey, I’m a French teacher who wants to do animation, to putting together an awesome event like this. I’m really happy for her.
Yeah, it really is fantastic. We were here recording in 2016, but it’s grown so exponentially. Not by size, because it’s designed to be small, but in stature and reputation, I think.
Well, I think it in value. You know, as someone who’s really only been to some smaller conferences, you know, sometimes the small is in the value as well. I mean, some of them are more valuable than others.
It’s just the nature of those things. And sometimes that depends on where you are in your career and also how you connect with the people that are there. But you know, really, the value of…
I can’t believe it’s only been a day and a half that I’ve been here because I’ve gotten so much information and so much encouragement, and have made some great starts to a great relationship so far. I’m just really, really appreciative of what she’s done and also the value of this conference.
I agree. So tell me what’s been your favorite part of either a session or something you heard on the floor.
Well, again, the relationships. And I had a great conversation the first night, just kind of, I don’t know if it’s God or the universe or whatever your belief system is, but I was in the right place at the right time to have a great conversation that really reaffirmed how I had kind of gotten through that valley that I had spoken about before. And I didn’t really have a lot of the tools and terms to realize sort of emotionally what was going on, but I had put up a lot of resistance in my life to my own success.
And now, being in a position where I’m much more confident in taking responsibility for my own success, I just feel so much more encouraged. But I gotta say, the coolest thing, and you know what I’m gonna say, was being in Joseph Riano’s class yesterday and reading promo to video with him was just, I mean, he’s a legend. That’s a once in a lifetime experience.
And to not have fallen on my face completely, I see as a raging success.
So it was really something. I thought you did one of the best jobs in there.
Oh, that’s so generous. Thank you so much. And yeah, it was just, God, my heart was pounding.
Was your heart not pounding?
It actually wasn’t, because I had spoken to Joe right here earlier that morning and gotten to know him the night before.
I thought you said you’d smoked to Jay. You said spoken to Joe. I thought you’d done a little pre-gaming.
No, I didn’t know what your…
We’re not in the district.
What is your method? I don’t know.
You’ve spoken to Joe, go ahead. And sort of knew his disarming personality like we talked about. He’s so great about just making everybody feel at home and comfortable.
So I wasn’t nervous. I was excited to get it done.
So down to earth, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s so, I’ve seen that with some of the other people that I’ve met that are, I don’t know about at his level, but have reached a certain level of success. One of the patterns that I’ve seen with those people is their pattern of generosity and their humility and you know, I mean, not everyone’s perfect, but good Lord.
He is such a giving person. And I think that’s sort of the hallmark of people that have reached that level. They sort of look around and go, oh my gosh, you know, I know I’m just me.
I see these opportunities that I’ve been blessed to have and oh my gosh, let me share with other people. Let me give, let me be generous. And I think Joe is definitely an example of that kind of attitude.
Yeah, I think it’s a hallmark of the industry, which is unique to this industry from what I’ve experienced over the years, not only in this business, but other businesses. Voice Over really is its own sort of communal thing. And I really love that about it.
Yeah, I definitely agree. And what’s amazing is, you know, I come from a radio background, broadcasting, and so we all live our lives in these little booths, but there’s a lot of looking over your shoulder in radio. Like, someone wants my job, someone wants my shift, someone thinks they can do a better job on the morning show than me.
I grew up really in radio. Since I was 17 years old, almost 30 years now, being in radio and that sort of paranoia seeps into your bones, that competition, that unhealthy spirit of competition, and that sort of, I gotta protect my thing. And what amazed me about being part of conferences like this one and also in Atlanta, I went to this one called VO Intensity.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I met some of the most generous people, encouraging, honest, sharing, you know what I mean? And it was the opposite of my radio experience and I was really shocked by it.
I was like, oh my god. Everyone hears on my team.
It can’t be real. It can’t be real.
There’s punking me.
Well, yeah.
I mean, like last night, I did this thing with Johnny Heller on audiobooks. I was actually, I actually sort of misbooked this thing. I’ve never done an audiobook.
I’ve never considered doing an audiobook. It’s like a marathon compared to my sprints of 15 second ads or whatever. But I was in the class and everyone did a reading and when it was my turn to do a reading, I’m like, god, I suck in audiobooks.
And Johnny Heller, look at this guy. And what am I gonna do? And I did it.
And afterwards, people were so kind and generous. And I, like my instinct was, they’re lying. I was like, you can’t think that that was good.
No, no, it really wasn’t. I’m like, oh my gosh. And it just reminded me that this is a really encouraging community where people do really try to just kind of come alongside and form relationships and boost each other up.
And that’s so needed for me, especially.
Right, that’s why Val says the slogan is get inspired. And I think that we all feel that way.
Yeah, for sure. It’s been an inspiring time.
Thanks for joining me this morning. Enjoy the rest of the conference.
I really appreciate it, thanks.
Thanks.

The VO Meter… Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. The VO Meter is brought to you by voiceactorwebsites.com, VocalBoot2Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, and IPDTL.
And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to Episode 32 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. Today, we’ve got a great episode for you guys. We have voice talent and expert marketer, Marc Scott.
He is leader of the VOpreneur Facebook group, and helps talent of all stages of their career just improve their marketing habits and really get them to understand that side of the business. So I learned a lot in our interview with him, and I’m sure you guys will, too.
But before we do that, we actually have the pleasure of introducing a new sponsor. We are so happy to welcome IPDTL to the fold.
Woohoo! Thank you, Kevin Leach.
Yeah, we’re happy to have them on board. And if you don’t know or are unfamiliar with IPDTL, what they are is a cost-effective ISDN replacement. They’re great for interviews, like we’re doing right now, outside broadcasts and voiceover.
And the great part is you don’t need any special hardware or software. It works anywhere with an internet connection. You can actually sign up with either a monthly or annual subscription, and all you really need is the Chrome web browser.
And the best part is, it just works. So once again, thanks to IPDTL for being a sponsor of the VO Meter.
Yes, thank you very much. We are really looking forward to having this wonderful solution and being able to record it both for our podcast and for the interviews we do on it. Up next, we have current events.
So what’s going on in your VO world, Paul?
Actually, quite a bit. I have a couple of really nice weeks. I finished a series of books I was doing for an author I found on one of the freelance sites on recipes.
It was a bit of an interesting topic because unless you’ve had some training in doing this, you might think that that’s really impossible to do, to read a list of ingredients, to read the steps of a recipe. But thanks to my training with the fantastic Sean Pratt, a narration coach, I learned exactly how to do this type of book. So the way it works without giving away too many secrets is you run it like you’re doing a cooking show.
So instead of just saying, take a cup of sugar, a quarter teaspoon of salt, a pinch of pepper. You actually do it like you’re Julia Child or Emeril Lagasse or whoever the popular chef is right now. You can tell I haven’t watched HGTV in a while or the Food Network.
But you pretend you’re hosting a cooking show and say, all right, well, we’re going to get the ingredients together and before we do that, why don’t you make sure you go over the list? And then I just read the list. And then I say, okay, let’s stop the recording here.
And you’ll get those together. And then we come back and say, hey, welcome back. Now I hope you’re ready to get going.
And then you run through the steps of doing the actual cooking of the meal. So if you do it that way, it’s a lot more engaging for the listener. I can see how it might be pretty cool to use that in the kitchen.
I was actually at a party this past weekend with some friends, and I was explaining this job I was doing. And one of the guys said, you know, I can see that being really good, the way personal assistants have really made their inroads into the house, like with Alexa or Google Home. And I thought, you know, I hadn’t thought of that, but yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Load this audio book into the personal assistant, just have them spit it out to you, so you have your hands free while you’re cooking.
Brilliant. It’s funny that you mentioned, because I’ve worked with Sean Pratt before, but not on that kind of material, like that kind of listicles, if you will say, or instructional stuff. And before you said it, I was like, oh, what about Food Network?
They all have voice overs on their shows, right? So that’s the perfect model to use if you ever get a project that you’ve never done a recipe before. And that whole idea of just being a person, trying to teach someone, someone else, or something else that you’re passionate about, works for just about any kind of explainer, e-learning, or instructional content that you might be narrating.
So it’s a wonderful technique to use.
Yeah, I’m having a lot of fun with those. And then last week, I also completed about a nine-hour sci-fi book I was doing, also from the same freelance site. And I was being helped out by the fabulous editor, well, also voice over talent, Andrew Bates.
He and I just completed that over the last week, and that was a decent job as well. And then finally, yesterday, I had another author come into my studio here at the home and record a book for them. Well, really just one chapter, about 45 minutes.
It was a compilation of which they were part of, and they wanted to do just their portion of it. And they got the permission from the rights holder, got the sign off, and she came in yesterday and recorded an audio book chapter for the first time. And I walked her through it and boot directed from the outside, which I’ve done a few times now, and it’s really just a whole different world that I really enjoy doing, because it sort of gets you out of the…
Not that our work is mundane, but it gets you out of the ordinary, and it’s something different that’s kind of fun to do every once in a while.
It was really funny, because I was reading your article, or your VO booth confessionals recently. We talked about it on an earlier episode, but you had mentioned donating your services to talent who might have been, through no fault of their own, might have gotten a bad demo. And so offering your studio and your engineering services, but not your coaching, because you weren’t comfortable with that.
And I was like, you know, I’m the opposite. I will coach someone until the cows come home, because I like to think of myself as a VO motivational speaker, right? Because I’m friendly and enthusiastic, and even if you make a mistake, I’m not going to crush your soul.
But the engineering side? No, I’ll hit record and that’s about it.
Yeah, it just depends on what you’re comfortable with. And I think I mentioned before, I have a degree in production from a four-year institution. So I spent a lot of time behind a board, albeit several years ago.
But as our listeners know, we are very fond of getting to know equipment and trying different equipment, and that’s also helped to get my skill level up.
Absolutely, yeah. Very cool. I know enough to get me in trouble, so I stay away from it.
Yeah, exactly. So the last thing I want to mention is upcoming this week, and I’ll tell you how it goes in the next episode, but I’m going to my daughter’s middle school for career day, and I’m going to present The Life of a Voice Actor, mostly audiobooks, because my daughter was looking at a sign-up sheet, and she said, the lady that filled out is really old. She puts you down as a books-on-CD person.
Oh, my God. Wow.
So my daughter also said the sign-ups weren’t too full on my sheet, so we’ll see if that changes by Friday, because it’s been a few weeks. But I guess I’m going to have to go and talk about mostly audiobooks, because that’s how it was presented to the kids, the sign-up, which will still be fun.
Well, I’d say that’s your specialty, too.
Yeah, I guess out of all things I do, that’s what I’ve done the most, so it makes sense. But it’s going to be fun. I’m going to bring the VOMO from vocalbooth2go.com, and set it up and have kids record a couple different scripts.
Let’s see, I picked Harry Potter, one of the Harry Potter books.
Oh, brilliant, yeah.
And Little Women, and Fahrenheit 451. So pick one of those three scripts, read a couple of paragraphs, and I’ll play it back for them, and they can either laugh or be impressed with how they sound. And who knows, maybe I’ll find some new talent to come to the studio and pay me some time for renting the studio.
Well, they’re already known for providing child talent, so maybe you can increase your roster.
Yeah, I did tell my daughter, don’t sign up, because she’s already doing this with me fairly often, so I mentioned to her it wouldn’t make sense for her, so I think she’s doing real estate and a doctor she’s going to sign up for.
Very cool, very cool.
So what’s going on with you, Sean?
Pretty much the same old same old, but I did have… I’m proud of myself, because I took the initiative in knocking out e-learning modules a little bit quicker this month, and I’ve actually… Like you were saying before, it’s really fun to bring people into your studio.
I’ve been recording some local talent so I can have a little more quality control on the audio and just edit as we go, as opposed to just receiving it and then having to go back and forth. Like, oh, you got to pick this up, la la la la, stuff like that. So that’s been fun.
And speaking of that client, my good friend Drew Badger, the owner of English Anyone, one of my, actually my first voice acting client, I’ve been sort of picking his brain about marketing and how to improve my own business, and he even offered to do some consults with GVAA, with Global Voice Acting Academy, to help us improve that one as well. So he gave us some wonderful ideas, and we’re really looking forward to this being, I definitely think this is going to be our biggest year yet, and I’m really happy about it, because I love GVAA, I love what we’re about, I love what we do, and I just want to share it with as many people as it could benefit. So, really happy about that.
That’s really cool.
Yeah, it was great, and it just seemed appropriate since we are with another marketing expert today.
Yeah, that’s great. I’ve really enjoyed my time so far with the GVAA, at least the new incarnation. I signed up for the promotion over VO Atlanta, but made a full-time member a couple of months ago, and so far I’ve done a few workouts, and they’ve been great so far.
Wonderful, yeah. It’s a really cool month we’ve got. It might as well be character month, because we’ve got several character specialists who are donating their time for workouts this month.
We’ve got, of course, got David Rosenthal. He’s great. He specializes in a number of genres.
And then one of my voice acting celebrity idols, totally starstruck, the wonderful Katie Lee, who’s got a career that spans over 30 years in the voice acting industry. So she was doing cartoons in the 80s and stuff like that, from Muppet Babies to Darkwing Duck, totally spies in the 90s, as well as Dungeons and Dragons. I actually was crushing on a character that she voiced back then.
Like, but anyways, so it’s… And I’ve worked with her in the past, too, and it’s just, like, she’s just a great, joyful spirit, and it’s just so much fun to work with.
Yeah, I put in a request for that one. Hopefully I’ll get to attend. This sounds like fun.
Oh, yeah, I should have sent you an email. Yeah, you’re totally confirmed. You’re good.
Hey, it’s good to know people in low places. Indeed, indeed.
Low places? It’s all… we get more things done down here.
Okay, so that pretty much wraps up current events, and we’ll get to our interview with the VOpreneur, Marc Scott, in just a few minutes, right after we talk about Vocal Booth to Go. They are one of our sponsors, as you know, hopefully by now if you’re a frequent listener. And what they do is create patented acoustic blankets that are an effective alternative to expensive soundproofing.
They’re often used by vocal and voiceover professionals, engineers in the studios as an affordable soundproofing and absorption solution. They make your environment quieter for less.
So thank you very much Vocal Booth to Go. You’ve been an incredible help basically since the podcast inception, if not before.
Speaking of gear, though, it’s time for our questionable gear purchase.
Because I did something stupid again.
Oh yeah? Well, that makes two of us, but you first.
Okay, well I bought a mic, which is not surprising. And probably the next part isn’t surprising either. I bought an Audio Technica AT4073A, which fans of our podcast will know I used to own.
And actually did a video shootout between it and a 416 a few months ago. But because I didn’t want to have two mics, I sold off that one. And then because of the career day thing I was talking about earlier, or at least that’s how I’m justifying it in my head, I wanted a backup mic to bring to the school that was not my 416.
Because as you and I have found, the shotguns worked really well in the portable booth, the BOMO. So I didn’t want to bring the 416 because it’s like carrying your baby and I don’t want to smash it on the road. So I picked up another 4073A at a ridiculous price.
I just couldn’t resist. And that’s going to be the mic I’m taking out on the road. Because the Blue Raspberry I usually use is working now, but I’m worried it’s going to crap out on me again because I did have that problem over the summer.
So this is my backup mic, and I’m going to use it as such for the career day thing, and I think it’ll work out pretty well for that.
Very cool. Well, it’s funny, I mean, a lot of parallel experiences this month. I also bought…
or first off, I just want to say, I’m so happy that you got that AT again, because I thought it sounded really good.
Oh, yeah, it’s amazing for the… it’s an amazing value.
Yeah, especially for what you got it for, which is like a seventh of what it usually goes for new.
I am a savvy shopper.
Yeah, that’s right.
That’s right.
Spend way too much time looking, folks. Don’t get fired from your job. Spend hours Googling gear that you don’t need.
But yeah, I mean, on Paul’s voice, I always thought, because the 416 is incredibly… it’s always described as very forward. A lot of engineers almost say it’s like pre-compressed.
It just is so like this condensed sound that really cuts through a loud music or background mix.
Cuts through the mix, as they say, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it cuts through the mix. And that can be great, but it can also be very grating on the ears or can cause ear fatigue, and for some voices, it just sounds really harsh. So for me, I mean, I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on my audio from it, but I understand Paul’s voice is a little bit bassier than mine, and it might pick up some unpleasant frequencies and stuff like that.
And the Audio Technica just had this really smooth character to it on his voice that I found really pleasant. So I’m really glad it’s in your arsenal again.
Yeah, it’ll be good. And it’s a perfect backup for the 416 should something go wrong, which I’m not hoping for. But at least if it does, I won’t be stuck without that sound if I have an ongoing project.
Oh, yeah, I think you’ll be fine. But I love that I like your mic more than you do. You’re like, all right, it’s a good backup, I guess.
Always have a backup, guys, always.
Well, if you watched that shootout I did, most of the comments favored the 416. Not that you should crowdsource your studio sound, but in this case, getting a lot of opinions that match my own makes me feel better that I like the 416 better.
Well, yeah, and it’s fine. It’s an industry standard for a reason. There’s only really three, right?
You hear U87, TLM 103, and 416 again and again and again. There’s a reason. They have characteristics that engineers want or are familiar with.
Does that mean it’s the best sound for you? Maybe, maybe not. You have to find out yourself.
But speaking of mics and backup mics, I don’t even know where to start. I feel like I’ve been holding back for so many months that I just kind of fell off the wagon.
That’s a good way to put it.
Yeah, yeah. So I guess I could start with something that I bought five years ago, but finally arrived, and I’m speaking of none other than the Sentronz Mixerface. So let me start off by saying, I admit, I was bitter.
I’m pretty much the most patient guy I know, and even mine was wearing thin, but Michael and Sentronz, you guys knocked it out of the park. You did an amazing job, and I apologize for anything me and I ever said, and this is just a fantastic, one-of-a-kind device, and I understand why it took so long to create. I mean, it’s got two-mic inputs.
It’s smaller than my smallest one-mic input interface, the Audient ID4. It’s a third of the size of my normal two-mic input interface, the SPL CREON, and it sounds incredible. And honestly, for talent who can afford it, as their first interface, or as their travel interface, or as their primary interface, it’s a no-brainer.
It really is. It works with tablets, with iOS and Android devices. It has its own…
Like the one that I got has the built-in recorder, so you can either just record there directly, or you can just have a backup track in case one of your devices goes haywire. It’s insane. And I can even plug it directly into my 416.
So I can be completely cordless. It’s insane.
Wait, it has an XLR female on it? It can go right into the mic?
So for a lot of interfaces, you could plug a mic directly into an interface, but just the shape of the interface would make it really difficult to mount, right? Like, I mean, for like your Apollo, you could have it… You could plug your mic directly into it.
You would just have to like…
That never occurred to me. I didn’t realize I could do that, actually.
Well, I didn’t even think about it until I saw Beau Weaver’s little impromptu review on it. And that’s what he did. He had it on a little tabletop stand, and he had the sentrence plugged right behind the mic while it was still plugged into the shock mount.
And it’s that light. It really is. And another solution that I found is that it does have a little thread on the underside that works with a camera tripod mount.
So if you have that kind of mount, I mean, you can get them for like $5, or if you have any adapters that might hook up to your normal mic stand equipment, like that’s a great place to mount it within your booth. And like I said, there are numerous ways that you can be almost cordless by plugging into a tablet, but without a mic cable, or just be truly cable-less and then just plug it directly into the unit itself. It’s insane.
So I know that’s a lot of features to go over. I’m actually putting together a review video trying to show all of this stuff because it’s amazing what this little thing can do. So like I said, if you can budget for a $300 to $400 interface, it really is a no-brainer.
But then I got, man, I got all this other stuff to talk about now too. So like Paul, I actually also bought a mic that I don’t really need, but it’s one that I’ve been lusting after for a very long time. It’s the Gefele M930, which is basically something that sounds as good or better than the TLM 103, but is the size of the TLM 102, which is something that I’ve always wanted because I’m a pretty portable, compact, modular guy.
And I’ve just… Like I had the 103 for a while.
Are you used to handling small packages?
I’m a late bloomer. No. Oh, man.
I don’t even know where to go with it.
Isn’t that also the mic that Paul Stichveda uses in his studio?
And he’s how I found out about it in the first place. For me, this was just that one aspirational mic that I was just like, the future me wanted in their studio so bad. I don’t even know if anyone else has that kind of relationship with gear where it’s just like, I don’t know, it just seems something that gels with your personality.
But that was the mic that I always envisioned in my studio, and in about a week, it will be here. So I’m really happy about that.
It’s funny to imagine that. I actually have the reverse. I’ve always wanted to use the Elvis mic.
What’s that called? The Shure?
The Shure SH55.
Yes, I’ve always wanted to use that because I just love to look at that. And I had one in here and it sucked.
Well, because it’s a live vocal mic. It’s not for voice over.
Yeah, it’s funny to imagine that because I always pictured that in my studio as being so cool to have pictures of me doing an audiobook with that mic in front of me.
Pretty sure Terry Daniel has one just as a prop in his studio.
Oh, really?
Yeah, yeah. Maybe you can modify it, like just have a nice capsule inside it or something.
That’s not a bad idea.
But yeah, I mean, Paul Strakwerd was actually how I found out about the mic and the shock mount that I’m getting for it as well, the Rycote USML. I had their larger version back when I had a Rode NT1, but I sold that and the Rode itself to David Tobak, my coworker at GVAA. But I loved…
I mean, once you go to that kind of system of shock mount, there’s no going back. I’ve tried numerous shock mounts that come included with different mics, and none of them have been as satisfactory an experience as that. Getting those damn rubber bands to fit and not come out of the spider shock mounts that come with these mics, and some of them are $200, $300.
Some of them are really precariously put in there too, at least in my opinion.
Absolutely. When I had a 103 in the Neumann shock mount that came with that, I never wanted to use it, because I was terrified it would fall.
Yeah, I felt the same way, because we had the same 103.
That’s right. That’s right. You sold it to us.
I was pretty sure it was going to fall down when my kids jumped too hard in the bedroom.
Exactly. It was… I mean, you want to protect that kind of investment.
And as you might know, large diaphragm condensers like the Geffel or the TLM 103 are much more fragile than a shock mount mic, which is meant to… or excuse me, a shotgun mic, which is meant for external use, to be used outside in the elements and stuff like that. So, yeah, that’s just…
I mean, I love the form factor of that kit and that… with that mic. And I’m actually…
It’s going to be very useful for another mic shootout that I have planned. My uncle actually loaned me a couple of mics. So now I literally have ones at every price point that most people would be interested in.
We’ve got the MX-L990 at $100. We’ve got the Blue Bluebird, the original, which was like $169 now, but you can… when it was new, it was $300.
Let’s see, you’ve got the AT4047 from Audio-Technica, which is another mic I’ve wanted to try for a while. And that’s about $700 new. And then, of course, you’ve got the 416, which is about $1,000.
And if the Giffel’s here by the time I want to do that shootout, then it will be featured as well.
Oh, I saw a podcast mic shootout coming on. That might be fun.
I think so. That’s pretty epic.
I have quite a few here that I was kind of recapping to you. Without even realizing it, I had created a locker over the last couple of months. I have an SM58, a Shure.
I’m currently using a Shure SM7B. I have the MKH416, now the Audio-Technica 4073A, and the Blue Raspberry, which is an entry-level USB.
That pretty much knocks out all the categories, doesn’t it?
Yeah, pretty much.
You’ve got several dynamics in there. I’ve got all the condensers. And you’ve got a USB mic in there, too.
But honestly, now that I have Mixerface, I never need a USB mic again. It’s just too easy to… I could literally have the 416 plug directly into that inside the VoMo and have it connected to an IOS device if I want.
Or just, like I said, have the backup recording as a backup. It’s insane. But like you, I do want to take Mixerface into the field, but not necessarily my 416.
Hey, buy another one.
Well, I could. So I have a couple of options. I was thinking of either getting something like the Audio-Technica 875R, which is a much more affordable shotgun microphone.
Or getting something…
Yep, got one of those, twice.
Yep, got one of those. Well, maybe I shouldn’t then if you sold it twice. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t good.
No, that’s true. And one of my regular narrators, Trey Mosley, who you mentioned on the podcast before, actually uses it and sounds great on him. But I mean, he’s got like…
His voice is just so bassy and very white-ish. It’s just… He would sound good on anything.
There’s that. And then another thing I was looking into is actually an omni-directional interview mic, because that’s what I want to take it out in the field for, is going to Comic Con or maybe VO Atlanta and interviewing people like Man on the Street, like that. So far, the cheapest option, but most quality, seems to be the RØDE Reporter mic.
So I like RØDE. I used their NT1 back before it was cool, and I really enjoy it. So it looks nice, looks professional, and I’m hoping to use that to get some really nice voice actor interviews at Emerald City Comic Con in the spring.
So some of my favorite voice actors will be featuring there, like Travis Willingham and Laura Bailey, Matt Mercer and Marisha Ray, and basically the entire cast of Critical Role, just an amazing YouTube show about voice actors playing Dungeons and Dragons together. About the nerdiest thing you can imagine, but I like both, so, and I’m an uber nerd. That’s awesome.
And a gear nerd, too, apparently, in case you hadn’t guessed from the 20-minute rant.
All right, so that wraps up Questionable Gear Purchases, thankfully, for our wallets in your ears. And we’ll get to our interview with Marc Scott in just a moment, right after these words from Sean about podcast demos.
That’s right, guys. Let me tell you about podcast demos. So this is run by a good friend of mine named Tim Page, and Tim and his team has produced over 1,000 podcast intros for some of the biggest podcasts on the planet.
So each of these demos includes custom-written scripts and hand-selected music, and it’s guaranteed to showcase your voice and talent in the best light possible. Tim has definitely got a finger on the pulse of what podcast producers want, and you can be sure that your podcast demo will sound professional, current, and competitive.
So I want to thank Tim and his fine staff for coming on board as a sponsor, and we’ll be right back after these words from the GVAA.
How many times has this happened to you? You’re listening to the radio when this commercial comes on, not unlike this one, and this guy starts talking, not unlike myself.
Or maybe it’s a woman that starts talking, not unlike myself, and you think to yourself, geez, I could do that.
Well, mister, well, missy, you just got one step closer to realizing your dream as a voice over artist, because now there’s Global Voice Acting Academy. All the tools and straight from the hip, honest information you need to get on a fast track to doing this commercial yourself.
Well, not this one exactly.
Classes, private coaching, webinars, home studio setup, marketing and branding help, members-only benefits like workouts, rate and negotiation advice, practice scripts, and more. All without the kind of hype you’re listening to right now. Go ahead, take our jobs from us.
We dare you.
Speak for yourself, buddy. I like what I do.
And you will too when you’re learning your craft at Global Voice Acting Academy. Find us at globalvoiceacademy.com.
Because you like to have fun.
Today, we’re welcoming a special guest all the way from the Great White North. He’s a full-time voice talent, has been practicing, doing work since 1995, and is located just outside Toronto. He’s also an entrepreneur, or as he likes to say, a VOpreneur.
He sells shirts, and last but not least, sadly to me, he’s a Red Sox fan, but we won’t hold that against him. Please help us welcome Marc Scott.
Just remember whose team is in the playoffs right now.
Oh, I know.
That’s all I’ll say about that.
Back down, guys. Back down. This is a peaceful podcast.
Welcome, Marc. It’s so great to have you with us today.
Thank you guys so much. I appreciate the opportunity to hang out.
Yeah, we appreciate it too. So why don’t you go ahead and tell us just a little bit more about yourself and how you got started in VO?
Okay, well, I, like many people, have a radio background. That was kind of how it all began. I did my first radio job in 1995 and did voice over as a result of that by default without actually realizing at the time that I was doing voice over just because part of my regular responsibility with the radio station was to go in every day, half hour, 45 minutes before my shift, and record commercials.
And so did that for a long time. As my network started to grow within radio and within broadcast and started picking up some other connections that were related to the industry, they started coming to me and saying, hey, could you voice this for me? Could you voice that for me?
And all the while, never really realizing that I was doing voice over, just kind of still assuming that I was doing radio. And then one day, very familiar to most people that work in broadcast, got the old heave ho from corporate who decided that it was time to do cutbacks and layoffs. And so I found myself in a position where I was unemployed with zero desire to go back to radio and trying to figure out what I was gonna do.
And that was when I had that aha moment of, well, you know, you’ve kind of been doing voice over all along without even realizing it. Maybe you can turn that into a full-time job. And so my commitment to myself at that point after almost two decades in radio was, from now on, the only idiot I answer to is me.
I am going to be my own boss, and I am going to do that through voice over. And that’s kind of how it all began. So I guess my first year full-time in voice over would have been about 2012.
Wow, that’s great. So what types of VO do you specialize in?
All the unsexy stuff. I leave all the sexy commercial video game to all the people who want to compete for that, and then I just come in behind and just pick up all the stuff that everybody else doesn’t really want to be bothered to do. And so I’m doing the corporates and the unsexy e-learnings and a lot of explainer videos and stuff like that.
A little bit of commercial from time to time, but not a lot. Mostly just some of that other stuff that I consider it to be kind of like a bread and butter. And I think a lot of people don’t realize that you can actually make a ridiculous living doing that stuff.
It’s just that you don’t get the fame and glory and you don’t usually get the five-figure paychecks from it either.
Well, you don’t sound like you mind too much. I mean, you just got this great enthusiasm and pep about it. So are there still any VO types or genres that you’re interested in breaking into?
I actually am trying really hard to get back into commercial. It’s kind of ironic because that’s all I did for 20 years working in radio. That was all I ever voiced was commercial.
But I have been one of those people that has come from a radio background that has suffered from the announcer syndrome. And it has been really freaking hard for me to get over the announcer syndrome because it’s just 20 years of doing what I do. And so it’s not that I’m putting on a voice or putting on a read or anything like that.
It’s just this is 20 years of doing what I do. It’s a habit, right? And so trying to get back into doing commercial has proven to be exceptionally difficult for me.
And I’ve been very open and honest with that about people because everybody thinks that it’s just so easy, right? It’s just talking. So I’ve done coaching just like everybody else does.
I’ve worked with Everett Oliver a lot on commercial coaching. I’ve worked with Uncle Roy. I’ve worked with J.
Michael Collins on some stuff and just working on trying to eliminate that dreaded announcer read while at the same time hoping that eventually it’s like bell bottoms and it comes back again and I’ll be fine.
Yeah, I had that same wish. I keep rubbing the magic lamp every night, but it doesn’t work.
Yeah, so far, not working out at all.
So you mentioned coaching and working with some of the grades we have in the industry. You yourself are also a coach, and one of the reasons we wanted to have you on was to talk about your coaching business. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got started in coaching and how your approach to coaching works with your students?
What I didn’t realize as I was starting to do voiceover full time or what I didn’t fully anticipate was how much business goes into pursuing voiceover. When you are doing it apart from agents. Not that I have any issue with agents, but I live in the middle of nowhere.
Are major US agents going to sign some guy from a hick town in southern Ontario to voice their US commercial campaigns? Probably not.
You’re literally off the radar, yeah.
Yeah, like that’s it. And so what I realized was I was going to have to, if I was going to make this work, I was going to have to go out and I was going to have to find my own clients, and so I started blogging because I read a book by Gary Vaynerchuk a number of years ago. This was kind of when I was all first getting started, and one of the things that Gary Vaynerchuk talked about was blogging, and so I’m like, okay, well, I’ll start blogging and that’ll help build my SEO, which I didn’t even know what SEO was back then, but I thought as long as I’m blogging and getting my name out there and people are starting to figure out who I am and I’m establishing authority and credibility and all this stuff that Gary Vaynerchuk talked about, I’m thinking, okay, well, that’s going to get me more voiceover work, which it didn’t actually get me any more voiceover work.
But the byproduct of that was that I did actually build credibility and authority in a different way. And by blogging that journey of going from unemployed bum to full-time working voice actor and kind of all the different steps that I was taking and everything that I was learning along the way, I realized that I was learning how to kind of grow a voiceover business. And so that ended up translating into opening up doors for coaching, which was not something that I had ever intended.
It’s not something that I ever tried to do. But I got to a point where people started reaching out to me and asking me, you know, can you help me with this or can you help me with this? Or, you know, I was given an opportunity to speak at a conference and I’m like, well, what the crap?
Who do you want me to speak at a conference for? It wasn’t anything that was ever planned. I was a firefighter for 17 years, and when I was on the fire department, I got to a point in my career as a firefighter that I became one of the senior guys.
And so part of my responsibility became teaching some of the guys that were coming up behind me. And so there’s always been this natural bend towards teaching. It’s something that I’ve enjoyed.
I have post-secondary certifications for it. And I guess I just kind of… The pieces of the puzzle just came together without me actually ever knowing that I was putting together a puzzle.
Well, that’s incredible. Actually, that’s how I found out about you in the first place, was from your blog. And I’m like, man, this guy really gets it.
And you’ve got such a wonderful writer’s voice. It’s really just, like you said, it shows who you are and this natural, genuine desire to help people. So I can definitely understand why people gravitated toward you.
So I’m curious, tell us about how you use social media for your business. I know you’re very active in your VOpreneur Facebook group, and you’ve also got a great deal of good video content out there. So how exactly do you use social media for your business?
I have a two-fold approach to social media now, because what I have created for myself as a result of getting into coaching, I basically created two separate businesses. So I have my voice over business where I am the voice actor, and now I have my coaching business, which is something totally separate. And so when I approach social media, there are two different audiences and two different approaches.
And so using YouTube and creating the video tips that I create, that’s part of the voice over coaching side of things. But using YouTube to go through and find all of the projects that I have voiced and adding those to playlists that I can then use to market to potential clients, that’s the voice over side of using YouTube. And using Twitter, for example, I use Twitter to share blog posts that I’ve written and talk about, share voice over tips and stuff like that.
And that’s the voice over side of my social media approach to Twitter. That’s the coaching side of my approach to Twitter. But then on the voice over side of Twitter, I’m using it more to look for leads and see who’s doing what in explainer videos and corporate video and e-learning and getting connected to those people and looking for leads and opportunities to make connections to them.
And so there really is a two-fold approach to all the different social networks that I use.
Well, I love this idea of the two-pronged approach because very often you see voice talent, even experienced ones, trying to market to other voice talent just because they don’t realize where their desired audience is. So I love that you have such this concrete idea of how to use each one for each business. So thanks for that.
I think that that is honestly, if there was probably one major mistake that I see voice actors make throughout social media, regardless of whether it’s YouTube or LinkedIn or Twitter or Instagram or whatever the social network is, we love to connect with each other. We do it very well. Everybody talks about VO Atlanta being a voice over family reunion.
We have this beautiful community, which is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, but the downside of that is because we are connected with each other everywhere, we become the audience that we are marketing to, and that just isn’t effective. People have talked to me before about, why aren’t you engaged in this group on Facebook or why don’t you engage in this group on LinkedIn or why don’t you do this? And sometimes people think that I’m just avoiding the community or whatever, but my point has always been, well, no, it’s because voice actors are much less likely to hire me.
And so with the finite amount of time that I have in a day to use social media, I need to use it to market to the people who are going to book me. And so that’s one of the things that I always tell anybody that I’m coaching with, is look at your network. If you have 1,000 people that you’re following on Twitter, and 800 of them are other voice actors, that’s the problem.
If you have 1,000 people in your network on LinkedIn, and 800 of them are voice actors, that’s part of your problem.
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Now we want to ask about other pitfalls you talk to your students about, but one more question about Facebook. About a year ago, you had either a video or a blog post, I honestly can’t remember which, talking about sort of the death of the Facebook page and how individual businesses marketing to the Facebook audiences is sort of a dead market.
Can you explain a little bit more about that and if you still feel like that’s the case?
So what Facebook has done is realize that they need to monetize the platform. That was not a surprise. We knew it was coming.
How they were going to monetize the platform, everybody was waiting to see, and what they have done is because they don’t want your whole entire news feed to be advertisements, they’ve limited the amount of real estate that is available for advertising. And so now you have all of these people with Facebook business pages who have lost all of their organic reach. The only way that you are going to be able to get reach in the feed is if you advertise.
But because they’re limiting the amount of real estate that is available in the news feed for advertising, it’s driving up the price of being able to do those advertisements. So, nine out of ten voice actors are not willing to do sponsored posts on Facebook. And pretty much the only way now from a business page that you are going to get any kind of reach is through doing sponsored posts.
I got to a point where I think I had 1,100 followers on my business page. And if I posted a new status, I would see, you know, like the initial reach of that status would go to, you know, maybe 20 of them. And if one person engaged with it, then maybe it would go to 30 or 35.
And as people engage, the organic reach would grow, but it was so hard to get that initial organic reach that to me, it almost became a waste of time. And for those of you that have followed my Facebook business page, for years, that was my number one connection to the voice actors that I was giving coaching advice to, was through my business page. And when I saw that take a hit and saw that it was going to continue to take a hit and that it wasn’t going to change in my favor anytime soon, that was when I made the switch to a group, and that’s when I made the decision to create the VO Printer group.
I have kept my business page because it has an audience on it, and I do paid advertising from time to time for various things. But for most voice actors at this point, I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of value in having a Facebook business page other than it gives you some visibility on Facebook, I suppose. But in order to get any kind of reach, you would have to be willing to spend money on a regular basis, and most people aren’t willing to do it.
And I’m not convinced that it’s the best place to spend your advertising dollars anyway.
Yeah, I tend to agree. It’s just one of the ways that Facebook, in my opinion, has made it harder to operate a business. Another way, or I guess this might have been Twitter, there used to be a way to integrate what you were posting on Facebook automatically on Twitter.
And I’m pretty sure it’s Facebook. They killed that integration. So where before you could post something on Twitter and have it automatically show up on either your personal page or your business page, that connection was killed sometime over the summer and it really bugged me.
All the social media platforms are actually moving towards stuff like that. I used a third-party service that I had paid a fairly substantial amount of money for. I think I paid a subscription of like $300 US for the year or something.
