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The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to Episode 16 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
All right, today we have an exciting episode. We have booth junkie Mike DelGaudio coming up in a few minutes. But first off, we have current events.
So what have you been up to lately, Paul?
Let’s say a couple of things. I’m finishing up the second book in a series for my Gnome Divox. I don’t really know that word, but Sean Pratt uses it all the time.
I prefer the word pseudonym. But yeah, the second book in a series for him coming out. And three more were released since our last episode.
So that’s really rolling along nicely. And it’s pretty exciting the way that’s taking it off as far as the audiobook work. And also related to the audiobook work, I was recently audible approved or listed as an audible approved producer with ACX.
So that’s pretty cool as well.
Very cool. And what are the requirements for that? Isn’t it something like 15 or 25 titles?
It’s kind of a nebulous target. Nobody really knows for sure. It’s sort of like a double secret probation type of thing.
If you’re an Animal House fan. But the general consensus is that if you have 25 titles, then you should probably go ahead and apply. And the rules are that you have to have, again, nebulous definition.
But the definition is a demonstrated record of success on the platform. So that’s sucking. Yeah.
And truth be told, I did apply once before and was actually rejected because there was an issue with one of my books that wasn’t my fault. There was a cover art discrepancy where the cover art that was initially published or put on the offer on ACX was different from the final cover art that I submitted. So it was sent back to me as the producer as rejection.
So when I applied, ACX said, well, you know, you have this nick on your record, but otherwise you’ve been doing well. Send us a few more titles. And I think they said three more titles and then apply again.
This was all back over like last spring and summer. So I did. And then after about two more months, I was finally at the badge.
Wonderful. Because I mean, like you’ve been doing audiobook work this entire time. So I just like, the fools, they didn’t realize what they had.
Yeah. I have over 40 titles out now between myself and the pseudonym. So there’s definitely a demonstrated record.
Now, what does that mean? I’m sorry, go ahead.
Speaking of nebulous definitions, that Gnome de Vox, I mean, Sean Pratz is playing off of Gnome de Plume, which is like a writer’s name or a pen name. It’s like, it’s the French translation of pen name, essentially, because pens used to be written with feathers or blooms. So there you go.
Oh, awesome. Thank you. Your etymology lesson for the day.
Thank you.
Wait, we need etymology correctly.
Yes.
Yes.
So anyway, what it actually means, again, so there’s debates about that, whether it helps you or hurts you. But I will say, I had a response to an audition today from a rights holder where they said, I like your audition. I took a look at your profile.
I saw the audible approved badge. That really makes me feel confident that you are familiar with the platform. So let’s talk a little bit more.
Haven’t gotten the deal yet, but it seems pretty good.
But it is a selling point. That’s good to know.
Yeah, I was actually glad to hear there was some return on it. So let’s see. Other than that, I did recently sign with a new talent agency as well.
I’m now proud to be part of the family with Tag Talent or the Atherton Group out of Austin, Texas. Pretty excited about that.
Very cool. Congratulations. So did you have to do any special marketing for them or is it just another name on your list?
Well, I hadn’t applied to them before and was summarily ignored. Wish I don’t blame them. It happens with agencies or busy people.
But funnily enough, I was watching Liz Atherton, the owner, on VOBS last Monday. And during her interview, she said… Well, somebody asked her, how do you get on her roster?
It actually might have been me. I forget now. In the chat room, some of the questions.
And she said, well, we only take people by referrals from people on our existing roster. So if that’s something that you can do, then go ahead and submit. They said they really don’t listen to any others.
And that clicked in my head. Well, that’s why they haven’t listened, at least. That was my rationalization and hope at that time.
So I contacted my good friend, Ken Foster. I think you’re friends with him as well, Sean. And he’s actually done a VO Meter stick for the show.
And he’s a member of their roster. And he was kind enough to provide a referral. And within the hour of him contacting them, I got a call from the, or should I say an email, saying, please call us.
And didn’t know what that meant. It was a little nerve wracking. But I made the call.
And Jimmy Cobble, my agent there now, said, welcome to the family.
That’s amazing. That’s so great. And I’m really glad you told me that, because I know several of the talent on their list.
So I might have to buy them a coffee or a beer.
Nope, sorry, they’re full.
Sorry.
There’s no availability whatsoever.
We totally are in the same wheelhouse of voice casting.
Yeah. So that’s my news. What’s been happening with you?
Very cool.
Cool.
Probably the biggest thing that’s happened is I got a new job with the Global Voice Acting Academy. So beforehand, I was kind of responsible for their membership program. I was their member liaison, and I still am.
But I’m also now their social media manager. So I manage our content, I create new content, and help promote our various services through our Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn pages. So, and for someone who spends as much time on Facebook as I do, that’s actually nice to get paid for it.
That’s awesome. How did that come about? Was that something you pursued, or did they ask you to expand your role?
My predecessor, the incredibly talented and very organized Mariel Navalle, was moving into a new business venture with her husband. They kind of moved across the US to the East Coast. And so she realized that having her own VO business and starting a restaurant would probably take up all of her time.
I had already been working with GVAA for about a year at that point, and they thought that I was probably the best replacement for her. So I humbly accepted, and here we are.
That’s fantastic. Congrats.
Well, thank you very much. I haven’t broken anything yet, but that doesn’t mean anything. So social media marketing is hard, and I’ve had to do quite a lot of personal research on how to go about it in the best way possible.
So it’s exciting and intimidating at the same time.
Yeah, I’ll bet. You know who you should contact? I hate to make referrals on the podcast.
No, I don’t. Who am I kidding? You should contact friend of the show, Chris Dottoli.
That’s what he does as well, part time, when he’s not doing voice work.
Excellent. Yeah, I would definitely do that.
Cool.
And we should have him on the podcast. I know we’ve talked about it before. I’d love to have him on just an episode, because I know he helped you with your recent con episode, or your con escapades.
Yeah, that was a lot of fun.
Yeah, he’s a definite friend of the show.
So what else is going on with you?
Well, personally, I made, what is it, my fourth trip to Hawaii in about a year to visit my girlfriend. And you guys know about Rachel, I think, at this point. I mean, we knew each other in college, and then we went our separate ways, and she moved off to Hawaii, and I was like, I’ve never been to Hawaii.
And then one thing led to another, and now I try to make it there quarterly.
Terrible excuse.
Terrible, terrible excuse. But we had a wonderful time. It’s actually about a year since we became a couple, so we got to celebrate our anniversary together.
Aw, woo! Funny story, though, because we knew October was a good month, but our anniversary’s on the 13th, so I was like, would it be better to come on the 13th or for Halloween? And she was like, Halloween.
I was like, yes, I love this woman. And anyone who knows me on Facebook knows that we dressed up as the Joker and Harley Quinn from the 90s animated Batman series, which is my favorite version of those characters. And she did an amazing job with the makeup.
I got nothing but compliments, both in person and online. And we even made a little Halloween greeting where we got to just practice our best Joker and Harley impressions. And considering that most of my friends are voice actors and they gave me some really positive feedback, it was really encouraging.
I enjoyed it a lot.
Yeah, that was cool. I have to admit, I didn’t understand the exact timeframe you were going over, which was a version of the character. I was thinking it was the Cesar Romero Joker, because that was the makeup I recognized most frequently.
Well, it’s really funny, because he is, like… I mean, he spans so many generations. To be honest, I call this kind of like my fusion Joker costume, because the costume itself was based off of Heath Ledger’s costume in The Dark Knight.
But the makeup was much more inspired by the Cesar Romero, the animated series, or even Jack Nicholson’s portrayal in the first Batman film. And then The Voice, of course, was based off of Mark Hamill, with his sort of like, his interesting, graspy, kind of almost British, but not quite, and ups and downs and all that kind of thing. So it was a lot of fun to do.
Awesome. Yeah, that was a cool video. Although I have to admit, I was terrified at first.
It should be. He’s a scary character. I mean…
Well, then you must have done a great performance.
Thank you, thank you. I got a lot of comments from people who are like, ooh, I peed a little.
So we have the Booth junkie, Mike DelGaudio, coming up. I know you guys are excited about that. Some of our fans have clamored for it.
But first, we’re going to have a VO Meter stick from friend of the show, Derrick Dorsey.
See.
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick. What did he say? It’s time for the VO…
Oh, never mind. The VO Meter shtick? Oh, got it.
Hi, Derrick Dorsey here for the VO Meter shtick. I first want to thank Paul and Sean for inviting me on to the podcast. I’m a relatively new voiceover talent, but I’m also a bass guitarist and touring musician of 30 plus years, performing all over the world for the military and civilians alike.
I was the bassist for the alternative rock band Jimmy’s Chicken Shack out of Annapolis, Maryland back in the late 90s and early 2000s. The band had a little bit of radio play and had a few videos on MTV. We also toured the US extensively with other bands, like Stained, Incubus, Fuel, 311 and Godsmack, just to name a few.
A few years later, I was the bassist for the Kelly Bell Band, which is a real cool blues band out of Baltimore, Maryland. Not only did we perform locally and up and down the East Coast, but we also toured worldwide, performing for our US military. When I decided to finally take that dive into the VO world, I admit having a sense of both excitement and apprehension.
But as I explored this voiceover thing a little further, I couldn’t help but notice that VO and my career as a musician had many similarities, which allowed me to draw from my experience and ease my anxiety. What I realize is that to even have a viable career as a voiceover artist, a professional musician, or any field in the performing arts, these few elements are crucial for a chance to be successful. And those elements are talent, passion, coaching, performance, practice, business, marketing, and persistence.
Now, I won’t go through every element that I just listed, but there is a couple that really resonated with me that I like to share. The first one was performance. Now, for me in the music world, it was nothing for me to play to a crowd of 50, 60, or even 70,000 people.
But in the voiceover world, performing for just one person was a scary proposition. I don’t have that guitar to hide behind. It’s just me, the microphone, and my voice.
And that’s where practice comes in and working with a good coach to help eliminate that fear and give you confidence behind the mic. The other area that also had similarities with the music biz is with regard to business. As a VO talent, you are a sole proprietor to your business, so you need to treat it as such.
You also need to file the appropriate tax forms that reflect that. Next is marketing. In VO, you have to have the ability to market yourself in order to get jobs.
This is so similar to the music biz. Now in the music world, for a local band or solo artist, you must be able to market yourself with an effective campaign to get people to see and like your band. You have to promote yourself months and weeks in advance, before and after shows, in order to build that fan base.
To give you an example, Jimmy’s Chicken Shack were able to market themselves so well that they were able to sell 20 or 30,000 of their own CDs before a major label even looked at them. So my point is this, that this is a numbers game when it comes to marketing and VO. So keep that hustle and remain persistent.
And that’s my time. Thanks for listening. And I wish you all continued success in your voice over journey.
Okay, Derrick, thank you so much for that. Funny story about Derrick. He was in a very popular band based here out of Baltimore called the Kelly Bell Band that I was a huge fan of.
I used to go see all the time at local bars back in the early part of the 2000s, even in 1998, 1999. It’s one of those bands that you go out and see and you’re like, these guys are gonna be huge. And they never got quite as big as I think Derrick probably would have hoped, or even I would have hoped, but he’s transitioned to voiceover and we’re happy to have him in the community.
So booth junkie Mike DelGaudio will be with us in a few minutes, but before that we have our questionable gear purchase. So I’ve had a strict no buy policy for the last couple of months, so why don’t you tell me about your escapades?
So yeah, speaking of booth junkies, I made some adjustments to my booth. We talked in the last episode about how I and then you tried to buy a double walled whisper room and eventually decided that was a bad idea. So what I had done was made some adjustments to my existing whisper room.
I think I was just starting that process at the end of the last episode. So that’s done. What we did was add, I had a contractor come over and we added some double walled drywall, not quite two layers, but Quiet Rock.
It’s a brand name that has two layers with a layer of absorbing material in between. And we put that on all the walls except for the door, then dropped a piece of plywood, or a piece of Quiet Rock on the floor with a piece of plywood over it. So I had basically almost a double walled whisper room, but sort of homemade.
And it’s helped a little bit. It hasn’t been the panacea I was hoping it would, but it has dropped my noise floor by about negative three or four dB, which is good. I do still have some rumble issues, which sort of led to me searching for mics again.
And what I decided to do was look for a less sensitive mic for audiobook work, because I was listening to my files, and or I should say my editor that I send most of my work to was listening to my files. And a lot of the notes that came back were noise in the background, hearing noise in the background. It’s all that stupid vibration that’s coming through the expander where I’m talking.
It works great. The expander works great to keep it out when I’m not talking, but when I’m actually doing the reading of the audio book, a lot of it still bleeds in at times. So I’m trying a less sensitive mic that I’m talking to you all on right now.
Familiar theme for the show, this is now an Audio Technica AT4051B. It’s a boom indoor dialogue mic that is used for TV shows, movie, filming. It’s similar to an Octava MK12 or there is a Rode…
Might need to choose a less obscure reference than that one.
Yeah, there’s a Rode K5, or N5 that some people might be familiar with. It’s basically a pencil mic, small diaphragm condenser that you put overhead, most of the time, that’s how I have it, pointed straight down at the source. So it’s in front of me, and I’m talking basically past the diaphragm.
I did some pretty extensive testing with this and my CAD E100S, and the AT875 shotgun that I still have. And this was by far the lowest noise floor with the expander on. I was able to actually turn the expander down a little bit from where I had it for the CAD, which is my entire goal was to have a less aggressive expander and still have the same sound.
And so far it seems to be doing a pretty good job. So I’m halfway through another audio book with it, and, you know, maybe by now we’ll see how it goes. But so far so good.
I was curious how you came upon that, Mike. Well, first off, I didn’t realize that small diaphragm condensers were used for indoor dialogue. Because, I mean, very often you’ll use something like the Sennheiser 416 or a shotgun mic like the Rode NTG3 or something like that on a boom arm.
I didn’t realize they had smaller pencil mics for that as well. And, I mean, Audio Technique is a great company, but what brought you to that particular mic?
So, I was watching a YouTube video by a fellow named Curtis Judd, who’s a videographer and mostly does corporate films by his own account. And he was doing a review between this AT4053B or 4053B, I’ll get to the distinction in a second, and the Rode NT5, which are both pencil mics, and comparing it to his existing NTG2, which is sort of like you were saying, more familiar shotgun mics that people use for overhead booming. And he said he really liked this Audio-Technica and became his favorite based on his tests, because it was easy to position and had the best self-noise and just sounded the best.
So there’s a predecessor, which is the AT405-1, and I bought that because it’s basically the only one I can find. They’re actually quite expensive if you’re looking for retail. The 405-3B retails for about $599, and the 405-1 was the same when it was first released.
So I found a used one at Guitar Center that was a little bit more reasonable, and that’s how I got into my booth.
And it sounds nice. I mean, it sounds very natural, very accurate, maybe a little bit softer than some of your other mics, but that’s kind of what you were looking for.
Yeah, exactly. So, again, I’ll probably not keep it, but for the time being, until I finish this next book, at least, it’s going to be in the booth.
Well, that’s awesome.
That’s it for me, believe it or not.
We would have a segment. I’ve gotten to the point where it’s like I really… and probably my girlfriend has played a part in that too.
She’s like, don’t buy any more stuff. But it’s gotten to the point where I would have to spend a lot more to really get any noticeable improvement. And I can always improve the acoustics and stuff like that beforehand.
I’m pretty happy with the mic interface combo I have right now.
Yeah, it’s true. And I think there’s a valid discussion that we should probably have about… there’s a point where you’re probably hearing more than most of your clients and an audience would hear.
So our friend Mike Norgard brought this up. He’s going to be on the next show with us. About how, at least in my personal case, my studio sounds great and there’s really no point in messing with it.
And he said I probably hear things that most people wouldn’t hear. And I found that to be true when I was recording the local author in my booth. There was a couple of pickups that I wanted him to do.
And it was basically him hitting the mic with his leg, I think, or the mic stand with his leg. And it was a little boom, boom, that thud you get when you have a low-frequency rumble in the booth. And I played it back for him over these monitors I have in the studio.
And he’s like, I don’t hear anything. I did it like ten times. And he said, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
I still hear nothing. So it’s worth mentioning that as voiceover artists and producers, we probably have ultra-sensitive hearing to issues that for the most part aren’t going to matter, especially if it’s behind music or other dialogue on a video.
And it’s funny because, I mean, as you practice doing this more, I mean, it’s something that you develop. Because my ears definitely were this sensitive to it before I started. When I listen to some of my older tracks with like my Porterbooth and my Blue Yeti, I just cringe because I was like, how did I not tell that it was awful?
It just sounded boxy and echoey. It was just ugh. But the funny thing is I still have clients who have that in their stock audio and will reuse it.
I’m like, why? Please let me redo that for you. But like you said, it’s just something that we pay more attention to.
But once you get to a certain standard and it doesn’t have to be the thousands of dollars studio, you can ride that for most of, not all of your career. So there’s other things that you can invest in that might be more helpful to your business, like a new marketing strategy or more training. So it’s just something to think about.
Now, if you like gear like me and Paul do, that’s a different story. But just accept that that’s the reason while you’re looking at new gear.
Yeah, fair enough. All right, so we won’t keep our fans waiting any longer. There’s been a huge response to us even floating the idea of having him on.
And we’re so excited to welcome the booth junkie, Mike DelGaudio. So welcome to the interview segment of this episode of The VO Meter. We are so excited for our current guest because Sean and I have been fans for a long time.
And frankly, can’t believe he actually agreed to come on. But joining us now is Mike DelGaudio. How are you, Mike?
Doing great. How are you?
Fantastic.
Thanks for having me on.
So, Mike, for those who don’t know or if you just want to sort of plug yourself, tell us a little bit about your background in VO and what you’re currently working on in the business.
Sure. Let’s see. I’ve been doing this professionally now for probably five years or so.
And I got into it because, you know, like many people, I’ve heard for most of my life, hey, you’ve got a great voice for radio. And when I was a younger man, a much younger man, I actually thought radio was going to be my career. And then I met some radio DJs and it turns out that it’s a really hard job.
It’s a hard life. And it’s not nearly as much fun as they make it seem when you’re listening to it on the radio. And so it didn’t necessarily pan out.
But I’ve never sort of lost the love for wanting to be behind a microphone. When I was a kid, they used to have infomercials on TV. And they would be, you know, the whole commercial break would be an infomercial.
At the end, there would be a blue screen with an 800 number, and it would say, $495 plus shipping and handling. Call now, 1-800-555-1212. And I was like, that’s the guy I want to be.
That was the guy I wanted to be. I never wanted to be on camera. I always wanted to be the guy behind the microphone that just had that great big voice and was doing the real announcer bit.
And, you know, that sort of, thank God, has fallen out of fashion. But some years later, as the technology allows us to work out of our home studios and actually create professional quality audio, video, movies, whatever it is, it sort of reinvigorated my desire and love for speaking into the microphone. And so I went and met with a coach and found a mentor, took a class, and as luck would have it, I just really fell into it, really fell in love with it.
Had an agent right away who started helping me find work, and it took off. It took off. And at that point, I was still going to the studio for much of things I was hired for.
And I realized I have somewhat of a background in technology. I was a programmer for a long time, so technical stuff was never really terrifying for me. But I realized that there was an awful lot that I didn’t know.
At first, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And then once I actually started to look at it, I was like, Oh my God, there’s a ton of this that I don’t know. I’m going to try and figure it out.
And that’s sort of what prompted me to learn about home studios and to create my YouTube channel about that. And luckily, now that I’ve been able to figure this out at home and set it up at home, it’s led to lots of different work. I’m going to work for Anheuser-Busch next week, and I work on the No Sleep Podcast.
If you guys are familiar with that, I read for the New York Times once a week on Audible. You know, lots of stuff. If anybody wants me to say something, I’m always happy to try and lend my voice to it.
And it’s just I’ve fallen in love with it, sort of re-fallen in love with it, and I try and work just as much as I can now.
That’s great. So you mentioned only five years full-time, or at least five years pursuing it as much as you can. Did you have any training in college or time on the radio?
No, other than college radio. I ran the radio station in college in my junior and senior year, but it was nothing to speak of. It was totally volunteer-driven.
It wasn’t an academic program in any way. I did not have… I didn’t take any classes as a kid.
I took some classes as I got older, and I am lucky enough to be married to a woman who is very involved in the American theater. So she’s very comfortable working with actors. She’s a director.
She really knows how to direct. She is really… I get to live sort of with a coach, an acting coach, which helps a great deal.
She really helps me with script interpretation and line readings and so forth. She’s really awesome at it.
Well, that’s awesome. So one of the things that the audience by now must be getting sick of is me finding people who I have some sort of commonality with. And you mentioned the college radio.
That was at Loyola College, correct?
That’s right.
So that’s here in Baltimore, where I am broadcasting from at the moment. And I went to a school just up the street called Towson State. Probably when you were there, it was still Towson State like me.
And I was on the college radio station there. So that’s sort of where I got my start. And similar to you, I sort of took different paths.
But I’ve come back to it over the last three years.
Your radio station was the station I listened to because my radio station was only on closed circuit. Towson State and Loyola had a very significant size difference. And Towson’s radio…
I probably listened to you quite a bit because I was a big fan of Towson’s radio station.
Well, maybe. I was on Sunday mornings. I turned on the transmitter and was on Sunday mornings from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. So maybe you weren’t listening then.
At least I hope not. Maybe you were having some more fun. So thanks for the information about the background.
But what most people know you from is your YouTube channel and the Booth Junkie series. So let’s talk a little bit about that. How did that start?
Well, as I mentioned, I started to really investigate and try and learn about what I needed to do in order to have the best possible quality sound here out of my house. Because there’s a lot more work available to us if we can work out of the house and we don’t have to necessarily book studio time. And when I first started, I found lots of good studio-related stuff.
How to use a DAW, how to set up a studio. But not a lot of it, for me, was around professional quality voiceover work. There was lots of set it up so you can play music or do music production.
But I was really interested in learning about what VSTs, what plugins do I need to use? How does my preamp need to be set up? What sort of microphone do I need in order to sound like the guys on TV who are narrating television shows, who are the voices of commercials, or doing audiobooks or anything like that.
And I found that I wasn’t finding as much. I’d have to translate what I was learning for music production and translate it over into voiceover. And I was very grateful for all of those people who made those videos.
And I thought, well, I’m going to… First, I started with, I’m just going to document what I learned. I think my first video was how to put together my whisper room, because I could find nothing on how to put together this whisper room that I’m in, that I bought secondhand.
I had no idea. I was like, oh my God, I’ve got to figure this thing out. And I bought it disassembled.
I had no instruction. I had to totally figure it out. And so that sort of had me think about, okay, what else didn’t I know that might help the next person?
And the thing that really got me jazzed about it is I was learning the… My preferred DAW is Reaper. And I put together a whole series of everything I needed to know in order to start doing voiceover in my DAW.
And so I just did a whole series called Reaper for voiceover. And that was just really getting myself set up, getting it configured, what plugins do you need to use in order to do that? My first couple of people who found it were like, why aren’t you charging for this?
And it was really just, I want to pay it forward. So many people put this stuff out for me. I want to put it out for the next person.
I’m a firm believer in good karma. I don’t really charge… I may someday create a master class or something, but right now I just want to put it out there.
Put it out into the world. It’s been very good to me. People are very kind in return.
They loan me their equipment in return. So I believe in the good karma of it. I just want to put stuff out there and help the next person.
You can really sense the passion for helping others in it. And if you’ve never seen the Booth Junkie videos, especially like the Reaper for Voice Over, Mike does a fabulous job of really breaking down this kind of intimidating, or what can be intimidating, concepts and just making it really accessible to people who are just getting started and don’t know where to get started. So I’m curious, do you have an educational background at all, Mike?
Not formal. In a past life and a past job, I was just a corporate trainer. I’d stand up in front of groups and I would train them and create PowerPoint presentations and stuff like that.
So I learned how to become comfortable in front of groups. I also learned things that made my class more enjoyable for me to teach and more enjoyable for the students to take, professional students. And so some of that probably translated back into my videos.
I liked to have scenario-based training. I like to make it somewhat snappy, not overly bland. I try to keep them moving.
I’m not sure. I was still pretty new to a lot of it in my Reaper for Voice Over series. I probably should go back and watch it and see if it still applies.
But I do have some amount of just corporate background in that from past jobs. And that’s how I did it. I just used some of those same techniques that I learned in the 90s when I was making training videos.
I love that style personally. One of the first things I saw from you was the Whisper Room video that you spoke about. And it helped me tremendously because I did the same thing.