And the whole point of that service was it allowed me to go through, and I would sit down on Sunday night, and I would spend an hour, and I would write a whole bunch of custom tweets for the week and then schedule them out accordingly. And then I would also plan out some of the posts that I was going to put on to Facebook in the group. So there was a level of automation in that I didn’t have time to sit down every day and come up with this stuff, but I would always make a point of sitting down before the week started and scheduling out a bunch of stuff.
And then as things arose during the week, it still gives me the opportunity to be present in each of the networks. But what has happened is Twitter has basically eliminated the capacity to do that through some of these third-party tools. And it all comes back to, you know, they keep blaming every…
I don’t want to get political here, but the whole situation that happened with Trump and the way that Facebook was manipulated and user data was manipulated in the election, in an attempt to block stuff from that happening, they’re preventing all the different social networks now are preventing some of this scheduled content and things like that to go online and kind of forcing people to do things in real time and even blocking some of the content that you try to share. Prime example, I’m an affiliate for Voice Sam, and I used to tweet out my affiliate link with a special affiliate deal for Voice Sam, and nine out of ten times now, Twitter will block that tweet. They won’t even let me send that tweet.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, but they’ve deemed that it’s content that people aren’t interested in, so they just block the tweet. You can’t even send it out anymore. I’m afraid that we’ll get to a point where we’re trying to sell voiceover services or whatever, and Twitter’s going to start blocking tweets that link to our webpages because they don’t want to risk people being directed to other sites that may be inappropriate, but rather than being able to specifically target, they just kind of blank it.
A few bad seeds ruin the fun for everybody.
It’s true.
We talked about some mistakes people make on their social media as far as marketing their business. What would you say, Marc, is the biggest mistake you see people make when they come to you as a student overall in starting a VO business?
The biggest mistake when they’re starting their business is that they’re not even in a position to start their business yet. Thank you. In all honesty, I had a conversation…
I mean, I sell coaching programs, right? And I sell… one of my programs that I sell, I only release it a couple of times a year, and it’s a bigger ticket item.
And I turn people away from it all the time, because they’ll come to me ready to start marketing and grow their voice over business, and I’ll say, okay, well, I want you to give me an honest assessment of where you’re at, and they’ll kind of… I ask them some very direct questions, and when I read back their responses, I write them back and say, you’re nowhere near ready for this. Please do not waste your money on this program.
I don’t want you to spend money on this. I had a conversation with somebody just this week, actually, who was looking to get together with me to do some marketing help, but they’d never done any professional performance coaching yet. And so it was honestly that situation we’ve all heard before where their family and friends tell them they have a nice voice, and they’re an excellent communicator, and whatever, we’ve all heard it.
And so they just automatically assume, okay, well, I go out, I buy my microphone, I start marketing to some clients, I sign up on a casting site, and I’m a voice actor, and away we go. So I think the biggest mistake that people make in their business is not being ready to start a business. Honestly, so many people come before they’ve even done an assessment with a coach.
You know, people joke about how much I talk about Uncle Roy online. The reality is that I refer more people to that guy for coaching than I ever work with on my own, because I know that until they’ve gone through somebody like him, or like a J. Michael, or an Everett, or Ang Angus, or whatever, until they’ve actually worked with somebody like that, and somebody like that has told them they’re prepared to move forward, there is absolutely no reason for them to spend a dime working with me.
Very cool. I mean, we see people shooting themselves in the foot all the time, and it’s usually because they look at voice over as a way to make money without investment of time or money. And that’s not, like you said, that is the opposite mentality that you need to take.
So kind of moving away from the pitfalls, say you’ve got a student who’s receptive to that feedback and wants to, is actually wants to learn and wants to pursue it like a business. What are some tips that you can give them to help them be successful as a VOpreneur or to change their mindset from that idea of being a voice over artist to a voice over entrepreneur or business person?
I think that agents are fantastic. I think they’re an important piece of the puzzle. I think that casting sites can come with benefit and value if you’re on the right casting site.
But in today’s day and age, I do not think that you can build a thriving, successful business exclusively on the backs of agents and casting sites. And maybe there are exceptions where you live in LA and you’re right there beside all the studios, but most of us don’t live in LA. And so you have to be prepared to put in the time to do the marketing.
And I think a lot of people underestimate how much time that’s actually going to be. One of the lines that I always say is, if you want to be a full-time voice actor, first you are going to have to be prepared to be a full-time marketer. And my first year full-time, I spent 95% of my time marketing and 5% of my time booking.
And over the years, those percentages have shifted, but you still need to put in the time to do the marketing every single day. There are leads that are out there. There are countless opportunities.
I believe that there is enough business for all of us. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be teaching people how to do this, because I’m basically… educating my competition.
But I believe that there are enough opportunities that are out there. The people that are willing to put in the time and the effort to go get them are the people that are going to succeed, and the people that are looking for the quick and easy money are the ones that are not.
So maybe to put things in perspective, how much time would you say that you dedicate to marketing each day?
In the beginning, I was a full-time marketer. I was legitimately… I was spending eight hours a day finding leads, contacting leads, and admittedly in the beginning, I wasn’t efficient because I didn’t know what I was doing.
That’s one of the reasons why I teach now. Here, look, I did all the stupid things. I made all the stupid mistakes.
If you want to avoid all of that, I can help you type deal. But I tell people that take my courses, you need to be finding a minimum of 50 new leads a week, a minimum of finding and contacting 50 new leads a week. If you really want to build something, you need to be doing 100 leads a week, finding and contacting 100 leads a week.
And that’s what I was doing in the beginning. I was finding and contacting 100 leads a week. It sounds daunting, but it depends on what your goals are.
For me, I was in a position where I was unemployed, but I still had rent to pay, so I needed to start making money. And you can make money if you only reach out to a handful of people each week. You’re just not going to make a lot of money, and it’s going to take you a long time to get there.
I needed to make it in a hurry, so it’s just a simple economy of scale. The more people that you put yourself in front of, the more opportunities you’re probably going to create. But I do legitimately think that you need to be, at the minimum, 50 leads a week, and if you really want to do something, you’re looking at 100.
It’s so great to hear those concrete numbers, too, because a lot of people just don’t have any idea or a misconception about how long it takes to start getting traction. It’s the same with auditions. They’re like, oh, I did 200 auditions last year, and I got nothing.
Well, maybe if you’re doing 200 a week, you might get more results. But you really just have to think larger and increase that volume and just cast a wider, more fine net.
You’ve got to look at the data points, too. Probably the most common thing that I get from people when they first start working with me is, well, I’m contacting two or three people a day. And I’m like, okay, well, let’s look at this then.
You’re contacting two people a day, which means that assuming you take the weekend off, that means you’re contacting 10 people a week. And the numbers on marketing show us that on an average, when you’re doing cold marketing, so you’re reaching out to somebody that you have no previous connection with, when you’re doing cold email marketing, you’re probably gonna get about a 10% conversion rate. So that means if you email 10 people in a week, one of those people might respond to you in some capacity.
Doesn’t mean they’re gonna hire you. It just means they’re gonna respond to you in some capacity. The numbers also show that you’re probably gonna get about a 3% to 5% eventual conversion rate.
So if you’re reaching out to those 10 people, then you’re talking about less than 1% of a booking coming out of those 10 leads. And so you can see why if you just do 10 leads a week, it’s gonna take you a few months before you even get your first job. And if you’re only booking a couple of jobs a year, obviously it’s gonna take you a lot longer to build your business.
Now on the flip side of that, you contact 100 people a week, and maybe 10 or 15 of those people respond to you, and maybe ultimately 3 to 5 of those people will book you. Not saying they’re gonna book you that week, but saying eventually they’re going to book you. That’s just kind of what the numbers show.
So now all of a sudden, if you’re adding 3 to 5 potential clients, 100 contacts, but 3 to 5 potential clients into your database every week, all of a sudden now you’ve got something that can grow.
So let’s talk about marketing as it relates to other businesses. Now, if you’ve only done voice over, you may not realize that what you just said is absolutely true. I, for one, came from a career of selling insurance, where I used to make 100 calls a day, and the conversion rates were largely the same.
But at the end of the week, if I converted that one client to a life insurance policy, that was a good week. So that brings us sort of to the talk about rates and voiceover. Do you feel, or I pretty much know how you feel, but tell our audience that in order to make a living doing this, you actually have to charge the rates that you’re worth, because if you only convert one or two clients a week, it’s the only way you’re going to live.
Would you tend to agree?
Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll tell you that the biggest issue with rates has nothing to do with rates. And this is the conversation that doesn’t happen very often.
It has absolutely nothing to do with rates, and it has nothing to do with the GVAA rate guide, and it has absolutely nothing to do with scale and union and blah, blah, blah. The biggest single issue with rates in the voiceover industry and just in freelance industries in general is mindset. Nine out of ten times, probably like 9.8 out of ten times, the issue has to do with mindset, and it has to do with somebody who’s newer to the industry, comes in, and you tell them, okay, well, you’re going to do that video, and I believe that you can charge $500 for that video.
That’s fair market standard for that video. And that person says, what? Like, this is going to take me like 10 minutes to do.
I can’t… I charge 50 bucks for that, and I’m making really great money. And that’s a mindset issue.
It’s a mindset issue where people can’t wrap their head around the true value that they bring and how that converts into dollars. They’re simply looking at it on a basis of time. It only takes me so many minutes, and so really, it’s not right for me to charge whatever based on it only takes me so many minutes to do.
Okay, well, fine. Then if you want to talk about time, yes, it only took you 30 seconds to record that 30-second commercial that’s going to air a thousand times over the next six months to an audience of six million people. Let’s talk about time.
How much time did your voice just spend on the air, sharing the message of a business, and now all of a sudden, you know what, maybe it is worth more than $5, $50, whatever. But it shouldn’t be about those types of things. It always comes down to, in my opinion, it comes down to a mindset issue and people not being able to wrap their mind around what they actually are worth.
And I mean, that goes back to programming that we learned when we were kids. I mean, I don’t want to go all psychology on you and everything, but it really does. It really comes back to what we were taught about money and how money was handled in our households and with our families or whatever the case may be.
And until you get over some of that stuff, it’s really hard for people to actually charge fair market value. And I get it. I went through that struggle.
When you’re starting out in voice over, okay, so I just got laid off from radio and my rent still do next week, and I’ll work for whatever anybody wants to pay me just because I’m desperate to pay my rent. I mean, I’ve been there. I understand it.
I had to work through that. You know, do I still… I’m still not charging.
You know, I don’t know that my rates are probably on par with GVAA in some of the categories, but I know that I’m charging what I’m worth, and I know that it’s a heck of a lot more than I would ever make on Fiverr and probably more than I would make on a bunch of the casting sites too.
Wow, Marc, thank you so, like, literally, mind’s blown here. I think the mics are blown too. But anyways, I mean, it’s like you really have just turned so many misconceptions on their head and really have given our audience the chance to just reevaluate how they’re pursuing their business.
Like, are they even pursuing it as a business? So how can people get a hold of you and, excuse me, either to hire you as a voice talent or to work with you as a coach?
Yeah, so if you want to get connected with me, my voiceover website is markscottvoiceover.com. It’s M-A-R-C. The coaching side of things is at markscottcoaching.com.
That’s where my blog is and some of the resources that I offer at markscottcoaching.com. The group that I run on Facebook is called VOpreneur. One of the things that really frustrated me about some of the other groups in Facebook and the reason why I’m not actively participating in some of the groups in Facebook is that there’s a lot of pity parties that go on in them sometimes.
There’s a lot of whining and griping and complaining and just general negative attitudes, and I really, really didn’t like the way that new talent were getting treated in some of those groups as well. Look, we have a responsibility as veteran talent. We have a responsibility if we want this industry to remain something beautiful.
It’s our responsibility, I believe, to help make that happen, and part of how we make that happen is by properly training up the people that are coming in behind us, and you don’t properly train them up by telling them that they’re stupid for being on Fiverr. That’s not effective, in my opinion. So I wanted to create a group that was a little bit different, that had a little bit different vibe to it.
And so the VOpreneur group that exists on Facebook, I mean, its primary purpose is designed to help people with the business side of voiceover, because again, you are starting a voiceover business. We tend to be creative people, we tend to think creatively, and so sometimes the business side of things doesn’t come naturally to us. So that was the initial intent of the group, was to help people with the business side.
But it’s also just to create a culture that people actually want to participate in and engage in. And it’s not that, you know, it’s all sunshine and rainbows and unicorns. You know, I have some pretty straight talk in the group from time to time on certain subjects and certain issues, but everybody is respected.
And there’s no talking down to people. There’s no making people feel stupid. You know, when somebody comes into the group and asks about fiber, you know, let’s have a conversation with them about fiber.
And let’s have a conversation with them to help them understand why maybe that’s not the best place for them. Let’s not just say, you’re an idiot, get out of our group. That doesn’t solve the problem.
That doesn’t help people advance. That doesn’t get them off of fiber and into a position where they’re charging fair rates. And so the VOpreneur group is open to anybody that is on Facebook that is a working voice actor.
It’s facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash VOpreneur. One of the things that I like to do as much as possible, I do free Advice Fridays where I literally, I just pop online for half an hour or maybe an hour in the group lots of times on Friday afternoons. And it’s just a Facebook live broadcast where I literally just sit there and just answer your questions and just offer up advice and talk about whatever you want to talk about related to voiceover and to your business.
And I really take the responsibility, I take it seriously of being able to offer something back to the community that has been really good to me. And we do have a really, really amazing community. I’ve never worked anywhere else where I’ve seen anything like that.
That kind of community certainly doesn’t exist in radio. It’s about as cutthroat as it can possibly get. So it’s cool to just be a part of that and to be able to share and contribute that.
And it keeps me sharp too. Sometimes people ask me questions that I have to stop and think about, or they’ll ask me a question that makes me want to go and do a little bit of research afterwards or dive into something a little bit deeper. And so it’s just as good for me as it is, I think, hopefully for the people that are participating and getting the advice.
So again, that’s facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash VOpreneur, and that’s open to anybody, any working voice actor on Facebook.
Well, Marc, we really appreciate you being on again. The VOpreneur group is really a breath of fresh air, and it shows the attitude that you mentioned about giving back. It’s actually the same reason we started this podcast.
We don’t charge anybody for it. You can listen to it free on the Webosphere, and we just like to give people a chance to listen to great folks like you to help them grow their business. Now, we’re going to see you again in a few weeks, or at least I will, at the Mid-Atlantic Voice Over Conference.
Are you looking forward to that?
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that one. It’s actually my first time going to that conference, and I’ll tell you, I totally dig what Val is doing. I love VO Atlanta, but I’ll be honest with you, I’m a little bit of an introvert, and man, sometimes VO Atlanta feels a little overwhelming to me.
It’s exhausting.
There’s just so many people, and you want to talk to everybody, but it’s funny, there were people that were there that I never even actually ran into over the course of the weekend. It’s so huge, right? And it’s got this totally different kind of vibe that is really cool.
But I love that Val has created something intentionally small because she wants the people that are there to be able to have more of a connection with the coaches and the mentors. And I really dig that, because I’m just as happy to sit down and have a conversation with somebody one-on-one or in a group of three or four people or whatever, as I am to get up and speak in front of a session that’s filled with 80 people or 100 people or whatever. So I just think it’s really cool that she’s kind of creating something that’s a little bit on the other end of the spectrum, and I think that’s going to work for a lot of people.
So I’m really looking forward to doing that conference and making some connections there.
Yeah, I love the idea of an intimate voiceover conference, because you’re right, when you’ve got 600 people in a three-story hotel, it’s easy to have some misconnections, and it can be overwhelming if you’re an introvert, like many of us in this conference call. But I think, unfortunately, I won’t be able to be there in person this year, but I know you’re going to have an amazing time. So I hope you guys do and learn lots.
Yeah, we’ll talk again. We plan to sit down at least for a few minutes with you, Marc, and Ken Foster, who will be joining me. And we’ll have a grand old time.
Yes. Very cool. Well, thanks again, Marc, for just so much for your experience or insight, just your overall attitude.
I love that you come from this place of wanting to educate people without judgment. I feel like there’s a lot of animosity towards new people because they make mistakes that make us upset or frustrated, but they don’t understand what they’re doing. So rather than breed animosity by name calling, why not give them the information that will help them make an informed decision and make the changes that we’re asking them to make?
So thank you for your part in that.
I don’t think there’s any of us that started in this business perfect.
We all make mistakes every day.
And so sometimes those of us that have been around for a little bit, we just need to remember that. You know what? I was a stupid rookie too.
I made every mistake when I was first starting out. So I have no problem sharing from those experiences because they are vast.
Wonderful. Well, thank you for sharing some of them with us today, Marc. We hope you have a wonderful day and wish you nothing but the best in your VO business.
Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.
All right. Thank you so much to Marc Scott for joining us on the podcast. We’ll wrap up with you guys in just a minute.
But before that, a word from one of our sponsors.
As a voice talent, you have to have a website. But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you. And when they finally do, they break or don’t look right on mobile devices.
They’re not built for marketing and SEO. They’re expensive. You have limited or no control.
And it takes forever to get one built and go live. So what’s the best way to get you online in no time? Go to voiceactorwebsites.com.
Like our name implies, voiceactorwebsites.com just does websites for voice actors. We believe in creating fast, mobile-friendly, responsive, highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use. You have full control.
No need to hire someone every time you want to make a change. And our upfront pricing means you know exactly what your costs are ahead of time. You can get your voice over website going for as little as $700.
So if you want your Voice Actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options, go to voiceactorwebsites.com, where your VO website shouldn’t be a pain in the you-know-what.
Thanks again to Joe Davis, Karen Barth, and the rest of the team at voiceactorwebsites.com. We really value you as a sponsor. So Sean, what do you think about Marc Scott’s interview?
Wow, it was amazing. I know our goal for the podcast is to kind of enlighten our listeners and stuff like that, but for me, it’s just wow. I mean, I learned so much and it really changed my mindset.
Like, mainly just the volume of reaching out that you need to do in order to really build and gain traction and just have that steady stable of repeat clientele. So thank you so much, Marc, for being so generous with your advice and expertise.
Yeah, it really reaffirmed what I kind of already knew, but it was good to hear that having business acumen is so important in running your VO business. If you have that experience or if you don’t, you should go find it, that you really need to be making all those contacts in order to have any returns at all. So if you’re not already calling or contacting 10 people a day, you’re really not doing it right.
That’s right. I mean, I know cold calling is one of the things that people hate, and you just have to do it, or something similar. It can be emails as well, but you need to find, like, so many other things in this business.
You need to find the method that works for you and be consistent with it.
And what you’ll find, and I just found this out this week, and I know this from other businesses, but it’s finally starting to happen in my VO world. Once you make those initial contacts, they will start coming back to you in the form of referrals. So, the author I worked with yesterday was a direct referral from an author that I worked with a year ago, who I reached out to personally.
I saw their book was out on Amazon, on Facebook, and I reached out to them and said, I’d like to do your book. And we end up doing it here in the studio. And then just last week, last Friday, her name is Wendy, Wendy sent me an email saying, I’d like to meet Donna, she wants to do a book too, and boom, we had it done yesterday.
That’s awesome. Yeah, once you get those connections started, they can grow exponentially.
So hang in there.
So hang in there, guys. Just keep going, pound the pavement. 50 contacts a week.
So that pretty much wraps up this episode of the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We’d just like to say thank you again to our wonderful sponsors, the Global Voice Acting Academy and Vocal Booth to Go.
voiceactorwebsites.com and podcastdemos.com.
And last but certainly not least, our wonderful tech sponsor, IPDTL. So thank you, Kevin, and your team for giving us such a wonderful service for our podcast. That wraps up this episode.
We hope you guys have a wonderful day.
So long, everybody.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the VO Meter. To follow along, visit us at www.vometer.com. VO Meter is powered by IPDTL.

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode 31 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Today is gonna be a little different, because we’re going to demonstrate how big of a shill each one of us is.
That’s right, guys, today on Current Events, we’ve sold out.
In no uncertain terms.
So, a number of great companies have reached out to us offering a sponsorship, and we just want to assure you guys we really do believe in the products and services they offer, and we just want to share them with you in this episode.
And starting with our very first sponsor, voiceactorwebsites.com.
As a voice talent, you have to have a website. But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you. And when they finally do, they break or don’t look right on mobile devices.
They’re not built for marketing and SEO. They’re expensive. They’re expensive, you have limited or no control.
And it takes forever to get one built and go live. So what’s the best way to get you online in no time? Go to voiceactorwebsites.com.
Like our name implies, voiceactorwebsites.com just does websites for voice actors. We believe in creating fast, mobile-friendly, responsive, highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use. You have full control.
No need to hire someone every time you wanna make a change. And our upfront pricing means you know exactly what your costs are ahead of time. You can get your voiceover website going for as little as $700.
So if you want your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options, go to voiceactorwebsites.com, where your VO website shouldn’t be a pain in the you-know-what.
So the main interview portion of the episode is actually a roundtable, where we talked about social media with a couple of stalwarts of the social media and voiceover circles, at least in our minds. And we’ll get to that in just a few minutes. But before we do that, Sean wants to tell you about one of our sponsors.
That’s right. So some of you guys might not know, but I’m actually the member liaison for the Global Voice Acting Academy, also affectionately known as the GVAA. And we provide professional online voiceover education through classes, workshops, webinars, private coaching, demo production and VO membership programs.
So whether you’re just beginning your VO journey or an experienced veteran, GVAA offers professional training, career resources, rate guide services and a supportive caring community. So if you’re interested, you should check us out at globalvoiceacademy.com.
Yeah, and they’re no strangers to the program. We’ve had Christina, the founder on and we’ve talked about them pretty much since the beginning. It’s no secret that we were fans of the company and we’re so happy to have them on board.
Thank you guys very much. It’s wonderful to have you as our sponsor for the podcast.
So, we are still going to run through our normal show segments and we want to start as we normally do with current events. So, is there anything cool going on in your VO world, Sean?
Just some fun auditions. I went up to Seattle recently and actually speaking of GVA, David Tobak, our co-worker and COO, our Chief of Operations, actually came to visit me for a week. He even recorded some stuff here.
It was a lot of fun. But anyways, he’s back in Florida now, but the day I dropped him off, we had to get up at like 4.30 to get him to the airport in time. And then I had an audition in Seattle after that.
But it was really nice because I felt like the producer really understood, like they had been frustrated with a number of audition, or like rounds of auditions. And so they’re like, all right, what if we get, like have them work in pairs, get them on like a couch, watching TV, like set the scene, almost like an on-camera audition or something like that. And it was just so much easier to get into the role.
It was wonderful.
That’s cool.
Yeah, so that was a lot of fun. And speaking of social media, I was able to find a new corporate narration client because someone had posted in the British Facebook group. So I need to record something for them after we do this.
Wait, the British group, you’re doing a British accent?
No, they wanted American talent.
Oh, yeah. We’ve talked about that. That’s a good bit.
So that’s right, be the unique commodity in the group that you’re in if you can help it.
Exactly. Don’t work with a bunch of people who sound exactly like you.
Exactly.
Well, that’s cool. I’ve had a couple of cool things going on as well. I’ve been continuing my spate of medical narration that hopefully some of you have seen on social media.
My latest one was on, let’s see, Angel Man Syndrome, which I hadn’t heard about before, and actually did the whole segment, pronouncing it Angle Man, because I’m an idiot. And the client got back to me and said, it’s Angel, and they did a little emoji with an angel and a halo over it, which I didn’t even know existed. I said, oh, that makes more sense.
So…
Was the conversation over social media, just over, or just…
No, just emailing back and forth with the client.
Oh, okay, okay, wasn’t true.
Yeah, I hadn’t realized you could actually do emojis and emails, but whatever program they were using, it came up that way. And then I said, oh, now I get it, sorry.
So I went back and did that. Isn’t that the same, like, where, I don’t know, like, they can actually have, like, the softening of the voice and just almost like a frail demeanor or something like that?
Yeah, well, I can tell you the whole spiel if you want. It’s a chromosomal abnormality that comes when you have disparate pairs of chromosomes from your father and your mother. But go watch the whole thing if you want to on YouTube.
But anyway, that’s an ongoing client, and I have about 30 more of those to do. And never complain about repeat business. And speaking of repeat business, I had a cool situation that just happened in the beginning of this week.
A client reached out to me yesterday, who I had done a video for over the summer, a repeat client, and they came to me through my agent in New Zealand and said, yeah, I’d love to do another video for you, but I really think we should go back through the agency because that’s how you found me to begin with. So it’s the first time I actually was able to send something to my agent where they were grateful because I didn’t try and cut them out. So word to the wise, if you have representation, respect them and they’ll respect you.
Yeah, because they’re looking out for your best interests. That’s what their job is. So they might be able to negotiate a better rate for you.
So certainly at least let them know when an opportunity like that comes up.
Yeah, and that’s basically why I did it. I mean, aside from just being good business and me being a generally good guy, I thought I could easily screw myself out of this negotiation because it’s not what I do. The client didn’t give me a budget.
They said, tell me what you would charge. And, you know, I go by the GBA rate guide normally, and I’m usually happy to do that. But if I can get the negotiation out of my hands, I’m all happy to do that.
So that’s why I said to the agency and said, you guys do it and tell me what you think. And the client didn’t mind at all, actually. He just said, great, yeah, no problem.
So that pretty much wraps up everything for current events. But up next, we have…
So Sean, what have you done to yourself this week, or your budget?
Well, actually, I finally took advantage of my Sweetwater gift card that I got from the incredible Unicorn Grand at VO Atlanta. I got a very nice, what’s called a drum throne for when I need to sit in the booth for long-form narration projects. And I go back and forth, because sometimes I don’t feel like I have enough energy when I do that, but when I stand up, sometimes I have a penchant for being overly expressive or just artificial in my sounding.
So, I don’t know, you really just need to experiment in just sit or stand, however you’re feeling that day, I guess. But, I mean, just having a comfortable thing, or drum throne to sit on is what it’s called, it’s been like, ah, you can just hear the relaxation in my voice when I read. It’s amazing.
Is an extra high one? Because I looked at that myself for a while and I found they were all too low. Like, basically it was like sitting on a throne, you know, the other throne.
And it was kind of uncomfortable because all my gear is higher in the booth.
I haven’t extended it to its full height, but I have had other people come in here who are much taller than me sit on it and they thought it was quite comfortable. So, I don’t know. If it’s something you’re interested in, I’m very happy with it.
It’s called the Rockin Sock Drum Throne, by the way. It’s got this almost like blue, at least the version I got, like blue velvet covering. And it’s got an optional back if you want it to look more like an office chair or you need that additional lumbar support.
But it’s quite comfortable with or without it. So I’m really happy with that. So actually, while we’re on the subject of that, I wanted to give a shout out to Beth Windsor Stewart and Lynn Norris for the recommendation.
They’re character actresses and audio book narrators. And so I think they would know a little bit about sitting in the booth for extended periods. So thank you guys very much for the recommendation.
And thank you, Emmett Andrews for your recommendation of the home purpose office chair for my studio desk. It’s very comfortable and I wouldn’t have found it without it. So thank you.
Ergonomics are important.
Yes, ergonomics are very important if you’re spending eight or more hours a day in your office.
Yeah, definitely. Anything else? Or is that the only one?
Nope, that’s it. Oh, actually I did get a isotope RX7. So I’m very excited to try that out.
Haven’t downloaded it yet, but they’re wonderful things. And last but not least, thank you Armin for your recommendation of the Renaissance Fox plugin. I was playing with that last night.
It sounds very nice. So thank you very much.
Cool. So in lieu of me buying anything stupid this month, because I actually didn’t, we’re going to talk about something I was given for free, well, almost free, in exchange from our new sponsor, Vocal Booth To Go. Now we’ve talked about them forever, ever since the first episode of the podcast, because we’ve used their products.
But if you don’t know, Vocal Booth To Go’s patented acoustic blankets are an effective alternative to expensive soundproofing. They’re often used by vocal and voiceover professionals, engineers and studios as an affordable soundproofing and absorption solution. They make your environment quieter for less.
Now I went out to the warehouse actually and met with the owner, Jeff, and the webmaster and marketing coordinator, Stephen Coghill, and we did some live sound with some of the new products. So what we’re gonna do is play that now and you’ll hear the, let’s see, the Vomo, the portable vocal unit, the hanging Vocal Booth. It’s sort of like your Sean, but a shorter version.
Yeah, it’s sort of like your booth cut in half. So it looks like the Vomo.
Cut in half from the, they chopped off the legs.
Yeah, exactly.
I wasn’t sure exactly what that was. That’s cool. I can understand why they might do that though.
And so, and for people who don’t know the Vomo, I have a version of it as well. It’s formally known as the Carry On Vocal Booth. But I think since carry on restrictions have changed, since when the product was first developed, he can decided to change the title.
So it’s now the vocal, or the Vomo, the Vocal Mobile Booth. And just as effective, if not more so, than when they first made it.
And then finally, you’ll hear a sound test from both outside and inside the new sound proofer booth, the SP sound proofer, it’s SPB33. SPB33. It’s the new and improved portable booth that has the mass-loaded vinyl sheets inside and has now a swinging door, which I got to try out and open up and close, and that was pretty cool.
So you’ll hear the before and after, and you can hear for yourself how the noise floor changes or drops when we close the door and zip it all up. So without further ado, let’s play the audio from my visit to Vocal Booth To Go. So welcome back to the VO Meter.
I’m actually here in the Vocal Booth To Go facilities in sunny Frederick, Maryland, for the time being anyway. And I’m joined by Stephen Coghill. And Stephen, tell us a little bit about what you do here at vocalboothtogo.com.
I am head of marketing here and audio engineer for Vocal Booth To Go. And I help people design and figure out what they need for their spaces and for the recording rooms and all that sort of stuff. And I also obviously market and design the website and put all the information for all the new products that we have going out.
Okay, well, Sean and I have talked about the products a lot since the beginning of our show, really even in show one because we both use them. But what we want to talk about is some of the new products that the company has coming out. Can you tell us what you’re excited about and what’s coming up?
Well, the newest products we have right now are that we’re excited about the new SBB booths. We have a new three by three soundproof booth and we have a six by six soundproof booth. And the newest thing about these booths is they actually have a swing open door.
So that’s, you know, before you had a zipper that you had to kind of open and crawl through, but now we have a proper door that actually swings open. So it’s easy kind of to get in and out of. Also they’ve been redesigned.
So we’ve shaved off about 100 pounds off of each booth. So that’s a good thing so that you’re not pushing around that much weight. Also the panels now zipper together and they seal with a Velcro flap.
So it just looks nicer. It’s a lot better looking. It seals a lot better.
And it seems to really provide good DB drop as far as the audio goes.
What is the ballpark reduction in noise that you think?
It’s about 40 to 45 DB. Which is actually pretty impressive, yeah.
Yeah, that’s really good.
Yeah, it is.
I’ve actually seen it up close. We’re gonna play a test from the booth in a couple of minutes where we do some room tone outside and then reading a script inside and you’ll get to hear yourselves what it sounds like. But yeah, I’m really excited about it.
I like to credit myself with coming up with the idea. I’m not sure if Jeff would agree.
Well, I’m not sure he would either, but yeah, we’ll definitely give you credit down there.
Yeah, I came out here about two years ago and rented the original model. And then I said to Jeff at that time, this is great, but if it only had a door. And then I think it was like two weeks later, he said, I love that idea.
Yeah, I’m gonna go make a prototype.
He does take, that’s the thing about Jeff, is he takes any and all suggestions, anybody who comes up and says, I mean, that’s how we develop our products, is somebody comes up with a problem and we come up with a solution. So that’s how all these products come about.
That’s great. So that’s the new SPB.
That’s the new, yeah, SPB33 and the 66 and they’re available on the website. I think we only have, we’re only down to 166. We’ve already sold out all the rest of them, but we have definitely a lot of the 33s that are available and ready to go.
That’s great. So let’s talk about some of the other products. Right now, we’re actually using the new model of the VOMO, the portable solution.
Tell me a little bit about that.
Yeah, so this is the voiceover mobile. This is a portable, kind of a suitcase type portable booth that you can take anywhere with you. Go on, take it on the plane, take it on your, take it in the car, go on vacation with it and basically be able to recording, get great recordings anywhere you go.
And that’s kind of what it is. So, you know, it pops up into a little kind of tent and it’s got our Producers Choice blankets surrounding it and you put your microphone inside and it works fantastic. I actually use it at my own recording studio at home and it works great.
Yeah, we’re actually using it right now to do this interview.
So, right now.
In the noisy warehouse with, is it 70? Right outside?
Yeah, that’s 15, actually.
Yeah, so really busy, six lane highway right outside. Similar to my own home studio, actually. And you can hear how the Vomo actually reduces the ambient noise pretty well.
Yeah, and we have the AC going too. So, we’ll see how that goes.
So what else?
Well, what else do we have?
We have a new hanging portable booth. So it’s basically a booth that it goes out, like kind of comes in a roll and a bag and you can take it with you. It’s kind of like smaller than the Vomo.
It doesn’t have like a tray, like a hard table like the Vomo has. Just a very soft product made of the Producers Choice blankets and you can unfold it, hang it up in a closet with a couple of hangers and you’re ready to go. You can start recording right away.
So it’s a very cool product. It’s called the Portable Hanging Vocal Booth and that’s very cool.
We’re going to take some pictures of these things before we go. I haven’t told Stephen this yet, but I’m going to. So we’ll put them on our Facebook page, the VO Meter, check that out and you can see what these actually look like.
Even though we do mostly audio here because we’re a voice over podcast, it helps sometimes to see the products as well. Also, where can they find them on your company’s website?
Yeah, it’s www.vocalbooth2go.com and all the products are listed under there. The other newest thing we have is, in addition to, we have a new style of fan. We still have our same fans that we have for the booths.
We have a six inch fan and we have a four inch fan, but we have a newly designed fan that’s inside. It’s gonna be really quiet and really powerful. So that’s one thing.
Another thing is the, is a fan speed controller. So it’s basically a fan controller that you can put in between your fan and the power and you can adjust the speed of it. So you can actually turn down the fan speed and make it quieter if you need to.
And was that fan and the controller designed by the company? Are they proprietary?
No, they’re not proprietary. They’re just products that we found and kind of used for this purpose.
Okay, the fan is really effective. I actually heard George Whitham at one point say it’s the quietest booth fan he’s ever heard.
Yeah, we used the soundproofing and basically designed a case for it that sits inside of it and that really makes it silent and run very, very efficient.
Which is really, really cool when you’re, hear that pun, really cool when you’re doing a recording and you want to, you know, breathe as well.
Yes, yes, you do need to breathe. It’s very important.
So anything else you want to showcase, Stephen?
Yeah, the last thing, or I don’t know if it’s the last thing, but the next thing is a universal stand, which is basically a really heavy duty stand that you can get for the VOMO, which is what we’re using now, the portable recording booth. And that will allow you to, you know, if you like to stand to deliver your performance, it’s a very robust stand that you can put the VOMO on without it tipping over and falling and breaking your expensive microphone. If you’re gonna use the hood and you’re gonna use accessories inside, it does tend to get pretty heavy.
And a thin microphone stand is good for, you know, certain things, but if you want it to be pretty much a permanent, sturdy setup in your house, the universal stand is the way to go. That’s what I use at my house as well. And it just keeps things really rock solid.
And the best thing is it also, you know, with a little modification, you can actually use it to support a blanket. You can support a six foot wide blanket whenever producer’s choice on there, and it’ll hold it freestanding and enable you to hang the blanket anywhere you want. It’s very, very flexible.
Awesome stuff.
So that’s pretty much all of our new products we have at the moment.
All right, well, I’m excited to check some of them out. I’m gonna take this VOMO home with me, which is pretty cool.
Yes, please do.
And I’m excited about all the new offerings the company has. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks, Paul.
And we’ll talk to you soon.
Appreciate it.
Okay, so now we’re outside the SPB33, the Sound Proofer booth, the new improved model with the swinging door. And I’m just gonna record some room tones so we hear what it sounds like in the warehouse here with the highway next door, a sewing machine in the background, and some people talking. So, here we go.
And now we’re inside the booth, with the zipper closed, and we’re going to do a quick read of a script to give you an idea of what it sounds like. Inside the booth, completely sealed up. Have you ever noticed what happens when you put in a movie?
It’s amazing. You just stick it in, sit back, hit play, and poof! The rest of the world just disappears.
Gone. Suddenly, it’s just you and your family. All right, so now we’re inside the portable hanging acoustic booth, or FAB, that’s with a PH, like pretty hot and tempting.
So we’re going to do a test run in here as well and see how it sounds. Have you ever noticed what happens when you put in a movie? It’s amazing.
You just stick it in, sit back, hit play, and poof! The rest of the world just disappears. Gone.
Suddenly, it’s just you and your family.
Great stuff, Paul. Love the interview. We have been, as you guys know, we have been a pretty devout supporter of Vocaboot to go over the years.
I’ve had their acoustic hanging booth, the original incarnation, for several years now. I’ve used their Vomo for several years too. I think it’s like…
And I’ve used a number of the different portable acoustic options out there, and I think it’s still my favorite. And they’re just great. And I love how Jeff is so receptive to feedback.
And I mean, just the story of it itself. It started as a moving blankets, and then he found out producers and actors were using it. And then he catered to that market ever since.
And so thank you, Jeff, so much for being so receptive to our feedback and trying to give us better and better solutions for our home studios. Thank you very much.
Yeah, I really enjoyed the experience out there. And what a lovely day. I know you haven’t been there, Sean, but it’s situated in the western mountains or the mountains west of Baltimore.
If you go about just 30 miles west of Baltimore, it becomes really mountainous. It’s the tail end of the Appalachians up here in the northeast. And it’s really cool to see when you drive out there, especially when it’s a sunny day, because you can see for miles and miles in that valley.
Ooh, sounds beautiful.
So in lieu of a VO Meter check, we’re going to be further chills and introduce our new sponsor again, or another new sponsor. The company is podcastdemos.com, and the founder is Tim Page, who has produced over 1,000 podcast intros for some of the biggest podcasts on the planet. Each demo includes custom-written scripts and hand-selected music, and is guaranteed to showcase your voice and talent in the best light possible.