I bought it at Whisper Room. Sight unseen. Brought it back here.
Wasn’t even sure I had all the parts. And I said, oh my God, what did I just do? And thank goodness I found your video.
And it helped me tremendously. Put my own Whisper Room up. And yeah, it was really helpful.
But I love the way you have that sort of Ferris Bueller type style of breaking the fourth wall. Although I know you’re talking to the camera anyway. But I love when you have something that you either forgot, like you forgot to bring the mic pop filter in, and you just go and get it in the middle of the video and come back.
I love that style where you’re so informal. It’s really engaging. That’s good.
That’s good. Because many of my videos, I just vamp. You know, I try and research them, but I don’t script them.
So I do vamp and all of a sudden I’ll go, oh my gosh, I should go mention this thing. And I just walk out and I try and edit out. I mean, sometimes they’ll be might…
I might leave the camera running for 10 minutes, and luckily I’ll just try and snip that stuff out. But I want it to feel like it’s you and me talking.
Well, it definitely gets that… It definitely accomplishes that, I think.
Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. I’m glad it doesn’t feel too disjointed.
No, no. I mean, you’re very personable, and like you sound very genuine when you do these videos. And like you said, it’s just like you’re talking to us, and it’s not too formal, and people don’t really get…
It’s just accessible, like I said. People want to listen to you talk or teach them these things.
That’s cool. Yeah, I’ll share a story. We actually were talking…
We weren’t talking about booking you quite yet, and another fan of our podcast reached out to me and said, you know who you should talk to? Mike DelGaudio. And I said, yeah, that’s a great idea.
Come on, let’s do it. And that’s when I reached out to you. So you’re resonating.
Yeah, that’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. I really…
It’s very gratifying to hear. Sometimes what we do on YouTube, it’s a little bit of a vacuum. We get the comments, but it’s a little bit of a vacuum.
You never know if what you’ve made is any good until you put it out there. And there’s some videos I go, I don’t know if I did this well or not. I’m going to put it out there, and hopefully people don’t completely tear me apart on it.
There have been a couple of videos where, like, this was not your best effort. Okay, I’m going to learn for that. I’m going to move forward from it.
But you do… I’m very lucky that in my little tiny, tiny, tiny corner of YouTube, people tend to be pretty kind, because YouTube doesn’t always have the reputation as having the kindest comment section. But I’ve been very gratifying to see.
So tell us a little bit, because like you said, as you got started, a lot of it was kind of sort of archiving your own journey and what you’ve learned and sharing it. But you’ve also kind of moved into this other branch of product reviews. Can you tell us a little bit about how that got started?
It… I have just sort of backed into it by accident. It really…
It wasn’t the thing I intended to do. It turned out that I really liked doing it. And it seems that it resonates with people, because my reviews are not like…
You know, I’m not like Marques Brownlee. I’m not doing these really in-depth technical reviews. I try…
The thing that I try and do, especially with the microphone reviews, which is the part that really seems to resonate with people, is I want people to hear them, and I want people to have a way to compare them to at least something else. And so that’s why I almost always do my microphone reviews with two microphones, and I try and swap back and forth. For me, there was nothing more frustrating than to watch a microphone review, and they talk on some other microphone for five minutes, and then give you 30 seconds of the way the mic sounds.
That’s not enough time for me to judge. I want you to hear the whole thing on the microphone, and let’s just back and forth between something else. That way you have a point of reference, a point of comparison.
And so that’s how I want it to be for me, and so I hope that’s how other people enjoy hearing it. And I try and anticipate, if I would want to hear this particular microphone that I’m reviewing against something else, then I try and figure out of my small inventory, small but now growing inventory of microphones, which ones would sound better against each other. And I try and do the side by sides as much as I can.
But it was really… I didn’t go into it with any intention. It started with other people who were watching my videos, and there have been a few people who have said, I got this thing.
Do you want to try this thing? I’ll send you this thing, and you can keep it for a couple of weeks and try this microphone and send it back to me. And for whatever reason, they trusted me.
Thank goodness they trusted me. I’m a trustworthy person. But there have been a few folks that have sent me, at one time, like $4,000 or $5,000 worth of stuff.
And we’re internet strangers. But I always return the microphone. I always, you know, and I give it back.
But that’s sort of how it has happened. I don’t… more and more companies now want to send me things.
And sometimes I say yes, and sometimes I say no. But it… and I try whenever it’s, you know, something that a company has sent me, I just set it up against something else, and I just talk.
And I try and, you know, I’ll give you the specs, but I want you to hear it. That’s going to be the best way to anticipate. And I always try and say, if it’s good for my voice.
My voice is not yours. My voice is not anybody else’s. I try and say what sounds good for me.
And as people, now that I’ve gotten a whole bunch of them, you can sort of say, oh yeah, I hear these drastic differences. And in many cases, the not so drastic differences between a $200 mic, a $500 mic, and a $2,000 mic. So, I mean, that’s a long way of saying I backed into product reviews.
It really wasn’t my goal, but I’m enjoying making them, and people seem to enjoy watching them, so I’m going to keep doing them.
Oh yeah, I know I enjoy watching them very much, and I like making my own product reviews as well. So I’m curious, is there any advice that you can offer, like camera techniques, or… You’ve sort of touched on it a little bit, but what your goal is when you do a product review?
Well…
Free stuff?
I wish I was… The thing I’m learning is the photography part of it is much harder than I expected. I thought the photography part was going to be super easy.
The photography part, and it’s maybe because my space is very limited, and my equipment is pretty limited. I try and use as much duct tape and bubble gum and PVC tubing as I can to try and do this. I mean, I have probably 100 feet of PVC tubing, and I do everything with PVC if I can.
But the things that I’ve learned is the photography is hard. It does require an investment. I still am just using HD cameras.
My cameras don’t have microphone inputs. I have to synchronize everything after the fact. Yeah, and anyway, my camera is outside the booth, and I record to SD cards on my Sony cameras.
It doesn’t go into the computer. I synchronize it all after the fact.
Oh, wow. If anybody doesn’t know how hard that is, that must be a labor of love.
Well, that’s why you see me in many of the videos. That’s why I clap in the beginning. That’s the classic, just synchronize.
It makes it really super easy to synchronize it. Synchronize it that way. And luckily, everything seems to line up.
I’ve got a couple of these little entry-level Sony cameras, but it’s hard to find them with a good screen that flips up to see.
I now have my technique. I do all my video editing in Reaper, the same DAW that I use for all of my audio. It’s all one really straightforward workflow for me now.
So I’ve got my process fairly well wired at this point. But I think learning your tools, and you don’t have to overdo it. My videos are pretty low-fi.
I have virtually no effects. I have no transition. I don’t do motion tracking.
My cameras are always shaky. But I think it’s… I try to make it as good as I can, but I don’t fetishize my photography.
And I think that’s sort of how I come to my own style. I remember… Sorry, forgive me this one tangent.
I remember watching a documentary with the three guitar guys. It was Jack White and Jimmy Page. And I should have prepared this story better.
Anyway, Jack White was talking, and he said, I like to… I play with a Montgomery Ward guitar, and the action is really high. And I like to put my amplifier just out of reach.
I want it to be just a little bit hard to do. And that makes it so that I work harder to do it, and it makes me have my own style, as it were. Because everything has to be just a little bit harder.
Not impossible. But I want to have to work for it. And that’s sort of how it has come to me.
That has resonated with me for whatever I’m doing. And I try and optimize my workflow, and I do try and make things so I can work efficiently. But I do try and make it just a little bit hard on myself so that I have to work for it.
I don’t want it to just be effortless, effortless all the time, especially when I’m creating the videos. I want to have to work for it just a little bit. And I think that’s how my style has evolved.
I don’t know if that makes sense. I don’t know if that makes sense.
No, it does. I mean, you’re challenging yourself and meeting the task. I like it.
I think it’s a common theme among creative people. I just… You may have heard the episode where I went down to Oticon, the anime convention, and we talked to the guys from Men at Arms.
They build these crazy weapons based on video games and anime, and then bring it to the renaissance festivals and other conventions. So the one creator there said, his biggest tip to the fans was, do the hard things first, and the easy things will come easy. Because you challenge yourself to do the hard things, and then it won’t seem so hard the next time you do it.
And it’s a really great sort of life lesson.
That is a great piece of advice. Tackle the hardest part first, because then it only gets easier. Don’t put the hardest thing till the end.
Right, exactly. So you’re an unapologetic gearhead, as are Sean and I both. You seem to be more of a collector versus me who is a flipper.
And I wanted to find out what some of your favorite mics are.
I am not a flipper. That is correct. Some of my favorite mics, and let’s see.
In order of preference, my typical go-to microphone, the one that is in my stand by default, is the Sennheiser MKH416. That’s what you’re hearing me on right now. That shotgun microphone.
Love it. I think it’s perfection for my voice. It really makes my voice exactly the way I want it to sound.
It stays out of the way, but it’s not the perfect microphone. There are some situations where it doesn’t necessarily work. My next favorite is probably the CAD E100S.
Oh, you’re hearing that right now as well from my side.
Oh, very good. If you get one, and I feel bad about this because a lot of people have bought that microphone on my recommendation, but CAD does seem to have a touch of a quality control issue with that microphone where you’re going to flip a coin whether or not you get hiss or you get no hiss. If you get one with no hiss, that microphone is glorious at its price point.
It is neutral, it’s easy to use, it’s easy to work.
It’s forgiving at the same time.
It’s forgiving, yeah. It’s really a nice microphone. If it is silent, if you hear that microphone making a sound, you’ve got to send it back to CAD and you’ve got to be like, you’ve got to fix this because it should be quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet.
You should not hear that microphone at all. And unfortunately, I hear too many people tell me that there’s a hiss.
Well, I felt like you really did us a service with some of your videos because I feel like CAD was a lot more resistant to address the problem until they’re like, or like, look, we’ve got a video showing that this mic is louder than it’s supposed to be. Like, please do something about this. And then I feel like there was just waves of people sending in their mics and actually getting it back.
Well, followers of our podcast know, we have a bit of a spotted history with the CAD E100S. I was someone who, and I was actually living in Japan at the time. So I found a great deal on Massdrop, but they told me it was going to be like something close to two months before I got it.
And then first mic got lost in shipping. Second mic came later than expected, but was, or excuse me, first mic was noisy. Second mic got lost in shipping.
Third mic never got processed, so they just refunded me my money. So it was just a very sour, sour experience. And then about a month or two ago, I just like, I felt the itch again, possibly because of your videos talking about how great it was.
And I decided to get another one just to try it out against some of the other mics I had. And it did sound great, but I just didn’t need it at that point. So I knew someone who did, who we’re also talking to right now, and I sent it to him, and he loves it.
Very good.
The thing I do recommend to people is, if you can find a vintage E100, the one from the 90s, I have no experience with the E100 II or E100 squared. I’m not sure how you pronounce it. But the old E100s from the 90s, with a 9-volt battery in it, I love that microphone, too.
And that one you can often get for like $200. And if it’s still around after this long, there’s a good chance that it’s going to be nice and quiet. You just pop new rechargeable batteries in there, and you’re good to go.
I’ve got two of them. I love them. Because I buy them on Craigslist.
If one comes along on Craigslist, and it’s under $200, I’m going to go buy it just so I have it. And maybe someday I’ll flip it, but I’m more of a collector myself.
That makes two of us.
So any others you recommend, Harley?
Any other microphones I recommend, Harley? There’s one that I don’t own that I hope to own at some point. There’s a studio here in town that I’m in front of this microphone every time I’m in their studio, and it’s the Peluso P87, which is a vintage…
I guess after the patents on the Neumann old vintage U87 ran out, a bunch of people made these 87-style microphones, and the Peluso, I love the way I sound on that one, and it could be combined with their outboard gear that they run me through, but every time I’m in front of that microphone in that studio, I’m like, what is this secret sauce? This sounds amazing. It’s smooth, it’s robust, I sound great, it sounds great when I’m close, it sounds great when I’m six inches off it.
I just love the way that microphone sounds. And it’s like… It’s a thousand bucks.
It’s an expensive microphone. But in retrospect, I would put that up against my TLM 103, my Neumann. I would definitely flip a coin on where my $1,100 was going to go between the Peluso and the TLM 103.
I have the 103, and so that’s what I stick with, but I definitely would have considered the Peluso had I known about it at the time.
Excellent. So what are some of your… I mean, because you’ve reviewed so many different products and so many different microphones at different price points, but you’ve also got some of these more eclectic videos where, say, you’re reviewing a portable preamp or even a handheld recorder.
So what are some of your favorite videos to do and what kind of inspires you to be like, well, nobody knows about this product, I’m going to make a video about it?
I try and review… A lot of the things that I’ve reviewed have been things that I have been trying to find for myself. A lot of the portable stuff has been me…
I often have obligations that if I’m traveling, either for vacation or for whatever reason, that I still have to audition, I still may need to punch in a recording, fix something, or I may need to actually record something. The New York Times doesn’t wait. The New York Times is Friday night, and if I’m in a hotel in Kenosha, I want to record for The New York Times.
I don’t want to say, you have to find a substitute for me. And so a lot of it has been, is there a USB mic that I can take? Is there a portable recorder that I can take?
How can I take this and not put my equipment at risk? How can I take this and not have TSA confiscate it? What can I do?
And so I’ve run through a whole bunch of stuff, and I have not found my perfect secret travel stuff yet. I’ve gotten close. The sound devices stuff is really good.
If you can get past the price point for it, that’s definitely pro-level gear. The Zoom H5 has been an extremely resilient, robust piece of equipment for me. I have not had a ton of luck with any USB microphones.
I’ve got an Apogee 96K that’s sitting on the shelf that I have to do a review for. I’m just waiting to actually use it out in the field a little bit more. But so much of this stuff, there’s a Saramonic little tiny portable recorder that I thought if this works, it’s going to be the greatest device ever.
This little Saramonic supplies phantom power, and it was the size of a couple of matchboxes. And I thought, this is going to be perfect. I can just plug my shotgun microphone into it and I’m going to pack it in my bag, and that’s all I need.
And it turns out that the preamps kind of sucked in it, and so I haven’t settled on it. But to circle back, the reason I do many of these is because they’re something that are trying to fulfill a need that I have. To make my recordings better, to make travel easier, to make my studio life so that I can work and get the sound that I want.
A lot of it is for my own needs. That’s where I come up with this stuff.
Do you take requests, or is that something you might look to in the future? Like a reader comment says, hey, I want to hear about the new RØDE NTG1. Would you do that?
Yeah, sure, absolutely. And I do. I get so many people that say, have you tried the Aston Origin?
No, I haven’t. Have you tried the Aputure Deity? No.
And my response is, if I can get my mitts on one, I’ll absolutely review it. Because there’s lots and lots of it. I kept hearing about the NT1, the RØDE NT1, which I hadn’t used.
And so finally, I did send a message to RØDE. I said, hey, if there’s ever an opportunity for me to use this mic, I’d love to try it. I don’t reach out to companies very often.
I’ve done it a couple of times for companies that I’m really interested in. But under most circumstances, I don’t. There have been some companies that have approached me.
Mostly they’re Amazon sellers. I get them every day right now. Somebody from China is trying to send me their no-name microphone.
And most of the time now, I have to say no to it. But I’ll always… Yeah, if I take requests…
It’s hard, because many times, it’s me outlaying my own money, and a lot of this equipment isn’t cheap. So that’s why I’m always very grateful if somebody sends me something, and I take very good care of it. Anybody who ever sends me a microphone or a preamp or anything, if somebody sends it to me, I take very good care of it, and I ship it up, and I package it very nicely, and I send it back.
But a lot of times, that’s how I do it, because it’s not like this stuff is pouring money into my bank account right now. It’s something I love doing. I’m really enjoying doing it, and as long as I have the love for it, and it gets to introduce me to people like you guys, where I get to talk this business, I get to meet other people, and just sort of spread the good karma around.
That’s why I’m going to continue to do it. But yeah, I’ll take requests, sure. If I can figure it out, I’ll definitely do requests.
Great. What’s next for Booth Junkie? Is it going to be a continuing labor of love, or do you have some plans to make it your entire business?
What’s really next for the channel?
You know, it’s a good question. What’s next for the channel? Right now, to just continue doing it as I’m enjoying it.
I don’t really have these grand designs and turning it into a media empire. I have thought about if there was a way to do the audition and connection between voice actor and company better. I’ve spoken with some people…
Not to actually build a product or anything like that, but I’ve spoken with people about the way the industry is currently being disrupted with some of the pay-to-play websites that are out there. Of course, we all make money, but I do feel like there’s a lack of transparency. I feel like there’s probably a better way to connect voice actors to products in a way that is both ethical and transparent, and everybody can still, in quotes, make money.
Everybody can still make money. That’s why we’re all in business, is to make money. But I feel like there’s a way to do it without some of the consternation that happens in the marketplace right now without going into the whole politics of it.
And I’d certainly like to do that, because it’s something, again, that I have experienced for myself. And I know lots of people, it’s how do I find work? How do I connect with that work?
How do I charge for that work in a way that makes me competitive but doesn’t price me out of the business or injure other voice actors by undercutting the market? How can we do that in a way that works for everybody? And that’s certainly something, that’s where a lot of my interest is for the future.
How can we do that? How can all of us folks back in our bedroom, now that we have our studio set up, how can we connect with the people who want to hear our voices and want to pay us for our voices and how can we lend our voices to their products? And so that’s something that I would like to, I would definitely like to investigate in the future.
Every once in a while I sketch it out. I was a web developer, showing my age. I was a web developer in the late 90s, early 2000s.
I made a lot of websites in my life. And so every once in a while I go back and I’m like, I should just put fingers to keyboard and start to code that. But it’s not where my head is right now to write that code anymore.
But that’s the kind of thing that I’d like to do. I feel like there is a model out there that can help voice actors find work and have companies find voice actors without the issues that are currently surrounding the pay-to-play. I think that’s available to us.
That’s great. I look forward to hearing where you take that. Me too.
Such a charitable soul. That’s wonderful.
You know, I’m not opposed to people making money, but I do feel like there is a lot of swirl and consternation around it that doesn’t need to be there. And hopefully somebody, me, you, them, somebody will find a better model and hopefully it will catch on.
Great. Sean, any other questions?
No, I think that pretty much wraps things up.
Well, Mike, where can people find you if they want to contact you or just absorb your content or hire you?
If you want to find me, just go to boothjunkie.com. That’s just a redirect. It’ll take you right to my YouTube channel.
And so I love for people to watch the videos and hopefully enjoy them. I’m at boothjunkie on Twitter. I’m at boothjunkie on Instagram, although I don’t use Instagram as much as I should.
I’m bad at remembering it. And you can also send me email, mike at boothjunkie.com. And I don’t mind putting that email address out there.
Feel free to contact me. I do try and answer. I get a lot of questions.
I get a lot of questions right now. I do try and answer as many questions as I can. So if you do contact me directly, I will definitely try and get back to you if at all possible.
Sometimes I can’t, but I do encourage people to reach out if they have questions, and I’ll try and help you. Sometimes it will say, can I turn it into a video? And sometimes that’s how it works.
Great. Well, Mike, we thank you so much for being here. As I said, Sean and I are both big fans.
I feel like we are on sort of similar trajectories. The reason we started this podcast was for the very same reasons you mentioned, that we’ve received so much help from people in the VO community. It’s the most giving community I’ve ever been a part of as a business person, and we’re just trying to pay it forward just like you.
It’s the way to be.
So we’ll talk to you soon. Wish you the best of luck.
Thank you. Same to you. Thank you so much for having me on.
And we’re back. First off, I want to say thank you so much to Mike DelGaudio of Booth Chunky. I’ve seen a lot of comments that a lot of people are just like, oh man, he seems so down to earth and so nice.
And it’s absolutely true. He’s just such a real nice guy, and he’s got great advice and just a really good outlook on trying to give back to the community, which is something that we see so often in the voiceover community, and I really, really love to be a part of it because of it. Anyways, so that pretty much wraps up this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We’ve got a lot of great episodes coming up. We’ve got the… or next episode, we have our VO Meetup Roundtable, where we have some other up-and-coming voice actors, or VOs that have been in the trenches, that got started about the same time we did, and that we’ve worked together with over the years, just kind of think tanking new ideas and trying to progress our careers together.
We also have Gerald Griffith, the coordinator of VO Atlanta, the Voice Over Conference, which is coming up March 1st through 4th, I believe. And then we also have some great voice actors and voice coaches, David Rosenthal, my boss from the Global Voice Acting Academy, and Mark Cashman, author of VO, that’s V-O, like as an O kind of thing, which is a great book. And he’s a great coach, so I’m excited to have both of them on.
Yeah, I can’t wait to talk to all of those gentlemen, and we’ll look forward to speaking to them coming in the new year. So for my co-host Sean Daeley, I’m Paul Stefano for the VO Meter. See you next time, everybody.
Have a great day, everyone. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter. Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.

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

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

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

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode 13 of the VO Meter podcast.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
I am Sean Daeley with my host, Paul Stefano.
Hi, everybody.
Hi, everybody. It’s like the clerks on The Simpsons, oh, my pimples.
A mix of that and maybe President Clinton.
Oh, gotcha there. Well, that’s a lot of fun to do. So we have a wonderful guest on today, voice actor and coach Terry Daniel.
You might know him from his very open Facebook presence in the voiceover camp and the voiceover pros groups. But other than that, since we have a coach and demo producer on the show today, the topic of the day is demos and demo production. Some exciting stuff.
So, before we talk about that specific topic of the day, let’s quickly do some current events. What has happened in your VO world in the last couple of weeks, Sean?
Well, just kind of recovering from the summer. I just got back from vacation, as we talked about in our last episode, so just trying to get some projects wrapped up. Every month, I’ve got these very long e-learning projects from my first and most loyal client, and so I have to make sure that those are all polished and done in a few days.
Other than that, I got some new international clients that I’m excited about, and working on an audio textbook for an actual English Language Institute in the Middle East. So some increasingly fun projects. I’ve seen some people complain that July was an incredibly dead month for them, and for me, it’s actually been one of my most successful ones this year.
So, yay! What about you, Paul?
Yeah, I’m actually in the same boat. I wrote, I think, that same post you were reading from Dan Hurst. I wrote that I’ve had my most successful month, I think, too.
I just wrote a blog post about it that John Florian picked up, and it’s going to feature on Voice Over Extra this week, so that’ll be cool. But it comes from a couple of e-learning projects that I did, where I signed up with this big e-learning company about six months ago, and waited patiently till they got me a few jobs, but now they’re starting to come in, and they’re all union scale or close to union scale for explainer work or e-learning. And I’ve done three of them so far.
I have another one that’s coming up this week, and they pay on time, and it’s fantastic.
Wonderful, wonderful.
I also am in the middle of four audiobooks that are in various stages of completion. One’s almost done, one’s in editor’s hands, and two more have to start. And then, finally, I have done some work for that giant 10,000, or was it 60,000-word e-learning project I mentioned in episode 10.
I’ve done the first couple jobs for them. They’re coming in very slowly, a few sentences at a time. So whenever they come in, I just knock those out, send them off.
They pay me the per-minute rate, and it’s worked out well so far. Hopefully, those will keep coming.
Very cool. I actually, unfortunately, I did lose a recent e-learning client. It was like an 18,000 word project.
So they auditioned My Voice. It was actually a referral from our friend, Mike Norgard. And it was a project that the time-to-rate ratio was no longer working out for him.
So he recommended me. And unfortunately, they’re just like, we can’t quite get the sound from you we want. But they’re very cordial.
And I felt like it was a bad fit too. So I’m not too disappointed. But yeah, something that I wanted to bring up is because, as you noticed, Paul and I, we do a lot of either audiobook work or e-learning or corporate training stuff.
And that kind of work doesn’t really have dead periods throughout the year, unlike say commercial or some of the broadcast television work that you can be doing, which tends to kind of peter out during the winter and summer holidays because everyone’s on vacation. So…
Especially if you’re working with other countries.
Yeah, exactly.
Because maybe vacation here in the US., but I’m working with a company in Australia, where it’s winter.
Exactly, exactly. So, I mean, these are all things that you should consider. I mean, if you get to a point where you’re doing multiple genres of work, you could basically be working through the entire year because you’re like, oh, like during the bulk months, you got your commercial and promo work.
And then during the quieter ones, you can work on your longer e-learning or audio book stuff.
So that brings us to our topic of the day for discussion. And we’re going to talk about demos and some faux pas that some people might make when they’re starting out. And we’ll talk about our experiences with our demo production.