With a finger on the pulse of what podcast producers want, you can be sure your podcast demo will sound professional, current, and competitive.
Yeah, it’s pretty incredible. Tim actually did Paul’s and my podcast demos, and he and his team were just amazing. I mean, his scriptwriter created original scripts perfect for my voice and my personality, and he even chose some scripts that, like, I didn’t think I was good for, but it sounds great on the demo.
And they really were reflective of current popular podcast genres. I recorded in the comfort of my own home studio, and Tim just worked his mastering magic. The whole process only took a couple of days, and, like, Paul and I couldn’t be more pleased with our demos.
So he is a consummate pro and so easy to work with. So thank you, Tim, and podcastdemos.com.
And now we’re actually going to play those demos for you. I guess we’ll play Sean’s first and then mine. You can hear the great work that Tim and his team did.
Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with a guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. It’s fantasy football season. That means your whole team is going to be injured, and you’ll be left wondering what to do next.
Here’s what you do. You listen to fantasy football ballers. Let’s get into it.
Our conversations with entrepreneurs and industry professionals can provide the support and reinforcement you need to quiet your doubts and move forward into your future. Welcome to your behind-the-scenes look at the latest strategies and technologies that top brands, thought leaders, and industry professionals utilize to excel in customer care excellence. This is Customer Care, The Social Way.
Welcome to The Science of Science, where you’ll go behind the curtains to discover how these brilliant minds were able to achieve the latest breakthroughs. If you’ve always wondered just what brought the top researchers to make world-changing discoveries, then listen on. Mystery, murder, intrigue.
You’ll find them all here on CUT. Follow the story of a man on the verge of losing it all and see what lengths he’ll go to in order to keep it. The challenges of running a consulting business seem to never end, but don’t worry.
We’re here to help you change your favorite emoji from facepalm to money bag. This is I Love Consulting. Are you ready to fall in love with your significant other all over again?
Then you’re in the right place. Join our panel of relationship experts as they share real world stories of how they’ve helped struggling marriages turn it all around. This is I Do, Again.
So we’ll get to our social media roundtable in just a minute, right after a word from the Global Voice Acting Academy.
How many times does this happen to you?
You’re listening to the radio when this commercial comes on. Not unlike this one, and this guy starts talking.
Not unlike myself.
Or maybe it’s a woman that starts talking. Not unlike myself, and you think to yourself, geez, I could do that.
Well, mister, well, missy, you just got one step closer to realizing your dream as a voiceover artist, because now there’s Global Voice Acting Academy. All the tools and straight-from-the-hip honest information you need to get on a fast track to doing this commercial yourself.
Well, not this one exactly.
Classes, private coaching, webinars, home studio setup, marketing and branding help, members-only benefits like workouts, rate and negotiation advice, practice scripts, and more. All without the kind of hype you’re listening to right now. Go ahead, take our jobs from us.
We dare you.
Speak for yourself, buddy.
I like what I do. And you will too, when you’re learning your craft at Global Voice Acting Academy. Find us at globalvoiceacademy.com.
Because you like to have fun.
And welcome to the interview portion of this episode of The VO Meter. It’s our social media roundtable, and we’re going to be talking about how each of our guests use social media to help their career and maybe in some other ways. Now, the way I came about this topic was actually because of one of our guests.
Melissa was doing a video of her own thanking people for their inspiration and being able to see their life stories through the use of social media. And I thought, that’s really cool. I like the way you phrased that because it’s kind of the same way I view it as visiting my friends and getting a window into their life and their careers.
And I think each of you have done that pretty well in your own way, while also promoting your careers. So Sean, might you introduce each of our guests, please?
Absolutely. So to my left, you guys can’t tell because we are in a video conference right now. We have audio engineer and demo producer and all around awesome guy, Uncle Roy Yokelson.
How are you doing, Uncle Roy?
Good, how are you Sean? Hey Paul, thank you for having me on here.
Absolutely, it’s great to see you. It’s been a while. Up next, we have Melissa Moran, Florida based talent.
And she actually inspired the idea for this episode. So we’re so happy to have her on. Thank you so much for being here, Melissa.
Thank you. It is an honor to be here with you guys and guests.
Aw, shucks, we’re not that big. Our reputation precedes us, Paul. Anyways, and last but certainly not least, Miss Ally Murphy, UK talent, who’s actually gonna be in my neck of the woods sooner rather than later.
So Ally, thank you for joining us today.
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Absolutely. So Paul, why don’t you go ahead and take it away with the first question?
Sure, so as I said, all of you have inspired me to sort of come up with this episode because I love the way you each use social media in your own special way, whether it’s talking about how to be an air hostess, whether it’s talking about how to do motion capture, whether it’s talking about the bagel you ate on Bagel Thoys Days. I really love the way you mix those things in to the way you promote your own work as well. So let’s talk about how each of you use social media, either personally or your career, or how you combine both.
Why don’t we start with Melissa?
Okay, yeah. I think I started out as a radio host. And so I was taught from the very beginning of my career.
Well, when I started my career, internet’s wasn’t a big deal. But as it progressed, I knew what a powerful tool it was and how, you know, in radio, you want to make everyone your best friends. That’s how you talk to people.
And that’s how you should portray yourself on social media as well. Everyone’s your friends. This is a big family.
So how would you talk to your family? Well, that you like, hopefully. So that’s how I treat it.
I want to share special moments in my life. I want to share what I’m doing. Hey, what are you doing?
And try to stay as positive as possible, because I think that’s important too. You can’t avoid negative situations in your life, but I also believe in the power of influence and I don’t want to bring my negativity to someone else either.
Okay, anyone else have any thoughts?
Yeah, I completely agree with that. I’m exactly the same. I started using social media before I got into full-time VO, so when I was an air hostess.
So for me, it was just a way of keeping in touch with people from all over the world and sharing images or stories and trying to be funny and that sort of thing. And when I became VO full-time, it was just a great way of me to continue to do that, but with clients and with new VO friends and from people from America, which has been fantastic because I’ve got some great friends over there now. So I think social media can be a great thing for just connecting with people.
That’s what it should be. It’s a social thing. It’s making connections.
You know, old school back in the day when voiceovers would show up at the studio and you got to shake hands and have coffee and be with people. And it’s the one thing sort of disconnect with everybody being at their home studio. We’re not together.
We’re electronically connected. And so through social media, that does help. It’s why I have my VO BBQ and 150 voiceover people show up just to hang out and shake their hand and pat them on the back.
So the reason I connected with voiceover people is just these are my true friends. And they’re coming over to see me and have my coffee. It doesn’t, you know, we shouldn’t worry about, oh, gee, do you think the radio spot’s gonna turn out okay?
Of course it is. It really was, who do you wanna hang out with? And my social media, you know, many people have a separate, and I have a separate Antlion Productions Facebook page, but I don’t really use it in the right way because I wanna be friends with everybody.
So my personal page has everything and my branding, the Bagel Thursday and all those silly things that we do. And I love it when people come up there and they go, oh yeah, I had an everything bagel, you know, because we’re friends, you know, and we have our shtick to talk about, you know.
It’s really interesting that you mentioned the sort of neglecting your business page, Uncle Roy, because it’s a trend that I’ve seen happen a lot in the last couple of years, where at first everyone’s like, oh, I’ve got to have both, got to have both. And then people just, like you said, they neglect the other one. And people tend to resonate more with an individual person than a business.
So it’s a really interesting thing. And so you definitely have to be more considerate of what you post because you are hoping to gain future clients. And if you say anything too controversial or something like that, you could be shooting yourself in the foot.
But it’s really interesting how this is becoming sort of a one-stop shop for representing you.
Also too many people, you know, I mean, we’re all on there maybe a little too much. Yes, it’s a time sucker and you have to behave yourself and kind of ration your time. And it’s a little different for me because if I’m on there, somebody’s gonna hit me up and say, hey, my scarlet doesn’t work, whatever.
But just to go on there and like everybody’s posts, you know, like to associate yourself with people, just, you know, they’ll see, oh, oh, so-and-so liked so-and-so. Ah, that’s a little, that’s a little juvenile, I don’t know.
I think you’ve got to make genuine connections. That’s the point. Like you don’t just go on and like everything so that you look like your name’s going out there or comment for the sake of commenting.
You’ve got to be genuine and be a friend. I mean, no one wants to sit next to the guy in the pub that’s just going, yeah, I did that. Yeah, I did that.
And yeah, I did that. They want to sit and have a genuine conversation. So if you’re part of that conversation, great.
If you’re not, you don’t have to be a part of everything. I think that’s probably key as well.
Wonderful. Yeah, it’s very easy to have a one-sided megaphone conversation on Facebook. But you’re right.
And I mean, for me, because Facebook was sort of like my inside look into the industry and the people who worked in it. I used it as a research tool, basically. Just found out who all the, basically who are the specialists, how I found out about Uncle Roy and other people like that.
And like I said, I spent a long time lurking before I started asking questions and then commenting and stuff like that. And then people are like, oh, okay, this guy’s new, but he’s not dumb or he’s willing to put in the work. And then once I showed that, I don’t know, I think it’s done wonders for my reputation and networking with people in the VO industry.
So I’m really happy with that.
You did it right. Yeah.
Yeah, I’m glad.
Thank you. Lurk first. Don’t ask too many stupid questions that have already been asked because…
Use the search function.
Yeah, Roy, just to back that up, I was about to say the exact same thing. Really, you can see the people who do it right. And that’s the difference, isn’t it?
And that’s why the guests we have here are here, because I feel like you guys do all do it right. And hopefully, you feel the same about me, because I can be obnoxious on social media every once in a while like everybody else. But the key is to have that balance of genuine personality, like Ally said, and then also being able to create real friendships.
And I feel like that’s really happened. I mean, Sean and I started this podcast without ever meeting one another. We actually just started recording and didn’t meet until the third episode.
And I think we’ve gotten better probably since we have spent some time together in person. But if you do it right, you can develop a real friendship over social media as well.
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s what it’s all about. It’s about building those relationships, whether that’s with other VOs, whether that’s learning, whether that’s building a relationship with your client.
You just gotta be good peoples.
Excellent. So that’s a great way to segue into our next point because we’ve already touched on how useful it’s been as networking within our own industry and either learning more about it or building relationships with people that you’re interested in working with. But how has social media helped or hurt your business directly?
Anyone wanna take that?
Well, I think I’ve definitely seen, it’s been a long game with social media. I think a lot of people go and think, if I put one post about how awesome I am, all the clients are gonna come to me. And it doesn’t necessarily work like that.
But if you put your brand out there authentically and have a good mix of this is what I do for a living, and also this is who I am as a human, and reach out and make these connections with people. I’ve had clients come up to me because, I saw what you did on social media, and will you be able to do that for me? Or even in the last week, I’ve had two different clients mention two things, one from Twitter, one from Instagram that they saw on my social media, and it led to different conversations.
It’s actually how I’ve now transitioned into doing some onscreen stuff because of things that my VO clients have seen on Instagram. They were like, will you do some onscreen stuff for us? So, you can use that, but I think it is a long game and you can’t just go full on thinking you’re gonna get a gig just from doing two posts on Instagram and liking a few things.
But it’s a great tool for just connecting with people.
You know, when I do, whether it’s coaching or tech or a demo, and people appreciate what I’ve done, and I’m just crazy generous with my time, and almost to a fault. And I’ll say, all right, look, can you just write something nice and put it on Facebook so everybody knows? And so it’s not free advertising because I’ve given my time for it.
And so people will usually write nice things and then other people will jump in, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The only negative thing that I’ve seen is, you know, and it’s on my business page where people can rate you. Somebody, a friend of mine, why did she give me four stars?
What did I do wrong? And one crazy person, and it’s very deep and I can’t get rid of it, one crazy person who I gave a ton of time and then she wasn’t happy, I gave her all her money back, wrote this one star review and you can’t get rid of it. So if you go to Ant Land Productions, I’m 4.8 and I don’t think anybody we know would give me a four point anything.
It’s just stupid.
You’ll never make Valedictorian now.
No, I’ll never make Man of the Year. It was terrible. I’ll never win the Unicorn Award.
It’s okay, it’s okay. I know who I am anyway.
Well that’s a great point is that you know who you are and that’s the image that you present on social media. You know what you’re getting. Sorry to interrupt, Paul.
What were you going to say?
I was going to move to Melissa. Melissa, you, at least in my mind, I mostly see your personal stuff on Facebook, which I think is just hilarious when you have your sort of snarky rants. But how has social media helped your business?
Oh, tremendously. So I’m sure what you’ve all seen at this point is the industry, whether you’re in strictly voice over or even on screen or audio books, the various niches in the VO industry, it can be very small. And you don’t even realize who sees what, and maybe they’re responding, maybe they’re not, but they’re seeing it.
So this could work for or against you. Now, fortunately, I think most of what I’ve done has worked for me by staying positive. But I’ve heard some stories about people posting about authors or stuff they’ve written that have become horror stories and kind of follow them around because the author industry is very small and they all have their own Facebook groups and all that.
So that’s just something to avoid, common sense wise. But for sure, I mean, I try to stay personal, because going back to the point where Roy and Sean talking about the business Facebook page, I felt like that got very, okay, Melissa is talking about her kid and fun stuff. And every now and then I’ll sprinkle in some of my regular audiobook stuff here.
But when I got to my business page, I felt like now I’m selling something. Now I’m that person, right? So when you do the personal and then every now and then you add a little bit of like, oh, by the way, this is what I’m doing, I think it counts more, you know what I’m saying?
Yeah, there’s a distancing, like you said, you’re like, you’re no longer just a person, you’re a corporation, pretty much. And it’s in your best interest to try and sell your product. But that’s really great.
Thank you.
And you become more approachable that way. I’ve contacted a lot of authors through Facebook and they’re very responsive.
Very cool. That’s interesting to hear.
So it actually transitions nicely into our third question, which is, how has your use of social media evolved over the years? And I’ll start off with my own experience in this one, because as some of you know, I haven’t been in the VO game that long, certainly less than some of the people on this call, just about three years, almost exactly, in earnest, trying to pursue it. So what I decided was, and obviously I had some social media accounts before those three years ago.
So what I decided when I decided to get into voiceover was to cut off any personal use of social media almost entirely. I had a Twitter account that I very rarely used, but I made a point to go in and delete everything that was there up until day one of my voiceover career. So I only use Twitter for the career, and whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know, but that’s how I decided to adjust.
And Facebook, very similarly, I do a few, sort of like Melissa said, I do a few posts about my kids, and maybe if I’m having a nice day at the beach. But other than that, nothing political, nothing business-related, or sorry, nothing personally related, except for those few things, it’s all business. And like Sean said, I’ve sort of abandoned the business page because I do everything on the personal page.
And I’d like to hear some thoughts on how people think that approach is good or bad.
I nearly did the very same thing. I mean, I’ve kind of been full-time for a couple of years now. And I thought, oh, I got to get rid of everything that I did before, otherwise people won’t take me seriously.
And then I kind of had to step back and think, actually, most of it’s just who I am anyway. I was an air hostess and, you know, I’ve made mistakes in my life and had fun. And so unless it was like really like a drunk pic or something that I think, yeah, maybe nobody wants to see that.
And there wasn’t that many of those, then I kind of left it in because I thought that’s part of me. And it’s a story that a lot of people, sometimes people can connect with, they say, oh, hey, I flew there or I did this or I know a friend who’s a cabin crew member as well. So sometimes having a part of your history in your real life can actually just help form you as a whole person instead of just being one business sort of thing.
I mean, I’m the same. I kind of have not really posted on my business Facebook page for ages because nobody’s listening. Nobody’s watching there really anymore.
My Facebook is just actually really just for people that I know or who I’m in the industry with rather than clients. And then my Instagram mainly and my Twitter to an extent is client based. But still, we are our brand, aren’t we?
So I guess we have to be the people that we are and you can’t do much about what you’ve done.
Nice. And I love that sort of ownership of your background experience and stuff like that because I feel like a lot of talent, they don’t want to be perceived as amateurs. Like you said.
And so they’re like, oh, forget all this ever happened and or like hide it and stuff like that. But you never know when it might come up. Like, it might help you build that connection or they’re like, hey, can you play an air hostess?
Like we could use one like that, you know, so you never know.
Absolutely. And then, you know, everyone started at some point and even, you know, I’m sure 20 years in the future with whatever social media is going on then, you know, will will have grown on continually learning and continually growing and social media be the same, I’m sure.
You’ll have to take down that drunk picture for 20 years from now. They may not, you know…
I don’t know what you mean, Uncle Roy.
I guess I used LinkedIn more in the beginning, forgetting about like MySpace and all that stuff because I don’t even remember what I might have done there. But as far as searching out for business or for connections, if anybody wants ancient history on me, because I’ve only been doing this like three years like you guys, 40, 42, they can go to my website and they can go to my IMDB page and find out what was my history and my career path and all that kind of stuff. LinkedIn I find very useful and I know a lot of people find me and search for me and my services on LinkedIn, so I think that’s very good.
And then the evolution of, I mean, Bagel Thursdays goes back to when the kids were little, every Thursday I’d go out and buy, you know, the kids would get a tail of ham and egg on a roll and all that, not bagel, and so I just decided to make that part of my branding. And social media, every Thursday we just put it up, check in tomorrow, see what kind of bagel we had. That’s it.
I think what’s important, like we say, the LinkedIn really worked for you, is that not every social media platform is going to work for everybody. And that’s going to be really individual down to the way that you like to work yourself. And I think a lot of people put a lot of pressure on themselves going, oh my God, I have to do Instagram now because that’s the thing.
But I don’t know how to take a picture and I don’t like doing it. If you don’t like doing it, then it’s not good for you. You’ve got to enjoy doing it because unfortunately, it is part of our businesses.
So find something that works for you. There’s loads of platforms out there and there will be one that will resonate with you.
Once a week, I’ll check in with Twitter and just like somebody’s thing or repost or something. But that’s not one that specifically works for me.
Awesome. I’m so glad you brought that up, Ally and Uncle Roy. I was curious, what are your guys’ preferred social media platforms and do you approach them differently?
Well, I’m all about, you know, Facebook. I had to shut it off now because if it was on now, you know, it would be blinging all over the place. So just by leaving it open, not that I’m sitting there necessarily connecting with everybody, but if somebody sees that I’m available, that’s the one that works for me.
So that’s my story. I’m sticking to it.
I’m mostly Facebook, but I’m training myself to do other things. I’m currently in a workshop to learn Instagram. Like Ally was saying, sometimes there are certain ones that are more natural or more user-friendly.
Like Facebook has just always been around, so that’s the go-to, and for a lot of people, it’s the go-to. So you kind of rely on that. But as business owners, we also have to kind of go with the times and where are the clients going?
So for me right now, I see that place as being Instagram. So am I moving all of my posts there? No.
It’s probably about still Facebook 80%, Instagram 20. And maybe that’ll shift. Maybe it won’t.
We’ll see where the trends go. But I think it’s really important to stay on top of that and to keep challenging yourself.
I’m definitely using more Instagram at the moment. I found, well, Facebook is really just, it’s not really for business for me. Twitter, I found to be so negative recently.
And there’s been so much, there’s so much political stuff and arguments and people just seem so ready to attack each other that I felt really… Icky. That’s the only way I can describe it.
It felt really toxic. It didn’t feel creative. It didn’t feel enjoyable.
So I’ve kind of stepped a little way from Twitter, or even though I know some of my clients are on there, I’ll occasionally put things once a week or something. But with Instagram, it tends to be all positivity and creativity. And I really like that.
So I’m kind of putting a lot of energy into Instagram at the moment.
Great. Where does YouTube fit in? It’s not exactly a social media network, but to me, it has the same sort of qualities.
And I know Sean has used that to read it.
I would definitely consider that social media. Like, I mean, that’s probably what’s built up my global reputation more than anything was my YouTube channel.
But you just introduced yourself and gave yourself a pat on the back.
Sean, how do you use it? I’ve never been to your YouTube channel, but tell me about it. How do you as a voiceover artist use it?
A lot of it is equipment reviews and just kind of like dumbing down a lot of the scary audio stuff that was intimidating for people. And I’m like, look, at the time I wasn’t a tech geek, totally now. But I was just like, yes, this isn’t that difficult and it doesn’t have to be expensive.
I just came from a place of wanting to help people. And that’s probably what resonated with people the most. And I still want to do that.
So I will continue to make videos to help people.
And I’ve been trying to ramp up my video content as well, basically following Sean’s model. So I’ve done a couple of tutorials and then a couple of sort of rants from the booth. I call them the VO confessionals, where whatever’s on my mind that day, I just start ranting about in the middle of the day.
And people do seem to resonate with people. They do seem to reply and make comments on it. So it’s something I was curious if anyone else has used to their advantage.
That’s a really interesting way of getting creative with it, though. I never really thought about it. I’ve kind of put my demos and stuff on YouTube and if I have it on screen, any video stuff will go on there.
But actually, you could do some really fun stuff with it, I guess, if you know who to reach out to with it.
I want to be Sean when I grow up. People have been saying, like, why don’t you produce some videos about all your shortcuts and all your stuff?
Videos are tough. It’s a lot of work. My videos could definitely use some improvement in the quality department, but you have to learn a lot about lighting and positioning the camera and all that stuff.
I have two YouTube channels, one that’s me and one that’s AntLand, and a lot of it’s just archival commercials that I’ve worked on or films that I’ve been in. And the other thing is SoundCloud. You got audio-only content.
Yes, you can put up a graphic and put it up on YouTube, and the YouTube is a huge, much bigger database, I guess, than SoundCloud. And the other thing I don’t like about SoundCloud is when my clip is done, it randomly plays some other thing that has nothing. It’s like, I don’t want to hear somebody else’s whatever, you know, if it’s another one of mine, okay, but I don’t know if it’s random, I don’t know how they do that.
But it’s the other way I get my content out there, whether it’s killer demos or audio books that I’m working on, samples, SoundCloud works for me.
I think it’s all about… you can use it for showcasing your talents as well, which is… not a lot of people know everything that you do, and that’s a good way of showing it.
I did something silly the other day because I burnt my foot doing something stupid. And then I had an hour to kill between clients, so I made a video, a public awareness video about how not to burn your foot on the oven, and posted it to social media, and it got quite a few funny responses. I mean, it was only silly.
I don’t think anyone… I’m not going to get any work from it, but if people are looking for different ways of using social media, just have fun and play around and use your talents and see what comes out of it.
And it has to be genuine. You know, I’ve tried vlogging before, and it was kind of a failure because you see the famous vloggers and how much freaking production they put into these things. And I think I went into it like that, and I just got so overwhelmed, and I turned into someone I’m kind of really not, that I just sort of gave up.
So if you want to try your hand ed videos, start small. Do something like Ally did. That’s perfect.
If it’s something that shows off your personality, who you are, and you have a little fun while doing it, people are going to respond to that because people can sniff out fake, like, like you wouldn’t believe.
Sean doesn’t know how to be fake, so that kind of works for him.
I don’t.
And Mark Scott is very good at these video podcasts or vlogs or whatever you want to call them, you know, his personality comes right through you. What you see is what you get, you know.
And like we were saying before, like if, don’t do it from a place like, oh, I have to do this, everything’s doing this, like don’t have it strictly as a means for self-gain. Like it’s, it’s the opposite. You have to come from a place of wanting to give.
You have to either like show your personality or share something that you think is cool. Or like I said, just come from a genuine place of wanting to help someone.
I think that’s important as well to remember that you don’t have to post every single day or three times a day. There’s a lot of people that say, oh, you know, you must connect at 10 a.m. and then 5 p.m. and all this stuff. But no, if I don’t feel like anything posting that day or just not in the mood or haven’t done anything that interesting, I don’t do it because it wouldn’t be genuine.
And people can spot those posts where you’re trying to force yourself to, oh, here’s me behind the microphone again or something like that. You can’t keep doing that. So just do it when it’s organic and do it when you have fun.
Because people that have, if thousands of followers or have a really good revenue from social media and they only post once every three weeks or so, so do whatever feels good for you. Don’t feel like you have to follow any rules when it comes to it.
And it takes practice, you know, like just like learning anything else. You have to find your, like find your platform, find your voice, find what works for you.
Really great point. So that brings us to our next question. We’ve thrown some out already, but what are some pro tips or cautionary tales some of you have in using social media?
Maybe something really stupid you did that you wish you didn’t do on social media.
Well, never post drunk. That’s a basic rule, same as texting your ex. Never do it whilst you’ve had a drink.
I always think, I always give myself like a minute after, before I post, I’m like, don’t want to do this. I’m not when it comes to like, obviously, when it comes to business stuff. But you know, if you’re doing something that’s a bit maybe not you or a bit out there, just think, but am I happy with this?
And then go for it if you are, but yeah, have fun. But don’t go, don’t go weird. And don’t go political.
Absolutely. It’s really easy to misinterpret text. So be sure like if someone can misinterpret something, they probably will.
So keep that in mind.
I will, you know, if somebody’s texting me and it’s back and forth, back and forth, it’s I put my phone number and it’s like, look, call me. And I can’t deal with, you know, whether it’s that I’m driving or ain’t nobody got time for that. Just texting, texting.
And I can’t hear your inflection, whatever. And you can’t tell you can’t hear I’m being genuine. I’m just trying to help you.
I just had that somebody sent me a demo. Oh, I spent $2,500 and I don’t know what I got. Well, let’s talk about it.
You know?
Yeah, that’s a big one, actually. And I’ll throw in a situation I had, actually, where I was commenting on Tremaine Mosley’s post, who, some of you may know, a talent also out of Florida. And he had landed a job with the National Aquarium here in Baltimore, where I live.
And my comment was, geez, Trey, why did you just come to my house and kick me in the nuts?
And a lot of our friends and colleagues posted, boy, that guy’s angry. What’s wrong with him? And thankfully, because I know Trey pretty well, he himself put up a comment saying, Paul’s just being funny.
We’re good buds. Seriously, it’s okay. But you have to be careful because tone does not come across in print.
Well, they’d also have to know you and your sense of humor, quote unquote.
Yeah, exactly.
I think you also have to be careful of… We surround ourselves with like-minded people, typically. So you get really comfortable in that bubble.
And that’s when you have a tendency to say something that could skew a particular way that others may not agree with. I mean, you know what I’m getting at. Anything political, anything a little bit off-color.
You may surround yourself by like-minded people, but maybe your clients aren’t thinking the same way. So you don’t want to isolate them. So just be careful.
Don’t get too comfortable in your own little bubble. Very true.
I think an awful lot of people forget that your clients can read everything you put on social media. So if you’re happy to lose a job over something that you think is hilarious, but your client might not, then fine. But you really have to think about not just now, but in the future.
Your clients’ research, especially if you’re doing anything that might be big profile, any big profile gigs you get out there, the producers and the production teams are going to be looking at your social media and making sure that you’re not going to embarrass them at some point in the future. So just be mindful of that.
Before you hit that send button, maybe reread it and think, okay, what are people going to think about this? Maybe I better edit out this phrase. Maybe I better just not send it.
Or have a friend take a look. Some of my friends do that. They’ll send me a post and say, I was thinking of putting this on LinkedIn.
Does it sound okay? And I don’t know why they seek my advice. What do I know?
But it’s a good way to get an opinion.
You fool them good, Paul. Now lots of people send me, or they’ll send me, hey, I was going to send this email. I wasn’t happy about such and such.
And I’ll like rewrite it in a more polite way or more friendly way. And they’ll usually go with mine. Yeah, so yeah, call a friend.
So one thing I wanted to talk about a little bit since we’re on the topic of cautionary tales, one thing that’s been a real issue in recent years is talent talking about projects that might still be under NDA. And another sort of, like first off, that’s huge no-no and could make you lose clients, make you lose current clients and future clients. But even talent who understand that, you still see a lot of like, book this big new gig that I can’t talk about.
How do you guys feel about that kind of vague posting like that?
I think it’s a bit gratuitous. Like you’re kind of doing it to go, hey everybody, I’m awesome. I can’t tell you about it, but I’m awesome.
Like you’re gonna have that time. It’s delayed gratification you need here. You will have that time in the future where you just say, look, I am honored to work on, I have worked on this project and it’s out now and I’m so excited for you guys to see it.
But when you book the gig, it’s not gonna do anybody any good to go, I booked it, I’ve got the job. Because I’ve heard of people losing it even just with those three words, I booked it. So it’s really not worth it just for that.
I can really think about why you’re posting. Are you just posting because you’re so excited and you wanna tell everybody, call your family up, call your friends up and tell them there. But if you risk losing your job just because you just feel too excited to get it out there, it’s not the right priority really.
It’s really difficult, isn’t it? Because we do this in a small booth, most of us. And so when something exciting happens, we have like our immediate family, we can tell, and stuff happens where you just wanna shout it from the rooftops because we have like zero social interaction, like physical.
So yeah, it is exactly what Ally says. It’s gratuitous and it’s just all about ego, but you gotta kind of check that out at the door because it gets really dangerous and it kind of, you know, and people see through that. They’re like, oh, yeah, they’re trying to, they’re trying to show how big they are now.
Yeah, well, I mean, it’s, and like a lot of people get really excited. I think even Tom Holland just listed like dozens of spoilers about the new Infinity War thing in an interview. And like you said, so we’re desperate for that human connection.
And as we’re actors, we crave validation and we never get it. So like we want to say like, yes, my talent got me this wonderful gig with this great client, which I lost because I posted about it on Facebook. So like you said, like keep it in your own circles.
Once it’s out there, it’s out there and out of your hands. You don’t control who will see it. So keep that in mind.
Plus it goes back to like we said about being genuine. There are people out there in any business or walk of life that will post about their accomplishments so much that it becomes overbearing and almost nauseating to people. And we all know those people where you think, oh gosh, again?
And you just don’t want to hear about it anymore.
Yeah, I tend to downplay some of my older accomplishments or whatever. I belong to what used to be MCAI, Media Communications Association International, which is now called Cinetech Media Professionals. And everybody gives their 15 second elevator pitch going around the room.
And I’ll say, if it has anything to do with audio voiceovers, I’m your guy and somebody will jump up and say, yeah, but what about those films you did, whatever. Okay, yeah, that too. But this is who I am today.
This is what I can help you with.
Well, that brings us to our last question, actually, Roy. We’ve all done things in the past on social media and in our careers, but where do each of you see social media going in the future? Do you think we’ll have the same tools we have available now in the next five years?
Or will something else come up and take its place?
We’ll all be in outer space.
Well, what I’m really mad about is when I post an event, Facebook shuts me down after I invite like 350 people and says, you can’t invite anybody else. Well, why? If you invite 800, then 150 will show up.
So I need to be able to invite more people. It’s a silly, I have no idea where it’s going in the future. It is ever-changing, I should get more into Twitter and Instagram and see how else can I spread the word.
I’ve maxed out what I can do on Facebook. Everybody knows how to get me and whatever. Next.
I don’t know, that’s the beauty of it. Who would have thought 15 years ago that we’d all be able to chat with people 4,000 miles away immediately and share photos and wish each other happy birthday without even realizing it’s their birthday. It’s a wonderful thing.
And I think, I’m hoping the way forward would be more creative and less negative, but I guess we’ll just have to see the way the world goes.
Yeah, who knows? Let’s just all support each other in no matter what social venue presents itself. And let’s all keep going to the conferences, because you know what?
The other thing about social media is it’s hilarious when people meet each other for the first time after only connecting through social media, because it’s awkward as hell. It’s so much fun, but we’re all in the same boat. So no matter where we go, let’s just all try to connect in all kinds of ways and keep it fun.
Yeah, wonderful points, everyone. Like we were saying, or intimating anyways, is don’t forget what social media is for. It’s to socially interact with each other.
So be genuine, make real connections, and find whatever medium works for you. So thank you guys for coming. This has been a wonderful, fun, very fun discussion.
And I hope you all, or I wish you all the best of luck in your social media campaigns and in your voiceover careers.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
Before we go, why don’t you each tell us where you can be found if you want to be found to be hired.
antlandproductions.com and all over Facebook, of course.
Okay, Melissa?
melissamoran.com, on Instagram, Melissa.Moran.VO. And just find me on Facebook. I don’t know, I’m like.1422, burp, burp, burp, burp.
Just find Melissa Moran.
Fantastic. Ally?
My website is allymurphy.co.uk. Ally’s two Ls and one Y. And on Instagram, I’m at AllymurphyVoice and the same on Twitter.
All right. And don’t forget to check out our new website. Just launched, www.vometer.com.
And we have a business page too that we never use.
That’s for your future. That’s where you’re growing and going and growing.
Exactly. Thanks again, everybody, for joining us and enjoy the rest of your week.
Thank you, guys.
Have a good one.
That was so much fun. I mean, it wasn’t even… It was truly a social event, right?
I mean, it was just getting friends together and just picking their brains about their expertise. And I can’t thank our guests enough for joining us. Uncle Roy has been a long time friend and mentor of me.
Ally Murphy, it was so wonderful to talk with you in person. You can’t… I hope you could hear the quotation marks.
And then Melissa Moran. It was really, really fun to get to know you. And so I hope you guys found that beneficial.
It was really interesting learning about the different social media platforms and the certain do’s and don’ts on how to navigate each one.
Yeah, I want to thank everybody again for participating. It went exactly as I hoped it would. As I said during the intro, the inspiration was some of Melissa’s quirky posts, and everyone else contributed so much to the conversation as well.
One thing I hadn’t thought about was Instagram. I know people are talking about using that, and it’s something I probably should use, but man, it’s intimidating to me for some reason.
Me too. I mean, if you’re not like a visually, or like a visually intelligent person, it can be a difficult medium. But it’s important because that’s the direction that a lot of media is going.
I take a lot of pictures, but it’s just something I don’t think about regularly. I was smart enough to secure my own name a long time ago.
Everyone takes a lot of pictures, but so many people need to share it with the world.
I was smart enough to secure my own name with an account, like, I think four years ago now. But to date, I have a single post, and it’s a picture of me and my daughter at a baseball game. Four years in one post.
Now it’s got like five billion likes, and it’s just like, he’s such a… He’s a savant. He’s only got that one picture.
I hope so. I was hoping Uncle Roy would talk more about MySpace, because I know he had a huge page when he was, when it was back in the day, I’ll bet.
He had stock, I bet. Before we go, we’d like to thank our sponsors, and we’d like to thank you guys for bearing with this on this overly promotional episode. We promise it’ll be slightly less so in the future.
But anyways, thank you again to voiceactorwebsites.com and the Global Voice Acting Academy.
Podcast demos.com and vocabwiththego.com.
Yeah, I’m very excited about these sponsorships and thank you again. Coming up next month, we have Paul and Ken Foster at the Mid-Atlantic Voice Over Conference, or MAVO. I unfortunately cannot make it this year, but Ken, thank you so much for going in my stead.
I know it’s going to be an incredible experience for everyone and I will jealously watch. And hopefully you guys can Zoom or Budogo call me in there so I can at least vicariously enjoy the experience through you.
Yeah, and if you haven’t registered yet, you can still join us. Go to www.midatlanticvo.com and sign up and you’ll see us at the conference. And then following that, we have two exciting episodes coming up in what will be, let’s see, I guess the end of November and December.
Wow, I can’t believe we’re booking out that far. We’ll have Voice Over Business Coach and Voice Over Talent himself, Mark Scott. And then the founders and curators of the Voice Over Collective, Brad Venable and Tim Friedlander will be joining us as well.
So we’re excited for both of those.
All right, so I’m looking forward to those great episodes. I hope you are too. Come join us next month and have a great day, guys.
Bye, everybody.
Thanks for listening to the VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com. Thank you.

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hello everybody, and welcome to episode 30 of The VO Meter, our special edition episode, post-Otakon 2018. Woo!
Oh yeah!
Woo!
Very cool. So unfortunately, this year, I didn’t get to go to Otacon, even though I love Comic-Cons and Anime-Cons and all things con, but luckily we had the very talented New Jersey talent, Chris Dattoli, in my stead. So he’s actually joining us to talk and share his experiences from the con.
So welcome, Chris.
Thank you, Sean, and thank you, Paul. Happy to be here.
Yeah, thank you so much for sitting in for me and all the, I’m sure it was, you really twisted your arm to go.
Yeah, you know, I swear, you called me up and said, listen, I really need help. Can you please help me? Sean deserted me.
And I said, all right, I guess. Anime, games, why not? I mean, you know.
Yeah, well, I am a big flake, so thank you for doing that.
That is kind of what happened. And it’s even worse than we expected because I got there and sort of told Chris, by the way, I can only be here for like two hours, so it’s all you. And that’s kind of what happened.
You thought I was acting.
No, that was true. You got the whole experience.
So I only ended up being able to do three interviews and Chris did the rest along with James Brown, who we actually pulled in on the spot to help us out with some too. So the fourth voice you’ll hear that you may not recognize is James Brown, another voice actor from New York, who we interviewed. And then after the interview…
Not the R&B singer. What’s that? Yeah, not that one.
He’ll talk about that. But we interviewed him as sort of an attendees perspective, as opposed to the special guests that we interviewed the rest of the time. And then I said, do you want to stay?
We’ll see if we get you a press pass. And they said yes. And then I left even earlier than I expected and James and Chris took over from there and it was great.
That’s awesome. We’re building our own little troupe of special VO interview forces.
Special correspondents, so to speak.
In the field. We gotta think of a cool name for you guys. Something with special ops in it.
We’ll get to the drawing board with that.
Yeah, it has to be something that has a pun involved given the name of the show. So we’ll work on that.
Something to do with, all right, everyone stare at their audio equipment until something comes to mind.
So we’ll get to the fabulous content we have from the show itself in a few minutes. But before we do that, we want to run through some current events. So let’s start with Chris, our special guest.
What’s been happening in your VO world?
Well, I’m keeping busy. I’m working on two video games right now. I actually just finished a series of new commercials that I actually signed on with the production team.
It’s actually, I think they dubbed it Jersey Baby, where I’m actually speaking as a baby in an Italian voice. It was really hard to bring up that accent to talk about different things. So that’s pretty fun.
New series will be released soon. I’m also gonna be flying out to California soon in a few weeks to work on my new commercial demo.
Very cool.
Yeah, and I actually had just completed because I had a bit of a speech impediment, so I actually spent months fixing that up, and I’m actually happy to say I corrected that, so I’m ready to take off flight with that.
And if you don’t mind, I think that’s, yeah, that’s an incredible story to hear that in there, because sometimes people will get discouraged if they have something like an obstacle, like a lisp or speech impediment. And as you’ll hear in some of the interviews, if you have those obstacles, you just gotta work around them. You just, like, don’t let it discourage you.
Try, and if this is important to you, you will find a way to work around it. So kudos to you for doing so, Chris.
Thank you, thank you.
Who are you working on the demo with, can you say?
Chuck Duran.
That’s not bad.
He actually did my, he did my first one, and I said, hey, I found out I have this impediment, you mind if I come back? He goes, yeah, absolutely, rock on.
I heard he knows what he’s doing.
He does.
Awesome, anything else you want to talk about?
Let’s see, gonna be working on with David Rosenthal soon with working on my characters demo as well. God actually was able to, by going to Oticon, I actually landed three audio books there.
Really?
Yeah, working on that, going to, if you sneak a side and go into like the dealer’s room and everything, just do a little technique that I call, ask about their product and then lo and behold, they mention, you know, hey, we had a voice actor. I’m like, oh, well, you know, I just happened to be a voice actor. And it goes, well, you look like the rock and roll type because I cosplayed Greg Universe from the TV show, Steven Universe.
Oh, nice, nice.
So, you know, it all played out. It goes like, you look like a hard rock guy. And like, I am, it goes, well, I need that type of voice.
And I’m like, well, here we go.
Perfect, man. Now that, like, voice talent and expert marketer. There you go.
And working at its finest.
That’s great. So, Sean, what have you been working on?
Very much same old, same old. Doing a lot of new projects for GVAA. We’re trying to, we’re going to have some cool new social media campaigns.
We’ve hired on some exciting new staff. We have Sarah Sherman for Disney VoiceCaster and voice director, becoming a new character coach for us. So that’s huge.
I just got to sit in on her animation audition technique workshop this weekend. It was a lot of fun, some great performances and some just excellent concise direction from Sarah. It’s always fun to see a great director in their element.
So that’s really cool. Other than that, just lots of cool, like just audition, audition, audition, e-learning, e-learning, e-learning, but the wheels are still turning. So that’s good.
Other than that, what about you, Paul?
Well, that’s awesome. You mentioned working with Sarah now. We’re actually gonna see her at MAVO when we do the episode from there in a couple of weeks.
Hopefully we’ll get some time with her. That reminds me, actually, I should probably talk to these people and ask them ahead of time if they wanna talk on tape, so to speak, or be recorded. I haven’t actually done that.
Yeah, you might wanna get their permission first. Before we bomb like steam, bombard them with microphones.
We know, the last time we were there, we did exactly that. We just sort of jumped in and grabbed people as they walked by, which worked, but isn’t necessarily the best way to prep a show as we’ve talked about.
Absolutely, and we can probably make some posts to the MAVO group. Like, hey, we’re going to have some correspondents there if you guys want to contribute your welcome to, just so they’re like, hey, what’s this big? Oh wait, you guys won’t…
I hope Vocal Booth to go is there because we can steal another thing from that.
Actually, I’ve already talked to them and they’re going to let us borrow one of their new VoMo’s. So I have to eventually get out to the warehouse to pick that up too, which reminds me of another thing I need to do before the show.
Love that, but I love mine so much, it’s starting to fall apart. Maybe I shouldn’t check it as often as I do.
Yeah, maybe.
Those guys have rough hands.
I’m gonna let that go. All right. So as far as…
Throwing you a line. As far as things I’m working on, the thrust of my work right now is one e-learning client who some of our listeners may have seen. I’ve been putting out this series of medical videos on YouTube and the response has been pretty good so far.
I’m not sure what this company does to market them, but several of them have over 1,000 views, 1,500 views, and I’m doing about five a week and they’re on just various topics that might be of interest to people who are looking up conditions they may have or may think they have, sort of self-diagnosing on the web. And I’ve got some traction marketing by basically quipping about them. So whenever I put it out on Twitter or Facebook, I make some ridiculous comment about the content.
So the one example was I did one on atopic dermatitis and I said, there’s a rash of causes of this disease. Make sure you follow the content to find out.
I’ve actually been loving that Paul, so thank you.
And I released one today where it was a play on the old line from Dean Wormer in Animal House where it was for streptococcal pharyngitis, which is a form of strep throat. And I said, swollen, itchy, and contagious is no way to go through life, son. Learn how to cure this disease.
To warm the strepococcal of your heart.
Exactly. But the response has been pretty good. Even just friends and neighbors around the area, when I see them, they’ll say, oh, I love that video you did on gonorrhea.
And I’ll think, is that a compliment?
Hey, people need to know sexual health is important.
Exactly. It is, yes. So that’s been a primary focus.
They’re giving me a ton of content and it’s been a pretty decent gig so far. I’ve done, I think, 20. And I have 30 more just sitting on my computer waiting for me to crank out, but I can only do so many at a time before my voice starts to tire out, but that’s the thrust of my work right now.
So one thing we want to talk about, current events-wise, is our new website. We’ve actually, this week, finally took the wraps off our new VO Meter website from voiceactorwebsites.com.
It’s super mobile-friendly.
Yeah, it’s super mobile-friendly now, and it’s not a pain in the butt, but the URL is the same. It’s www.vometer.com. Check it out when you get a chance.
Let us know what you think. We’ve really tried to streamline the content to make it more friendly for comments and questions, so please go there and follow the link for comments. We’d love to hear what you think about the show, or if you have any questions that you want to have answered on the show, we’d love to help.
Absolutely, questions, suggested topics, or if you’d like to contribute to some of our audio submissions, like the VO Meter shtick, please just let us know. We’d love to hear from you. So, that pretty much wraps up current events.
Before we get to the actual con footage, though, it’s time for…
Questionable Gear Purchase.
For today’s Questionable Gear Purchases, we’ve all got some great stories from in the field. And since you’re our guest, Chris, why don’t you start first?
Yeah, I’ll take the lead on that. So, as I’m all prepped and ready to go for Oticon, I got my Blue Raspberry all packed. I go to my hotel to set it up just to do a test run, and all I hear is a background ssss noise.
And I’m like, what the heck is that? So, I plugged it in. I thought maybe it was my computer.
Plugged in my friend’s computer. Plugged into a pad, into a tablet. Same thing.
So, I thought, this broke. Like, something’s wrong with it. And I’m like, well, this is great.
I guess I’ll just use my good, old-fashioned phone to record everything and no mic. Well, hope for the best. And I think you had the same problem with yours, right?
Sort of the same issue?
So, yeah, I had pretty much the same issue. Only a couple hours later, I showed up on Saturday where you had been there since Thursday night, right? When you got there?
Yep, was there since Thursday.
So, I plug in my Blue Raspberry and say, all right, here we go. And I get…
Kuh-kuh, kuh-kuh, kuh-kuh.
All in the files. And I thought to myself, oh, this actually happened a few weeks ago when I had it at the beach. I thought it was just a fluke, maybe the computer I was using at the beach, because this was a different one I had with me, and realized it was actually dead, because I did the same thing.
I plugged it in my phone and tried it and got the same results. So basically, we had two dead Blue Raspberries that we couldn’t use, and you used your phone for some of the interviews, I used mine for the rest, and that was the way we had a roll. So, did you ever have a resolution to your issue, Chris?
I did not. I actually saw someone posted something similar on one of the groups we were a part of, and they mentioned…
Wasn’t that me?
I think, yeah, it was you.
There’s some other dark-skinned Italian that mentioned having a problem with… So, I put that on the Facebook group, and our mutual friend of all of us, Mariel Nuvall, actually said, do you think it might be moisture in it? And I said, oh yeah, I did just have it at the beach.
So I actually took mine and put it in front of a fan for about six hours, and tried it again, and it did go away. So I think Mariel might have been onto something, that it might have been moisture in mine, and at least that’s cured it temporarily.
Well, that’s the irony of those kind of devices, because I mean, Blue very much markets that as a portable travel solution, but obviously you’re gonna be exposing into the elements more often, it’s gonna be bouncing around in a bag. So that could really affect the durability and shelf life of products like that. I mean, I had an Apogee mic for a while, and pretty early on, it developed this hiss, and I even spent the extra $25 for the travel kit and accessories or whatever, but apparently that’s not waterproof, because I was wearing it in a backpack one day while it was raining, and it totally got through the backpack and the travel kit.
Oh, I wouldn’t have even thought about that, wow.
Yeah, that, oof.
Yeah, so you gotta be careful. I mean, you might wanna put it in some kind of protective thing, or just not, who knows? It could have been a factory issue, or, I don’t know.
So, really sorry you guys had to go through that.
Yeah, well, luckily, I contacted support, and they’re working with me on it.
Oh, awesome, awesome. Yeah. Yeah, like I said, mine’s cured for the moment.
Hopefully, it doesn’t happen again. I am going back to the beach next week, and I’ll be sure to be more careful with, or at least leave it out and dry it out before I try to use it.
Put it in like a plastic bag with those little silica things. Yeah. Like the, yeah, the food dehydrators.
Yeah, I was just saying that. I feel like maybe a vacuum-sealed plastic bag or something.
I do have several of those silica packs from various mics I’ve purchased. As you know, I’ve had quite a few.
So Sean, do you have any questionable gear purchases this episode?
Questionable gear, like, well, in anticipation, I guess. As some people know, Centrance has finally released their mixer face, something that has been in development for almost four years. And I was actually one of the contributors to the original, I believe it was on Indiegogo, or like a Kickstarter-esque campaign.
I forget what the actual name for that type of… Crowdfunding, there we go. It was like a crowdfunding, that word.
Yeah, well, you know, you’re trying to put your…
Words are hard.
Words are hard. That’s why we read off scripts. But anyways, yeah, it took about four years to do, like the new device is actually quite different than the original designs.
And I remember, I was actually really looking for it, because it almost kind of had this cradle shape that you could actually put a phone that you were recording to on it, and you could secure it with some kind of Silcon band or whatever. But now I realize that it took so long to create that phones will never be that small again. So it would not actually fit in that space.
So I’m like, ah. So they decided to kind of move the more mixer-esque controls and dials onto the top of the unit and make it more tactile in that way, which is cool. A lot of people complain that they don’t always like the, they would rather have something more hands-on and tactile than always adjusting everything in software.
And of course, if you’re in a VO booth, your mic and your interface might be a couple feet from your computer. So it is nice to have something right there. So as you can tell, I have mixed feelings about the unit.
The people who’ve gotten it so far are pretty happy.
Why do you not have yours is the question. Why do you not have yours, Zach? Because I’ve heard several broadcasts, I think VOBS mentioned it, where they said, so everyone who ordered one, who pre-ordered one, has one now in their hands.
Bo Weaver and Harry Legg actually showed some positive reviews for it on that. They’re both big promo talent. But I had actually asked them to delay mine, because they had mentioned that they had a more advanced unit than what was currently available, because it had an included stereo mic accessory and an internal SD card.
So you could be a true standalone unit. You’d literally just need to plug a mic into it and then record to the SD card, and then like true portability. You don’t even need a phone or a tablet device.
And so I was like, all right, I can do that. And then I wrote to them, I was like, oh, everything’s released. When’s the new one gonna come out?
They’re like, oh, it’s gonna be a couple months. And based on the track record, I was like, might as well just take a bird in the hand.
Yeah, well hopefully you’ll get it soon.
No offense to Sentrence, I mean, they were trying to create a new technology basically, and they all had all sorts of production issues, like with Apple changing the IOS and the hardware and then various companies not wanting to do the production that they asked for, so I don’t know, it’s a struggle. So when I get it, I’m sure I’ll be happy with it, but it’ll probably be the redheaded stepchild of my interfaces.
All right, well we’ll get to our fabulous Oticon content in just a second after these fine words from our sponsor.
As a voice talent, you have to have a website. But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you. And when they finally do, they break or don’t look right on mobile devices.
They’re not built for marketing and SEO. They’re expensive. You have limited or no control.
And it takes forever to get one built and go live. So what’s the best way to get you online in no time? Go to voiceactorwebsites.com.
Like our name implies, voiceactorwebsites.com just does websites for voice actors. We believe in creating fast, mobile-friendly, responsive, highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use. You have full control.
No need to hire someone every time you want to make a change. And our upfront pricing means you know exactly what your costs are ahead of time. You can get your voiceover website going for as little as $700.
So if you want your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options, go to voiceactorwebsites.com, where your VO website shouldn’t be a pain in the you-know-what.
All right, now let’s get to the interviews. I’m gonna start with Masaya first. He was probably one of my favorite interviewers.
It’s really interesting to hear the viewpoint how voice actors record from Japan versus America. So let’s get right to it.
So just a quick introduction. We’re here with Todd Haberkorn at Otagon 2018. Chris Dattoli is joining me, just like last year.
Hello, hello.
And we’re gonna talk about voiceover. So our first question, Todd, if you don’t mind, tell us how you got started in the business.
Well, voiceover was kind of the last thing that came along. It started on stage and then went to on camera and the different variations of that. And then voiceover kind of crept in because I never thought it was an option.
I didn’t know that VO was… My brain was never in that mode and I didn’t know it was a thing. So when I was watching cartoons, I didn’t even think that actors voiced that.
I just thought that they find that mouse and they find that duck and they find it and then they go and they put them in a studio and then they do their thing. So then when VO was an option, I was like, okay, let’s try it out. And then people…
People didn’t hate it. Yeah, and then the rest is… But here we are.
How long have you been at it?
For VO, about 15 years.
And you start out full-time right away? Did you get a gig right away that was a full-time job or did you sort of ease into it?
It was pretty much full-time right away. Yeah, it was just like no voiceover and then I got the first gig, which led to the next, which led to the next, but it very quickly was just like, was what I was doing. And so I just went with it, not knowing where it would lead.
Excellent.
What in your life experience was most helpful to you to become a voice actor?
Well, I think it was my previous experience with the other forms of acting, film and stage work and training, because I had been training since I was a little kid in school and then doing classes outside of that. And I was in honors programs for it and it was my major. And so I think that above all is the most helpful.
I think a lot of people that want to get into voiceover sometimes maybe get into it for the wrong reasons. They want fame from it or they want to work with people that they admire. And that was never…
Fame is nice, absolutely. But it’s not what motivates and drives me and keeps me going for those days that are like 13 hour record days or crazy deadlines or impossible production problems that you have to figure out. It’s just, I just want to…
My goal is always to just make a good living doing what I love. And so if I keep that my theme, I feel like that’ll serve me best.
Excellent, now you mentioned 13 hour days and everything, so that’s gotta be pretty stressful on The Voice. So do you do any warmups or do you take any herbal sprays or herbal tea to kind of help your voice stay in a pristine condition?
I’ll do a lot of vocal rest and then I’ll drink… I mean, I drink beverages that are not in the extremes of temperatures. And so I’ll always kind of keep it, for me, maybe room temp a little bit above, a little bit below.
And so that, and then also in terms of warming up, just, for me, I don’t always warm up. I’ll wake up and get right in the booth and start recording. Because I have a studio, a residential studio, and so I’ll get up and immediately start doing my work.
And so, and some things fit that. Some of the auditions, I arrange them to where it’s gonna work out, to where I start with a certain type of audition and by the end of it, it gets to this type of audition. For me, some people audition at night, some people do it during the day.
It’s just, you know, how I do it.
Some people smoke in their cars before an audition. Did you ever hear that story about Kiefer Sutherland?
No.
There’s a story about him where, to get into a certain character voice, they can’t remember the exact character, he would close up all the windows in his car and smoke about two or three cigarettes before each session and then jump out and you have that natural raspiness. Well, not natural, like it’s chemically induced raspiness.
Wonder if that was for Solid Snake.
Yeah, I think it was. Yes, it was. Yeah, it was.
All right, so what beyond talent do you think one needs to have to book work and to keep working?
Well, I think one of the mystical things about it that people assign to VO is that it’s different from other jobs. When really, it’s very similar to every other career. You have deadlines, you have a hierarchy of people in the business, you have people you need to be nice to and people that are gonna be temperamental, and you have, it’s a people-oriented job, just like customer service work, just like cubicle work, just like anything else.
And I think that there’s something that happens when people mystify it and give it too much power. Because then what happens, I feel like, is when voice actors get involved with it, they become endangered servants to it. And so then they’ll do whatever any client says.
So if a client says, I know you’re about to go to a funeral, but I really need this copy for ABC, they’ll do it, as opposed to being like, no, I’m a human being going to a funeral right now. I’m not gonna do that. But you have that environment where actors will, if a VO job says, I need you to send me this MP3 and a finger of your choice.
They’ll do it. There are people out there that will do it. And that is the thing that I shy away from.
I will create boundaries and structures for my life that where I make my career a priority, but then at the same time, it’s like, it’s a priority. It’s not gonna be the end all be all. I think that’s something that a lot of, I see a lot of young voice actors doing is that they will do absolutely anything for it.
And that passion is admirable and you need that passion, but when it when it teeters over into obsession, when you make it all about the job, when you get that, then you have no more direction because you’ve hit your mark. So then you’re aimlessly searching, it never ends. Like I heard a story of a guy that he would, he would drive to a certain street, a quiet street because they didn’t have a studio.
And he would record audio books between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. And that sounds like a beautifully romantic story. That’s stupid. Go to a studio and rent the studio.
You have a paying gig, go to a studio, don’t do that to yourself. So when traffic would go by, you have to stop. Then you have to record somewhere.
This isn’t like the 1900s and the microphones first being invented and we’re figuring out how to… It’s like, don’t do that stuff, and then people hear that and they’re like, oh, that’s amazing, and no, it’s dangerous and it’s crazy. Don’t do that shit.
And so maybe that works for some people, done work for me. You gotta, I feel like you have to look at it like any other job, but one that you choose to do, one that you bring passion to, yeah.
It’s a trade-off though, right? We recently had on Christian Lanz, and he spoke about how the fact that he has this job but it is so flexible with home studio and travel rigs is what allows him to go on vacation to the beach with his family. So if he has a paying gig from ABC, for instance, like you mentioned, he can take an hour away from the pool while his kids are playing and knock that session out.
So it is a balancing act, wouldn’t you think?
Absolutely, yes. The world loves balance. We don’t wanna eat too much dinner, we wanna eat just enough.
We don’t wanna work out too hard, we wanna work out just enough. And so it’s absolutely balance. And I think what happens is when, kind of it seems like a little red herring, but I think how we approach social media and interaction like that informs our life choices of extremes.
So in social media, how do you get someone to click on an article? You don’t say, well, there was kind of a little bit of an argument here. Click to see what happens is like, there was an all out brawl, click to see what happened.
That’s how they sell people to get clicks. So then when you get in an extreme mentality of thinking and how we argue and debate online is in extremes, it’s not, it’s never like, that’s a valid point. Well, here’s my response.
It’s always like, you’re wrong, here’s why. I’m right, here’s why. And so that informs other aspects of our life, I feel.
And so that’s why we get into this. Also, you see, you see like The Rock, it has a big social media following. He talks about extremes.
And he talks about push yourself till you bleed, da-da-da, this and that, don’t rest, da-da-da. And that works when you’re an actor that makes $157 million a year. And you can forgo everything else because you have 10 people that do those things for you.
That sends an unhealthy, it’s as unhealthy, I feel, and I love The Rock. It’s as unhealthy as like when you look at the front of a fitness magazine, and you’re like, that’s what a normal man looks like. I need to be like that, that’s an extreme.
And so I feel like there’s cases of that when you see it in the VO. And so it’s careful to, you have to create that balance. Of course, I bring my work with me too.
And yes, you find that time, and you segment part of your day for that. But when it comes to like recording these things in cars at 2 a.m., that’s crazy, you know? That’s what I feel like.
So it’s, that’s, and I wasn’t always like that. I used to be, no matter what extremes, I’m gonna get it done, I’m the guy, because I grew up with Batman, and Batman is obsessed with right there, he’s obsessed with being a vigilante, and he does whatever it takes, and then what happens when he winds up alone, he doesn’t have what Damien he has, but not by choice. And so like, for me, it’s like, it affected my life because of that, you know?
It led to great things, and it led to not so great things, so trying to find that balance is just the sweet spot for me personally.
Well Todd, in addition to acting, you also direct and produce. Yeah. Do you feel the same way when you’re hiring an actor?
Do you look for that sort of person who respects the business, as well as their personal lives?
That’s a good way to look at it, actually. Respecting the business and respecting your personal life. Yes, actually.
I feel like I do, because I find that the people that come in, that are, have a tendency to lean towards the obsessive, that bleeds into other aspects of their life. Their performance is very, they lack technique behind the mic, because they’re just happy to get the thing out there, and they’re not being mindful of mic placement, and proximity, and things like that. So, yeah, I find that there’s an unspoken, ephemeral quality, I think, that comes across when you respect both, I feel like.
Maybe. That’s just me.
What do you do to kinda de-stress between work and everything? What do you kinda…
For me, I just set boundaries. I used to not. I said, like, okay, at this hour, I’m not doing any more work tonight.
On the weekends, I’m not gonna do, very rarely will I do, and you just, and it sounds like, oh, you’re missing out on this opportunity, but it’s like, no, you’re missing out on life. I can’t have to, like, make time for that. And I think we’re getting to a place where these, some of these auditions, VO auditions are like, they come out at 11.30, and then they’re like, need it ASAP.
Get it to me as fast as… Every audition says version.
It’s almost like they don’t even know it exists until they go, wait, what is that? Is that an ASAP audition?
Wait, did you get that out to the…
You know, it’s like, it’s, and I think it’s because people are like, drop the casket, I’ve gotta get this VO thing done. It’s because they do that, the agencies think, oh, well, we can just do this and get it even faster, when it’s like, well, no, guys, don’t let that happen. So I try to de-stress with doing things other than business things, like fitness is a big thing for me, or video games, or watching a movie, or spending time with friends and family.
So I try to do more of that.
That’s good. How much of your time do you find getting work is with agents and on your own time?
It’s busy on all sides. So that’s why boundaries are so important for me, you know? And so a lot of the people that work with me and for me are so crucial to finding that balance, but it’s always a goal to try to find the perfect balance.
So I haven’t found it yet. Working on it.
All right.
Well, Todd, I gotta say, I didn’t expect this to go in the direction of life balance, but I like it. I really appreciate you taking it, Todd.
Yeah, it’s really like, I’m actually pretty inspired hearing that and everything. You gotta find that balance in everything. That’s a lot of things people, a lot of voice actors don’t mention everything, but you mentioned it perfectly.
Or any walk of life. The whole society now is rush, rush, rush, and then wait, and it shouldn’t be like that. It’s like any other business.
It’s like when you look back and you’re like, wow, where did those 10 years of my life go? Yeah, you wanna be able to look back and have those like little light bulb moments.
So yeah. Well, Todd, thanks for being on the VO Meter and enjoy the rest of your time at Oticon.
Thanks for having me. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we’re back at the VO Meter with Johnny Yong Bosch and we’re talking about voice acting and the ways to get into it as a newbie for our guests who are just starting out in the business. So Johnny, how did you guys start in the business?
Well, they can’t do it the way I did it. Basically, I was on Power Rangers, after Power Rangers stunt team, they’re Japanese. They had a Japanese camera, wanted to shoot an action film.
They cast me as the lead. Their audio equipment wasn’t Japanese and so somehow it didn’t communicate, so the movie was all static. I had to go in and dub myself.
As I was dubbing myself, the producer walked in and thought I had a decent hero voice and asked me to come audition for Trigun. I auditioned for Trigun and I booked that role. So it’s kind of a fluke.
If that didn’t happen, then I wouldn’t be there. I wouldn’t be here. So complete fluke, but I guess in all of that, what you can take away from is just going to an audition.
Getting auditions, I think, is key. Having an agent is pretty important to get auditions. Yeah, there’s a lot, I guess.
There’s a lot.
I’m sure you’ve covered all sorts of stuff.
But for someone who has started maybe not in the last five years, it is entirely different. We’ve had that experience or that discussion with most of the people that are here, actually, that don’t do what I do, basically. So what would you suggest for someone who’s just starting out now to get an agent?
Because a lot of people, that’s their ultimate goal, which as we’ve talked about on our show, is not necessarily the right way to do it. But what would you suggest if you’re just starting out?
Not always. It depends on where you live, too. Some people will take advantage of you.
That’s a sad fact. Finding a legit agent is going to be important. But the problem is you do need to have something together to present to an agent, or you’re going to be auditioning in front of them right then and there, which is also fine.
But I guess I would… When I got into it, it was very different. The way I got into it was very different.
More of a fluke. But I would recommend definitely putting together a demo reel. And it depends on what you want to get into.
Commercials or voice over games or animation. And I’ll provide multiple characters and emotions. Nothing that’s already been done.
Don’t do Mickey Mouse. Just do some original stuff there that might be unique. Take definitely your own voice and showcase your acting.
Definitely need a clear speaking voice. So if you have a lisp or something like that, you need to work that out, unless that is part of a character. But definitely acting.
Take some kind of acting somehow. And yeah, put a demo together and try to… You just want to get auditions.
You don’t have to get an agent. You can take whatever demo and submit it to whatever dubbing houses are near you. You kind of need to live where there’s the work.
But that would be my advice. It might not be the best advice, but that’s what I would do if I wasn’t already in voice over.
So that brings up a good point. Do you find that it’s absolutely essential to live in LA or New York in order to do a looping? Or are there looping groups showing up in places like Texas or Atlanta and some of the other hotbeds that are growing?
Yeah, Texas definitely has a place. Even Canada. There are definitely places, but it depends on what you want to do.
Commercial, I think you could be pretty much anywhere. There are now also sites that are online where you can submit and make demos on there and you can get work from there. Having your own little home studio is also pretty nice because you can do the work there and you can submit it online.
I’ve done that plenty of times, a lot of work in commercials and stuff. I have my own studio, I dub my stuff and then I send it out there to them, wherever they are. I do think though, if you want to get into anime, Texas is a great place to be because they’ve got huge anime funimations there.
LA is just acting in general, in all sorts. I think New York as well. I definitely think you need to live where the work is.
If there’s no work, how are you going to get to work?
You think technology will ever change that?
Yeah. I think that it’s changing now. That like I said, there are sites now that you can join.
I don’t recall any of the names, but there are sites now where you can submit your own demos and try to get work that way. Now the pay won’t be as good as some union gigs or something like that, but it’s definitely work. And then it’s up to you to do the work.
There’s book readings and things like that, novels and stuff that you can voice over. That’s a whole different animal too.
Do you do any work in Japan, on the ground?
Yeah, motion capture.
How much of your work would you say is North American based as far as the production being done on site, North America versus Japan?
Oh, you mean anime versus…
Do you have to physically travel to Japan to do work, is what I’m asking?
No, I’ve traveled to Japan, yes, on multiple occasions to do motion capture.
Okay.
For which then I later do also the voice over. I mean, they capture my voice there and then we come back to the States and they’re working on the motion capture and all the animation or whatever. And then I voice the character again on the state side in LA.
But there’s also in LA, yeah, there’s a good number of original animation that I’ve been a part of. Most of my work though has been games and anime. The bulk of it has been.
But I need to live in LA or near Burbank and be able to do that work. A lot of shows that I work, I do dub now, a lot of foreign dubs for Netflix. And a lot of that’s being done in LA.
Okay, great. So you mentioned your home studio. Can you tell us a little bit about what sort of gear you use to record and what’s your recording rig?
I have a ton of gear. And some of that’s because of my band. So I have a lot of analog stuff for recording, but that’s when you want to get color.
So I’ve got Neve and API and Universal Audio.
Oh, you’re a geek.
I’ve got Neumanns, I’ve got Gafel microphones. So I’ve got very expensive microphones. I’ve got very cheap microphones.
I have everything from recording drums and guitars to voice. I have tubes, I have transistors. I have, you know, I’ve got it all, so.
You find that…
This has been years that I’ve put it together, you know.
Do you find it’s absolutely necessary to have top gear equipment in your home studio, at least for you?
For me, definitely. For me, where I’m at in my career, if I present them something, the quality’s not that good, then it’s just not gonna, it’s, you know, it’s who I am then, it’s part of me. Then it’s like, you kind of expect something good to come out of where I’m, my stuff, you know.
But, auditions, it doesn’t really always matter. Auditions, half time, like if I’m at a con, like I have auditions tonight, I’m gonna do them on my phone or my iPad and I edit them there. I do sometimes bring a rig with me, but I didn’t want to carry all that stuff.
I think it’s important to have something decent, you know, a decent condenser, you know, a nice interface.
You don’t want to… And a backup. I actually brought a blue microphone with me.
It crapped out this morning and that’s why I’m using the phone.
Is that right? Yeah, blue microphones are good, though.
Usually, yeah. I don’t want to trash them. They’ve been good to me so far.
Yeah, I think it’s a good idea to have a decent microphone, yeah.
Okay, so before we go, what are some things you’re working on that you’d like to promote?
The only thing I could really talk about is the stuff that they’re releasing, the boxes, and like the box set of Gundam. They’ve got the Digimon Tri stuff is out. Big Fish and Pagonia, Devil May Cry 5 will eventually be released.
I can only mention that it’s coming. The rest of it I’m not sure I can talk about, so I shouldn’t talk about them yet.
Fair enough, that’s a good place to be in. Well, Johnny, thanks so much for your time. Enjoy the rest of the conference.
So welcome back to The VO Meter at Otacon 2018. We are with Lucian Dodge. Lucian, how are you today?
I’m doing great, thank you. How are you doing?
Good, good.
Thanks for meeting with us today.
How are you enjoying the con so far?
It’s great, you know, as a homebody, it’s nice to get out of LA, get out of the apartment, and meet the fans of these projects that we work on. Kind of in isolation, I mean, obviously it’s with a director and engineer, but we don’t really know how this stuff is gonna land until we go out and meet these people and see how it’s affected them, so it’s really cool.
Sometimes you don’t even know what you’re recording for until it’s out. No, exactly.
Sometimes I find out, sometimes my girlfriend has to tell me, hey, you know you’re in this? I’m like, no? Yeah, here, check this out, here’s your voice.
Oh yeah, that is me. You’re right.
It’s better in the alternative. I get calls from friends that say, hey, I thought I heard you on a commercial in LA, and I’ll say, no, sadly not.
If it is, someone owes me a lot of money.
Exactly.
Someone owes me a check.
So can you tell us how you got started as a voice actor?
Sure, well, truth be told, it’s kind of a two-part road that kind of met up in the middle. I was involved in theater in middle school. I was a very shy, introverted child.
Wouldn’t talk much with anybody when I was young. One particular story, I think, I forget what year it is, but during a parent-teacher conference we were doing, I literally hid under the desk the whole time because I was just deathly shy. And so it was interesting.
The school I went to, it was a requirement at the end of each year that your class, and this was a combined class, so it was like first, second, grade, third, fourth, and so on, you put on a play at the end of each year. And I think in the beginning, I was playing small parts, but even then, I found that there was a certain freedom, a certain release in performing on stage. By adapting a character, I didn’t feel shy anymore, and it was really interesting.
And then the last year at this particular school, I actually ended up playing the lead in Moliere’s The Phony Physician, which was a very verbose role. And my mom saw the production, of course, and thought, wow, there’s something to hear. Shy little Lucian is playing this big, vibrant character and lots of lines.
I think there might be something here as far as helping to bring him out of his shell. So she signed me up for more acting courses, and I continued being involved in theater from that point on. Now, meanwhile, up to…
So at about age 13 or 14, I think, I discovered anime. And watching anime, I had the epiphany… I think it was watching Gunsmith Cats, I think it was.
And I recognized a voice from another anime that I was watching, and the light came on. I realized, oh, there are people who do… The voices of these characters had never occurred to me, never really thought about it.
So once the curtain had been parted, so to speak, I had to find out everything I could about this business, who are the people, how does this work, how do you do this. So I started doing a lot of research online. And the more I found out about this little niche of the acting business, the more I loved it.
And started practicing on my own, doing little skits, recording myself. And I thought, this is great. It’s everything that I love about acting, but in some ways it’s even better because you have so much more freedom in a lot of regards.
They don’t see you, so it’s really just about the illusion that you’re able to create with your voice alone that’s really gonna matter. So there’s so much variety and range you can really play with in that field. And from that point on, I said, well, this is what I gotta do as a job, as my life’s work.
And just put in everything I could to making that happen. And very fortunate, fast forward to now, I’ve been in LA about six years now, that it’s been going really well. So I feel very fortunate for that.
That’s great, that’s great. Now you do a wide range of characters. How do you develop each character’s voice?
Well, it starts typically with the picture. If there’s a picture, depending on what I’m working on, if it’s an anime, obviously, most of the work visually has been done already. So you can get an idea based on how they look, how they act in the scenes, their body language, things like that, about what kind of character they are.
And then also the script is very helpful. So based on those things, I kind of, in my head, try to envision, well, what voice do I imagine this character would have based on A, B, and C. If it’s a kind of older character or extremely old and kind of hunched over and very, very wiry and maybe based on the script, his brain is working and then a lot of different things at lunch and so he’s talking to this person, but wait, what was I talking about?
I’m sorry. And just sort of a voice emerges and all those things coming together. Just kind of, it’s like an alchemy, if you will.
Just kind of throwing these ideas into a pot and then I kind of feel out what do I think that would sound like. Not unlike if you’re reading a novel or something and based on the description of the character, you kind of think in your mind, so this is what I think they sound like. It’s pretty similar, I’d say.
Sometimes you have other elements to consider, as far as this is their physicality or this is how, cadence-wise, they’re written.
That was what I was watching you do to create that voice. I saw you hunching back and your arms moving a certain way.
Yeah, exactly.
And I guess what a lot of people would assume, because it’s voice acting, that that doesn’t really happen because it’s just the voice.
Right, there is this misconception that because it’s just the voice, in quotations, that we’re standing straight, rigid, in a isolated room in front of a microphone, just kind of saying the words into a microphone, just like that, but this is true for a lot of my peers, and certainly for me, if you ever see what it looks like when we’re performing in front of a microphone, by and large, we use a lot of physicality. I mean, like you mentioned, when I was kind of just creating that old character, just now, I adapted a certain physicality that I sort of visualized him having. And that just kind of helps to just get everything set so that it sounds like it would come out of that kind of body.
In the same way, if I was playing a beastly ogre or whatever and he’s got these large jowls or something and he has huge teeth, I just think it really helps if you just kind of adapt the physicality of that. And as far as what that voice would sound coming out of that figure.
Because it probably wouldn’t sound very clean and like this, necessarily, if you had all of that to work around. So yeah, definitely a lot of physicality. I mean, certainly if I’m doing a battle scene, within reason, there are technical parameters you have to keep in mind as far as addressing the mic and staying in proximity to the mic so that it’s going to give you a good recording.
But as far as, you know, I’ve got that pretty much locked into a general region. But then as far as what the rest of my body is doing, I’m sort of hurling myself around there from getting hit in the gut. I’m kind of doubling over.
Or if it’s a laid back character, I’ll kind of adapt, you know, hands in pocket, kind of, you know, like sort of David Spade, lackadaisical. Hey, man, what’s going on? I’ll kind of, you know, just sort of hold my body in a certain way that just kind of lends itself to that.
Yeah, little tricks like that, I think, just really help to put you in the moment and make a believable impression of what’s going on in the midst of that scene with that character.
Wow, this is like a master class in character development.
Yes, it is.
When you’re performing these days, is it mostly ensemble or do you record mostly alone?
It’s, you know, to my chagrin, it is mostly still just me in the booth, though my favorite way to record certainly is ensemble with having the whole group of kooky, my kooky peers, and kind of bouncing around ideas and getting our energy, you know, just in sync. Someone might throw out a funny improv or something, a little ad lib, someone else might pick up on that and do something based off of that. Just little things like that.
I just think it’s a lot of fun. But at the moment, it is mostly just one actor at a time kind of work, as tends to be the case with most anime dubbing. In fact, there may be an anime project I’m not aware of that has tried to do kind of a full ensemble impression.
That’s in the States. I understand now in Japan, when they record their actors, it is very much like a radio drama. But just for logistical reasons, because everything is really just kind of set into place, all the animation is done, and it’s got to be within, we’re talking like frames as far as timing goes.
So it’s just really hard to get all of that to work together and account for eight different people. So for that reason, it’s typically one person in at a time, which is an interesting challenge, because then you are, of course, with the help of the director, you’re finding the correct context for each individual moment, but it is kind of doing it piecemeal. You’re doing an individual moment, sometimes multiple times to get the timing right, and then you’re moving ahead.
Maybe you’re moving to a completely different scene, and you kind of have to… In your mind, I think it helps to have a memory of sort of what you did before, especially if you’re doing multiple cues, as it’s called, within, say, the same scene, to remember what you did before so that it kind of interlocks in a natural way, because the way it’s recorded is not the most organic way an actor can act for a scene, because you’re doing these little bits, and then hopefully when everything is connected together, it will sound like a cohesive scene, but it takes a lot of work and skill to give off that impression.
You’re from New York originally, right?
That’s correct. Upstate New York. Upstate New York?
Yeah.
It looks like James.
We have New York. New York, New Jersey and Philly here.
I live in New York City now, but I used to live in maybe an hour away from Syracuse.
Oh, great.
Fort Drum.
Fort Drum. It’s funny. You live in a place for so long, and yet there are so many little things like that.
You’re like, I don’t know that place. But in a way, it must have been not too far from my hometown, which is Ithaca, New York. Yeah, that’s really cool.
I did not know that.
Yeah, New York, New Jersey, Tri-State Area.
East Coast represents.
How did you end up making the transition to LA?
Well, honestly, it came out of a necessity to pursue the type of work that I wanted to involve myself in. I did live in New York City for about five years, where I predominantly did a lot of commercials. I’d say mostly.
A little bit of video game stuff and the Western animated projects as well. But mostly, it’s mostly commercials, as far as voice work is concerned. And it was always my dream to do more character work in animation and the big AAA video games.