So I’ll start off with the biggest faux pas that everyone tells you not to do. And I think we talked about this in episode one as just the biggest overall newbie mistake, but producing your own demos. And I was totally guilty of this.
I created some that I thought sounded good. I used a friend’s music catalog because he was offering it to me for free. And great tunes, but that wasn’t necessarily the best fit for the copy I was writing.
I wrote my own copy with zero experience other than my bachelors in journalism. And they were terrible. But I put them out of my website and we’re actually going to play one right here so you can hear just how terrible it is.
But it suffices to say, it didn’t get me any work. And all it did was get me criticism from, and rightfully so, from all the VO pros that are out there. When you have a job to do, the last thing you need to think about is where to lay your head.
You want to know when the day is done, you can relax, recharge, and get ready to do it all again tomorrow. You have a dream, but you’ve put it on hold. Maybe it’s about the kids.
Maybe it’s about the house. Maybe it’s about the time. Well, the one thing it doesn’t have to be about is the money.
With the Next Day Small Business Loan from Mayfield Community Bank, you can make that dream a reality. Open your eyes. Stretch your arms.
Do you hear that? No? Nothing?
Exactly. When you go camping, all the hustle and bustle of your normal world just melts away along with your cares. Go.
Oh, Paul, Paul, Paul. How far you’ve come.
Or a little bit, at least.
Well, to your credit, it can be a great learning experience to try and produce your own demo. It’s like writing those letters that you don’t end up actually sending because it could get you in trouble. Yeah, that’s a fair point.
But it’s important. I’m working on some new demos with the Global Voice Acting Academy, and they really want me to be as involved as possible. They want me to do my own research, figure out where my voice fits in with what products, try and find my own scripts, maybe write my own scripts.
And they do want a much higher level of involvement. But whether or not you want to do that for your first demo is debatable. And as Paul said, you should definitely get some feedback from trusted sources before you go off submitting it to agencies and stuff like that.
Yeah, that was the key. Once I heard from the pros out there, mostly on the VOBB, that was a terrible idea. I did immediately take them down, and it was a good choice.
But it’s interesting that you brought that up, though, Paul, because recently in our sort of VO support group, we’ve been talking about genres where making your own demo might actually be a good idea.
Yeah, that can’t be the case. Audiobooks specifically, the coach that we work with, Sean Pratt, has suggested that you create your own samples for your audiobook work, and that was echoed at VO Atlanta when I was listening to Amy Rubenet talk, where she said the same thing, that your audiobook samples really only need to be you reading an audiobook or the text of a book. And there are some criteria that Sean recommends.
It’s that it’s about a five-minute length and that it’s one genre, one piece, so it could be young adult, drama, it could be historical or non-fiction, but it should be one genre that showcases your talent in that specific type of work.
And another thing is that since a lot of people are self-producing for say ACX or just have a home studio, your demo is selling your studio as well. So like with commercial and narration, you might be going into an external studio still when you’re working with an agency. But for things like e-learning or audio books, you really want to showcase your studio sound too.
Yeah, exactly. So let’s shift gears and talk about professionally produced demos. I know you had one done early on I believe with our guest today.
Let’s talk about those experiences.
Yes, I actually had several demos done with Terry, because I wanted to do all of the voice over.
I will do all the voice over.
I will do all the voices. All of them. Oh God, don’t get me started.
My girlfriend and I just slip into German all the time. There was one time we went on a nature hike, and we were just talking like this for the whole time. And then when we got to the top of this beautiful, it’s called Moana Falls, we heard some…
We were eavesdropping on some people talking behind us, a couple of tourists, and it was like, so where are y’all from? Oh, via from Germany. I hope they didn’t hear us on the way up.
But anyway, so I wanted to do Oz devices, and I talked with Terry, and I was like, I want a commercial demo, I want a narration demo, I want an audiobook, and I want a telephony or IVR. And he hooked me up with all of them. And that was about, four years ago.
We worked together for about six months, and then I actually told him, you know what, I think I’m ready for a demo. And he’s like, you know what, I think you are. As I mentioned later in the interview, I actually traveled home to the States to visit my family.
I was still in Japan at the time, and then had booked a local studio from there. That way it was a lot easier to coordinate schedules, and I could communicate better with the engineer, and didn’t have to use broken Japanese. And Terry didn’t have to try and navigate the Japanese at all, which I’m sure he appreciated.
How did that work out for you?
Really, really well. Like I said, this was almost four years ago, and depending on what circles you inhabit in the voiceover realm, people will recommend different amounts of time before you should update your demos. Some people say once every three years, some every two, every year.
I’ve heard as often as every six months.
Wow.
Yeah, I mean, if you can afford it, you want the most current content you can get that really showcases your ability. But honestly, I’m still booking work off of my demos from four years ago. As long as it showcases your abilities and it sounds like you, why change it?
Awesome. My first professionally produced demo was done with Edge Studio, and that was as part of their training program where there was a package deal, and there was a set amount of weeks where you were doing classes and then individual coaching with some of their coaches privately, and that was to be determined how many sessions you had until they thought you were demo ready. So once that was done, we did the demo.
I went to a professional studio in Washington, DC., and they recorded it for me there with a phone patch into Rachel Butera, my coach at Edge, and mine came out great. It signed me to my first five agencies.
Wow.
They seemed to love it, and I had a really great experience there. Now, the one thing I want to caution against is that in that sort of environment where you have group classes and a pre-determined time where you’re going to produce your demo, you want to be careful that you’re ready, because I have heard people have bad experiences with that type of environment. Where they felt like they were pushed out the door because they weren’t ready.
Now, in my case, similar to what I did with Terry, which we’ll talk about in a second, I was champing at the bit. I was ready to go. I was studying all the time, practicing as much as I could, and I thought I was ready.
And I pushed that process along. And I also made sure that I was heavily involved in the process. I think that’s another problem that sometimes people have.
Especially if they’re brand new, they feel like they shouldn’t put in any input because what could they possibly provide to these professionals up on high that must know better? And I would caution you to know thine self, as Shakespeare said, and know what you want to get accomplished with your demo. I definitely had that mindset where I had a certain sound I wanted to get across, and I was not going to let them tell me any different.
And I think it bared… The results speak for themselves, where I was immediately signed to some agency, so it must have gone pretty well.
Well, it’s an important skill set to start building as early as possible, because one thing that we don’t consider is that we’re creative collaborators. We work with a whole other team. Even though we record on our own, we’re still kind of collaborating with the producer or with the agency, trying to get a specific sound out of whatever we’re recording.
So it’s really good to kind of build that collaboration from the beginning and being able to communicate as part of a creative team.
Yeah, because those skills will serve you well later. When you’re in a session, especially if it’s in your own studio, the director on the other side of his remote session may not hear you walk into the wall or drop that glass of water. And you would want to say, oh, you know what, we need to redo that because I tripped or I just heard my dog bark in the background.
Now, you don’t want to have that happen all the time because then you’re not professional, but you want to make sure that you’re aware and being professional on your end so the professionals on the other end can do their job. So not long after my Edge demo, because as we’ve talked about, I’ve only really been doing this about three years, I looked into getting another demo done because my demo with Edge was only a commercial demo. And I wanted to get a narration demo done, so I started doing some research and asked some of my peers, which I highly recommend doing, ask your peers who they worked with, who they like, and get some advice on who does a good job out there and also might fit into your budget.
And Sean, you said that your demo was done with Terry, and I was a big fan of that, so I contacted him and started working with Terry as well. And I didn’t do any specific coaching, it was just the coaching and preparation for the demo production, so my process was much shorter, probably only about six weeks. But we wrote some copy together and recorded it in my studio, which didn’t have to happen, but I was pretty confident in the way my studio sounded.
It was Volvo Studio approved, yeah, Volvo Studio certified by the tech committee there. And I was confident in the way it sounded, and when I sent a clip to Terry, he thought so too. So we did it in my studio with him passion, via plain old Skype, and it worked out great.
Now, I want to say again, Terry, as you’ll hear in the interview, has a very strong personality, if you don’t already know him. And that could have a detrimental effect on the result, if you’re not strong-willed, like I was saying before. So even with somebody who has a strong personality, you want to make sure that you can work with them, and they’re going to listen to your feedback.
Now, it turns out, Terry is really receptive to feedback. So I had a script that I wrote myself. So there was, I think, four clips he wrote, or five clips, he wrote four of them, and I wrote the last one.
And it was because it was an Edgar Allan Poe piece. And a lot of my work is based on sort of a low, dark, creepy voice. I’ve done a lot of horror audiobooks.
I’ve done some character work where it’s a creepy serial killer. And that’s a voice that suits me well. So I made sure I got that in there.
And the other reason is because living in Baltimore, I wanted to have something that represented my local flavor. And everybody here loves Edgar Allan Poe because of him spending some time here and ultimately passing here. And his grave is a local landmark.
So I put that in. At first, Terry was like, I don’t know about that. And I said, no, we’re doing it.
And we did it.
I thought it was one of your strongest spots.
Yeah, I think so, too. That’s what most people say. So again, the point is, know yourself and make sure you get your own flavor into your demo, even if someone else is producing it.
Very cool. And so kind of going off of that, like really having your own input. Like I was saying, I’m working on two new demos with the Global Voice Acting Academy right now, a new commercial and new narration one.
Because like we were saying, every now and then it can be important to try and reevaluate, see if your demo is still the best representation of your current skill set and talent. And my friends and coaches over there, Christina Melizia and David Rosenthal, were like, yeah, this is good, but it doesn’t showcase your whole, like enough variety and it doesn’t showcase your full abilities. So that was the main reason why they would encourage me to make another one.
Right now, like I said, like I had a lot of help from Terry for my previous ones, but this one, it’s just like, you really get what you put in because it’s like, they really want me to have a much higher ownership of these demos. So Christina was very helpful. She sent me a couple of talent who she thought had a similar kind of voice and style to me.
She’s like, study all of their work, listen to their demos, figure out what kind of products they’re marketing for, figure out what kind of products you want to do. And then, like nowadays with the internet, it’s so easy to just research commercials. I mean, we have YouTube.
You can literally just do like BMW commercial, like 2017 commercial and see what they’re doing right now. Or another popular one is ispot.tv, which is where it’s pretty much just like all commercials all the time. And you could even like learn about who voiced a spot or who produced a spot.
And just learn about, like you can learn so much more and be so much more involved in the process. It’s kind of, it’s a little intimidating, not gonna lie, but it’s also very empowering too. And I know that when we are, that we’re done working on these, they’re just gonna be amazing.
So before we get started with Mr. Terry Daniel, we will actually have a VO Meter stick from a mutual acquaintance, Mr. Rob Marley. No, not the reggae musician. This is voice talent and blogger Rob Marley.
He’s got an incredible blog and a wonderful free ebook that you should definitely check out. But before you do that, why don’t you listen to this episode’s VO Meter stick?
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter shtick.
What did he say?
It’s time for the VO… Oh, nevermind. The VO Meter shtick?
Oh, got it.
Hi, Sean and Paul. Thanks for allowing me to share my shtick with you. Wow, that sounded bad.
Anyway, I was listening to your last podcast, and Paul had mentioned that he had his first live directed session with a client, and I thought I’d share my first experience. Now, I thought I’d planned out everything perfectly. I’d worked with hundreds of clients so far in my voiceover career, but this was my first experience with the client.
In this case, the producer and engineer of the spot listening in while I did the recording. It’s one thing to be able to flub a line and redo a take while you’re by yourself in your little studio, but man, it’s a whole different ball game when there’s someone watching or listening closely to your performance live. I didn’t know if the client was gonna use video with Skype, so I made sure my background looked professional.
I mean, come on, I work out of a closet. Now, I’ve studied acoustics for several years, and I understand the finer points of wave propagation and acoustic absorption. I’ve done the work, treated the walls, carefully isolated all interior noise, and my room boasts a very respectable negative 73 dB noise floor.
In other words, it’s pretty good. I work really hard to be as professional as possible, but the trust that a client has in me might be completely nuked if they catch a glimpse of a T-shirt hanging in the corner of the shot that says, damn right, I’ve been naughty, now spank my evil butt. As it was, the client connected via the audio-only mode of Skype, so it wasn’t really a problem.
The first take went well enough. I thought I hit all the key points and the client seemed okay with this take. They asked for a second take, and while I was setting up for that, I discovered that the first take didn’t record.
I don’t know what happened. I apparently never started the record or thought I did. I hit the shortcut keys I use for my software and thought things were recording, but they weren’t.