And the truth of the matter is that most of that work is recorded in LA. So it was always my goal, eventually, to move there. It just was a matter of…
It was a question of when. When am I ready? And I struggled with that for quite a while.
I had a lot of, I don’t know, am I good enough to make that jump? What if it doesn’t work out? Lots of self-doubt.
And it was actually with the help of my agent in New York City, who kind of knew what my aspirations were. And she kind of just sat me down one day and said, hey, I really think you should be in LA. We just had that chat.
And I was like, oh, okay, wow, yeah, I mean, I’d like to, but you think so? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll help you out. I’ll get you some meetings or whatever.
So that was really nice of her. That was very altruistic. I mean, she didn’t necessarily have anything from a business standpoint to benefit by doing that.
It was just like, hey, I feel like I want to do this for you. Just a good person. So that was kind of the starting point where I really seriously considered it, as far as immediacy is concerned.
So I went out for about a week or two, I think, just to feel things out. And then I’m like, okay, I’ve got some ideas, some leads here. And then eventually I said, okay, let’s do this thing and made the jump.
And that’s also something maybe I could say is that it is important to make sure you’re prepared and to do your homework and to train, train, train, train, do your homework. But there probably will still be, there will always be that little doubt, as far as if you’re ready. And honestly, I don’t know if that ever goes away.
I still to this day, and look, I’ve had a decent career and I’m working, I pay the bills doing what I do, which is more than a lot of people can say. And I feel very grateful for that. But there’s still those times, there’s still that self-doubt and questions.
I don’t know if I’m talented enough, I don’t know. Is this going to continue to last? I’m not sure.
And I think at a certain point, if this is really what you want to do, I think, yes, take all the precautions you need. Save up a nice little nest egg to keep you afloat while you’re getting things figured out. But at a certain point, you’ve got to just try it.
Failure, whatever. That’s a scary term, and I think it keeps people from doing a lot of things that they would love to do, because they might fail. Well, then, fail.
That’s fine. That’s human. So, that’s what I’m saying.
Sadly, we’re out of time. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. Enjoy the rest of the conference.
Thank you very much.
We’re back again with The VO Meter. This is Chris, and I’m here with the very talented Ray Chase. Ray, how are you?
Hi, there. I’m doing great. Thank you for calling me very talented.
This is the best way to start a podcast.
Thank you. Thank you.
You’ve got to kiss the right butt.
Exactly.
So, how are you enjoying your con so far?
This is awesome. I’m here with my pals Max Middleman and Robbie Damon. We’ve been doing our shows.
The fans are really excited. It’s been fun. Lodocon was my first con two years ago, so it’s great to be back.
That’s good. We’re happy to have you back. I want to ask you, what in your life experience was most helpful to you to become a voice actor?
When I was a little kid, my dad would tell us stories to go to sleep that were really funny, and he would do tons of voices. He grew up watching lots of fun cartoons and always just playing around, and so I grew up mimicking his voices that he came up with. And then, yeah, later on I ended up taking a felon to acting, and then realized, oh yeah, I already knew how to change my voice.
This is great. So I think that’s… I attribute that to my dad, for sure.
Oh, great, great. Fathers really do have an impact. I do the same thing to my kids as well, every night.
You do? You tell them stories?
Yeah, I do. Sometimes I want to hear it, sometimes I don’t. So…
What beyond talent do you feel one needs to book work and to keep booking work?
In order to make a career as a voice actor, you have to have a lot of clients, because one job is not going to pay the bills. And because of that, it takes a long time for you to be able to quit your day job. You’ll have a lot of little jobs from voice acting that it takes years to actually achieve.
So that takes resolve, and I think that’s a really, really important thing. You can be really talented, but in order to actually see it through and put in the years that it takes, even once you’re booking work, like there’s still years before you book work, now you’re booking work, it still takes a few years for you to actually make a career out of it. So keep your resolve on.
Absolutely. Do you have any classes or books or programs you recommend?
Let’s see. There’s a book called Accents, a Manual for Actors by Robert Blumenfeld that I bought in high school, came with two CDs, and it just goes through all of the accents, even through time. And really, he doesn’t use IPA, he uses his own way of writing out accents, and it’s just a really helpful reference.
I spent one summer in high school and just learned 30 of them, just to be able to say, okay, at least I have a groundwork of accents to rely on. Hugely helpful book. I love that one.
Great, great. I hope to check that book out.
Yeah, for sure.
Do you have a home studio?
I do.
What do you have in it?
A microphone, I hope. It’s a Sennheiser 416 with a Scarlett preamp. And that one, I’ve had that set up basically for since forever.
That’s my… Since when I first started out, I had a little USB mic and then eventually when I started doing audio books, I put down the money to get a real good microphone.
That’s great. I have the Sennheiser as well, too. So it’s a great mic.
When you do a lot of your recordings, do you record with an ensemble cast or are you just by yourself?
My career has made me very lonely. I never record with anybody ever for anything. I know so few voice actors, which is a damn shame.
For video games, it’s all by ourselves. And for all my anime, it’s all by myself. I’m starting to do some animation work, but even that, it’s all by myself.
So no ensembles for me.
I was actually checking out your website and I noticed I had a very nostalgia 80s feel to it, and I personally loved it. So do you feel like having a little… I’m assuming you’re a big 80s fan, as well as all the nostalgia.
Do you feel that plays a very good impact on designing your website?
Well, that specifically is early 90s pixel art style, because that’s what I grew up on, on DOS computers. I had a Compaq 386 when I was a kid, and so I played all of those old Apogee software games and Epic Mega games. That was what I grew up on.
So that’s what I made my website on. I found a really cool pixel artist, Ainsley Askew, and she’s awesome.
That’s great. How much time do you find marketing yourself versus your agent getting you work? How much time do you get work?
How much is your time devoted to getting your own work? And how much time is devoted to your agent getting work? Is it a unique blend?
I would say that’s 50-50, and that’s the way it should be. You’re getting stuff that’s coming through the pipeline that your agent’s sending you, your agent’s pitching you on stuff, and that’s half of the work. But yeah, the other half is marketing yourself.
I don’t know if actual marketing works to get jobs in the social media sense, but what really helps is going out to industry mixers, meeting people, going to conventions. I’ve been going to GDC for the last five years. That’s the kind of stuff that really makes a difference, not making a Facebook post.
I don’t think that really makes much of a difference.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Now, you play a wide range of characters, probably most infamously, we, Noctis, from The Farmers Day 15. How do you develop each character’s voice?
It’s a collaboration with any director that you’re working with. For Noctis, the voice I use to audition is different than the voice that was in Episode Dust Guy, which is different than the actual voice that Noctis had. So it takes a long time.
It’s a process for a lot of these characters. But some of them, you audition, and it’s right out of the gate. You’re doing fine.
Like for Puri Puri Prisoner, it was immediately angel style, and you know it’s the real guy.
Absolutely. Now, as we talked a little bit about your career, can you tell us how you got started in the business?
I always did Voice 123, and that’s how I got started doing little low-paying jobs. Started building up a reel because of that over a couple years. And then in 2013, I started doing audio books, and I did about 200 in a three-year period, all by myself.
And that was a good way to get out of bartending, which was what I was doing, but it didn’t really help my voice acting career. It wasn’t until I met Max Middleman and we started taking classes together through Voice Actors Network and Voice Actors Network and Voices Voicecasting that I started to actually start booking some work through that. So I highly recommend those two.
Okay, do you have any current projects that you’re working on that you’d like to share?
Well, of course, we can’t talk about anything, but I can talk about some that are announced. We’ve got Fooly Cooly. Alternative is coming out in September, and at some point, Bloodstained is gonna come out.
I don’t know when the heck that game is gonna come out, but I can’t wait to play it.
All right, great. Well, we’re gonna run out of time right now, but right before we go, where can people find you online and everything?
Twitter, Ray Chase, or Instagram, RayChaseNation.
All right, excellent. Ray, thank you very much for your time. And hope you enjoy your con.
Take care.
Make sure you get that handshake in the podcast. You got it.
And we’re back. This is Chris with The VO Meter. I’m here with Bryce Papenbrook.
Bryce, thank you so much for meeting with me today. I can’t talk.
Happy to be here.
Yeah, all right. You’ve voiced a lot of my favorite roles, Kirito and Sora online, Erin Yeager, actually Kat Noir from the Adventures of Ladybug and Kat Noir. So there are a lot of emotionally draining and powerful roles.
So how do you develop each character’s voice?
Each one is kind of unique and different. It’s really a collaborative process. So first, when you’re cast in a role, you know there’s a whole auditioning process to even get in and to get cast as the role.
But once you’re cast, you work with the team. Sometimes it’s just you, an engineer and a director. Sometimes there’s also a producer there.
Sometimes there’s a team of producers. But what you do is you kind of look at the character and you come up with something, and then the director will adjust you a little bit, and then you adjust it a little bit. And then once you kind of find that role, they capture it.
They record it. And then every time you start a session, they use what’s called a vocal ref, which is just a playback of what you recorded that first session. And that kind of gets you back into the character.
You mentioned that you record with a cast. Do you usually record by yourself or part of an ensemble cast?
So it all depends on what kind of a show it is. If it’s an original animation where they’re animating based off of the audio, it records as an ensemble, almost like an old radio play. If it’s anime, so if we’re dubbing it from another language, which would include Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, and Miraculous Ladybug, those are all dubs, we record one at a time because we’re actually hitting sync.
So you’re looking at a screen, you see your character, the character’s talking and you’re talking at the same time, and the goal is to make it not look like Godzilla. Like you want it to fit the flaps. So it’d be almost impossible to do as a group.
It’s very difficult even to do by yourself.
Do you record a lot at your home? And if you do, what type of equipment do you use?
Sure, yeah, I do a lot of auditioning out of my house. I have like a semi-professional set up. I started with just a very basic mic that I bought at Guitar Center and it worked.
But I’ve reinvested a few times. So I have a Neumann TLM 103. It’s a great microphone.
I have a Universal Audio preamp and an M-Box. And then I use Pro Tools to record all my auditions.
What percentage of your work is North America versus Japan?
You know, it’s a blend of work that I do. Really, I kind of cast my net out as wide as possible. And I’ve done quite a bit of both.
Because on top of anime, I do a lot of video games. I also do radio and TV commercials. And I also do something called Walla, which is recreating the background noises in movies and TV shows.
You might notice my voice is a little beat up because I was working on a movie. When was that? Two days ago.
Screaming quite a bit. So it’s a blend of everything.
Well, so you mentioned now, familiar with that, it’s also called a loop group and everything, where movies and everything. What warmups do you do? Do you take any herbal tea or any kind of vocal sprays that kind of keep your voice in pristine condition?
I don’t. My warmup is yelling at other people in traffic. That’s really what I do.
But I wasn’t traditionally trained as a, or formally trained as a voice actor. I kind of learned on the job. And I looked back at a lot of the things that I did growing up, like I taught martial arts.
So I would just yell at kids and yell at kids and yell at kids, and then their parents would come and take class and I’d yell at their parents. So that kind of was my vocal training. So I have a different approach than a lot of other people.
Yeah, talking about your background a little bit, it’s amazing that for 16 years you’ve been practicing martial arts and you’re a third degree or sixth degree?
Fourth degree black belt. Tongue snow, yeah. I think it’s about time I test for my fifth, but I’ve been a little busy doing some other things.
So what was that crossover for doing martial arts into voiceover? How did you get your start into that?
Well, actually, my dad was a voice actor, so he was working on Power Rangers, and they needed a kid’s voice on Power Rangers, and my dad’s like, he’s a kid, throw him in the booth! And that’s how I got thrown into the booth for the first time. I never thought that I would really be a professional actor.
Actually, I thought I would be a professional fighter first. Then I went to UCLA and studied political science and philosophy, thought I would be an attorney. You know, it makes sense.
Fighter, attorney, voice actor, yeah! All leads. But I’ve always been around the industry, and when I graduated college, I booked something and then booked something else and booked something else and thought, I’m gonna give this a real shot.
And went for it and haven’t looked back.
Wow, that’s incredible. So it’s a really inspiring story. So how much of your time do you find yourself doing marketing for VO jobs?
How much of the percentage is by your agents and how much percent is on your own?
I mean, it’s a good blend. I’ve made a lot of contacts being in the industry for a long time, so people know the kind of roles that I play and they send me auditions for those. But the majority of my auditions come from my agent.
Yeah, I mean, there’s just a lot of competition out there. So auditioning is really the job. If you book one out of 100 auditions, you’re doing extremely well.
That is true. I’m very familiar with that. Actually, I heard one out of 200, so half that, so that’s good.
So, you know… All right, so now if you have someone young who says, Hey, Bryce, Michael E. Bryce, I want to be a voice actor.
How can I get my start? What advice do you have for me?
Yeah, I mean, it’s so tough because there’s not one way to become a voice actor. It’s not like if you go and study this, then you’re going to get cast as this role. It’s, you know, it’s totally random.
But I tell people, become an actor. Hone in on your craft. Record an amazing voice demo.
That’s almost like your business card. Get a great agent. Start auditioning.
Get as much experience as you can. And then hope that something hits. You know, there’s just no guarantees.
It’s like shooting darts at a darkboard blindfolded. But when you hit the bullseye, it’s an amazing experience.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Bryce, that kind of wraps up everything right now.
I want to take it easy. I know your voice is a little raspy. I don’t want you to talk and everything.
A little beat up.
So, Mr. Pappenbrook, thank you very much for meeting me today. And I hope you have yourself a great time and good luck on your journey.
Thank you. And I’d love to tell people where they can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Bryce Pappenbrook, on Facebook at actor Bryce Pappenbrook. And they should check me out on the Unlocked app, which is available for iOS, which is an app that I co-founded, and it connects actors and voice actors and creators to fans around the world.
So it’s amazing I can take people behind the scenes and show you what it’s like to record as a voice actor and what it’s like to go to these amazing conventions. So check out the Unlocked app.
Absolutely.
On iOS now and coming to Android very soon.
All right. Thank you very much. Hey, this is Chris.
We are back on the VO Meter. I’m here with Cherami Leigh. Thank you very much for spending time with me today.
So over 20 years of voice actor acting in general, that’s quite a resume. So I got to ask you, what in your life experience was most helpful to you in becoming a voice actor?
Man, I don’t know. I kind of just fell into voice acting. I started out just wanting to be an actor, and my ultimate goal when I started was to be on Barney.
And I was not on Barney, but I’ve gotten to do tons of other things. I have worked at Radio Disney. I’ve been an on-air DJ for them.
I’ve written scripts. I’ve been a copywriter. I’ve done promos for them.
I’ve been in an improv troupe. I’ve been interned at an agency. I’ve done adaptive script writing, directing, producing, and industrials, commercials, all of that.
And so just to say what I think is more impactful than the other, I think they’ve all helped in some way. Seeing the business from all these different sides, getting to experience a recording session from the side of a director or a casting director, that influences how I audition as an actor. Getting to see what it’s like working on the marketing side of things, working at Radio Disney helps me influence how I present myself when I’m helping market a show.
So all of these things have been instrumental to me and that’s one of the reasons why I love when people say, I just want to learn more about the industry. I’m like, yes, you have to learn as much as you can because it’s all interdependent and it’s constantly changing. The more knowledge you have, the more likely you’re going to be able to work because you’re constantly growing.
You’re more, I think, you’re more open to information and people can see that when they want to hire you or when they’re asking you to direct something. I think watching anime, watching movies, playing video games, being aware of what’s out there, all of that stuff is super important because if they’re trying to direct you in terms of a series that’s on Netflix, hey, can you think about this kind of character and you’re like, oh, I don’t actually watch that show or I have no idea what that is, it’s part of your job as an actor to be aware of what’s out there so that you’re involved in the business.
Absolutely, so much like any other career profession, you got to study and stay on top of it. What beyond talent do you feel one needs to book work and keep working? What do you need to kind of stay fresh and everything?
I think the biggest thing is a passion and love for what you do because if you don’t love it, the rejection is going to be so hard, it’s draining, it constantly brings you down. I love this industry so much. If I wasn’t an actor, I would still probably be in the industry in some shape, form, or fashion, but I found I would miss acting too much, that that’s just what I have to do.
But it sucks. I mean, sometimes I’ll not book something over and over again or I’ll be so close on something so many times and they’ll point out everything that’s wrong and I have to remind myself, well, but I got to play that character for five minutes. For those five minutes, I was the only fill in the blank of what I auditioned for.
And I can always savor those five minutes. And I’ve got to go in and have fun with my audition and not go in trying to make them like me. I mean, it’s sort of like when you go out on a date.
When you go on a date and you’re like, please like me, please like me, please like me, they’re going to feel this desperate energy from you and say like, I feel like they’re just not, they’re not present with me. I feel like they’re not showing me who they really are. Whereas if you go, you know what, I’m just going to have a fun time with this person, learn about them, have a conversation.
If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. But I’m me and we’re together for this moment. We get to go see this movie and have a great time.
And I think that’s what you’ve got to do as an actor, is keep it fresh, keep it fun, and remember why you started acting in the first place, because the business will try to tear you down.
Excellent advice, I got to say.
Thank you.
Any classes or books or programs you recommend?
Oh my gosh, so many great classes. I think it’s so imperative to take improv. I think it’s so, so imperative, especially for voice acting, to take cold reading classes, because I never get the script ahead of time.
I walk in, this is the first time I’m seeing the script, and I’m previewing the scene in Japanese while I’m seeing those words for the very first time, and then I’ve got to do the next take and try to get it as word perfect as I possibly can. So cold reading classes are really important. I actually think it’s important to work out and stay fit, because it keeps your lungs fresh and it gives you stamina in the booth and keeps you able to work longer and do longer screams and all of that stuff is very important.
Or if you want to do more motion capture, all of that physicalization is really important for you to be able to expand in that area of your career. I’ve read a lot of really great books. One of them that I just read, I think, is called The Dude and the Zen Master, and that was a really fun book with Jeff Bridges, and obviously a Zen Master.
I really loved that one. I love reading spiritual books. There’s a book that Dee Wallace wrote.
She was the mother of ET, and she’s looking at acting from a spiritual perspective, and I feel like it definitely is. I mean, the things that you’re working on as an actor and the things that are coming up for you in a scene and the roles that you’re booking, it’s amazing how much of a correlation it has to you in your life’s journey, and I think if you look at that as a way of kind of doing free therapy, it can only feed your experience as a human being and as an actor, so it challenges me. Some of the roles, I’m like, ah, I don’t think I relate to this character, and then when I read into it, I go, this is exactly what I needed to do.
This is what I was avoiding dealing with in my own life, and this role came to me as a challenge to get over myself and learn and grow, and I’m so grateful for it.
That’s great. That’s great. So now, after part day of voice acting, how do you find yourself distressed to unplug, unwind?
Yeah, I love to work out, just because I have a lot of… Usually I’m doing some sort of fighting game or some sort of fighting something. I’ve got to get all this physical energy out.
I usually like to actually watch documentaries on Netflix. I’m fascinated by human beings, so when I come home, I want to learn about somebody else or read a book. I like to hang out with my cats.
Shopping is fun. I usually like to write scripts. I’m writing a TV pilot and a movie right now, so jumping into another world is really fun.
But then there are some times I’m like, I just want to lay here and play this stupid app game on my phone about interior design. So sometimes it’s that. I’ve just been so emotionally tapped.
All I can do is pretend to rearrange a house.
That’s good. Any little bit helps.
Yeah, any little bit helps.
So you mentioned a little bit about writing scripts right now. Do you have any projects that you’re working on right now that you like to share?
A couple of years ago, my husband and I, he wrote and directed and I produced and gave him the idea for a series called Confessionals about… it’s an on-camera web series about voice actors at conventions and seeing the behind the scenes. So that is going to a web series festival in New Jersey next month.
So that will be really fun to see how people that are not in the voice over or anime community respond to that. And I’m working on Steins Gate Zero. I’m working on about ten video games that I’m not allowed to talk about right now.
I’m directing, co-directing an anime series. And I just finished doing Book Two, an audio book with Todd Haberkorn and Brittany Karbroski for… it’s called Tell-A-World.
It’s part of the Color World series by Rachel Kelly. So there’s a lot of stuff going on. Those are the few things I can talk about right now.
Hopefully we get more sword art. Hopefully we get more fairy tale. We’ll see.
Alright. So how do you find yourself calming down after a whole session of screaming and everything? What techniques do you do?
Do you have any sprays or any vocal tea that you use?
Yeah. I love Singer Saving Grace. That’s great.
I usually try to stay away from sugar. So they come in a yellow bag there. I can’t remember what they’re called, but it’s a yellow bag of cough drops that are sweet and mastivia.
I love them so much. And I drink a lot of throat coat tea. And there’s a Chinese cough syrup that I buy on Amazon, which is so delicious.
And it really can just coat your voice. But the most important thing that I have to do when it is shredded, and I mean like shredded beyond all belief, I have to be quiet. I can’t talk to anyone.
I can’t respond to anybody. I’ve got to write letters around and hope that people can read my lips. But that’s what I have to do when it’s just really, really tapped.
I just have to be quiet. But it doesn’t happen too often. The only time that I shredded my voice this year, I was dealing with really bad allergies.
And then went in to do a session where I had to die 400 ways. One of them, the last one, was we’re going to stab you in the throat, rip your throat up and set you on fire. And I was like, awesome, I think that’s going to be the last one of the day.
And it was, but it sounded real cool. So I guess there’s that.
That’s great. Now you mentioned that Chinese tea, I actually use it as well. I heard it’s been called the Hulk Juice.
It has been called the Hulk Juice.
Yeah, because right after Camp Francis’ last name, Ted Escora, he uses it, and he says it works wonders.
My trainer, and he’s an incredible actor as well, Lou Freignot Jr., obviously his dad is the Hulk Hulk, I should see if I can just drop some off at his house, because when I train in their gym behind their home, I should just be like, this is Hulk Juice. It’s an offering. You should have this.
And see how he responds. See what he thinks. Because we’ve got to get all the Hulk stamp of approval on it.
Mark Ruffalo will be next.
Well, Cherami, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. So thank you so much for your time.
I really appreciate it. You gave such amazing advice. Thank you.
It’s a pleasure to talk to you.
You too. You have yourself a good one. We’re back on the VO Meter with Josh Greeley.
I’m here with James. James, how are you doing? I’m doing great.
So, Josh, thank you very much for meeting with us today.
Absolutely.
How are you enjoying the con?
Fantastic, man. I was telling someone earlier, you know, like 14 years ago when I was still starting out, I hadn’t really done anything yet in the industry. This was the first con that I ever came to as an attendee from Texas.
It was the first time I’d ever really flown out of state by myself to go to anything like this. And it changed my life, changed my world. And I decided from that point on that, you know, one of the milestones, one of the goals I wanted for my career was to be a guest at this con and took me 14 years, but I did it.
So yeah, it’s been, it’s literally been a dream come true all weekend.
That’s amazing goal. And I actually have like a similar goal to that, I can’t talk either.
We talk for a living. That’s the thing.
That’s always the curse.
We talk for a living, we can’t freaking do it at the time.
Yeah, so we’re 14 years in voice over. So mind sharing, how’d you get started?
I, well, in voice over, I started just because I got the phone number for ADV Films and said, I want to be a voice actor. And so, but I started in theater. I started as an actor when I was five years old.
And I did nothing but community theater from, you know, that point, you know, upwards. My little podunk town in Texas didn’t offer theater in school at all. So it was, community theater was really the only game in town for me.
And that’s where I started and where I really kind of found my life love as early as five years old. And then, you know, I’d loved cartoons growing up, fell in love with anime, you know, from a very early age, you know, Pokemon, you know, when it hit was definitely huge. But then discovering less mainstream stuff on my own and then, you know, like Slayers and Ranma One-Half and stuff.
And then eventually to and Dirty Pair and Dirty Pair Flash and all those good like in old school ADV stuff like Evangelion and then Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon and all those, you know, the Toonami stuff from my childhood. Everything was just it all kind of culminated individually was just like, well, I love cartoons and I love acting. Maybe I should marry these two loves.
And so I decided to pursue it. And a buddy of mine through an online forum that went to school with a girl that had done some voice work. She was the voice of Nadia and the 90 dub, the 90s Nadia Secret of Blue Water.
And she gave me the she gave me the phone number for ADV. And I just called them up. It was like I’d like to do this.
And they put me on a waiting list for auditions and stuff. And January of 04, three months before I graduated high school, I started I did my first professional gig. And it’s they liked me enough that they kept using me.
And, you know, sometimes, you know, that particular branch of ADV shut down. And so I had to, you know, you know, I thought everything was over, you know, before it even started. But then a director I’d worked with there was moved down to the main branch in Houston.
And he brought me in on a year and a half long project. And other directors found me as a result of that. And then Funimation people discovered me through Monica Rial.
And then it is just one thing led to another. And, you know, here I am 14 years later, still riding the train, man.
That’s a great journey.
Yeah.
So you talked about, you know, you said it’s a life experience. What in your life experience was most helpful to you in becoming a voice actor or an actor in general?
What life experience was most valuable? Becoming an actor first. Because acting not only, you know, gave me the tools that I needed to, you know, actually, you know, go in with, you know, my guns blazing for my first audition, my first official professional audition, you know, I was already comfortable with myself as a performer.
But becoming an actor also taught me how to put on a confident face, even in my most frightful moments. And so, like, every time that I had a crippling self-doubt or something going into the booth or to an audition or anything like that, I would just start acting like a confident person. And that got me through it.
And so, yeah, acting literally is the thing that made me become a professional actor and not just because of the craft itself.
Absolutely. That’s great for job interviews, right?
Right, yeah.
Yeah, exactly. You go in and you’re just like, I can own this. Like, I’ve got the script, you’ve got the script in your head.
And you’ve been trained in improv and stuff, so you can roll with the punches for whoever’s interviewing you and everything. So yeah, it’s a great set of tools to have in your kit.
Awesome. You mentioned Monica Rial earlier. So she moved to Funimation long before you did.
What was the first project she brought you in for?
Kenichi.
Kenichi.
Yeah.
We had ADV films. I had had my first lead role in a show called The Wallflower. Had a couple of parts after that, and then Matt Greenfield cast me as the lead in Gurrenlagen when we first brought it to the States.
And we did the first five episodes of it, and this was going to be my first breakout role. This would have made my career back in 2006, 2007. But I lost it within a month of having it, and it was heartbreaking, and I thought I almost gave up on all of it after that.
And then Monica had, because ADV was about to fold as a result of losing the title, she moved up to Dallas. She’d been working for Dallas for a long time, but she officially moved up there. They made her a director, and the first show they gave her was Kenichi, and I auditioned for it out of a closet in Houston.
And she, I guess, you know, after just from some of the times that we’d worked together at ADV, and from my audition, she thought that I had what it took to give Kenichi what she was looking for, and she literally changed my life. Brought me up there, and with all the funny people discovered me because of it, and because of Kenichi, and most of my work at ADV had been villains, because that’s how they knew me for, for the most part, and it was fun, but I didn’t get to, you know, I started getting stuck in just doing nothing but that, and then Funimation saw me, the first thing they saw me on was the young hero, and so I played young heroes ever since, and without that, I probably would never have been Armin. I probably would have never been the Grand Minister, you know, in Dragon Ball, the show that solidified my love of anime, and like, it’s, it really, like losing that role was the biggest blessing in disguise that I ever could have hoped for on my journey, and you know, it took me four or five years to actually realize it, and so like, it’s, sorry, I’m not even sure if I’m answering your question.
No, you are, you are.
Yeah, it’s so weird how these little things that you think, these things that come along and punch you in the face and make you want to give up, and just the fact that you stick with it, and it finds out that that wallop to the face was actually the wake-up, exactly what you needed to happen. Yeah, it’s a hard lesson to learn, but it’s so worth it if you stick with it and you learn it.
Yeah, so how did you manage to stay positive and unbeaten and not give up and say, oh, this is… You have a huge role like that being taken away. How did you manage to work through that?
Really, it was just the fact that I just wanted to keep pursuing the dream. I wasn’t ready to give up. I had so many goals set for me that I had set for myself beforehand, and the thought of not finishing those, even if it was through no fault of my own, still felt like if I didn’t finish them, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
It would feel like a failure. And while I don’t want to be afraid of failure, I would rather think of failure as the great teacher, as the thing that you need to go through in order to learn. That was one thing of like if I lost and was not able to at least do the things that I had set out to do initially with this, I had set so much of my own self-worth in that goal that I wasn’t willing to give it up yet.
And thank God I held on even for just those few months because then, you know, Kenichi came along and that was a two-year-long process after doing that whole show. It helped me pay the rent. I moved up to Dallas as a result of it and more and more people started using me.
It was just like, all right, well, I guess life’s moving on. I’m moving out of another place. I moved up even closer to home than I was before.
So yeah, it all worked out in the end.
That’s great. You have any classes or programs you recommend to anyone who wishes to pursue in the field?
I highly recommend looking up any sort of classes first that are actually done at colleges or any sort of theater courses or if someone’s still in high school or something, if their high school offers that, do that. It’s really, it’s kind of a, it’s a hard process now, these days, to find teachers that are actually worth their salt. I think there’s a lot of people that are starting to see classes as just money farms and people that aren’t actually qualified to teach aren’t actually, aren’t the ones that are, you know, and then the market’s being saturated with these people.
So I would just say for anybody that was gonna do that, if you’re gonna pay something along the lines of $600 for a course, which I have, I paid $600 for a full weekend workshop where I worked 12 hours a day with one of the industry’s most well-informed and most experienced voice directors and voice casters in the history of voiceover. That’s worth it. If I then paid that same $600 to be in a class with, to be in a one-day class for one hour with only, with like eight to ten people, and I’m only getting like five, maybe five minutes in the booth, and we do that for like maybe just a couple of weeks or whatever, it’s like, you’re not learning anything.
You’re not getting any experience or any exposure. You are literally, it’s just a money farm. It is a ripoff.
And I, so like just be wary of exactly what it is people are offering, because it’s getting dangerously close to pay to play. And that’s, if that starts, it’s gonna hurt everyone.
Absolutely.
So yeah, just find teachers. Find teachers. That’s the best thing that I can tell someone.
Now, like I mentioned in regards to rates and everything, as you mentioned, pay to play sites, there are a lot of, one that won’t be mentioned, you know, will charge a large fee and then pay the actor very minimal.
Yes.
So, how would you feel to kind of like, actors who really want to get this gig, they feel it’s a big opportunity, but the price isn’t what they want, and what do you have to, what advice can you give them for that?
Are you talking about Voices 123? Because I will say that name out loud. Yeah.
voices.com and Voices 123, this was strictly something to bring in amateurs with a dream that did not know, that do not know the industry, do not know what their time is worth or what a commercial booking is worth. And these websites rip them off. And they make them think that, oh no, you’re living the dream, you’re getting paid exactly, you’re getting paid the big bucks, like the big professional things.
No, they are being ripped off in order for this website to make the majority of that money that I would make if my agent had booked it for me instead. And using that to build their website so that they can rip more people off. So like, yeah, I have no problem saying those names out loud and accusing them and calling them out on their BS because they are also part of the problem.
Absolutely, yeah, it’s very hard.
So yeah, that’s another thing I would say to look out for. Because they’ve already oversaturated the market with so many people that just, you know, sit around at home after their job and from their couch just think, you know, I think I’d like to try to do voices. And they actually, and they give them that opportunity to come in and, you know, think that they’re going to get an extra form of income or something.
And it literally is just a way to give other, you know, commercial companies a way to pay less. And again, that’s another thing that will damage everyone. It will damage the entirety of the industry at every level, and this will not be a job that anybody can do to actually make a living at anymore.
And the profession will die. The profession will die. So…
It’s a small, small ripple that will affect everyone.
Quick question. I would like to hear your opinion on, based on what you’ve heard from young amateur voice actors, what’s the number one error you see them make as they’re going about their career?
This idea that they need to seek out the advice of people like me in order to take that first step. I had no idea when I was doing, when I started this. Absolutely none.
I had nobody that I could turn to. The internet was still a fairly new thing. Facebook wasn’t even around yet, or Twitter.
There was no big social media way for anybody. Like, everybody just had their own private email. If you didn’t know somebody’s email, you didn’t know how to get in touch with them.
So, like, it really was just like, I just had to figure it out for myself, and I carved my own path. And the great thing and the hard thing at the same time about this industry is that you don’t have to. There is no one way.
It is literally a… This is the type of business that is kind of a frontier, like a wild frontier type thing. If you can figure out a way to get in and how you…
What you have to offer and how you can use what you have to offer to get yourself into the industry your own way, that is the best way. Yes, is it smart to ask for advice? Absolutely, and I’m willing to give it.
But the biggest mistake that I see people make is this idea that, no, I’m not ready yet. I can’t be ready until I’ve gotten all the information, until I’ve asked every single actor or anything like that, and then they never move on it. They never actually do it.
Just do it. Just go. And the other thing that I think is a big mistake is this idea of only becoming an anime voice actor.
Yeah. Pigeonholing yourself. Or only doing voices on YouTube.
And they want to make a living doing this. They want to make a career out of it. These are not sustainable.
There is no possible way I could stay just an anime voice actor and pay my bills. And only do that. And keep my schedule open for whenever I would have the next anime gig.
I assume that means a lot of commercial voiceovers.
Lots. You take everything. Take everything.
You audition for original animation, industrials, commercials, narration, audiobook narration, industrial narration, video games, political.
Anything that you can do.
This idea of… Greg Ayers, a very popular voice actor, has one of the best ways of explaining this that I’ve heard. Saying that you want to become a voice actor and only work in anime is the same idea as saying, I want to run a car dealership, but only sell 1967 Camaros.
Yep.
You’re not going to make a living off that. It’s unrealistic. People, I think, need to realize that this is not a job…
The reason, the stereotype of the young working actor that also works as a barista or a waiter or a waitress or something is so prominent to the point of being a stereotype. It’s a stereotype for a reason. It’s because we all do it.
We all have something. Most people that I know that started in theater and that are chasing after some sort of career in this field have a second job. For a very long time, the only reason I couldn’t, I didn’t have a second job, was because I shared a one-bedroom apartment with four people.
And so our rent was extremely cheap. And we lived like animals, basically, but we paid the rent. We had all of the free time and stuff that we could want, and that allowed me to be only open to acting.
But eventually, at one point, when I was working for Funimation, and only funny for a while, before I became a writer, I delivered cookies. I worked for two years, almost two and a half, three years for a company. And I did it full-time hours, but in order to make full-time hours but still keep myself open during the week, I only worked Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
So I would work three 12-hour shifts back to back, and then I’d have the rest of my Monday through Friday open for any sort of voice work that I might potentially get. And thankfully, they were all so willing to let me go take time off on those weekends to go do conventions whenever I had conventions as well. So I was insanely lucky and fortunate to find a job that was even willing to have on a part-time or semi-full-time employee that they would also let go every other week end or something.
I mean, insanely fortunate, and I did not appreciate them as much as I should have when I had them. But people need to realize that they need to have some sort of backup or some sort of other form of income in order to make this work in the initial stages. It is very rare that someone comes in and blows people out of the water and immediately gets the first lead role that then becomes like the next big thing and it makes their career overnight.
Most… No, it is so incredibly rare that it’s… that I would almost say that it never happens.
So, yeah, that’s the other. That’s the other. Those are really the two biggest mistakes I hear.
Other than that, people looking for a backdoor. The people that consistently ask the question, how do I become a voice actor? How do I get in the industry?
And then you give them the answer and there’s so much work involved with that answer that they are not willing to listen to it. They want the instant gratification. They want the, oh no, how do I come into this right now?
What’s the backdoor? There is none. I had to make my own and I kicked it down until they let me freaking do what I wanted to do.
Obviously, I was professional about it. I was never a jerk or anything and I never tried to force myself on anybody. You know, I let my work ethic and my ability speak for themselves.
And really, I think that’s the best approach is you go in, you kick ass at your job, and when you’re done, you shut up and leave. Absolutely. They remember you because you’re good and you’re fast and you’re professional and then you get out of their hair and you let them continue working.
So yeah, those are the three biggest issues that I think I hear all the time consistently at almost every convention. And from people online and emails that I get and letters that I get and stuff like that, it’s… I wish and I hope that every single one of those people, if this is something that they absolutely cannot see themselves being happy unless they are doing this, I hope that they find their way in and I hope that they find the courage to actually just say, you know what, maybe I should just try this.
Maybe I should just go ahead and do it and see where it goes. And I hope that, you know, I would hope that they all, you know, find their dreams and live it, but as long as they keep this mindset of, no, I need the back door or I just want the instant gratification or anything like that, and yeah, sure, you might succeed. You might get it, but it’s going to be hollow and it’s not going to be fulfilling because then you’ll always just be expecting the rest of your career to be just as instantly gratifying as that, and that is not the nature of this business.
Absolutely.
You’ll be told no a hundred times before you’re told yes. And if someone can’t handle that, they should not be doing this.
That’s right. Overnight success takes 20 years. Hey, this is Chris for The VO Meter.
I’m here with Mr. Matsukaze. Thank you very much for meeting with us today.
Nice to meet you. Thank you, thank you.
So, can you tell us a little bit how you got started in the voiceover business?
So, I started out in a hero, like a hero, like Power Rangers style show called Denshi Sentai.
In the movie, the sound and the video were filmed separately.
So, that was filmed using film. So, the visuals and the audio tracks were recorded separately.
After that, I shot a game.
At that time, I shot motion capture and CG.
So, after that, I was actually headhunted to be in a game called Shenmue, where I did the motion capture and the voice over work. So, it was another one of those jobs where I was doing the visual, physical side of it, and then doing voice over work as well.
So, I was introduced to the Shenmue sound director for an audition for an animation.
So, I started out as just a straight, plain actor, but because my debut was the type where I was required to do the overdubbing, and then I moved into another job where I was doing overdubbing with Shenmue, the voice director for Shenmue actually introduced me to some auditions for anime work after that.
Wow, it’s amazing.
It’s amazing.
Do you think this career path is only for you in Japan?
This kind of career path that other people in Japan, aside from me, don’t necessarily have.
People tell me it’s a very rare type.
It is, it is. You’re very skilled, very talented.
Lucky, lucky man.
So, how do you develop each character’s voice?
What is it like to develop each character’s voice?
There are those who speak normally and are interesting, and those who aren’t.
I’m not that type of person.
So, you could probably divide the types of voice actors in Japan into two categories. The type of person who their normal speaking voice is very interesting and original, and then there’s the type of actor who has to create a voice, and I’m the type that is voice creation type.
So, I try and do is strengthen the traits of the character that I associate with, and try and really bring that closer to who I am and my empathy with that character. And then on the other end of it, I try to take the parts that I don’t necessarily associate with and bring those closer to what I can do with the character. So, I try to create a voice that is as much of me as I can, and bring the character closer to what I empathize with that character.
Great talent. Very good. Do you record mostly by yourself or as part of an ensemble cast?
How much work do you find doing by yourself and how much work do you find doing with the cast?
I hear that it’s kind of a Japan-only type of approach, but we try as much as possible to gather everybody and do all of the voice work at the same time.
So, there’s usually about four mics, and then everybody stands around the mics, and when it’s your turn to talk, you step up and do your lines, and then you try and make as little sound as possible as you move away and kind of step out of the range, and then come back around and wait.
In line for your next turn and do the next line.
So before they have to do some really energetic like screaming style acting or something, you have to stand up extremely quietly and approach with making no sound, and then you do your yelling, and then you have to also leave without making any sound, so I hear that it’s a very Japanese talent that people outside of Japan don’t necessarily work in those kind of conditions.
Absolutely. From what we do here, we usually record separately. Very artists, because their schedule and conflicts are doing many different projects, they’ll record separately and then paste it all together.
Very few projects.
It’s hard to do it alone in the US.
Do they record at home sometimes too, right?
Yes, we do. We have our own home studios at home. That was like the last question.
Do you primarily go to your own studio, or do you go to a studio from whatever production company you’re working for?
That leads to the next question. Do you have your own studio at home, or do you work there?
We have a sound recording studio in Tokyo.
So there’s a multitude, like many tens of studios around Tokyo. So we have to go around to the different studios.
So all of the voice actors have to meet at a specific sound studio at a specific time. So everybody meets at the studio, and then meets at a different studio for the next… There’s probably not even a single voice actor in Japan that has their own home studio.
Really?
The reason for that being that there’s no director at your house, so you have to go to where the director is.
There are musicians, but there are no musicians who go to their homes to record.
So of course there’s musicians who do that sort of thing, but no matter how famous the person is, there’s probably nobody who does their recording at home and sends it in in Japan. That kind of doesn’t exist.
Wow, that’s a lot of different. There are some production companies that we will have to go to the studio, but a lot of times if we’re doing a quick commercial or what have you, we’ll usually do it through Skype or through a phone patch and record the lines that way.
We’ve heard a lot about this, and we’ve heard that when a Chinese client is doing a script, the director can’t come.
So we’ve heard rumors that the director is doing a script on Skype.
I’ve heard rumors of productions that are based in China, where you talk via the director in China via Skype. I’ve never experienced it, but I’ve heard rumors.
Yeah, I’ve actually done that.
In Japan, there are actors, directors, Japanese directors, and Chinese directors on Skype.
In that case, usually, there’s the Japanese voice actor, and then the Japanese director, or the production director, and then the Chinese director. So they are the ones who are doing Skype, and then the production manager is the one who’s giving the directions from China to the voice actor.
Wow, a lot of work for the director.
The director must be very busy.
Do you, in the ensemble cast, rehearse beforehand, or do you get the script usually as soon as day of, and then you just kind of improv beforehand? Do you just kind of, everyone meet at an agreed time, rehearse, and then perform, or is it all just sort of improv and acting in the moment?
Do you rehearse in advance, and then everyone rehearse, and then you gather at the scene, and then you record the script, or do you go a little earlier, rehearse, and then record the show?
This is also one of the reasons why other actors are said to be quite special in voice acting.
In the old days, we would gather together and watch the script and watch the video together. Then we would say, I’m going to do the test, and then we would go into the microphone. Then we would do the show.
We would do it in real time, and then we would do it as we saw it that day.
So the traditional flow of things used to be that you would show up as a team, and there would be the rough of what’s finished, and so you watch where all of the mouth movement goes, and kind of everybody just mutters their lines, and then they say, okay, test, and everybody runs through the test rehearsal of it, and then they would take the final take, and that’s like everybody in the room for the full process, and now what’s kind of becoming more of the industry standard is that the company will send you a DVD of that footage, and so you can kind of do your practice at home and get what you’re going to do ready, and then you meet at the studio and do the test, and then do the final record.
So it’s a little similar how a lot of dubbing is done in studios such as Funimation and what have you. We won’t get a DVD sent home. Well, sometimes go to the studio, then they’ll do the test run, then we’ll kind of voice, you know, mutter our lines, then we’ll do action and record a take.
To get it delivered first.
He’s a great guy from the past.
So that’s similar to the Japanese classical style, where people who have tremendous talent would be able to show up and look at a character, for example, Nozawa Masako, who does Dragon Ball Z, is famous for being able to have no prior knowledge of a character and just see what they look like and look at them moving on the screen and come up with a funny voice that works for the character. But in modern times, it’s really difficult for somebody who’s slow in creating their character to keep up with that fever pitch at the recording studio and be expected to ad-lib that heavily. So it’s kind of shifting towards get the DVD at home and do a little bit of pre-recording.
When you’re developing a character that is getting really emotional in the moment where they have to cry and scream, how do you brace yourself for that? Do you kind of think of any emotional thoughts or do you just kind of get lost in the moment of performing the character that you just go with it and get lost in the moment?
When you’re developing a character that is getting really emotional in the moment where they have to cry and.
Moment is the moment.
It’s like the moment you create.
I really feel like explosiveness, what comes out is the most important thing.
So, like, in a play, you have the time to be, like, in your outfit, and you can remain in character, and then there’s the buildup. But when it comes to anime, everything is what’s done and what’s ready, so it has to be very in the moment.
So, I do end up kind of feeling ill, like sometimes I end up even feeling like I’m going to throw up, but I feel like when that happens, it means I’m getting closer to where I need to be, the things that I’ve got to answer.
A good voice over, just doing a very normal character, and you have to remain within the frequency of normality, then there’s no risk being… But when it comes to the protagonists, you have to be able to hit those highs and then hit those lows like super elated, like super heartbroken, very angry. All of those things, you have to be able to hit the apex and the zenith pretty repeatedly, and also in real time.
And so that’s very emotionally trying. It can be exhausting.
Yeah, you feel completely drained afterwards, almost.
So that’s what I mean when I’m saying that if I feel sick, I feel like that I’ve hit all of the points to make that protagonist interesting.
Wow, good, good. Do you do any warm-ups before going into the studio? And if so, what are a few, be able to share a few examples?
Ah, ah. Pretty much, it’s been a long tradition of, since for about three hours before you go into the studio, wake up and you do voice inflection training, ah, ah, ah, things like that.
So, like…
So, in my case, I like sometimes, I’m required to do a very husky type of, gravelly type of voice. So, if I’m doing that sort of thing, if I warm up, then I can’t get the voice that I need. So, I won’t say a single word until I get to the studio, and then I’ll get ready to have that very…
So, I just woke up, very gravelly type of voice. But in the case where they need a high-pitched tone, and if I’ve used a high-pitched tone, then I can’t get back to the low pitch, so I’ll have to stay in that tone. And same thing for a low tone.
So if they need a low tone, then I’ll spend the whole morning talking in very low tone so that I don’t betray that idea, so that when I’ve been doing the voice, it doesn’t…
Okay, so you sort of spend, for every character, if it’s a higher tone or lower tone, you just spend the entire session in that high tone or in that low tone.
And if it’s a low voice, then you’ll be using that low voice all the time?
Basically, it’s usually middle, high, low.
It’s pretty much only three. There’s middle, high, and low. So a little bit of in-between, so…
All right. Well, we’re getting close to the end right now. So do you have any advice for anyone there who wished to get into voice acting or anyone who wants to pursue anything in the creative field?
So, if you have anything to say to someone who wishes to pursue voice acting or wants to become an actor, please do so.
I was able to talk to Chris today and Andrew.
So, the world is expanding, and good works are expanding from our own world. I hope we can create great works together and enjoy them together.
So, it’s all thanks to being involved in anime that I’ve been able to come here and meet people like you, Chris, and me, and been able to meet all kinds of people that I never thought I was able to meet. And that’s all the power of anime and working hard in the industry to realize your dreams. So, I really hope to continue to do works that will help connect people and inspire.
And I hope to meet everybody else on the world scene from here on out.
I hope the same. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
And thank you for meeting with me. And I hope best of luck on your journey and everything. And hopefully get to see each other soon.
Thank you for taking the time to come.
It’s nothing.
It’s an honor to meet you.
See you again. I’ll do my best to keep my name on the Teropi of the one I thought was a masterpiece.
I’m gonna keep working hard so that whenever you’re watching something that you think, oh man, this is a really good piece of work that my name is in the credits somewhere.
Oh, I know. I know.
Well, thank you again for your time.
Thank you very much.
Hey, this is Chris and James. We’re here with Erika Mendez. How are you, Erika?
I’m doing really good.
It’s been a great weekend. Good, good.
Thanks for meeting with us. So I just want to jump right in. Excuse me, jump right in.
I can’t talk. It’s Sunday. Tongue-tied and everything.
So how did you become a voice actor?
I have always been interested in cartoons and video games, and I’ve also always wanted to do some creative expression. I did drawing and stuff like that. That was my creative outlet for a while.
But I’d always had an interest in acting, but I was a very shy kid growing up, so it wasn’t the easiest thing for me to get into until I finally pushed myself to start doing acting in high school. When I found out about voice over, it felt like the natural progression I could do, like acting and not have to be on stage. But I knew I still had to get that acting skills within me, so I took some classes and stuff like that.
But it wasn’t until I moved to California from Chicago that I had done audio dramas and stuff like that online beforehand and met a lot of people. And I knew people that were already working in the industry and people who knew what I could do. So when I moved to California, people would every once in a while throw me some opportunities.
And for about the first year, nothing super landed. But I started taking classes with Tony Oliver at Bang Zoom. And after taking two of those, he apparently really took a shine to me and was like, I’m going to recommend you.
So they started sending me auditions and it took a little bit before I finally booked my first role with them. But that was Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures. I did a voice match for that video game.
And then they’re like, you do little boy voices. All right, this is what you’re going to do for us for the next year. I’m like, cool.
So that was my way of jumping into Bang Zoom and eventually doing as much stuff as I’ve done with them and a lot of other studios.
Okay, excellent. Now you mentioned that you were in Chicago. Now Chicago is actually a very big voiceover market.
Yes.
For commercials and other things. So what was it that brought you to move from Chicago out to California? Was it a wish, desire to pursue more animation?
Actually, I have a degree in animation. I have a BA in animation specifically. I went to school for that.
Which one?
DePaul, DePaul University, yeah. So I’ve got a degree in everything, paid $20,000 for that schooling and have done nothing with that. But that was the plan, though.
I actually am dating Lucian Dodge, which I believe you spoke with him. I don’t know when our interviews are going up, before or after each other. Yeah, so he was from New York, and I was from Chicago.
We did long distance for about two years, and eventually he’s like, I want to go to California. And I’m like, all right, well, I have a degree in animation. That’s the best place, I think, to go for animation.
And I’m going to follow you, follow your dream. We’re going to do this. We’re going to go to California.
And it just kind of so happens that, you know, the voiceover stuff came up. I’d always wanted to do it, but I wasn’t sure that it was going to be anything that I could do professionally. And lo and behold, it just kind of worked out.
So I feel like it was the right move for me, you know.
That’s great. It’s always good when couples who just have both been voice actors, you know, kind of align, everything aligns a certain way. Yeah, yeah.
That’s really cool. I’m curious about something because you are a graphic designer by trade. Well, you were when you went to college.
So I went to Art Institute. So could you tell me a little bit about… Did you do like character design?
Did you get some illustration? Or did you do just…
I was looking into storyboarding and stuff like that, yeah.
I was wondering if anything from that path helped you in terms of voice acting, maybe developing characters.
Yeah, I actually… Well, it helps for… Because I had to do like my own animations and stuff for some of the classes, and I would actually…
As far as getting voices for characters go, I would just do the voices, and Lucien would do the voices for me. I’d get some other friends and stuff if I needed them. It was actually pretty good practice for me, I think, at the time, just to kind of be like, oh, hey, I did this thing.
Let me just throw my voice in there and see what happens. It was kind of a two birds with one stone kind of thing for me.
Now, just having to review over your website has a very simple, clean, and effective look. Is that sort of like the look you’re going for? I’m sure, you know, we’re agents.
Is that sort of like, they want your simple and clean right there, or do you feel like they need all the bells and whistles?
I think everybody has their own preference and stuff. I prefer really simplistic pages. I actually…
Thank you for complimenting my website, actually. I don’t touch it as much as I probably should. I’ve actually been looking into doing just kind of a one page kind of thing, because I know a lot of people have been doing that lately.
Whereas, you know, as opposed to having to click links and stuff, you just have everything right there, all the information, and people can look at it, check out your stuff, and then go on their own way, you know. So I’ve been looking into streamlining it a little bit more. But I do think, kind of like with demos in general, I think people just have short attention spans and just want everything right then and there, so.
Absolutely, absolutely, nowadays especially.
Yeah, yeah.
So a wide range of characters that you do, a wide range, excuse me, a wide range of characters that you do. How do you develop each character’s voice?
I, pictures help me a lot, a lot. Especially for when I’m doing anime, or just in general when people give us voice references, which, you know, especially for anime, that happens a lot for video games. Not so much, but every once in a while.
If they play an audio reference for me, I find it tends to help if you kind of like mimic a little bit. Like, you can always do a take, because you can do multiple takes, usually up to like two or three. I tend to err towards mimicking the Japanese, just because a lot of the clients, I feel like, want something that matches.
I don’t know why, but it’s worked out for me more often than not. But if I do have another idea, I, you know, just send another take, and they’ll choose between the two, and I’ll find out if I get cast, like which one they chose. Because that happened to me with Aladdin from Maggi, The Labyrinth of Magic.
I submitted two takes. One where I was like, this is the voice that I would use for Aladdin. Here’s the voice that I want you to see, like, my range of boy voices, like what I can do just in case you want something a little bit older.
And they actually picked the older one, which I thought was strange, but I eventually moved it down to what I had preferred, and they didn’t say anything, so I was like, okay, well, this is what it is.
So when you started off doing voice over in California, they had you do a lot of young boy voices, like you said, but it looks like it was kill a kill where you started shifting to more female characters, protagonists, powerful characters. Yeah. What did you appreciate about being able to do more characters like that?
Because I’m certain you appreciated doing more young boy characters, but you definitely wanted to do more.
Yeah, I love just being able to expand my range in general. I think it’s good to have a lot of range, especially being a female. It’s good that you can play both genders to an extent, so it gives you more job opportunities.
But in general, I just like playing characters with, not just kind of stretch my vocal range, but my emotional range just because it makes me feel like a better actor if I can kind of throw more feeling into something. And if I can get myself to cry during a recording, like that’s a win for me. So I really appreciate when a character has a lot of depth to kind of get to play a little bit more with different aspects of them as a character.
Always good to fun. Speaking of crying, you’re lying, April. I still haven’t finished you yet because I don’t.
You don’t want to cry.
I don’t with the feels.
It’s pretty feelsy.
It’s always good to play around with the characters.
Yeah.
Well, Eric, unfortunately we ran out of time, but thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate it. Any projects you’d like to share?
Yeah. There’s my website that I should update more. It’s just ericamendosvoice.com, and I’m mostly…
I have a Facebook page, but I feel like I’m more active on Twitter and Instagram, which you can find me at Soon Derica, which is T-S-U-N-D-E-R-E-R-I-C-A. That’s what I meant to say, but yeah.
All right.
Erica, thank you so much.
Enjoy the rest of your con.
All right.
So we’re back at the VO Meter, and we are talking with James Brown, who is a voice actor that’s attending, as a general attending this year.
That’s right. Incognito.
Yeah. That’s the way to do it, sneak around, don’t let anybody know what you really do. So James, tell us how you’re enjoying the conference so far.
This is probably the largest panel I’ve been, I mean, largest con I’ve ever been to. Well, actually, you know, New York Comic Con is pretty…
That’s right there.
Yeah. But I’m pretty much enjoying it. The whole thing is I came down to meet a couple of friends I haven’t seen in a very long time, which is part of the reason why I’m down here, visit family, and so I said, you know, I might as well come to the panel.
I keep on saying panel. But I go to the con as well, and it’s been pretty great.
Awesome. What were you hoping to get out of the con once you signed up?
This has been for a few years now, but any time I go to a con now, I still come to have fun, get the merchandise and stuff, but a lot of it’s going to the voice actor panels and asking questions and seeing their experiences in the industry and finding out what I can glean from that, from my own.
And you are a voice actor yourself. What kind of work do you specialize in?
Animation or character voice over is what I’m really mostly for, whether it’s in games or animation, but I’ve done some audio plays in the past. I’ve done, like I said, video games, animation, YouTube, a little bit everywhere, except for commercial and audiobooks. I haven’t really done those two as much, but kind of spread out.
What panels did you go to that were about voice acting?
I went to see Lucian Dodge and Eric Mendez’s voice over panel. That was very interesting because Lucian Dodge is also a native of New York. So I didn’t even know that.
So I definitely went to, after the panel, I had a chance to talk to him real quick and just, you know, see, I just want to know if he still, you know, worked in New York area. He looks like he’s just mostly in LA now, but it was good just to connect with another fellow from New York.
What did you learn most about the panels?
I just really wanted to just hear how they felt about playing, portraying certain characters at that point. I think that’s the thing that stuck out the most for me. I asked about Erika’s involvement in a Gretzko, which is something I recently watched and it was very, very interesting because it was obviously a cartoon and it was satirical, this explanation of just harsh work life in Japan, but it can also apply here, which is why it translates so well.
I just wanted to see if it had any impact on her. When you play a lot of characters, some tend to stick out for certain reasons, whether it’s the character’s backstory or what have you. I want to see what she would say about that.
One of the things Chris and I are here for, maybe even the primary thing, is to network. Have you found that when you go to this or any other con, you’re able to actually find work? Not necessarily right away, but in the long run?
Well, I wouldn’t say I’ve gotten any work yet, but that’s definitely the case. That definitely will happen for a lot of people. I would suggest anyone who’s serious about voiceover work to, whether it’s at a con or a workshop, to consider networking.
I know for me in the beginning, it was difficult because I was more of an introvert, but as I got more into voice acting, you kind of get forced out of that shell. So interviewing became more and more, or just networking became more and more part of my life. So I went to Anime Central this year, too, where they have the Bang Zoom auditions for one of their contests.
So I didn’t win, but that really wasn’t the point. It was to network, make a proper impression, and just have a good time. So I keep that in mind every time.
Well, I’ll give you a little secret. You know what a great way to meet people at a con? Is to host a podcast.
Oh, like this one. Oh, that’s what we’re doing right now, actually.
Actually, what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going up to the game room and everything, and since I have that first aisle of independent games, I will go up to them. I’ll say, oh, what’s your game about? And I’ll play for about good 10, 15 minutes.
Then I’ll talk to them about it, how the design. I go, oh, hey, by the way, are you looking for any voices for the game? They’re like, well, we haven’t thought about that, but we’ve been really intrigued.
I’m like, oh, well, you know, I usually have my business card. I’m like, I’m Chris. I happen to be a full-time professional voice actor.
This game is amazing. Can I have your card? I really want to sign up for your mailing list.
Make it like you’re not trying to sell yourself. It does stuff like, oh, you know, I do like, hey, I do voices. I talk for a living.
Pretty much, yeah. You know, we met Microsoft, because Microsoft has those events in New York.
Yeah, I was over there talking with them, too.
Playcrafting. Did a lot of that.
What do you think is the hardest part about meeting someone at a con?
Hmm. I think just getting over the initial jitters of, oh my god, it’s Josh Greeley or Max Middleman or Vic Mignana and just, you know, realizing that they are people. They are people just like you.
They probably went through the same struggles as you. And a lot of… I have not met one person that is like a jerk or anything like that.
You know, even if you’re a little nervous, I really think that it’s just more self-inflicted. There’s no reason to be nervous. Just talk to them and, you know, let them know you appreciate their work especially, you know, because they always appreciate that.
Yeah, that’s true. You have any other questions?
Yeah, I just want to kind of follow up with that. It’s amazing. You think, oh my gosh, here’s the guy who voiced so many shows I’m a fan of.
I’m really like… You kind of get the nerves and everything, but you go up and you see they’re very chill. They’ll come in, shake your hand.
They just got a big smile on their face, and they talk to you like they’re your best friend.
I got over that really quickly, Young, because when I was early in school, I was living in Georgia near Fort Gordon, and James Brown came to my school.
Yeah.
To perform? I guess just to say hi to kids. I really don’t remember.
All I remember was…
You had the whole entourage and the cape?
Ladies and gentlemen…
I have to tell you, remember I said that super introvert and my name is James Brown, the last thing I wanted was to meet this guy because I knew I would have to go in front of a lot of people because it was the assembly hall, and tell this man that my name is James Brown, and I did not want the audience laughing. I was very like, I hate my name and all that kind of stuff. Every time someone says my name, they go, I feel good.
Because everyone is a comedian, right?
Everyone is super funny and hilarious when they are kids. I hate kids.
I was 44 and I almost did the same thing when we started.
Those flashbacks. But I ended up getting his autograph as a result, and got over that really quickly. So, when I meet someone famous, it doesn’t really bother me as much.
Unless it’s Morgan Freeman, and I will freak the heck out. But outside of that…
Well, James, thanks for joining us here on the VO Meter. Where can people find you if they want to hire you?
Find me on my website at www.jamesbrownjrva.com. That’s also my Instagram and my Twitter, JamesBrownJRVA. And I also stream from time to time.
Art streams, but also voiceover streams on my Twitch.
Alright, thanks again. Enjoy the rest of the conference.
Thanks a lot, man.
Have a good one. We survived.
Great weekend? Same here, man. This was a great year.
How many years now has it been at this location? Is this the second year here for it, too? Cool.
I like this location.
It feels a little bigger than the Baltimore Convention Center was. Just a little more space for everything. This has been really cool.
It’s definitely not subtropical like it is in Baltimore.
So, yay for that.
Oh, there’s a Sebastian.
Nice Sebastian cosplay.
Oh, all right.
Yes.
Oh, thank you.
Great, pal.
Take off that ridiculous tailcoat.
You look like a crow.
You can’t do nothing.
Yeah, there we go.
Thank you.
Oh, cool.
So, guys, thank you so much for coming. I see a lot of familiar faces. Thank you guys so much for coming to the other panels over this weekend.
This one is a little less educational, and well, maybe not so much, depending on the questions. I do this panel mostly because, kind of for the same reasons that I do the creating voices panel that I did on Friday, because I find so often, you know, we go to and we do general Q&As, and so many people have questions about voice work and stuff, and we spend so much time answering those that a lot of people who might have questions about other aspects of the industry, like the writing process, the directing process, casting, and just really anything about it. And I have been very fortunate in my career to, aside from acting, also work for about 10 years as an ADR script writer.
I’ve been trained by Funimation to be a director for them, and I’ve assistant directed and end directed a couple of shows for them, but it’s definitely the one I have the least amount of experience in. But that said, because of my involvement with all three of these, I know how they all work fairly intricately. And I also have a pretty good knowledge about the rest of the aspects of the industry.
So, with that in mind, if you have had at any point any sort of burning questions that you’ve ever wanted to know about the writing process or how we go about deciding dialogue, or if there’s an aspect of it that confuses you, or you want a clarification on it, this is the chance to do it. I would just ask if at any point you do have a question, please just get up and form a line at this lovely, lonely little microphone. And we’ll do it that way.
I’ll also, in the interim, just talk. I’m not going to stare at you and just wait for questions.
Or will I? It is Sunday.
It is Sunday.
I think most of us are ready for a nap at this point. Hey Shane, I think this might be a little hot.
Is there a way to turn it down just a little bit?
Much better, thank you sir. Alright. So, voice acting, writing and directing for anime.
Does anybody here not know at all the process that goes from an anime being made in Japan and then the entire process of it coming over to the States? Does anybody here familiar at all with that? One or two of you?
Alright, cool, cool.
What is your question? I have a question about if you were to, say, write an anime, how would you go about pitching it?
Oh, I’ll rephrase. Not writing an original anime because that’s all done over in Japan. I’m talking about writing the scripts for the dubs.
This is mostly about writing, directing and voicing for anime dubs.
That should be at the end of the title.
I’ll change that for the next con. But yeah, no, very sorry. Okay, so we have a few people who are fairly familiar with it.
So I guess just for now, I’ll talk about the process of bringing over an anime from Japan to the States. If at any point you have a question, just line on up and I’ll get to you. So let’s say we have an anime that has just been made.
For example, we’ll say a fairly popular one, like something that was in Shonen Jump. Those almost always get some sort of anime adaptation eventually. And they’re generally known as safe bets.
So back in the 90s and the early 2000s, many of the major industry leaders for the American side of the industry would go to Japan sometimes throughout the year or at the beginning of each new season. And there was one or two… There was a convention in Japan that was dedicated just for industry people.
There was no attendees of any kind. It wasn’t a fan gathering. It was strictly for people who work in the industry.
And this is where shows and different pilot episodes and stuff would be viewed in a big room with a lot of producers and directors and investors. And they could all see what the new ideas and concepts were or what the new shows that were coming out were going to be. And they could decide for themselves, okay, we want to bid on that, we want to bid on this, and we could probably…
And just figuring out what they want. And then, by the end of the weekend, there would be a bid war between all of the major American distribution companies for who would get the rights to dub and release the shows.
And at that point, it’s a fairly straightforward process. You get a contract, you figure out all the… exactly how stuff is supposed to be dubbed, or if they even require you to do a dub, which it’s universal now.
Most studios absolutely want you to do a dub for an American release.
The others, they’ll create the contract, they’ll set a date for when they will expect this thing to be available and streeted in the United States, and figure out a schedule for sending over all the materials for it and everything else. And back in the late 90s and the aughts, they would send it to us on a boat. Like these hard drives, huge hard drives, and sometimes several hard drives, and VHS tapes with the original files, with the original reels and everything on them.
They’d be, you know, sent on a boat, so sometimes it would take a very long time for us to get the materials, come to the states, and then we begin the process of localization. The first process, obviously, is translation. And Funimation has an entire department dedicated to translation.
They have like three or four full-time translators, most of them born in Japan, that then learned English and we contract them, or they move to the states and then they work for Funimation. And they go through it. One person does it, and then the person above them checks it, and the person above them re-checks it, and makes sure that everything is as close to the original intention and all of the information that the Japanese were trying to convey.
What they were trying to get across is there. And then from that translation, it is given to a subtitler who has a… Oh, sorry, is that answering your question there?
Okay, yeah. I’m going to go through the process, but I’ll stop real quick. Yeah, what is your question?
It’s no rush. Okay, cool. Appreciate it.
So this is then handed over to a subtitler who has to deal with… Now, there’s a program out there called Aegisub, which it’s life-saving, because originally what you would have to do is basically do this really convoluted code to tell the computer that would produce the subtitles, where the subtitle will begin, what the subtitles were, when the subtitles should stop being on screen, and then you do it for every single line, every bit of information. And one of the big challenges for that, too, is whenever you’re producing any sort of media that is going to be released in the States, it has to meet certain regulations.
And there are even regulations for subtitles. For example, have you ever on an official show, like a DVD or something, ever seen subtitles that were not white or yellow? That are not white or yellow on an official DVD?
Not a subtitle, not a fansub, because only fansubs ever used…
Well, Animaco would sometimes use green subtitles, when someone said something with a yellow subtitle, and then they need to put another subtitle on there quickly, they put it at that green.
Like a solid green? Oh yeah, like if someone else is talking and they need to put that over that or whatever, that actually, you can’t do that anymore. At least as far as I understand it, because the regulations for subtitles are, first, they must be either green, they must be either white or yellow, because those are colors that are easily seen even by colorblind people.
And those are two colors that are very easy to pop, no matter what the background image might be. You’re not going to wash out pure white or pure yellow in most situations, so it’s easy to see. You can also only have so many characters on screen at one time.
Think of it as like, each line of dialogue on a subtitle can’t not be any longer than a tweet. Like the original Twitter length, like 120 characters or something. So like, yeah, not the new length, which is just liberating.
But yeah, you can only have a little like 120 characters worth at any time, and they can only be on screen for a certain amount of time before you put the next bit up. So the challenge at that point becomes, how do we get across all of this sometimes vast amounts of information that are being given in the Japanese dialogue when we can only have this much stuff information on screen at one point? So anytime you ever watch a subtitle, you have already watching a truncated version of the original translation.
Subtitles are not accurate translation. They are bite-sized. They are all that information and all the nuance and the subtlety and everything shrunken down to just the bare information that is important enough for you to know so that you can follow along with the story.
And back when I first started out, ADV Films, when I was first collecting… When DVDs were first the new thing for anime releases, some companies like Animanga and ADV experimented with adding separate layers of subtitles. They actually…
ADV would have one part of subtitles, you could turn that on and it’s just the regular subs, and then you had two or three other forms of subtitles you could switch between that would give you all the information that you weren’t getting in the subtitle. Which was, if there was a word that you may not necessarily be familiar with, or a historical figure that’s being referenced that you may not be familiar with, those subtitles would pop up and give you a brief synopsis of exactly what it is they’re talking about. Even down to, like, if you were walking…
If you had a character going down, let’s say, Akihabara, and there’s all of these signs and stuff up to see different shops and everything else like that, they would have subtitles to pop up and show you, this is what this is, this is what this is, this is what this is. I mean, you’re getting all this information, but it became… It got to the point where there was so many subtitles and so much information on screen, you couldn’t see the picture.
You couldn’t see the animation. And that’s not fun for anybody. So we…
originally it was said, you can’t do that anymore. And so the industry standard now is certain amount of characters, only in that section on the bottom, and they can only be on screen for a certain amount of time, and they can only be white or yellow. So then, after we have that subtitle version up, this kind of truncated, bite-sized bit of information, it is then the job of an ADR scriptwriter to take that translation and those subtitles and all the time codes that go with it, and then try and bring back some of the nuance and the characterizations and stuff that were lost in the subtitles.
Does that make sense? So, more often than not, with subtitles, because we have to focus so much on just the bare bones information, you lose a lot of the subtlety, and you lose a lot of the… Sometimes, there have been plenty of times where I’m reading a translation for something, and it sounds like a character is being insanely kind and very complimentary to someone, but then I found out actually reading the translation and talking to the actual translator about the scene, and they’re like, no, this is all underhanded.
Like, everything this character is saying is actually very, very mean. She’s just slipping it in under the veil of all these very nice, kind words, and if you don’t speak Japanese and you’re just reading the subtitles, you’re gonna completely miss that, because all it says is just from reading it, it just seems like, oh, she’s being very kind. So the whole point, then, of the dub is to try and, for the English-speaking audience, bring those nuances back from that point, and when I first started writing scripts, I would be given roughly for one 25-minute episode, I’d be given anywhere from a week to two weeks to go through the entire thing with the subtitles.
I find every single character, mark them in the script, write a time code for every single instance. Anybody not know what a time code is? It’s totally cool if you raise your hand.
Okay, just for brief explanation, time code is something on a video, any sort of video. You never see it in actual broadcast or anything like that on DVD, but the time code is used for production purposes. In the terms of anime, each number represents an hour, minute, second, and frame of the animation.
And for anime, the frame always caps out at 24, 25, something like that. So you will always have 24 milliseconds basically, or frames, before you get to the next second of time code. Your job as a writer is to go in and find every single instance down to the frame of where someone’s mouth does this.
Or if somebody is throwing a punch, or does this. Like, reactions in Dragon Ball are what we call Foley. So anytime Goku does a big, haaa, power scream or whatever in the script, I would mark, okay, his mouth starts to open at exactly this time code, and it is an O-M power scream.
O-M, open mouth. If someone is, like, Vegeta’s powering up, and he’s being like, haaa, C-T, power up, clenched teeth. C-M, closed mouth.
M-N-S, mouth not seen. The character is on screen, but their mouth is not actually in the shot, or off, the character is talking, off screen. And you just kind of have to guess as to where that frame is that they actually start talking or making a noise.
And you go through the entire 25 minutes of an episode and find every single frame where someone starts to talk or make a sound. And then you go through with the subtitles and you then start the localization process for the dub, which the majority of the job and the majority of the time that is spent is trying to make sure that the words that we’re typing both get across all the information in the subtitles while also not sounding truncated and not sounding awkward or not like someone would talk normally. Like we don’t want to sound like we’re reading something.
It needs to sound like a very natural thing. And so the words need to flow in a very natural cadence. But we also have to make sure that that natural cadence is not screwed up by random flaps just stopping in the middle of a word and then starting again.
Because so often with the Japanese language, our syntax is different. It’s completely reversed. They sometimes take much longer to say certain amounts of information than it would for us.
So very often we’ll have times where the translation is this long, but the line is actually that long in terms of the amount of consonants and vowels and stuff that are being used. So you have to figure out a way to get this little amount of information to fit in all of these flaps and sound natural. And not give false information.
And not just willy-nilly add words that absolutely have nothing to do with the story or the character, because that’s going to make stuff very messy, very quick. So the majority of the time is spent just making sure, okay, does that fit? I would literally sit while watching and yell out as if I was recording in the booth every single line at least six or seven times to make sure that they fit as close to perfect so that when they then are sent to the booth and the director is going over the show and they are reading it as well, they can see right away that the script is working, that it will fit the mouth flaps.
And there is always going to be a little bit of error there because my read speed might not be as fast or as slow as another actor’s read speed. So sometimes my dialogue, they will have to take out a word or two or add a word or two just so that actor can speak at their normal pace. But for the most part, it’s pretty much already locked in.
The script won’t change from that point unless the director is just like, this line is stupid, what was he thinking? It’s like, anyone fixes it. And then from that point, the director watches the whole show, the episode, checks the script, makes sure they’re happy with it, that they’ve been researching the show at the same time that I’ve been researching and watching and writing it.
And then they go around casting, and from there, eventually, actors come in, we record the show. What we used to do was, a writer would be given six episodes at a time, six chunks, back when DVDs were the new thing, four to six episodes. And it’d be given roughly a month to write all six of those episodes, and then the director would have roughly a month to two months to record all six of those episodes, cast people, and really make them perfect.
And then it would go to mix, and the mix engineers would do their magic and make stuff for the nice 5.1, 7.1 surround sounds for those audio files that we are. And within another three to six months after that, the DVD with those first six episodes would be out and on the shelves. So roughly from the time of a Japanese show coming out, running its course, being bought, brought over to the States, written, directed, cast, recorded, mixed, and streeted, was roughly as short as six months to as long as a year and a half.
It was a long wait time for a lot of people. It was really hard to be an anime fan in the late 90s, early aughts. You had to wait a long time for stuff.
And those of you that have been anime fans since the early 90s and the late 80s, you had it even worse, because you were going for laser discs and VHS and stuff. Did anybody ever collect laser discs back in the day? Oh my god.
Okay, for those who did not, let me just kind of paint a picture for you. Imagine loving the show so much that you wanted to go collect it. So you buy your laser disc that big, like you could kill someone with this disc, and you get two episodes with subtitles only, no extra features, no nothing.
You dropped anywhere from $80 to $110 per disc for those two episodes, and you had to wait about a year for the other two episodes, the next two episodes to come out.
It was horrific.
It was horrible.
So when VHS came along, we were getting like, holy crap, I can get three new VHSs of Dragon Ball every three months. We were so happy about it, but nowadays, it’s dang near instantaneous. Anybody watching My Hero Academia this season?
With the exception of the last three episodes, because there were some snafus in the scheduling and with some materials, we kind of fell behind. But for the first eight to ten episodes of this current season, we released the dub the same day as the subtitle came out. We get our materials two weeks ahead of time.
Now, instead of the script writers having two weeks to write maybe one script or just a week, which is the norm, one week, one script, that’s absolutely doable. Now, those of us that were really good at it and very fast, now, ever since Space Dandy, which was the first simuldub that we did, Space Dandy, if you watched it on Toonami three or four years ago, you were literally watching it before the Japanese even saw their own version because of time differences. Because they’re literally a day ahead of us in terms of time zones, so we released it before they even released their own version.
The English came out first for Space Dandy. Ever since then, Funimation was like, okay, we’re going to try to do this for everything. For the last three years, every season, roughly 12 to 18 shows, every three months, we simul-dub every one of them.
It’s becoming the new industry standard, trying to get it out as fast as possible. Now, DVDs still come out within a year after it, but you get to see the dub at the same time now as the sub online on whatever service you have, like Crunchyroll or Funimation or Anime Network or whatever, any of the legal ones anyway. But now the writers have 48 hours to 14 hours to write their scripts.
Within a day of getting the material, within a day of the episode coming out, if we didn’t already have the materials, we would get it the day that it came out. Someone, sometimes a time code or a translator would wake up at 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock in the morning to start translating because of the time difference. The show aired in Japan during mainstream time, but it’s 2 a.m. over here.
They had to translate it, send it off, and it was time coded, then it was subtitled. So within that same day, then the day after that, it’s handed over to the writer, and they have 48 hours to write the script, send it on to the director, who then has to cast from it without holding auditions very often because we don’t have time for the auditions anymore. We want to make sure it has to get out as fast as possible.
So they will start to use people that they will consistently cast people that they have worked with before, that they know can do this work fast, efficient, and make it sound like we have been spending hours and hours and weeks making this show. The amazing thing is we did it right. Funimation did it right anyway.
I say we. I’m a contractor for Funimation. I’m not an employee of Funimation.
This is all opinion. But I feel like Funimation did it the right way because the first company to try to do this super fast thing was Sentai Filmworks, which is kind of the remnants of old school ADV films. And they tried several years ago to do a thing where they were telling the Japanese, hey, you give us the rights, we’ll have your entire show out in a month.