So it was at this point that I have to then tell the client that there was a problem with the first take and that we would need to do it again. They understood and I quickly delivered a respectable second, third and fourth takes. The client seemed happy and the audio sounded good, but I never heard from this particular producer again.
The moral of the story is try to be prepared for anything, but know that it’s gonna be the thing you can’t imagine that will probably be the thing that trips you up. Knowing how to fix the problem and how to handle yourself while you do it is what separates the amateur from the pro. And it’s something we all need to be reminded of from time to time.
Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble at you. Love the podcast, keep up the great work.
Okay, so now we are pleased to welcome our guests for this episode. We are so excited to have coach, voice over talent, marketing extraordinaire and dare I say, ambassador to the voice over community, Terry Daniel. Welcome, Terry.
You know, I like to be preferred to as the pharaoh of voice overs.
Very nice.
Yeah, so please address me as that from moving forward, or I’m going to hang up on you bastards. Just kidding. I mean, honestly, I’m very, very happy to be here.
Fantastic.
Yeah, we’re very excited to have you. So Terry, let’s jump right into it. I’m sure people are wondering who aren’t familiar with you.
How exactly did you get started with voice over?
This is a true story. My parents, this is going to make me sound like a real dinosaur. My parents bought me a Donnie and Marie microphone when this is the latter part of the 70s.
I’m probably about maybe nine or 10 years old when this is happening. This is like Mr. Microphone. This is where you put the battery in, you turn on the mic, and you find that empty frequency on your FM dial, and then you can kind of sing and talk through.
Go look up Mr. Microphone commercials on YouTube. It’s hilarious. You’ll watch it 10 times in a row because it’s hysterical.
I had one of those actually. I think we’re close to the same age.
I had one as well. I would put on concerts for my parents and it was just brutal. I would try to sing the entire album from Paul McCartney and the Wings.
Nice.
I would sing Terry Jacks, that depressing freaking song, Seasons in the Sun, which I believe was very depressing. And man, I was one screwed up kid. And that’s kind of how I got started because I had a microphone in my hand and I really haven’t put it down since because after that, that’s when I kind of got into radio.
And I started just a quick funny story with you guys. In the, you know, about 18, 19 years old, you know, we all had like those silver Panasonic boom boxes. I would record commercials off, you know, various shows.
And then I would practice along with the commercials. And on television, I would record the TV spots, you know, in between The Love Boat and The Dukes of Hazzard, you know, with my Montgomery Ward’s video cassette recorder. And I would practice along with those commercials.
But then I would do like fake radio shows. I would record them onto a cassette with my Sears Home Stereo. I would plug a little Radio Shack microphone into the input and, you know, play songs and write and perform fake commercials.
And I would even record phony prank phone calls. I would stick the microphone to the ear part of the landline phone. And I would call up businesses like McDonald’s in the area and bullshit them and tell them…
You know, I told one manager of McDonald’s, and I’m recording this, by the way, I said if he could get everybody in the entire restaurant to stop eating their breakfast and stand up and sing Here Comes Peter Cottontail, that I would send the restaurant $50,000. And, you know, I’m pretending like I’m this hot DJ in LA. You know, hey man, this is Chuck McCann from K-Rock LA.
And then I would have him go do something really stupid. And this guy did. You could actually hear him slam the phone down.
And you could hear him in the restaurant area coaching people to stand up. And you could literally hear about 30 people sing, Here Comes Peter Cottontail. So then he comes back to the phone all excited that I’m going to send him a check.
And then there’s this kind of subtle, dramatic pause. And I said, well, Bill, I think Bill was his name. I said, Bill, you’ve just been the victim of a prank.
Sounds very Howard Sternish. He tells a similar story about starting that way.
19 years old, kind of a jackass, 19 years old. I would never encourage people to do that. I mean, you could get away with so many weird things back then.
Do you guys remember when…
Lose no caller ID.
You could call somebody, and then you could click the receiver, and then get the other line, and then call somebody else, and then you click your receiver again, and then you connect those two people, and then you can just sit there and see what happens.
Yeah, I think I technically still have that service on my phone, but I haven’t used it in 20 years.
So these people think, you know, I didn’t call you, you called me. No, you called me, I didn’t call you. You know, you just sit there, and they just bitch back and forth.
This is pre-internet, so life was pretty entertaining back then. But long-winded story short, that’s what really got me excited about doing voice overs and just being able to do this for a living has been a lot of fun and really such a joy, gentlemen, such a joy.
Well, you’ve obviously grown up quite a bit. But what is the focus of your voice over business from a talent standpoint now?
Well, it’s interesting because we all fall into that specialty. We all fall into that niche. And many, many years ago, I was more of a commercial e-learning type dude.
That’s pretty much all I would do. The occasional IVR gig, I guess, would come across my desk. But really within the last few years, I’ve gotten more into theme park announcements.
For example, if you’re on a roller coaster ride at Six Flags, you guys have heard that voice.
Mind the Gap.
Please keep your hands and feet inside the car until the car comes to a complete stop.
It’s so assuring and authoritative.
Yes. And what’s nice is it’s a beautiful fit for my attention span, which is very limited at the ripe old age of 49. I’ve tried to do a few audiobooks.
I couldn’t stand it. I would entertain the idea of maybe doing another one if I were to play a character in the audiobook, but some of these long 300-page audiobooks on search engine optimization and various car parts, I would prefer to send those gigs to you guys.
Yeah, it takes a special breed. I’ve done a nine-hour book on… I’ve done a nine-hour book on Radhaswami, the Middle Eastern religion.
Try that.
Well, you know, and you hear from people all the time, you know, that have these ACX accounts, and they’re doing it just to get experience. And I think that’s great. You know, it’s a good service for that.
But I just, you know, as the years kind of went on, I got a little spoiled with these promo announcements that I’m doing at theme parks and baseball games and state parks and all that. You know, they just send me three sheets of announcements at pretty much the same rate as some of these audio books would pay. So I got pretty used to that, and I’m pretty happy with it.
Very cool. And so about how long into your career did you start transitioning into voiceover coaching, Terry?
The coaching part of it was, you know, I did a lot of theater back then. You’re going to hear a few bumps. My crazy yellow lab is right above the studio, so she might get a lot of hand here.
But I got into the coaching aspect because, you know, I directed some plays back in the 90s. You know, I used to be a drama coach and ran an improv group. I’ve always enjoyed the mentoring and the teaching part of it.
But what really got me motivated to do it was, you know, I would get calls from people who, you know, dropped about six or seven grand on what we call demo mills in the industry. And I’m not here to bash my competition or, you know, hang anybody out to dry, but there’s plenty of them out there now that charge way too much money for too little. Everybody’s reading from the same scripts, everybody’s demo sounds the same, and you’re really more of a number than a person.
It really broke me when somebody called me, and literally, this is not a joke, they started weeping because they had paid like five or six grand. And, you know, this coach or program, they promised her stardom, and they filled her head with all these empty promises. And I just got kind of tired of it.
I’m like, you know what? I’ll start taking a few students here and there and just kind of showing them what worked for me when I launched into this full time many moons ago. And it’s just a straight up mentorship program.
I’ve tweaked it, obviously, a few times since. But that was really the birth of Terry Daniel, The Voice Over Coach.
Very cool. And so what do you feel separates you from, as a coach, from either these demo mills or even some other coaches out there today?
Well, I’m not much of a smoke blower. I’m a pretty candid person. You guys have known me for a long time now.
And I don’t really mince words in Facebook groups or anything. And honestly, I’ve put my foot in my mouth a few times because of it. But you heard my story when I was young and doing the prank phone calls and just being kind of a class clown.
I mean, that certainly hasn’t changed. But the only part of the reason… What was the question again?
See, I told you, ADD voice talent. I warned you guys.
He’s got his prescription right there, folks. It’s real.
All right.
It’s been confirmed.
The separation thing. I think it’s because I’m real. I don’t try to…
I love the teaching end of it, but I’m not teaching science. I’m not one of those big grouchy history teachers that you had in high school. I take it seriously to a point, but we have a lot of fun with it.
It’s very candid training. I think people have gotten a lot out of it. At least that’s what they tell me.
And I think that’s just the separation, is because I treat people as an individual, and I try to find a niche for each person, as opposed to inviting 500 people into a weekend seminar and then forcing them into a studio that Monday morning to do a demo. My God, I think even some of the top tier talents in the country aren’t going to be ready for a demo that quickly. So mine’s a little more of a drawn out mentorship where we just kind of keep working until I feel that they’re ready, until the talent feels that they’re ready.
There’s a mutual understanding that, all right, you know what? We’ve been working together for 35 years. Okay, well, maybe not quite that many.
Let’s take the next step.
But I never like to pressure anybody. I’m like, okay, we got to get this done by then, and this done by then, because we got to get you into the demo session by Thursday, July, such and such. And all that does is create anxiety and tension, and people are a little more too keyed in on their calendar than just learning the craft and practicing.
So I kind of take that off the table.
That’s what I was going to say. I mean, you’re so just genuine when you work with people. Like, you don’t put on any kind of teaching persona.
And like, you’re just incredibly flexible and relaxed and fun to work with. So I miss our old coaching sessions, Terry. You never call it anymore.
Speaking of which, I think Sean and I worked together back when I still did have the Donnie and Marie microphone. So I think, you know, I don’t even remember. I think Sean, you and I, that must have been…
That was about four years ago, I think.
Oh, was that only four? It felt like 14. Well, you were such a jerk to work with.
I would have been 14, 14 years ago.
Oh, don’t rub it in.
You were so high maintenance and you were such a diva. No, I’m kidding.
Well, Terry, talking about the way people approach the coaching and the demo production, do you feel that it’s better to listen to what the coach or the demo producer says wholeheartedly? Or do you feel that it’s better to come with your own ideas and have sort of a give and take? Because I know when we did our demo, and it’s been very successful, thank you very much.
I appreciate all the help.
I’m very happy about that.
When we were working together, I felt like I was maybe pushing a little too hard, but I definitely had some ideas in my head. I tend to be a little stubborn. Do you find that that’s a better style where the person comes with their own ideas, or do you feel more comfortable when you’re providing the direction almost wholeheartedly?
Somebody like you, Paul, you had some experience, obviously, so you weren’t super green. So I welcome ideas, and when I work with people for the first time who have zero experience, sometimes they’ll bring ideas, and it doesn’t always work very well. As long as I can have some veto power, I definitely want it to be an established, good working relationship.
And it’s never my way or the highway. Somebody, a student might actually write his own, her own scripts. Now I have somebody to write the scripts because my programs have received a complete makeover.
I’ve got a website designer. I’ve got a marketing person, and it’s a little more than just Terry Daniel. There’s other players involved as well as we slowly kind of get out this other program.
But I’m always up for ideas. I think that’s part of being a good coach is being open to listening to creativity from the talent. Now, well, I’m the teacher, you’re the student, so what do you know?
It’s not that kind of a relationship, and especially with demos. Those are going to be very important to come up with scripts that not only are a good match for that person’s persona and skill level, but to also come up with content that matches with their personalities and their hobbies and interests, because you have to be engaged in the content that way. And there’s just different methods that we use now.
Back then, when I first started doing the demo thing, I was kind of learning as well, so I would do what a lot of companies did. Oh, let’s just find some scripts online, and we’ll do that for your demo. That’s no longer the case at all.
That was a learning experience, and although there were some good demos that way, I didn’t want to use the same scripts as 15 other companies were using. So now, when I do demos, all of the scripts are 100% originals.
Awesome. Very cool. Do you ever turn people away for either coaching or demo production?
Nope. I’ll just take their money. No, I’m kidding.
I just contradicted everything I just said in the last 20 minutes now with that stupid joke. No, I do turn people away. I don’t exactly put them through a Peter O’Connell entrance exam.
Entrance? You know what? That’s one of those words where it looks easy on paper and I can never say it in conversations.
Entrance. I don’t necessarily put people through an entrance exam, but I do have them read a few scripts, fill out a form, learn a little bit about what they’re able to do technically. You don’t have to be perfectly technically sound to work with yours truly, but you have to have a little bit of skill, let’s be honest.
And I do turn plenty of people away. I do get a lot of emails and phone calls from people all over the country and overseas, and it’s a little bit of a process before we get started for sure.
And then just wrapping up on the demo production, what percentage of people working with you would you say you’re able to record from their personal studio versus making them either come to you if they’re local to Minneapolis or go to a local studio where they are?