And we would get scripts. They would have me write a script. They would send it to me and they’d say, we don’t have time for you to write it.
Just time code it, mark the foley and send it in. The director would have to rewrite the script on the fly. And their dubs plummeted in quality as a result of it.
It looked like bad 70s live action dubs all over again. It was just like we took a massive step back in quality when doing that. Animation, on the other hand, found the sweet spot where we can have it fast but still keep the quality.
And that’s what we’ve been doing now for the last three or four years. And that’s kind of a very bare bones what it takes from an anime made in Japan to it being released for you to watch and enjoy here in the States, so you’re dubbed. We’ve come a long way.
We’ve come a long way from when I was a kid. We’re just a step away, I think, now from beaming it straight into your brain. But we’ll see.
Can you imagine? The moment they invent that technology, people will be watching Hentai in public places. It was just like, what are you watching?
You don’t want to know. I see fan service behind your eyes. Yes, your question, sir.
Thank you so much for your patience.
No worries. So this isn’t directly about anime. It’s an appropriate question to ask.
And I was wondering if you had any tips about voice acting or any resources I can use.
Actually, if you look up, because I think people have filmed and put up videos of my creating voices panel that I did on Friday that covers exactly what you just asked. It’s all about the safety, like the safe ways to, on your own time at home, practice coming up with new voices and characters and how to get comfortable with that and with performing and stuff. And yes, absolutely, I think that can help in dungeon mastering, especially because it’s so much fun to get to come up with all those different voices for all the NPCs that you’re going to be in control of.
So, I mean, look that up, just Josh Greeley creating voices. I try to do the panel now every con, but I can only do it once. But that will answer your questions, I believe.
Great, thank you.
Yeah, absolutely, thank you. And thank you again for your patience.
Yes, sir?
Okay, so I know that usually you can take more leeway with comedic shows because of different senses of humor. Yes. What’s the non-comedic show that you’ve taken the most leeway with, and what was your mentality behind that?
That I had a lead in?
You’ve been as a scriptwriter.
As a scriptwriter, non-comedy.
Tokyo Ghoul. That was my favorite that I had, like non-comedy. I mean, every show in some form, especially super dramatic shows, are going to have some form of comedy, because you’ve got to have a break from all the super crazy stuff.
But, I mean, unless it’s Attack on Titan, because that’s just sadistic. But, for Tokyo Ghoul, the approach to that was just, for me, because I wasn’t the lead writer, I would write every second or third episode. Monica Rial was the one who was writing the majority of the scripts for that show.
But I got to do the first couple of episodes of Tatum’s character in that show.
Tsukiyama, thank you.
Yeah, the cannibal, the epicurean.
And my big thing for him was, I just had this idea of his character after watching the subtitles and then watching the Japanese version first and just the way that he speaks, the way he uses language and everything, I knew immediately it was going to be a Tatum role. And I was like, he’s the only person who can make this work. And because Tsukiyama is very much about books and literature and stuff as well, and that’s kind of how he works his way into a friendship with Kaneki, I wanted very much to capture that well-read, intelligent, epicurean, make him sound like just a very charming, very educated, smart, artistic person.
But play with the language in such a way that it could very easily be construed if you know the character as manipulative and evil and all this stuff. It was a very fun challenge to take the subtitles and take the information that they were giving us and that character. And we didn’t change anything about the character.
We didn’t change anything he said or anything. We just changed the way he said it. Made it a little more palpable to an English speaking audience.
And because we were able to, kind of like what I was talking about earlier, because we were able to kind of play with his language a little bit more and work that nuance in of like you’re not sure as you’re listening to him if you can trust him or not. I feel like a lot of that stuff is lost in just the straight up subtitle information. So the fact that we were able to do that and it worked and we pulled it off and Tatum’s performance sells it 110%.
I’m really proud of my writing for that character and on that show. But to kind of talk about, once you also brought up about comedic writing, yes, we have a lot more freedom when it comes to comedic shows. Case in point, I just finished recording E-Safe or High School DXD Season 4 a few, you know, about a week or two ago.
And that’s the type of show where so much of the dialogue is not important to the overall story. There’s actually no information being, you know, like no real information or anything being said or given most of the time. It’s just reactions basically to the ridiculous situations that are happening.
We do have a lot more freedom to really localize and to bring in more of modern American humor into some of the lines. Like, oh god, what was it? Like, one of Issei’s lines this past season was, You made me feel weak like there was nothing I could do.
And like, and it completely, like it sells. People get it, like, you know, an English speaking audience is immediately going to get that reference and get that humor. And so often, and sometimes people don’t want that, they want, you know, I just want it to be as pure and true to the Japanese as possible.
But if we do that, we’re doing the majority of the people that aren’t hardcore Japanese anime fans, like anime fans or someone who knows Japanese culture and language and references, whether they’re political or pop culture or whatever, intimately well. Those people are very rare in this fandom. People that actually do know all that stuff.
And so if we’re just catering to that small group instead of trying to make jokes and stuff that the broad audience can appreciate, then we’re just doing the majority of the fandom a disservice. The main point of Japanese comedy is to make you laugh. But so often, their jokes and our jokes don’t cross.
Because the syntax is reversed and there’s cultural differences, and so much of their jokes are based in puns. And there is literally nothing in our language, no pun that exists, or really anything that is an equivalent. That is like a direct translation.
Anything that we can give you, like we can only give you a bare bones… Like exactly what they’re literally saying, but unless you know the joke that’s within that literal translation, you’re not going to get it. It’s just going to be this, what is he talking about?
Why is everybody laughing? Then you’re just lost, and you feel like you’re not in on the joke. And that makes you feel ostracized.
So it’s so much more… At that point, we have to think of ourselves more as caretakers of the creator’s original intention. Does that make sense?
His intent is to make you laugh, so we’re going to give you the best joke that we can that the broadest audience will understand. And that way, we’re doing you a service, and we’re doing the creator a service. Does that make sense?
Awesome, thank you very much. Yes, sir?
So this is going to be sort of related to the topic, but also answering one of my own questions I had about background tests in general. So when Akihisa’s sister comes in to the series, was it very difficult for you to get into that, to be able to go through with what was going on, knowing Carly’s character?
The thing that made it hard was the fact that I know Carly. She was like a sister to me at that point in time, literally like a sister, so for this person that I look up to as like a big sister, to be playing my big sister in a show, but she really wants me?
That was awkward.
That was a little awkward. But I mean, I’ve done, again, I’ve been an anime fan since I was nine years old. I grew up seeing fanservice and stuff like that too.
You can’t shock me with, like, anime does not shock me, you know, anymore. So it’s just, at that point I was just like, okay, this is the joke we’re going with, and I just, I roll with the punches. You know, I tried to react exactly as I felt Aki would be reacting in that situation.
It came out very fun. It actually wasn’t very funny. They handled it in such a way that it wasn’t obscene.
It was actually just very funny. So yeah, I appreciated it for that. If it had been a little more, if they had pushed it just a little bit further though, then it would have been uncomfortable.
I’m glad that they did it though.
And to sort of go in line with that topic, is situations like that really difficult for some people where if it’s with someone that they know, is it hard for them to do the performance because they know the person, and they can’t get into, I can’t feel this sort of relationship with that person because people are close friends.
I’m sure there are. I can’t really speak for anybody else other than my own experiences, but I do know that there are many actors and actresses that are very uncomfortable with a lot of the material that happens specifically in fan service shows because there are so many of them lately, especially, that have moved more and more towards trying to do stuff that’s more and more extreme. Like, the joke is that it’s offensive type thing.
And using obviously children as the result of, as the focus of these sexual situations and everything. And just there’s a lot of us that are very uncomfortable with that. And I get that there’s cultural differences and things like that, but you can’t expect people that have grown up in one culture and see that as offensive or disgusting or something and expect them to just be comfortable with it because it’s a job.
So there are many actors and actresses that just will not do those roles. Or if they have to, because we all need to work. We’re starving artists, every one of us.
They’ll use pseudonyms. And there’s plenty of actors and actresses who do that too.
Thank you guys so much. You asked such great questions, and you really were just expert interviewers in your own right. So thank you for going out into the field and picking the brains of some of these incredibly talented people.
I’m super jealous because I’m huge fans of some of the guests. Todd Haberkorn, in recent years, the voice of one of the main characters from Fairy Tale, and of course, one of my all-time top favorite anime voice actors, Johnny Yong Bosch. You might have known him as the second Black Ranger from Power Rangers, but he also had an extended anime career doing such voices as Vash the Stampede from Trigun.
He was Albert in Gonkutsuo, which is a wonderful re-imagining of the story of the Count of Monte Cristo, so I highly recommend that. And he’s just got an incredible voice, and of course, Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach. Just so, so amazed.
I just wish I could have been there to nerd out about audio equipment. I was so jealous when you brought up that question, Paul.
Out to Johnny?
Yeah, with Johnny.
Yeah, that was a funny story about Johnny, actually. I wandered into that completely unknowing it was going to happen. We actually tried to schedule him, so the way these interviews work is they ask for requests for guests’ time months in advance.
So I put in applications for pretty much everybody, and they sent back the ones that we could get, and they told us, unfortunately, Johnny’s not available for your show. So we said, okay, great, we have plenty of people to talk to. So we did, I guess it was Todd Haberkorn, who we had just finished up, and we had a big break, so we separated.
And Chris, I think, went up to the room. I went to get some coffee. As I came back from the Starbucks, the staff at the show grabbed me and said, do you want to interview Johnny?
And I said, uh, sure. And at this point, I was still kind of half asleep, having the coffee in my hand. I had no idea who they were even talking about.
Couldn’t remember. So I said, sure. Right now?
And they’re like, yep, you got to go right now. So apparently it was a cancellation or a no-show. So they shoved me in the room, and I turn on the phone and I’m like, hi.
I don’t… I wasn’t prepared for this. I actually told them, I was honest.
I said, they just pulled me in here. I didn’t know I was going to be here, so I’m kind of winging it. And I started asking those questions.
I was just making up as I went along. Luckily, I remembered as he was answering the questions who he was, but it took me a while.
Thank goodness they’ll appreciate that if you know who they are.
If you listen, you can tell by some of the questions that I was kind of pulling it out of my you-know-where, especially the gear one. But like you said, that turned out to be a great answer because he is a total gearhead, just like us.
That’s perfect. And you do find a lot of voice actors who are musicians as well. And when you have that level of audio nerd, I don’t know, it’s match made in heaven, except for your wallet, of course.
Yeah, I just wish I had asked that question earlier so I could have really geeked out, because that was the last question, and they only give us a certain amount of time. And then the people came in and gave me the hook right after I started to answer.
Gotcha, gotcha. But all of them gave such incredible answers. And one thing that was interesting to me is just hearing how the possible ways of getting into voice over have changed so much, even from the people that we followed, like who were successful as we got interested in voice over and stuff like that.
But even though their experience may not be as relatable or as replicatable as it is now, or as it could be, they still had such, there were still so much nuggets of wisdom that they gave. And you can tell that just some of the some of the mantras of succeeding in any business, like trying, trying again, if you fail, being willing to fail, and working through it, and being a good person to work with, and honoring deadlines, and just working your tail off to succeed in your dream. It was just incredibly helpful and inspiring.
You know, my biggest takeaway was the dedication that everyone seemed to have nonstop drive to complete what they wanted to do, like you said, follow their dream. And that’s a theme that I guess resonates, like you said, with any business, but especially for people who are our listeners that may be just starting out, that maybe haven’t had the success they thought they would right away. Keep at it, keep plugging ahead, and eventually you’ll get there.
Absolutely, yeah. And it’s difficult because you either don’t get feedback or you get straight up rejection. Lots and lots and lots of rejection.
And you can’t let that affect you too negatively because it will suck out your energy and your drive. And as we have established, that is the one thing that will help you succeed more than anything, is the drive to keep going.
So Chris, what was your biggest takeaway?
My biggest takeaway was just hearing everyone’s experience, how they record in Japan versus America. And honestly, just as Sean touched base on, the dedication. Erica Mendes said that she just didn’t want to have anyone tell her what to draw, so she decided to do her own thing and then went into voice acting.
Just a lot of passion people have. And really honestly, I want to touch base on what you and Sean said about if you don’t get feedback, but if you do get feedback, take it to heart and try to look into the good of everything. Not to talk forever, but when I got a phone call about hearing from an agent that I have a speech impediment, I stopped and thought, wow, this guy took time out of his day to call me and let me know that.
So that’s a really good thing. So maybe I also thought, so in one way he likes me a little bit, or I made an impact on his life.
Yeah, definitely. Sometimes no news is worse than bad news.
Absolutely.
And don’t be deaf to criticism, like Chris is saying. So it’s important, like if you’re getting negative feedback, maybe you do need more training, or you need vocal training, or whatever. So there might be more work involved, but if this is that important to you, you gotta rise up to the task.
So you were mentioning that you were fascinated by the differences between Japanese recording and American recording. Chris, can you talk a little bit more about what was surprising to you?
Absolutely. How they refuse to record unless everyone’s there. A lot of times we have our own home studio set up at home, and we don’t really record when anyone’s in the room.
Sometimes it’s one person or not many. So what they do is they just basically sit like an old-fashioned radio play, and they have all the voice actors set up, and one person stands up, says his lines, and they get back up, and the other person, his or her, say their lines. So it’s really cool in how they feed off the energy of one another, and it’s really impactful.
It can make a much more better show, radio play, what have you, just by doing that.
That is so cool. I mean, you hear over here, they do that occasionally, but it used to be far, even just a decade or two ago, it was far more prevalent. And I wish it was like that more often, but I understand the logistics of coordinating everyone’s schedules like that can be really difficult.
Now it’s only really top-notch film productions that do that, it seems. Yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
So you have the budget for it, but it’s just so cool that they put that cultural importance on it.
Yeah, Masaya said that basically home studios don’t exist in Japan.
Yeah, it was really difficult. I mean, I’ve talked about this a little bit, but it’s very difficult to break into, like, or as a non-native resident, to break into Japanese voiceover, because you do need a certain level of bilingualism to communicate with, like, the producers and agents and stuff like that, and you have to be there. Like, you have to be in Tokyo.
You have to be in a large city to record, because they will not accept it, like, otherwise.
Yeah, I was surprised that some of the… Maybe it’s because of the level of success they’ve achieved, but I was surprised that some of the other voice actors we talked to didn’t have to make more trips to Japan. It seems like once they’ve made those inroads, they can still do the bi-continent recording.
Like, I asked Johnny that question, expecting him to say, yeah, I’m back and forth all the time, but he said not really, unless he’s doing motion capture.
Well, so much of that is they’re working with the companies who buy the distribution rights rather than the original creators.
I guess that’s true, yeah. Last year, we talked to some actors who were still working with the actual originators of the content, like Jamie McGonigal and Mike Rosenthal-Nicholas. They were doing some recording with the actual creators of the content, and in that case, I think they did have to travel some more, so different styles and career paths, yeah.
One thing that fascinates me while we’re still on the topic is that apparently, they actually record the… it’s almost like native language dubbing, because they will actually do the animation first, and then they will have this sort of ensemble come in to record to their, like, to lip flaps. And, like, it’s just such an interesting difference in the way that they produce animation versus how we do it here.
So Chris, what was your favorite question?
My two favorite questions would have to be what skills aside from talent do you need to exceed in the business, and how do you maintain that level of talent and maintain work? So hearing different people’s, like, viewpoints on that, saying, like, well, what I do is… Bryce Papenbuck, believe it or not, he’s, I think, a fourth black belt, fourth degree black belt, and he kind of uses that to…
He mentioned outside, he uses that to kind of, you know, keep himself calm and everything, get some frustration out. And, you know, how all these talents, Eric Amendez, is an art, and all these fields of talent used can lead into voice over.
Yeah, I actually like that question a lot. I was listening back to the interviews I wasn’t present for, and yeah, some of their answers were really insightful into what makes them who they are, and then how they can bring that to their work.
Actually, now that you mentioned martial arts, I know a lot of, especially anime talent, Kara Edwards mentioned that at MAVO, or the last time we went, because she’s in, like, a black belt as well in karate. And she’s just like, yeah, it’s one of the most relevant skills I have, because she’s fighting, her characters are fighting so often. So she knows how to sound like she’s fighting.
And of course, the meditative and, like, the exercise, and all good benefits. But if I may, one of the things that really stuck with me is when you were talking with Todd Haberkorn, and you’re talking about the work-life balance. And you see this in a lot of the people that we, like in Our Voice Over Idols and stuff like that, they never really thought they’d get into voice acting, but they like to perform or they like to act.
So for them, this seemed to be the perfect way to express themselves and to, like, to do that, to harness their artistic creativity. But they’re not obsessed with it. They don’t let it take over their lives.
They pursue other jobs. They pursue other projects that are interesting to them. And they have families and lives that they try to cultivate and nurture.
And the more life experience that you have, the more you can draw from as an actor. So I think it’s really important, yes, you do have to work very, very hard, especially to get your foot in the door in this career. But you can’t let it dominate your life and get you to lose focus of why you got into it in the first place.
You have to love what you do.
You do have to love what you do, for real.
Yeah, you’re right. Todd had some fascinating thoughts on that. He was talking about the audiobook narrator who recorded in his car and had to wait for traffic to drive by in order to get takes.
That’s just insane.
That’s not a Cinderella story. I loved when he said it. He was like, no, that’s horrible.
You know what’s funny? A guest from last year, Dick Mignana, had a similar sort of discussion with us about life balance. If you remember the episode from last year’s Oticon, he actually stopped us in the middle of it because his phone alarm went off to celebrate his moment of thankfulness that he has every day at noon.
So it happened right in the middle of our interview, and we just stopped and all had a moment of silence so he could sit there and reflect. It wasn’t lost on me that he and Todd are good friends. There’s this video out there you may have seen where they had a swimming competition, and over the footage of them swimming in a pool, someone had done some anime drawings, some anime footage of them as characters racing each other, and they would flash back and forth between cartoon animation and then the live footage.
But it was a real race in a pool, and Vic actually sort of kicked his butt. So then at the end, they’re actually doing fake synchronized swimming, like that old SNL skit with Martin Short and Harry Shearer, where they’re a team, but they’re doing basic moves like touching their elbows and nose. So it’s a great video if you get a chance.
Check that out with Todd Haberkorn and Vic Mignana.
And what’s interesting is that if you listen to their voices and see some of the projects they’ve done, like Edward Elric for Vic from Full Metal Alchemist and Todd’s character from D. Grey Man, they actually have a very similar vocal type, kind of like very youthful and slightly higher pitched male sound. But they’re best friends, so there you go.
Be friends with your competition.
So yeah, to touch base on that, Sean, I know Max Middleman, Ray Chase and Robbie Damian, they have a little group they formed together called Lava, which is loud, annoying and very annoying. And it’s really funny what they do. They may be like…
They just talk about their nerd side of everything, and they’ll post videos where they’re having like a nerf competition. I think there was one time where Ray Chase and Robbie Damian and the other two voice actors of Final Fantasy XV all dressed up as their characters, cosplayed them and went to a con together. And they were actually like…
Robbie Damian was Prompto, Ray Chase was Noctis, and they were acting as their characters the entire con. And it’s… You guys check out their videos.
They’re really funny.
Just so you can get it, it’s an improvisational, like I-M-P-E-R-V, improvisational anime and pop culture variety show. So I think that gives you a fairly good idea of what kind of show it is. But it sounds like a lot of fun and very funny.
I’ll have to check it out.
All right. So that pretty much wraps up our discussion on our experience at Otakon. I want to thank Chris Dattoli for joining me again and James Brown for joining me last minute or joining Chris more accurately.
He picked up for me when I skipped town and went to a fish concert. It wasn’t exactly pressing business, but it was fun. So I want to thank both of them.
I want to thank the staff at Otakon, especially Alice Wilson, who actually when I walked in the door this year gave us a huge compliment. She said, Oh, I listened to your show and it was really good. She said, she probably shouldn’t have admitted this to me, but she said, Normally, I just kind of spot check these things, but I listened to your entire show and really was impressed with the questions you asked the actors.
It was different than everyone else’s content. And I said, Thanks, that’s really nice. So I want to thank the staff at Oticon, and hopefully we’ll be back next year.
So coming up next, we have our interview with the incredible Pat Fraley. Pat has been doing voices for characters and animation, audiobooks, and just about every other VO genre under the sun for more than 20 years. So I’m super excited.
He’s also a personal voice acting hero of mine, so I can’t wait to have him on here and to pick his brain about his experience and the various. His work is both a voice actor and one of the premier voice acting educators available. So other than that, Paul, tell us about MAVO coming up.
Yep, we will be broadcasting live. That’s not true. We’ll be recording live from MAVO 2018, November 9th, 10th, and 11th.
And I will be joined this time by special guest Ken Foster, because Sean’s ditching me again.
Sean, what a flake.
Hey, I told him no from the get-go.
We’re happy to have Ken. He’s a good friend of the show. He’s done our VO Meter stick before, and I’m sure he’ll fill in nicely the large shoes of Sean Daeley.
He’s already interviewing replacements, guys. We’ve got to do something. Just please, just like hashtag keep Sean or something.
Keep me alive, man. Keep the lights on.
So with that, we’ll sign off. Chris, thanks for joining us on this part of the show.
Always a pleasure.
Yeah, thank you so much, Chris. It was great to have you both as a correspondent and on the show.
It’s always an honor to be here. Love it, guys.
Thank you, sir. We’ll hope to have you back soon. Thank you again, Chris, for being with us.
Why don’t you take it out for this episode?
All right. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and children of all ages, thanks again. Stay close to your dreams and take care.
Thanks for listening to The VO Meter. Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.
Thank you.

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. Hi, everybody, and welcome to a very special episode of the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Today we’re in between episodes, but we’re doing this special report about the interview I just did with the two local authors who I recorded in my studio doing their own book.
Yeah, I’m sure you’ve heard Paul mention on some of our earlier episodes that he’ll actually rent out his studio and record local authors to do their audio book projects and stuff like that, which I think is a really cool added value for having a personal studio. So it’s not something that all of us can do if we’re working out of a closet or have roommates and stuff like that. So that’s really cool, Paul.
Yeah, something I sort of walked into by accident. I had a friend, the first one was a friend of a friend who had written a book and they were talking about it on Facebook. And just sort of the Looney Tunes thought bubble over my head said, hey, I wonder if they’d like to do an audiobook.
So I asked and she said yes. And then we worked on it over the next couple of weeks. At first I approached her and said, do you want me to do your book?
And she said, well, it’s a book about working moms.
You know all about that though, don’t you? Your wife’s a working mom.
Yeah, my mom was a working mom most of my life. But anyway, I said, good point. Would you like to do it yourself?
And she said, yeah, I’ve actually been thinking about that. Tell me how it works. So we talked about the ins and outs and the dos and don’ts.
I sent her Sean Pratt’s video of talking to herself in the bathroom for two weeks to see if she actually liked doing it. And she said she tried it. And she said, yeah, let’s do it.
So we produced a book, put it out on Audible, and it’s been out for I guess about six or seven months now. So that was fun. And I said, hey, this is cool.
I like being on the other side of the glass for a change and just doing the editing and listening. So my local pastor, who we’ll talk to in a second, you’ll hear the interview I did, and his associate had written a book that was wildly successful. And I approached them about doing an audiobook about a year ago.
And they sort of said, yeah, we’re thinking about it. Maybe we’ll tell you when we have some time. And then they said, yeah, let’s do it over the summer.
We’ll make it our summer project, which you’ll hear in the interview. It was probably the worst time to do it, because it’s in the…
Oh, the heat.
Yeah, the East Coast and Baltimore and the humidity. They were locked up in this booth. And I tried to use the fan, but it was interfering with some of the recordings.
So that’s one of the things Pastor Michael actually mentions that that was the worst part about doing the audiobook. So you’ll hear that in the interview. But yeah, the book has been out now for a couple of weeks, and we’ve had good feedback from it.
And they actually have a whole series of books that I’m hoping to work with them on in the future.
That’s wonderful. Best of luck to both of you guys, or to all three of you, excuse me.
Thank you. Something you’ve considered at all? Have you ever rented out your studio or let somebody borrow it, either here or back when you were in Nagasaki?
Well, yeah, I did it all the time, actually. Well, mainly for what I do, like sort of the English e-learning modules that I do. I’ll have people…
And I’ve certainly advertised my studio to local talent, but just based on where I’m located, there’s not a whole lot of people who need it. But back when I was in Japan, if anyone had any audio recording needs, they had them like, oh yeah, sure, just come on by. And by the way, I need more narrators, so it was kind of a you scratch my back, I’ll scratch your situation, which is what I’m sure you’re experiencing now.
You might have… Or you can trade your studio services for marketing services or any number of things, whatever you set your mind to, really.
Yeah, actually brings up a good point. I met with a local marketing strategist this week, a friend of mine, who I’ve known for 20 years, that’s also what he does. And we talked about that.
And he said he’s more or less doing only consulting now. And I said, well, how could we work something out where you help me with the strategic part of my business? And he said, well, let’s barter for it.
And he apparently volunteers with a local school at where his kids go and helps them with their production for their sports teams. So his son and some of their classmates produce videos for the football team, the soccer team. And they’re really good, actually, for high school kids.
Like awesome cross-phase and dissolves and epic soundtracks behind it. So they need some voice overs for that. And I said, yeah, I’d be happy to help.
You know, I have the studio here, just like you said. We can barter out the services and we’ll see what we can make happen. So that’s something I’m looking forward to, too.
And I’m sure that’d be a fun little field trip for some of the kids participating in that. Like, create your own professional voice over.
Yeah, exactly. We’ll figure out if I can bring a mobile setup to the school, because it’s not that far away. It’s basically the next town over.
So I could bring a mobile setup there to a class and set it up there. Or maybe bring them here. We’ll see how that works.
Maybe you can get our friend a deal involved and have them set up their own little professional studio with vocal booth to go blankets.
Well, yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking anyway. But maybe you’re right, get a deal out to bring his van out there and do it for his benefit as well. That’d be cool.
Maybe not a van, they might be skeptical, but…
You’ll see the nice man in the unmarked van on the corner. Yeah, perfect.
So once again, the reason we’re doing this episode is to play the interview I did with Pastor Michael White and Tom Corcoran of Church of the Nativity here in Lutherville, Maryland. And we’ll talk about the book, Rebuilt, how they liked doing the audiobook and what challenges there were. And you’ll hear me trying to convince them to do another one.
Thank All right, so we are here in the interview portion of The VO Meter with pastor Michael White and Tom Corcoran, who are the authors of Rebuilt, the audiobook that was just published on Audible, iTunes, any place you can pick up audio books. And we’re talking about the experience and how the book came together. So welcome, guys, how are you doing today?
Good, thanks for having us.
Thanks, Paul.
So as I said, we just produced the audio version of this book, but obviously there was a print version before. Can you tell us the background story? Because the two of you work for the Church of Nativity here in Lutherville, Maryland, or do we call it Timonium, Maryland?
Mostly official zip code.
We say Timonium because people know the Timonium Fairgrounds.
Okay, so Timonium, Maryland, the Church of Nativity. But how did you come about writing a book about your experiences here at the church?
Well, I think a little bit was kind of both of us were new to working in a church. So for many years, we thought there was just an easy template. I think a lot of people think about church work that it’s kind of really easy.
We meet people all the time that come in from the business world, work at a church, and expect it to be very easy. And we certainly expect it to be easy. But we came in and found it much more difficult than we thought.
And also that in the Catholic Church, at least, there was no, the playbook or the template that seemed to be the way you would run a church, which made us think it would be easy. It was broken and not working. So over about five or six years, we learned that, that this is not working, that we need to do something different.
And that really a lot of places didn’t understand what the business of the church was and that this temple was not working. And so after having gone through that experience, frustration, and then learning some things that did work and seeing a growth and change in the church, we wanted to just share that story and share what we learned and think it was something that other people were feeling, some of the same frustrations that we had had, and give that a voice. So that’s kind of how the book came about.
Did you want to add anything to that?
Well, I think that you had the instinct to want to put our experience down on paper, and I responded accordingly. I think that was the basic exercise.
One good thing about kind of our partnership in writing the book is that I love a blank page, but I’m terrible at editing. I am awful, I can’t, you know, and Michael’s really good at editing and writing and rewriting. I like to say I’m not really a writer.
I just have ideas. I think Michael’s more a writer than makes the book readable.
Yeah, I don’t have any ideas.
Did you edit it and proof it yourselves or did you hire someone third party to do that?
Well, eventually we identified a publisher and he appointed an editor.
So you ran it through several hands before it was actually published?
Sure.
But that was the big obstacle for people who are trying to write a book. It’s hard to do, and so you have to go through a lot of different no’s. We got no’s many times and sent out proposals and did all that.
You either get nothing back or just get no form letters back. We actually got very lucky. Kind of the way it got printed was that we went to a conference where there was a bunch of publishers and we just happened to run into one.
I don’t know if you wanted to add that story at all.
Yeah, we were desperately in search for a publisher and we were at this conference where there were a number of them. And we ran into one sort of by accident and hit it off and struck up a conversation that led to our association, our publishers Ave Maria at Notre Dame University.
And as far as the audience for the book, what was your initial thoughts about who would read the book? Who was it for, basically?
For anybody in a parish that cares about the work of a parish, then I think, again, the way I think we describe it in the beginning is who feel like things are not going well, that love the church, want to see the church grow, want to see it be successful but feel like it’s not, and maybe aren’t sure why that is or what’s the path forward. So it was for anybody in a parish that cared about the church and wanted to see it grow and succeed and was not satisfied with the status quo.
You’re talking about staff or actual parishioners as well?
Either staff or parishioners, yes. We thought it could have a wider reach beyond just church staff and it has. It’s sold about, we’ve told, about 100,000 copies, I think, of Rebuild, 140,000 among all the books that we’ve, the three books we’ve written.
Full disclosure, I’m a member of the parish here and have read the book, and I know from the community that it really was well received and it sort of became a rallying point for the parish. Have you found that other parishes have been able to duplicate that and use it as a rallying point for themselves?
Yeah, there’s still, there’s some parishes that are doing that now. It’s still actually, even though the book was printed or published about five years ago now, almost, it’s still kind of early. It takes time for people to read a book, put it into practice, but definitely we see, we’re seeing fruit in other parishes, and that’s very satisfying.
I think probably the most satisfying thing about writing a book is, and this we were told by our editor of the book, that you wrote and put into words what people were thinking, but no one either had the courage or had taken the time to voice. And that kind of reminds me, you know, CS. Lewis said he wanted to write the books that he’d wish someone else had written.
And I think it’s cool to say you’ve written a book that all these other people wish they had written, but you wrote it and put voice to that.
Well, I think you both did a great job of getting that voice across. Sometimes there’s a disconnect between your writing voice and your actual speaking voice. And one of the things I like so much about the book is that knowing you two, it is your speaking voice.
When I read it, I hear your voices in my head. And that brings us to why we did the audio book, or at least in my mind. So let’s talk about how that started.
I think you had some thoughts about it, but I approached you both about two years ago to actually get it off the ground and see if it’s something you wanted to do. Did you have thoughts of the audio book before we talked?
Yeah, absolutely.
No, not at all.
Go ahead and say it. Ed, you explain your no. I’ll explain my yes.
Well, I just didn’t… It didn’t occur to me that anybody would have any interest in it.
Yeah, I mean, we had… People had come to me a few times and said, you guys should do an audio book. And our publisher at the time had said, yeah, we don’t do it.
If you want to do it, go ahead. But they just said, it’s not something we’ve found. I think since then, they’ve actually…
Come back around.
Come back around.
Said, oh, we’d like to do an audio version.
Because they had to read Already Worked With You. Oops. Yeah.
But, you know, but yeah. So I mean, a few people had said, you know, I never read, but I will listen to audiobooks. So the idea was out there, but…
It just makes so much sense, too, because people spend so much time in the car, in commute, at least in our community here in North Baltimore. And they’ve got plenty of time to listen, not much time to read.
So what were some of the challenges involved with doing the audiobook? First of all, before we started, what did you think it was going to be like? And then once we got into it, was it that way, or was it completely different?
I thought that it would be easy. I thought that it would be a no effort kind of exercise. And I thought that it was extremely challenging.
It was exhausting, actually.
Yeah, that’s the reaction a lot of people have when they think about it. I’ve worked with a coach where he has lots of people come to him and say they want to be audiobook narrators, and he has this video, I think it might have sent it to you, actually, Tom, where it’s a test that he gives everybody. He says, go in your house, his name’s Sean Pratt.
We talked about him on the podcast. But he says, go in a small room in your house, maybe your bedroom or the corner of your kitchen or maybe even a bathroom, and sit down with a book and read it for three hours every day for two weeks.
Oh my gosh.
And tell me what you think after that if you still want to be an audiobook narrator. And he said, at least half the time, people come back and say, yeah, this was not what I thought it was going to be. There’s no way I could make a living out of that or do that long term.
And then there’s others that say, yeah, it’s something I really enjoyed and I want to do it. But, Michael, for you, that was the challenge, the actual sitting down and getting through it? Absolutely.
And I speak for a living. I preach. That’s what I do.
So I’m no stranger to the exercise of the spoken word. But this was a challenging at a whole different level that I hadn’t anticipated.
So, when we started, I said right away that I thought the two of you were doing really well because I’ve produced some other books for narrators and it can be a bit of a struggle. But both of you did a great job, I think, in the actual dictation and picking up on pickups when we had to stop the recording and go back. Did you find it that after a while you got better at it or was it something that you think you still struggle with if you had to do it again?
Well, it’s interesting, you told Michael that he did really well. I don’t think you said that to me, Paul, but you said I had to get rid of my Philly accent.
Well, I’m saying it now.
Professor who actually connected Father Michael and I together, still might have said, before you handed every paper in, you should read it out loud. And it’s amazing the differences. I still haven’t taken that advice yet, but read it out loud because it does change.
You just pick up things you don’t know otherwise. And we practice a message that we’re giving. Again, we say, speak it into life.
So I think the audio stuff teaches you, again, that great connection, that thought that comes from both of the written word and the spoken word, and how the connection between the two. It might be a better way to say that, but…
No, that’s perfect. So the big question is, now that you’ve done a full audiobook, nine hours worth, would you ever do it again?
Not in the summertime.
That was the other challenge. It was like 125 degrees in that booth, because we were doing it in…
We could do it here in July.
Yeah, this is a nice space. We’re inside the media room at the church. And yeah, it’s apportioned very nicely for VO.
We could do it here.
All right, next time. That’s what we’ll do.
Well, guys, thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. It was fabulous to work with you.
I was really excited going into it, and I’m so excited the book is out there now. Let’s give the title one more time. And with the subtitle, it’s Rebuilt, Awaking the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, Making Church Matter.
There we go, all together now. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Paul.
So once again, that was the interview I did this week with Father Michael White and Tom Corcoran from Church of Nativity. The book is rebuilt, and I’m so proud of the work we did, and it was also a lot of fun.
Well, that’s so cool that you got to work with sort of non-narrators and educate them a little bit about the recording aspect of audiobooks. Did it kind of remind you of your own journey getting into audiobooks and some of the challenges involved with that?
Yeah, for sure. And especially since neither of them had been in a recording booth before, I definitely could remember the struggles of sitting still, worrying about the clothes. One of the first things I had to do was tell Tom to wear a different shirt because it was rubbing on the microphone because he’s a big dude and inside this booth it was making noise.
Just those struggles that you don’t think about when you’re either speaking publicly or you’re reading to yourself and you’re thinking about doing audiobooks. Sitting still and making sure you’re on mic are two things that are so important. And I get to see those challenges as we develop the production.
Oh, absolutely. I’m actually working with a new talent, helping her set up her studio space. And just little things like giving yourself room to move, but not moving too much, making sure you have a chair that doesn’t make noise, that your clothes don’t make noise, that your mouth is clean and not too clicky, that you drink enough water.
It’s really, it’s amazing how many things we get used to just because we’ve been doing this for a little while.
Yeah, even to actually having somebody in the room, in the studio, but not in the booth. So the whole time they were doing the book, both authors were here. So if Michael was in the, I get to call him Michael now, it’s pretty cool.
If Michael, Father White, was in the booth, Tom was sitting on my couch in the editing area and vice versa. And for the first week, Tom had this awful cough. And if you listen really closely, you can hear some of it in the dead space, in the room tone of the book.
I got most of it out, but they weren’t available at the end to redo those parts and I had to do some magic with them, with Rx.
Don’t tell ACX that.
Yeah. So I had to do some magic to get those out. But even to that, you don’t think about those things if you haven’t sat in the studio before, that even outside this, what’s supposedly a soundproof booth, this whisper room, a loud cough is gonna come through.
Yeah, they’re not panaceas.
No, definitely not.
So what else did you learn about recording these guys, or kind of validate your experience as a burgeoning audiobook narrator?
Well, one of the things I learned is that I have an ear for talent, because one of the things, one of the reasons I wanted to do this book is because the pastor, Michael White, is such a great speaker in person. He’s actually booked on tours for speaking and is invited to parishes all around the country and even the world to speak about this book they wrote. So I knew he’d be good.
And the first day he came out, I was like a kid in a candy store.
I said, this is so awesome.
I knew you’d be good at this.
I’m so proud.
And then Tom, of course…
Put your agency cap on there.
Yeah, and then Tom, of course, said, does that mean I’m not? And I said, eh.
You have potential, maybe?
Exactly. We’ll get there, is what I said. But yeah, Father White was just a natural.
And I said, you could be an audiobook narrator tomorrow. And so they have their own podcast, actually, where they promoted the book. And Tom told that story and he said, yeah, Paul said that Michael was great.
I wasn’t so good that if the church thing doesn’t work out, Michael could be a narrator full time. So that was a funny story.
Well, I remember some of our guests, Mark Cashman and some of the other coaches we worked with, often mentioned pastors transitioning into voiceover, either when they retire or before, just because they’re natural storytellers and public speakers. And there are definitely a lot of crossover skills involved with that. So I mean, that’s great that you got to experience that firsthand.
And it was with your very own pastor.
Yeah, I mentioned in the interview that we just heard that their speaking voice comes across really well in the book. And it’s something you mentioned to Mark Cashman that when he writes, you can hear his voice in his writing. And for the two authors, Tom and Michael, it was the same thing.
And it came across in the audio as well. They were really good at getting their speaking voice like they do when they’re doing the messages at church into the audio book. And that really shows.
Everyone has this idea of what a voiceover artist or an audio book narrator is supposed to sound like. And the truth is, it’s supposed to sound like you. Yeah, you’re supposed to be clear and convey a story well, but unless you’re actually doing character voices, you’re just supposed to be your true self and let all of your natural personality and charisma shine through on Mike.
So once again, it was a great time working with these two gentlemen. The book again is Rebuilt, Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, Making Church Matter by Michael White and Tom Corcoran. You can find it on Audible, go through Amazon or iTunes.
Go ahead and buy it now. I’d really appreciate it. I wanna thank Michael and Tom for being on the podcast.
I had a great time interviewing them at the church. And go buy the book.
Before we go, I just wanted to thank Paul for his great idea of bringing his guests in and to our studio audience. It’s just a great reminder of how to add, like have that added value to your voice over business is actually renting out your studio and making it available to other talent. I know a good friend of mine, a co-worker of mine for the Global Voice Acting Academy, David Tobak, he actually rented his studio out to some very successful voice actors, Katie Lee, and you might know this one, Townsend Coleman, the voice of the original Michelangelo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, actually came to his studio to record because they needed that ISDN promo now.
And it was amazing. Yeah, it was really cool.
Townsend Coleman, keynote speaker at this year’s VO Atlanta, by the way.
Yes, bringing it all around. And so now when I meet him, I’m like, hey, you recorded with my friend. Can you sign my Michelangelo?
Cowabunga!
You’ve got an N.
I know, I know. You never know when those will come around. But by all intents and purposes, Townsend’s an awesome guy, and I’m sure he’ll be very friendly and sign whatever turtles you have when you see him.
Unless you’re maybe, unless it’s one of those backpacks and you want him to sign your back.
I guess you could say he was shell shocked. But anyways, that just about wraps up this mini-sode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Have a wonderful week, everybody. 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 everybody, and welcome to Episode 29 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Today, we’re going to talk all about P2P, or Pay-to-Play sites, those places you can go to get jobs. Some people call them Online Casting sites. We’ll take you through some of the lesser known ones, some of the really well known ones.
But before we get to that, Sean, what’s been going on in your VO world?
Well, I just went to one of the coolest voice acting workshops that I’ve ever been to. So a little bit of backstory. I have wanted to work with Pat or Patrick Fraley for a number of years right now.
I grew up watching him on Saturday morning cartoons. He was Crang and Baxter Stockman from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He was also on Brave Star, a filmation show about a space cowboy, which was actually pretty…
The animation and the subject matter at the time was actually quite deep for a kid show, I think. But anyways, I’ve wanted to work with him for a number of years. When I started training in Japan for my voiceover career while I was teaching, he offered a lot of online materials.
He was one of the first coaches to have these sort of home study courses that you could just purchase from his website. And he’s got everything from how to be a better audiobook narrator, on how to do various accents. He’s got this whole three-part curriculum on character voice acting for animation and video games.
And of course, like I said, audiobooks and now e-learning. So, cool thing about Pat is he actually grew up in Seattle, where I’m from. And so once or twice a year, he’ll actually come up here to do a workshop.
And I couldn’t really rationalize doing some of his other workshops, like the audiobook work or the character voice acting, because those aren’t my primary genres. But when I found out he was doing an e-learning one, and the tracks would actually be used for a bit of an e-learning demo, I was like, done and done, click, click. And it was everything I wanted it to be.
I mean, Pat is just such a generous spirit and such a wonderful storyteller and educator. It was just a joy to be working with him throughout the day. And it kind of confirmed some things that I knew I needed to work on, like just dialing down the intensity a lot when you’re doing e-learning work, because people want to be listening to their peers.
They don’t want there to be any emotional or authoritative distance between the narrator and the listener. And of course, he helped me fix some of my slash breathing techniques, like, that’s a slash breath, is when you get through a long line of text and you want to keep going. So you’re like, and then just enough air to get you going.
But that’s actually pretty poor breathing technique, and you really want to kind of bring it down and take advantage of, like, that oxygen will give you the energy and the focus to attack the next sentence with a lot more emotional intent and clarity, if you will. So thank you, Pat, for some of those incredible gems. I’ve been using them in some of the auditions that I got this week and some of my e-learning projects.
And not only am I much happier with my performances, but I’m also a lot less winded or tired after doing long form, because I’m not straining myself to sound how I think I’m supposed to sound. So, I mean, it was worth every penny, and I highly recommend his in-person and home study courses. So thank you so much, Pat.
Interesting. How big was the class?
He actually divided it into two weekends, because, excuse me, two days, because the demand was so high. But the first workshop had about 10 people, and then we lucked out, there was some crossover and cancellation, so we only had about six or seven on that second day. I was actually really concerned, because I was like, oh no, I waited too long, and I missed the initial day.
And then he was quick to inform me that they had added a second one. I was like, done.
Oh, cool. So really, really intimate setting, huh? A lot of face-to-face time.
Oh yeah, totally. Everyone only got about two reads, but we still got about a minute of material to use for our e-learning stuff. E-learning is an interesting beast in that it’s one of the few genres where you can have a self-made demo, but I was just like, how much better will mine be with that professional guided instruction?
And so that was kind of the mindset for that. And of course, I want to be better at my sort of bread and butter genre. So it was just, whenever you’re trying to decide the return on investment for certain training and things like that, it was pretty obvious to me.
So I’m very glad that I did it.
That’s awesome. Congratulations.
Thank you, sir.
Anything else you want to talk about?
Yeah, I mean, I could go on about that workshop for days, but I think you’ve heard enough from me. What about you, Paul? Almost called you Pat.
What about you, Paul?
Pat, Paul, if you want to call me Pat Fraley, I’ll take it, believe me. I have a few things going on. I had, let’s see, it’s been a few weeks since our last episode.
So a few things, actually. Since we last talked, I’ve had two audiobooks released, one for The Pseudonym, that’s the third book in that series. So I have one left.
So I have one left I actually embarked on just before we got on here, the fourth book in that series, the last one for this author. So that was something I actually never thought would happen to have an author contract me for a series, but this has been going on for almost a year now. This is my fourth book, and so happy to work with this author.
That’s fantastic. And the last book in the series for Find Away Voices about the history of the Balkans that I spoke about in the last episode, that’s been released too. So now the Balkan Network is released on Audible.
Please go download that one. And yeah, I would love to see some positive reviews on that one too. So far, the reviews on the first one are fantastic.
Four and a half stars. And I got one that said, actually put my name and said, Paul Stefano did a great job, five-star review. They actually wrote five-star reviews, so I couldn’t be prouder of that one.
That’s excellent, man. And actually, I did want to touch on something you mentioned, how you were surprised about to be working, or the relationship that you built with that one, or the author, in getting a whole series. So that was one of the cool things about the e-learning workshop was that, or Pat really encouraged us to network with each other, because basically, everyone kind of had shown their talent and skill at the workshop.
So we basically had our own private e-learning roster. So, for example, if we get a client who likes my voice, but we’re like, do you have anyone who could play like your parents, or like an older adult? I’m like, oh yeah, Paul Stefano and Lee Laird, or whatever.
And then, as I had mentioned before, I frequently cast e-learning narrators for one of my ELL clients. And so I’m always looking for new people. And so I was like, I got all your contact info, you’ll be hearing from me soon.
And so we talked about this in a lot of different genres, but it is important to network with other voice talent because sometimes you will prove yourself an asset to a potential client, even if they are not hiring you for your voice. So if there’s something that you know you wouldn’t be good for, but you can recommend someone, a client will remember you for being so helpful. So yeah, always try and make a good impression and keep people in mind for future projects.
Oh, definitely. I’ve talked about that in a lot of different episodes, how if you can be a resource, you’ll be a rock star yourself, even if you’re not doing the work yourself. Referring to somebody is the best sort of way to maintain a relationship.
Definitely, and it might take a while, but usually those ripples do come right back.
Yeah, exactly. So I was on vacation last week, and funny thing happened. I only brought minimal equipment with me.
I really planned not to work. I just kind of wanted to relax, do nothing. And then of course, two days in, my son gets a job.
Oh, no.
I had to make do, and I did bring one of the Producers Choice blankets from vocalbooth2go.com, and he and I basically sat under the blanket, like it was a tent, and rattled off these lines, so he could get his job done.
So you were the bass trap then?
Yeah, more or less. I think I helped with that. So we got it done, it’s an author client, and I mourned them.
Just, this is something you should probably do as a best practice. If you are in a situation where you’re not in your home studio and a client doesn’t necessarily know that, you should tell them. So I did.
I told the client, listen, we’re at the beach and this may not sound as good as the sample you heard. And they said, okay, that’s fine. So I set it off and they said, yeah, this sounds great.
So we got that one job done. So it’s Murphy’s Law. Even when you think you won’t need your stuff, you will.
Or if you’re having a dry spell, but the expression goes, all you have to do is book a hotel and you’ll immediately get an audition, right?
Exactly. Like I can’t tell you how many times, like if I bring the equipment, crickets, but if I don’t, I can’t get enough jobs, you know? It’s ridiculous.
Yeah, so at least we got that done and I was happy for my son to get that job done. Of course his brother and sister were jealous, but that’s neither here nor there.
You can turn them against each other. They’re like, just be better kids.
Yeah, exactly. Just suck less and then you can buy toys too. No, that would be terrible.
And the last thing I’ll mention just before I went on vacation is my demo for radio imaging that I did with the fabulous AJ. McKay was released. And I’m really happy with the way that turned out.
Responses have been great so far, both from peers and family. It’s the first one where my brother was actually impressed. Normally he’s like, meh, let me hear the next job you do.
I played this for him and he said, wow, that’s great. And then another friend said, yeah, and then another friend said, that actually sounds like it could be on the radio. And I said, good, cause that’s the idea.
And then finally, not to sound too pompous, but AJ, who some of you may know is good friends with Joe Cipriano. It’s a running joke that we have going on. He played it for Joe and Joe told him it was really good too.
So that warmed the cockles of my heart as we say. So really proud of that.
Yeah, that’s some high praise, both from AJ and Joe.
Yeah, I can’t thank AJ enough because it was so much fun to work on and I knew that he would produce a great product and he really came through. It’s the first time I was actually impressed myself. Normally I’ll hear myself and I’ll say, yeah, I hear some mouth flicks or, yeah, I should have done that line better.
This one actually blew me away. And AJ said that was what he was hoping for was to do one that actually blew you away.
That’s wonderful. And like I’ve enjoyed working with AJ a lot. He did a recent radio imaging workshop with the Seattle group that I practice with and just over Zoom.
You know AJ, he’s just like so lighthearted, but no nonsense. And like it’s really easy to feel comfortable around him and do some good reads.
Yeah, that’s some advice I would… It’s a big takeaway. And that I would give to people who are looking to do a demo, do it with somebody who you feel comfortable with.
And I knew this would be the case with AJ because he and I just get along great from all our time spent together at VO Atlanta. So I knew that would work. But it’s an important thing to know that you can actually have some sort of relationship and some sort of back and forth with a demo producer.
Don’t go with the best just because people say they’re the best because you may not actually jive with them. Make sure you have a discussion and some talks to make sure that it’s someone you can work with.
Exactly. And usually before you get, like before money changes hand or anything like that, there are ways to sort of test drive different coaches. And I highly recommend that because unless you’re restricted by budget and stuff like that, there is, I highly recommend working with a variety of coaches before settling with anyone.
Because like Paul said, even if they’re good, they might not gel with your learning style or your personality. So those are other things that you need to keep in mind.
Well, in lieu of a VO Meter Shtick this week, we’re actually going to play the two demos we talked about. So you can actually hear the differences between the styles and the different production techniques that were used in both. So let’s start with the imaging demo that AJ did for me.
And it’s a rock imaging demo. And we’ll play that now.
1067, The Eagle is sending you to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies. We’ll throw an airfare and hotel for two. This is your captain speaking.
Welcome aboard Eagle Airways.
You just get ready to party like a rock star with this year’s inductees. If it’s Classic Rock, it’s here. Yeah, we’ll definitely need more cowbell.
I gotta have more cowbell.
93.7, The Fox Rocks. From Paul Rodgers’ voice……to The Clash’s tough choice…
This is your home for Classic Rock.
Rock 101.1 on air, online, on your phone, and sometimes on your nerves. Jay and the Wake Up Crew. Classic Rock 92.9.
Made in Baltimore. Cloud all summer. And rock in the bay.
You play everything I want to hear. Locally owned, locally operated.
100.7, The Bay.
97X presents Summer Tip Number 327.
Don’t bother with the sunscreen. It’s far more likely that your poor lifestyle choices will cause your liver, lungs, and heart to deteriorate before your skin does. 97X.
WKBU New Orleans, home of the Saints.
You know!
At John Oshelon in the morning.
Shigella, did you know, causes diarrhea? One thing I like about this show, we try to learn something every day.
This is Classic Rock, Bayou 95.7.
That was really good, man. I stayed for, like, that was like a minute 30, maybe a minute 40. Listen to the whole thing.
That’s great.
Thanks, buddy. Yeah, it’s a little long. But AJ seemed to think that worked, and I’m not going to question his judgment.
Yeah, I mean, and your acting’s, like, your performance has improved. You really come into your own. It just sounds like, it just sounds like your website promo.
You’re, like, snarky, gritty, seriously, you know? Excellent work.
Thank you.
Now, up next, we’re going to show up my e-learning demo. Now, I admit, it’s probably not going to sound as interesting as Paul’s, just because since it is e-learning, the focus is not on the production aspects, on the music and the sound effects, but which are incredibly important for radio, obviously, because it’s completely audio medium. What I’m really happy about personally with the e-learning demo is just the improved performance and being able to engage with the listener and help, as Pat said, to be a teacher rather than a narrator and to teach them cool stuff.
So here’s my e-learning demo, courtesy of Pat Fraley. Sean Daeley. This video is for parents and grandparents, and for you, because you want your baby to thrive.
For a baby, touch is talk. Touch is the most developed sense a small baby has. Skin-to-skin contact is a powerful way to communicate with your baby before your baby can talk to you.
Give your baby the gift of feeling deeply connected to you. Make sure your child knows what positive touch is all about. Create a deep and lasting bond.
Years later, when your grown child gives you a big hug or confides in you, you’ll be glad that you gave them a special way of communicating with you. Welcome to the Morton Arboretum, home to more than 3,600 native trees, shrubs and plants. This virtual guide provides a snapshot of what to expect when you visit our Wheaton, Illinois location.
So first, let’s look at how to get the most from your virtual tour. See the five main tabs on the top of your screen. Of course, there’s Introduction, Trees, Shrubs, Plants, like I mentioned, and of course, Frequently Asked Questions.
The Introduction tab is highlighted because your tour automatically started here when you click the Enter button on the home page. So you use your mouse to click on a different key page. Each key page lists subcategories in its left pane.
Wow, that’s really good. I can really hear the difference between this and your previous narration demo. Definitely some of that fine tutelage from Pat rubbed off.
But yeah, so you can already see the very different requirements for sort of the intended audience.
So we’ll get to our main topic of the day in just a moment. But first, we want to thank our brand new sponsor. Well, not so new anymore.
It’s actually our second episode. But they’re still our very first sponsor for the VO Meter. We want to thank, once again, Joe Davis and voiceactorwebsites.com.
That’s right. Thank you so much, Joe. So say you’re like me and Paul and you’ve got some new demos or you’re in need of a website to put your shiny new demos on.
voiceactorwebsites.com is the place to go. And to tell you even more about them is our good friend Dan Leonard from VOBS.
As a voice talent, you have to have a website. But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you. And when they finally do, they break or don’t look right on mobile devices.
They’re not built for marketing and SEO. They’re expensive. You have limited or no control.
And it takes forever to get one built and go live. So what’s the best way to get you online in no time? Go to voiceactorwebsites.com.
Like our name implies, voiceactorwebsites.com just does websites for voice actors. We believe in creating fast, mobile-friendly, responsive, highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use. You have full control.
No need to hire someone every time you want to make a change. And our upfront pricing means you know exactly what your costs are ahead of time. You can get your voice over website going for as little as $700.
So if you want your Voice Actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options, go to voiceactorwebsites.com, where your VO website shouldn’t be a pain in the you-know-what.
So thank you so much, Dan, for that awesome promo. And thank you, Joe, and voiceactorwebsites.com for the incredible services that you offer and for helping us out with our own websites when we need it. We highly recommend these guys.
So definitely check them out if you need a website or want to update your website for you and your voice over business.
So now we got that bidness out of the way. Ha ha, just kidding. Let’s move on to our topic of the day, and that is pay-to-plays, or P2P, or Online Casting websites.
So we’re going to start off with something that’s a bit of a taboo in the voice over industry, and that’s Fiverr, or fiverr.com. And we want to talk about why. So in case you’re not familiar with the platform, this isn’t just a voice over casting site, but it’s a freelance casting site for a variety of skills and products that people can do individually and just set up a profile and the basically…
This isn’t always the case, but you can basically do a voice over for $5. $4 if you talk about the cut that Fiverr takes for each job. So obviously, that’s not very much money.
And you can… A lot of voice talent are a little bit more business savvy and they will add additional services to it until it gets close to what might be a more acceptable rate, but still, the issue with it here is that it really gives clients the wrong idea on what a voice over can and should cost. And some people have argued whether or not this is really affecting the industry, and I think it is.
Granted, it does match low cost clients with low cost talent, because there are certain clients that like, this is our budget and we can’t or won’t go above it. And that’s fine. That’s not the issue.
What the issue is, is when you have a pro talent who is undercutting themselves and the industry as a whole by accepting working for lower rates, rates that are substandard. And so, or another part of this is, is that since there is really no barrier to entry, people will join Fiverr as an opportunity to learn while you earn and to build experience and build clientele that way. So, depending on what your ultimate goal is, like if you’re just trying to do this as a hobby or as a side income or as beer money is the common joke, then it might be okay for you.
But if you’re trying to look at this as a professional lifelong full time career, then you’re really making a bad impression because a lot of talent and a lot of people who hire talent do not look favorably at Fiverr.
Yeah, and that’s really where we are today, is that it has become a stigma for some people. And I can’t verify this at all, but there have been stories of people who say that agencies had dumped them or had dumped the talent they knew because they were on Fiverr, or an agent had seen a potential submission of someone who was on Fiverr, and they were essentially blacklisted from ever being added to that agency roster. I can’t verify that that’s true, but there is certainly a stigma out there for people who want to be considered professional voiceover actors or voiceover talent and still maintain a profile on Fiverr.
And it’s difficult. We’re just trying to give you guys a understanding of what the controversy is, so you can make that decision for yourself. There’s another famous article by a friend of the podcast named Stephen J.
Cohen, who’s a talent and audiobook publisher. He sort of documented the situation where voice casters will use Fiverr talent for, say, scratch tracks, tracks that aren’t ultimately going to air and are usually just to pitch an idea. So they want to save money on the scratch track, but they will make a note of who that talent was and blacklist them for any serious projects.
And so we don’t want anyone to shoot themselves in the foot by doing this service that they think is trying to ultimately help their business or to serve as sort of a stepping off point for them to sort of go into more professional waters, as it were.
Right, exactly. So moving on from Fiverr, there are other self-service, let’s say, casting sites out there where you create a profile. Again, there’s no barrier to entry.
Anyone can join. Sometimes there isn’t even a fee. Sometimes there is.
Some of those that I’ve looked at or some that I’ve actually been involved with are Voice Jungle, Voice Crew, Voice Hunter, Internet Jock, let’s see, voices.us, voicesdirect.com, and let’s see, that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. In all these cases, again, you can sign up for a profile. There may or may not be somebody vetting the talent to get in.
Some claim they do, some claim they don’t. And what often happens is they’ll post auditions directly to you, and maybe a few a day, maybe a few a week, and you’ll submit a read to this client, and then may hear back, may not. I’ve had some success with a few of those, but more often than not, the audition goes into an abyss, and I have no idea what’s happening, whether it’s been listened to, whether it was a real client to begin with, whether it’s someone who’s ever going to hire me again.
So that’s really the issue I have with some of those, is that they’re very nebulous in the business practices. I have no idea who runs the site, and I don’t really ever talk to anybody. Sometimes I get paid, sometimes I don’t.
Not on jobs that I’ve done, but sometimes I have a job, sometimes I don’t. And it’s just another way to have your name out there. Do you have any experience with any of those, Sean?
Well, only what I’ve heard from you and some of our Meetup group. And personally, I was not satisfied with some of the stories that I was hearing with the amount of goal-digging you had to do to find decent jobs and this uphill battle that you have trying to get reasonable rates for yourselves. But if any positive stories you have, I’d love to hear more of.
Yeah, several of those actually have set rates. VoiceCrew is one, and Internet Jock is one, where it’s a set $50 rate, and that’s it. For whatever the job is.
Now, there aren’t any long-form jobs on there. They’re all quick hit, 30-second ads, 15-second tags. But the max and the minimum is $50.
So that’s something to keep in mind if you’re looking at some of these sites. Now, funny story about Internet Jock is I’ve actually been rejected from them for whatever reason. So it’s one I applied to, and was told I didn’t meet the standards for whatever reason, even though it doesn’t seem any different from several of the others where I was accepted.
So apparently I do have some sort of betting.
It’s like you’re saying before, it’s so ambiguous. You have no idea. You don’t know what their standards are, or if they’re just like some arbitrary reason why they don’t want to hire you.
Yeah. Do you want to talk about The Bunny?
Oh, The Bunny, yes. So here you have this, and it’s such an interesting thing because, so you might be familiar with Voice Bunny. It’s a subsidiary of Voice 123, which is probably the second largest online casting site available today.
Well, the parent company for both is Toray, by the way.
Oh, yes, yes.
And it’s Alex Toraynego is the owner.
Exactly. And so a lot of people actually like Voice 123. It is one of the more reputable sites that has been receptive to feedback over the years.
There are still some things that people don’t like about, namely their smart cast algorithm for how they cast auditions. And on paper, it’s not a bad idea because their goal is to simply discourage talent from trying out from everything under the sun and really being more selective with things that fit their voice and their ideal niches. And that’s good business practice, I think, for voice talent because you shouldn’t try to feel like a jack of all trades.
You’ll have much better traction if you specify in fewer areas but are amazingly good at that. But anyways, they also have this very…
Very different site.
Very different site called Voice Bunny, which again, they do vet you for that one, right? They have to listen to your audio quality, they need to know about your experience.
Yeah, I’ve actually been kicked out of Voice Bunny, ironically enough.
That’s so weird. And the way they do it is that they have these auctions for jobs, and you basically have to be on call 24-7 to really take advantage of these. And you can name your own price for most of these things, but it really encourages underbidding because of course the client is gonna go for quality at a lower price if it’s available.
So a lot of people complain about the sort of competitive like shark tank atmosphere of that. And of course, another unfortunate correlation that you find is very often clients who aren’t willing to pay much tend to be difficult to work with for some reason. I don’t know why this happens.
They might make unreasonable or unfair demands of you, just the amount of work that they’re asking for the price that they quote. And I’ve heard talent reduced to tears from some of the client or customer experiences they’ve had from that site. So that was another one that I personally steered clear from.
One thing I will defend about the money, and I’ve done it in the past, I think I mentioned on the show, is that they actually pay you for auditions. So it’s minimal money. It might be $8, it might be $20, but for every audition you do, they will pay you.
So there had been times where I would do 100 auditions in a month, and do pretty well monetarily. So in that respect, it wasn’t the worst of the sites. I did respect that.
But like I said, I was kicked out for poor audio quality, and that’s a whole different story where…
That’s bizarre. And a lot of people complain about that. And it’s almost like if there’s an issue with their uploading software or something, because people who normally have fine audio quality and decent studio setups are constantly being rejected.
Yeah, something was off about that. I mean, you’ll hear… You’ve heard my demos.
The one I just played was recorded right here on the microphone in the studio, the same one I used for the sample at Voice Bunny. And for some reason… This was after I was a member for quite a while, by the way.
I sent one audition, and their quality control people said, something’s wrong with this, you need to fix it. And when I sent it back again, again, they still rejected it and said, okay, well, until you fix your studio quality, you can’t participate anymore. So that was out.
Yeah, how do you defend against that? I don’t know. But if you want to learn more about Voice Bunny, I believe Doug Turkell, the un-nouncer, and Joe J.
Thomas, who’s got a voice actor blog as well, have written extensively about Voice 123 and Voice Bunny, even adding some interesting pictographics about some of their practices. So I highly recommend that. And then, who should we talk about next?
Well, let’s talk about the freelance site, as I call them. There’s one actually called freelancer.com. There is one called People Per Hour.
There is Upwork, which is a combination of what used to be two companies called Elance and ODesk. And now that company together is called Upwork. Gotcha.
And then there is guru.com. Those are four that I’m pretty intimately familiar with. I’ve been a member of all of them at some point or another.
Upwork, I was a member for about a year. And what you described about the clients wanting the most and paying the less is basically the norm there, at least in my experience, where I had clients asking me for a thousand word pieces, e-learning pieces for 25, 35, $50. And I was constantly arguing about rates, trying to raise the rates.
And ultimately, what ended my relationship there was that very issue. There was a job where the client, I was arguing rates basically with the client and asking for a payment on a session that was already done. And the client was refusing to pay.
And there was a sort of a grievance file with the client against me. And I said, all right, I’m gonna wash my hands of this. Just keep the money, I don’t care anymore.
It was like $50 that I was arguing over. I said, I’m just gonna cancel my account. Thanks for the memories, so to speak.
I was gone from there.
Thanks for all the fish.
Yeah, I did have some success there. Probably made several thousand dollars over one year. So it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
And some of the clients were good. But again, there were some issues with over demanding clients, is how I’ll put it. People per hour is one that has been very good to me.
It’s where I found some of my most high-profile clients. And that is based out of Greece, I believe. It’s definitely in the EU, and I think it’s Greece.
So the only issue there is a lot of jobs come in early and are looking for European voices, especially lately. It’s probably got something to do with our current government climate. But there’s not a lot of demand for American voices.
So that’s the only issue there. I may get one job a month there. But it has been good to me, and I have had some very high-profile clients from there.
And there’s freelancer.com, which out of all of those has probably been the best to me. I’ve had the most clients from there and definitely made the most money. They actually did a profile piece on me a couple of months ago about American success story for their front page of their website.
Cool.
And they gave me a free T-shirt to go with it. So what I want to mention about all of these is that they all work the same way. There’s no fee for having a membership.
You create a profile similar to Fiverr, actually, but they will take a larger cut of each job, a percentage. So I don’t remember the exact numbers for all of them, but all of them work the same way. They take a percentage of the fees for the job.
So you don’t pay anything upfront, but you will lose some of the fees in the backend. But those three specifically, People Per Hour, I’m sorry, those two specifically, People Per Hour and Freelancer have some really nice clients, legitimate companies you’ve heard of, universities I’ve worked with on there. So those have been good to me by and large.
And then the last one I mentioned is guru.com. That one is similar. And I’ve been on there for three years, never had a single job.
Oh, wow.
Nothing against them. They just have very few and far between voice jobs. All three of these sites have jobs for any type of work where it could be, they’re all usually clerical work, like you’re not gonna find a job steam fitting, but there’s writing jobs, proofreading jobs.
Transcription, stuff like that.
Transcription.
Oh, coding?
Coding, yeah, coding, web design, and instructional design, a lot of those. And then animators too. So one of my videos on my website actually hired somebody on Freelancer to do the whiteboard drawing, and then I did the voice to create that video.
So yeah, all three of those have been okay at one point or another, and I’m still with Freelancer and People Per Hour.
Cool. That was a world that I wasn’t too familiar with. So thank you for sharing your expertise on that.
And that’s another… I mean, you could even lump… Like, I’ve heard of people going to Craigslist and eBay for similar jobs, like that same kind of goal.
eBay, really?
Well, maybe not… Sorry, Craigslist, and there’s one other one that I can’t think of off the top of my head.
Mandy?
Probably Mandy, yes. Mandy’s a little bit more specific to entertainment production kind of stuff, so it’s more like videographers, cameramen, actors, voice actors, that kind of thing. So it is a little bit more specified to what we do, but in the same vein, it went from being a free service to a paid one, and the voiceover jobs specifically are still fewer and far between than some of the other team jobs you can be doing.
Yeah, I have a profile on Mandy, and the only offers I’ve ever gotten are for live announcing.
Oh, well, that can be fun, but maybe not what you want to do.
Yeah, some of them are pretty cool, but they’re always in the middle of the day, and they’re always in Washington, DC. There’s nothing ever in Baltimore.
That’s another thing. Like I said, it’s a lot of its location work. You actually have to be in where the project is.
Exactly. Have you ever had any luck on Craigslist?
I haven’t. I heard the occasional story. Usually indie game developers trying to cast voices or they need a scratch track, stuff like that.
Yeah. I’ve had a few auditions, but I never had a job. But my kids have.
I actually had two jobs for the kids off of Craigslist. So maybe that’s where all the jobs are for kids.
But one thing that I like, whether or not you choose any of these sites for your business model, just look at the number of baskets you can have for your voice over business, the amount of opportunities. And that’s not even through direct marketing. Like there are definitely options.
And I would encourage you to think about the various ways how can you reach out to companies, whether it would be through an agent, through a mediary like an online casting site or a freelance site, or through direct marketing to clients in production houses and businesses individually. So there’s lots of options and you should never have just one or two baskets to put your VO eggs in, as it were. All right, so now we move into sort of the upper tier.
Ironically, these are some of the ones that you might be most familiar with just because of their marketing SEO and their larger budgets. But you have sort of the top four online casting sites that we’re gonna talk about right now. You have voices.com, or what many of our compatriots like to refer to as voices.com, which we can talk to ad infinitum.
Voice123, which we mentioned before, and then Voice Realm, which is out of the UK, I believe, and then Bodogo, so the owner of which we’re gonna be talking with in a few minutes.
I hate Bodogo, god, this guy’s a jerk.
I hate Bodogo, we just wanted to bash Armin for the next 45 minutes. He doesn’t know what’s coming.
Just kidding.
Yeah, no, we got nothing but love for Bodogo. But starting with voices.com, it’s a company out of Canada, and a lot of voice talent have had very unsatisfactory experiences with them, and they’re concerned about a lot of things. Their entrance fee has increased over the years from about $200 to $400, and a lot of people are concerned that there is no vetting process, that people who are willing to pay that much, they are just allowed on the website.
And if you listen to the demos on the profiles there, you will certainly find some subpar demos, both acting quality and audio quality-wise.
You also find a lot and lots of people. That latest claim, voices.com is claiming 500,000 members.
Wow, that’s even, I was going to say tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of competition. Granted, not everyone’s going to be great and not everyone’s going to have a similar vocal type to you, but that’s a lot. And that’s why you see some talent discouraging people away from online casting sites, is because there is so much available talent there.
And it’s only going to take a couple seconds for an agent or a caster to click next and to find someone else. There have been a number of issues with just the amount of money that Voices takes from each job. For example, they charge an additional escrow fee to make sure that you’re paid is what their logic is.
So they’re taking an additional fee in addition to the entrance fee to their website. So we don’t want to go into too much detail there, but if you do a search, you can find lots of stories and lots of reasons why you might want to be wary of Voices.
Now, I will say I did have… I wasn’t a member there for quite a while and had a lot of auditions, but I never got a single job. So about a year and a half of membership, never a single job.
Now, I don’t know if that says more about my talent or the competition, but it wasn’t a good fit for me.
Yeah, yeah. And ironically, this is… a lot of newer talent will look at an online casting site as a way to get a foot in the door, as a way to get access to real scripts from real clients.
There’s some validity in that.
Oh, absolutely. But the funny thing is, is it’s like, if you’re not at… if your skill level is not competitive, you’re wasting your money.
So, like, you have to be conscious of where you’re at and if you can actually make money off of these sites, because if you’re completely fresh or if you have no innate skill and don’t know… like, don’t have all the proper equipment, you won’t make your money back.
Yeah, that’s true. So let’s move on to Voice Realm. Voice Realm is similar in that they charge a fee, a membership fee.
It is a little bit cheaper than voices.com. And you can get on there with tens of thousands of your famous friends or favorite friends. And it’s a similar situation where you’ll see jobs and you’ll be able to audition, but you may not know how many other people are auditioning with you.
And it’s going to be a huge competition pool just like voices.com. So the only issue with Voice Realm that I had was their social media presence, where they spout off all the time about voiceover topics in a snarky and sometimes crude way. So I ultimately canceled my membership with them for that reason because they seem to be baiting other voice talent on Twitter and flat out making fun of them, which I was not a fan of.
Especially since we’re supposed to be, like, we are their commodity, you know? They are selling voice talent. And yet it’s very, it seems very apparent that they don’t respect talent very much.
And like you’re saying, it’s sound, it’s trolling, it’s bullying. They’ve had a number of upsetting social media campaigns where, like, everything from voice actors have more sex to pictures of butts and abs and whatever. And I’m like, one, what the hell does this have to do with voiceover?
Two, a lot of people are offended because they have underage talent on the site. They have minors on the site. And here you’re pandering sex and drugs with your voice actors?
That’s very unethical and wrong to me. I never had any, like, directly negative experiences with Voice Roam, and I actually liked a lot of the jobs that were coming in.
Yeah, I had some jobs there and had some success.
But I could not stand that kind of treatment of my peers. And some good friends came to me with just the way that they were treated. And I couldn’t stand for it, so I left as well.
Now, there is one more thing about Voice Roam to be aware of. They have a sister site called cheapvoicetalent.com.
Oh, yes.
And it’s worth mentioning that if you’re a premium member or above a Voice Roam, they automatically add you to cheapvoicetalent.com.
Yeah, and a number of talent have complained and left the site because of that, because they don’t want to be associated with cheapness. They are not cheap talents. And the fact that we have no control over that made a lot of talent upset.
So you can actually find out more about that via Mark Scott, a Canadian Voice Talents blog. Just look for Protecting My Brand, Why I Deleted My Voice Roam Account, over at Mark Scott Voice Over. So thank you, Mark, for detailing and archiving your experience so that other talent can learn and make a more informed decision.
And then we have one of our sort of the newest tier of these Online Casting Sites. We’re of course going to talk with Armin Hirstetter of Vidalgo, but now you have Kevin West with VO Planet, which is a newer site that just launched a week or two ago, actually.
Well, they’re newer in this form. They’ve been around for a while.
In this form, yes. I did want to talk about that. So VO Planet was another Online Casting Site with actually not the best reputation for a lot of talent about a decade or five to ten years ago.
It was just poorly managed under the management at the time. People didn’t get very many jobs, and when they did get a job, they didn’t have the best client experiences, and there was issues with payment. But anyways, a man named Kevin West actually decided to like, bought the site, and so it’s now under new management.
And over the last couple of weeks, he has been very receptive and very open to voice talent feedback in the features that they want in an online casting site. So honestly, I haven’t seen that kind of invitation for involvement from almost any of the other sites that we have just been talking about. So Kevin, really excited.
I wish you nothing but success in your new endeavor, and I hope that you and the talent that are a part of your site are just satisfied with the experience. And I believe Paul can give us first-hand experience because he signed up a few weeks ago.
Am I right? Yep, I remember. It’s been about three weeks, like you said.
I was there before the crash, unfortunately. Well, you know, it was probably a good thing in the end. The site crashed about a week after it relaunched.
But from what I understand, it was being run off the old code and they were going to redo it anyway. And as they were trying to upgrade it, the whole thing crashed and they had to build it from scratch. So probably in the long run that’s better because, as Armand will tell us actually later, having old code in a website is actually a bad thing.
So starting fresh is probably good for them. But anyway, I see several auditions a day. It’s been great so far.
Really good clients from what I can tell. I haven’t booked a job yet, but hopefully working towards it. But what I like about it is not every…
similar to Bedalgo, not every job will require a custom audition. What I found from my membership in all of these websites is, Bedalgo and, so far, VO Planet seem to have the highest percentage of people who will hire you off your demo. So they’ll put a job listing, and it will say, just send us your demo, and we’ll consider you off of that, which I like a lot because it saves a lot of time.
You don’t have to do a custom demo for everything. It’s the reason we pay thousands of dollars for professionally done demos anyway.
I was about to say, it’s a much more active and apparent return on investment instead of sending it to individual companies or agents. It’s great to have sites that are willing to accept this.
Right. So, so far, things look great. Like you said, I wish Kevin the best of luck as well.
Wonderful. And so, sort of to wrap up, the whole point of this episode was to kind of just let you know what the current online casting atmosphere was so you can make more informed choices for you and your voice over business. They’re not necessarily all evil or taboo as it were, but…
Or all good.
Or all good. Yeah, that’s a great point. But they might be a potential avenue for your voice over business.
So, like we said, we just wanted to give you as much information as possible, the experiences that we’ve had ourselves and have heard from our colleagues, and help you make the best decision for you and your business.
So with that, thanks for listening to this episode of the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
So coming up in our next episode, we have our feature from Otacon. Chris Dottoli sitting in for Sean will be joining me in two weeks now, actually only ten days now, down in Washington, DC for the Otacon Japanese Anime Convention. We’ll do some live interviews with guests and voice actors, and maybe some ambient interviews, man on the street type of things, and then we’ll do a quick wrap up, and yeah, should be a lot of fun.
Wonderful. At the beginning of this episode, you guys heard how stoked I was to be working with the inevitable Pat Fraley. He has actually agreed to be on our show.
We’d actually love to hear from you guys, since he’s got such a wealth of experience in so many different genres. What kind of questions do you want to hear? So feel free to reach out to us, or just to send a comment on the vometer.com website, and we’ll be sure to ask any questions that you might be interested in.
So, that’s it for this episode of the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Have a great week, and we’ll see you in a month. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.