That’s a great question. You know, more and more… Paul, you did it from your home setup, and that worked out great.
It’s getting to be more and more… Yeah, I think…
It’s getting more and more likely that they can record from their home setup, but I usually have to send… They’ll send me a couple MP3s, and I’ll kind of dissect the audio a little bit. It’s got to be A1.
I might throw the MP3 over to a Cliff Zellman or a Dan Leonard and go, you know, this sounds great to me, but I’m just wondering if I could get a second opinion, because we’re going to do this person’s demo from their recording studio. And if it’s not the case, you know, I typically book somebody in a studio in their area, and they patch me in. Sean, I think we did your…
Didn’t we do yours in Japan or something like that?
No, I actually timed it. So when I visited my home for Christmas in Washington, I found a local studio over there.
Oh, that’s right. Yep, yep, yep.
So that way you were only like three hours ahead instead of like 18.
Yeah, that was very helpful. So that was a perfect example of just recording in a studio in their area. I do invite people to come and see me.
I mean, they’re always welcome to fly here if they want to do the demo live and have that face-to-face time, but that’s what we do for local talents here in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. But it’s pretty easy now with studios that have Phone Patch, Source Connect, and even Skype.
It’ll work as long as both parties can hear each other. It works really well.
Yeah, it can certainly be tempting to use your own studio because it showcases the quality of audio you can come out with, but in the same vein, it’s still so much to be the engineer and the assistant director and the talent. It’s a lot to worry about for your first demo.
I agree, and that’s the beauty of doing it in a studio. You have the coach, you’ve got the engineer to worry about all the audio, and I love doing it in recording studios for that main reason for sure.
And so one thing I’ve noticed and really like about you, Terry, is that you’ve been pretty much an early adopter of social media as a marketing tool. So could you tell us a little bit about your web presence on the various social medias out there?
Well, I believe social media is a fantastic platform for political piss matches. And I love to just soak it all in and waste at least eight or nine hours of my day pretending like I know every f***ing thing. I’m sorry, is this show rated PG-13?
Because then I think I can get away with that.
We might have to roll back that.
We’ll get your own Terry bleep, it’s fine.
All right, no, serious answer. You know, social media has been responsible for probably about a dozen or more brand new clients every year. You know, some of them stick around to become regular clients.
Some of them don’t, but still, you know, have relationships based on like Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram. I have not, and this might sound silly, because people always think, oh, well, you got to be a part of LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn is a major business, you know, blah, blah, blah.
But I just honestly have never been, I’ve never really liked it that much. I like to stick to just two or three different social media sites. You know, I’m not much of a Snapchat guy.
I know all the kids love that one, but I’ve gotten some pretty good gigs, you know, via relationships that were started via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Very cool. And like I said before, you’ve really built a Facebook community for voiceover talent, because you’ve sort of started two pages with fellow talent, Dave Courbassier. So why don’t you tell us about those?
Well, there’s two groups, and here’s where it all started, honestly, and a lot of voice actors that are listening to this podcast are going to remember it. It really all started on Voice Over Universe, the website. Many, many years ago, when Facebook was just kind of getting going, there weren’t really all these groups in there.
I mean, you had your profile, and you had probably about 20 or 30 friends, and it was fine, but Voice Over Universe was really the place where we all came to kind of chat with one another. They would schedule events in there. The beauty of going to a voiceover conference, I believe it was Voice 2008, where everybody that met up met on this Voice Over Universe website, and it was terrific.
It was almost like a class reunion or something. Everybody kind of knew each other, and it was a heck of a lot of fun. Of course, back then, there was one voiceover conference.
Now there’s one every day somewhere.
Seems like it, doesn’t it?
Yeah, it’s gotten a little watered down, to be honest with you, but there’s still some good stuff out there. But the Penny Abshire James Alberger event in the early years of 2008, 2009, 2010, they were just lights out fantastic conference. But then Facebook got around, and suddenly these groups popped up out of nowhere, and they started to become popular.
As a matter of fact, it kind of put Voice Over Universe about six feet under once they got popular. But Dave had a group called Voice Over Friends, and I had a group called Voice Over Pros. And the same people were in both groups, and we were both kind of doing the same thing.
I’m like, you know, I called Dave up one day. Why don’t we just combine the two groups? This doesn’t really make a hell of a lot of sense, right?
So he agreed to do it. So we got everybody together, and then just called it Voice Over Pros. So there’s, you know, tons of people in that group, and there’s a lot of good discussions.
You know, occasionally there can be too many chefs in the kitchen, and everybody’s an expert at just about every subject, but that’s, you know, you’re going to get that in just about any forum. I also created Voice Over Camp, which is really created for the new talent. You know, people interested in either getting into voice overs or they’re just getting started, and they don’t want to be overwhelmed by, you know, sag after a voice actor’s and all this stuff that they’re not going to be familiar with for a very long time.
That’s kind of a place for them to go. So it’s VO Pros and VO Camp. I don’t know the exact URLs for those, but if you do a search in the little search box of Facebook, just type in Voice Over Camp and Voice Over Pros, and you can find either of those two groups.
There’s a search box?
I know. Can you believe it? I never know the actual URL for these things, but people obviously find them because we get requests for people to come into those every day.
And it’s really amazing because now I think there’s about 100 voice over groups out there, and that can get very overwhelming. And by the way, it can be quite distracting to your career while you’re sitting in there, about 15 to 20 different voice over groups, soaking up some of the information and asking questions and giving out your expert opinion. Suddenly it’s like 9 o’clock at night, and you haven’t done a damn thing.
Yeah, that certainly has happened to me on occasion.
We’ve all been guilty of it, believe me. But that really has become… I mean, Facebook…
I know there’s groups on LinkedIn that people kind of swarm to once in a while, but really these Facebook groups are really huge now for lots of different industries, not just voice over, but podcasting and photography and theater acting, on-stage acting and improv. It’s become quite the empire.
Well, speaking of podcasts, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention your own podcast, which is where I was really introduced to you first, The Voice Over Cafe. I was an ardent fan listening to every episode. You mentioned Voice 2008.
I remember the interview that you and Trish did from there live, which was just hilarious. Because, frankly, it was just a mess. But it was so much fun.
And Sean and I actually tried to mimic that when we went to the Mid-Atlantic Voice Conference last year. We did it live from there as well, trying to drag on your coattails.
It gets a little noisy, and people are talking over each other. The Voice Over Cafe was actually spawned from an older podcast that Trish and I did called Voice Overs On Demand.
I think technically that’s who you were representing in Voice 2008.
Yes, and you can still find those old episodes on iTunes. And the hilarious part about that podcast is the audio never sounded the same on every episode.
That sounds familiar.
Kind of like ours.
It would be like I’d use a different mic, or it’d be louder, I’d use different… It was just a mess. But yeah, Voice Over Cafe, we record that podcast about once every two years.
Because it’s been so hard to get together. When you’re working with like five or six people, unless you all work together in the same office, it gets to be a little challenging. Oh my God, yeah, so we’ll definitely be back at it.
There’s no question about it. And it’s voiceovercafe.org for that one. But I did create a mini podcast series for the voice talent with ADD, and that would be 95% of all voice talents.
What? What do you say?
You can go to voiceoversermons.com and the beauty of it, yeah, it’s me rambling and ranting about stuff, but there’s good information in there, and I think the longest one ever was like 10 minutes long, so that one does pretty well. It’s just something you can kind of plug in and take a little lesson and just be done with it by the time you get off the toilet.
I love your voiceover sermons because they’re short and sweet, and it either gives you a nice reminder of something that I had been failing to do in my own business or just new ideas. Sometimes it can kind of pick you up and you’re like, oh, I’m not making any progress. Like, shut up and get back to the mic.
And sometimes it can really get me into trouble. I’ll give you a little story here. One time I bashed a talent agency here in town because they didn’t sign me.
The former owner, this is how it got started. The former owner was going to bring me in and add me to the roster, and decided at the last minute that I wasn’t a fit for the agency. And I was kind of young and stupid back then because I let my ego get the best of me, and I started lashing out, and sent them along, drank a bunch one night, and left a big, long, angry voicemail.
You know, this is like quite a few years ago now.
Like almost one?
And then they have new ownership, and then I tried to get back in with the agency, and the funny part is, they like the demos, and it sounded like it was going to happen. So I go in, and the new owner brings this up at the meeting. I’m like, wait a minute, what?
I understand that you did a little podcast episode, and I literally just shit my pants when she said that. Because I was not kind in the episode about that particular agency. I apologized profusely for it, regretted it, deleted that episode.
So I have been known once in a while to put my foot in my mouth. But it had a happy ending because they’re a terrific agency. I get a few gigs every month from them.
They’ve been very good to me. We had to start from scratch, and I had to kind of earn their trust, which was justified, really, after my horrible mistake of just teeing off without really thinking about it. And then it’s really become quite a very, very positive relationship.
Awesome. Well, Terry, as you may know, our podcast focuses mostly on the newer talent who are just starting out, and our focus is really to try to educate them on the stupid things we’ve done, and maybe you’ve done as well, to maybe sandbag their career and try to avoid those things before they get into trouble. What’s some advice you can give to talent that are just starting out, either equipment or where they should go for coaching?
What’s the right path to start down so they eventually have a fruitful career?
Well, you mentioned, I mean, I’ll start with… Let’s start with the equipment, because if you’re gonna spend $200 on a USB mic, you might as well spend $400 on a really good mic. If you’re really serious and passionate about it, spend the extra money.
It will go a long way. USB mics are good for on-hold messages and maybe a podcast or maybe an explainer video, but if you really want to get into more of the commercial broadcast work, it’s gonna benefit you to buy that better mic. And I know that even I used to say, I’ll just get a USB mic for a couple of years until you build up your clientele.
I used to say that many, many years ago and I’m like, you know what? You could get a Rode NT1A for like $200 more. It sounds incredibly better than like an AT2020 or a Samsung or an MXL or one of those mics.
So not to really put the cart before the horse, but you should definitely learn how to read a script before you start buying equipment. But if you’re gonna buy a microphone, what’s an extra $200 if you’re truly passionate about doing this?
So speaking of, what are some other kind of shortcuts that you see newer talent trying to take that really just like, oh, why won’t they listen?
Well, for whatever reason, if you really look at any kind of industry, universities, schools, training programs, they all cost money. And sometimes newer talents will read blogs or read things online where they’re almost floored when you tell them that it’s going to take a little bit of an investment to get into this. You know, coaching, equipment, demos.
Time.
Websites, time, exactly. And for whatever reason, there’s books out there that can be very mythical about this, and they think they can just take a free ride and jump over the rainbow to the pot of gold without putting any effort into it mentally or financially. And I think that’s where people really get snake-bitten because they realize, oh, man, I did everything the wrong way.
I’m not getting anywhere. You know, maybe they got a couple of Fiverr gigs, you know, or something like that. I know, that’s kind of a…
That’s definitely… The cheap shot. Yeah, that’s profanity in the voice over pro world, but…
And they just kind of stumble, and they’re never going to get picked up by any talent agencies with that type of mentality. And honestly, that’s where people really make the mistake. They assume that they can…
This isn’t something that you can do. Oh, I’m unemployed. I’ll just get into voice overs, and that’ll take care of everything.
Make a quick buck.
Yeah, it’s just… It’s not that. And for some reason, voice overs once in a while have…
You know, the industry… It’s not like it has the reputation of that, but at least one out of every five inquiries that I get from somebody who wants to get into voice overs, somebody is absolutely astounded when you tell them the pricing for either coaching or a demo or just building up the business, period.
Indeed.
And one thing that… I mean, it’s funny that they do that to you, because frankly… And I’ve done this a lot on the voiceover camp.
Terry has some of the most reasonable coaching and demo production rates out there. Shh!
Don’t say that.
And still do, by the way. And still do, I’m still way under what any of my competitors are charging. Thank you very much.
Well, we’re not tossing out numbers here, but you get a lot of bang for your buck. Like, for example, Paul and I were both previous students of Terry’s, so we actually still have access to an entire archive of all of his webinars, and we’re welcome to join his bi-monthly online classes and just practice scripts or learn more about marketing. And of course, you’ve got all of your free content through your blog and your voiceover sermons.
You really are pretty generous with all the content you offer to students and non-students alike.
And dare I say, it’s actually quality. The demos you produced for Sean and I have signed both of us to agencies.
Across the world.
That’s really good to hear. And I started to kind of branch out a little bit on the programs. I’ve got an excellent copywriter.
I’ve got a couple of other coaches that I’m kind of honing in to my big program that I’ve just recently… Well, it’s kind of a soft launch. And even a website designer.
Because if you really think about it, people tell me that they like my programs. They’ve gone through the coaching, they’ve got a great demo. It’s like, oh man, now I need a website.
And I never really had that as part of the program before. But now I have a website designer on my staff. I really wanted to create a program that was really the full toolbox.
The full plate of meat and potatoes, so to speak. Where it’s like, alright, so coaching, some group classes, some demos, some after demo mentoring, and website. It felt like I needed to kind of add to the toolbox just a little bit.
Why don’t you tell us about your new staff?
Oh, absolutely. I’m using a terrific talent named Tawny Plattis. She’s the one who writes the scripts for the demos, and she’s very, very good.
She also used to own a retail store and has got a ton of marketing experience. She’s done very well in voice acting as well. And Rob Marley, who’s a great blog writer and does a lot of narration work, really.
Not like a big commercial broadcast guy, but just a ton of big kind of independent contractor like Voice Talent, but a very, very good coach. And then Josh Risser, who’s a very talented young man. Designing websites is what he does for a living pretty much, and I added him to the staff as well to help design and develop Voice Over websites for students.
So it really has become quite the full menu, so to speak. Not necessarily menu. My brain is shutting down.
I’m not using the right words now all of a sudden.
Josh, by the way, is the most recent like on the VO Meter Facebook page, so thank you very much, Josh.
Oh, terrific. Yeah, he’s a good talent all by himself, but he’s a really good web master, and he’s got an understanding of what… He doesn’t build websites that suck.
There’s your marketing tagline.
I know, your tagline right there.
We build websites that don’t suck. He’s really cool, a very talented guy, and just a hell of a good website designer too. And it was just…
Even if things are going well, I’ve been a solo voiceover mentor for many, many, many years now, but it’s still nice to change things up here and there and add a few pieces and take some pieces out. I’m always trying to improve my craft as a voiceover coach as well. Paul, you’ve been very voiceless with your opinions.
I sound like I’m being sarcastic, but I’m really not. I like people who have a quote-unquote clue. I enjoy getting feedback and ideas from them, and both of you guys have been gracious with that type of feedback, so I do appreciate it.
Yeah, well, we were inspired by you, and it’s the whole reason we started this podcast, among others, but to give back to that community, to some of the knowledge that we’ve gleaned from all the successful pros like yourself.
Well, I appreciate that, and this is episode number… You guys have done pretty well with this podcast, especially considering… Yeah, this is number 13.
I know there’s people… And Rob Marley actually… Paul, you told me that you were doing it, but then Rob Marley told me about it, thinking that I didn’t already know about it, and he was a fan, really, ever since the first couple of episodes.
You guys are newer in the industry. You don’t try to pretend that you’re an expert at everything. You’re kind of like new guys who are trying to find your way through the voice over world.
You’re very real, you’re very genuine. You’re not a narcissistic elitist. It’s not your way or the highway.
And you don’t… Never mind, I was going to rip on a couple people, but forget it.
No, I’m just kidding.
Like you were saying, we don’t blow smoke. We just kind of want people to know the reality of getting involved in the business if it’s something they want to do.
Absolutely. And I will tell people who are listening to this, and I wrote a blog on this recently and maybe even did a sermon on the same blog, it’s just that there are so many different opinions out there, and there are so many chefs in the kitchen when it comes to voice over advice. So make sure that you’re getting advice from all over the place, not just like one voice over group.
Because I’ve heard people that, well, What’s-his-name said that in this group, so I’m going to just go ahead and be an auto mechanic instead. And somebody that just wants to give up. I’m like, you know, in this day and age of forums on Facebook and LinkedIn, people are going to have about 150 different opinions on the same subject.
And you really have to just dig deep and really do your research and not base everything on what one or two people say.
Yeah, it’s a valid point. And to be certain, most of the community will help if asked, as long as you’re respectful about it.
You’re right. It’s a very, very helpful community. There are people out there that kind of troll new talents, and they like to just tell them what idiots they are.
And there’s just no place for that. I see this stuff in these, quote unquote, professional voiceover groups. I’m like, who the hell is this guy?
You got a guy who’s got about a year of experience going into 25 different voiceover groups and spewing out a bunch of bullshit to people when…
Wait, are you talking about me?
When they have no idea what the hell they’re talking about. And honestly, if you’re really that successful, you probably don’t have eight or nine hours out of the day to give people advice.
Well said. Sage advice. Well, Terry, it’s been…
So put that in your AT2020 and smoke it.
Well, Terry, it’s been such a pleasure. We’ve been waiting for this for such a long time.
That smells good, Sean.
Well, I am in Washington, but…
That’s true.
That’s true. I’m sorry, Paul.
I was trying to wrap up in a nice little way. But anyway…
So was I.
It’s been a pleasure. We were so happy that you said yes to come on. We have admired your work and benefited from your coaching for so long.
It was really great to have you on.
My pleasure, guys. I’ll come back any time. This is a lot of fun.
I appreciate you having me.
So before you leave, Terry, what’s the best way to get a hold of you if people just want to ask you questions or get some coaching?
Well, I like it when people come to my door and knock. No, I would say you can hit me up on Facebook. I’m easy to find.
Come into Voice Over Camp on Facebook, or you can send me an email, terry, T-E-R-R-Y, at universalvoicetalent.com. And the website is the same address, universalvoicetalent.com. Doing a makeover of that one, thank God.
That one’s been collecting dust for a little bit. Not collecting dust, meaning that it’s not working, but it’s time for a makeover. No question about it.
But those are different ways that you can get a hold of me.
And we’re back, man. Isn’t he just sound like a guy you want to have a beer with? Thank you so much, Terry.
Learned so much, and had a blast talking with him. So you can find him up on Facebook, or you can find him at his personal website, universalvoicetalent.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Thanks again, everybody. Have a great day. 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 12, a full dozen hard to believe of the VO Meter podcast.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. We almost got a baker’s dozen there.
Yeah, a baker’s dozen will be the next one, I think.
Yeah, it’s 13.
I’m just flabbergasted that we made it to 12.
I’m flabbergasted that we’ve had over 2,000 downloads.
Yeah, we are at 2,458. Wow. So hopefully this next episode will push us over 2,500.
And that combined with 12 episodes will be a real milestone in my mind.
Maybe we should add more incentives.
Maybe, and I think we have some ideas on a way to do that.
Oh, yeah. You have to listen to the rest of the podcast, though, so don’t leave now.
Please don’t. I know nobody will. So, just so everybody is clear, I am coming to you from Sonny Duck, North Carolina, on the outer banks of the North Carolina coast.
I’ve been on vacation all week, but I have sucked it up to come back for our fans and conduct an interview with our special guest and do episode 12.
Very nice. And who is our guest this time, Paul?
It is the fabulous coach, blogger, voice over talent, none other than the nether voice, Paul Strikwerda.
Yes, awesome. I totally forgot to turn the W into a V in the interview, but it was close and he was very polite. I’m sure he’s used to people messing up his name.
Yeah, I’m sure as well. So we will get to him in just a moment, but before we do that, let’s talk about some current events. What’s going on with you, Sean?
Well, it’s funny that you’re traveling now. I actually just got back from a two-week pseudo vacation in Hawaii because my girlfriend lives and works up there. And so I’ve actually been up there, it’s like my third time this year, but it’s the only way we can see each other with her schedule, because me doing freelance, I definitely have a little bit more flexible, and I just bring a whole bunch of gear with me and try to pay off the trip while I’m there.
Well, that sounds like a great excuse to go to Hawaii.
All right, like anyone needs one.
You want to trade?
Hey, you sound pretty happy out there.
I can see the beach, I’ve got a glass of wine in my hand, things can’t be better.
Sounds wonderful, man. Sounds great.
So let’s talk about your travel setup. We want to talk about that theme for this episode, how we maintain work or at least work in an emergency situation when we’re traveling. What’s your travel rig like?
Well, it’s relatively simple. It does take up a little bit of room though. It’s mainly my laptop, my 416, my Sennheiser 416, and a newer interface, a one channel interface by Audient called the ID4.
And I’ve been following them since back when they only had the ID22 as it was the only entry into the line of digital interfaces. And it honestly sounds just as good. Obviously doesn’t have all of the features, but it sounds fantastic.
And for $200 or less, if you go refurbished or a demo unit, I think it sounds incredible. And it’s incredibly simple to use. And it actually has dual headphone outs.
So you’ve got the typical quarter inch headphone connector for studio headphones, and then an eight inch one for earbuds and the like. Or you could just have two people listening on it at the same time. It’s just so much packed into that little box.
Yeah, that’s fantastic. I know we actually recorded episode three on that very unit.
That’s right.
At the Atlantic Voice Over Conference.
Yeah, at MAVO, and then that’s what I used again at VO Atlanta for my team. So we had that, and we actually had what I’m speaking into now, the Carry On Vocal Booth. And I use it as sort of like additional treatment in my, I call it my blanket booth.
But yeah, as you can see, it sounds great. Or actually, no, we’re using the Yamaha AGO3 today for ease of interview purposes. But also a great sounding travel unit.
Yeah, for sure. So my setup’s a little bit more simple, maybe, depending on your opinion. I’m using the Blue Raspberry USB mic, and I have that running to a Dell Venue Pro, which is one of those hybrid laptop tablet machines where you can remove the tablet or plug it into a keyboard and it becomes a full-fledged laptop.
So I use that, and then I have it inside a homemade Harlan Hogan-ish portable. If you remember, when he first started, his deal was to put out plans on how to create your own version of his portable. So I had this fabric case, I guess that’s what it’s called, from Bed Bath & Beyond, and I lined it with acoustic foam on all five sides.
And those are those little collapsible fabric boxes that you can use for a shelf or just laundry bags or something like that.
Or you can use it to hold toys, that’s what I use it for home actually when I’m not recording. And then I stick the microphone in the back of it, stick my head inside, and you probably hear the birds and the seagulls because I’m literally on the beach right now. But it sounds great inside a regular house room, or for the last week, I’ve been using it inside my car for auditions, and it sounds pretty good.
Yeah, a lot of people have used cars either when they’re traveling, and as long as you’re in a reasonably quiet spot, most cars are already, like they already have quite a bit of sound isolation and absorption just to make it a more comfortable driving experience.
Yeah, and I did a remote session with our good friend Marisha Tepera two days ago. We were doing a dual point of view audition. I was in the back of the car with the Porta Booth, and she said, that sounds great.
And I said, well, maybe I should just use this all the time.
Use what you got. And doesn’t the Raspberry have some kind of like noise canceling technology too?
Yeah, I won’t say I exactly know how it works, but it does do a pretty good job of canceling out some of the ambient sound. I mean, if one of my kids comes out here and starts asking for dinner, I’ll be in trouble.
It won’t erase them.
Yeah, or go back on the boogie board. But for now, it sounds pretty good.
Yeah, it does sound nice. All right, so anything else for current events?
Well, as I said, I’ve been on vacation, but when I get back, I’m booked for four audio books until probably the end of October, where I just have my schedule entirely taken up, and that’ll be pretty exciting.
Very nice. Yeah, my schedule… The first half of the vacation was nice, but then I got at least four different gigs or auditions that came my way, or while I was in Hawaii.
And so my girlfriend was very supportive, and she gave me full reign of her room. Yeah, it’s great. So I just moved all the clothes on either side of the mic, and then just shoved every pillow in the house in there as well.
And then she didn’t have too many blankets because it’s really hot in Hawaii, so I used a lot of beach towels behind me, and it sounded pretty well. None of my clients complained. I even checked in with a few of them to make sure it was okay, and they’re like, yeah, it’s totally acceptable.
And it was a lot of fun. I even did a remote session with this German client for this sort of medical assistance app, and that was a lot of fun. It was only one sentence, and those guys were hilarious too, so it was a lot of fun.
One sentence, and then that was the whole job?
That was the whole job.
Fantastic. I should promote the one book I have that was released recently. It’s called The Fat Kid by Mark Roeder.
That’s R-O-E-D-E-R. If you’re looking for a new book to listen on Audible, please check that out. It has one rating so far.
That’s five stars. I’m pretty proud of that. And yeah, I’d love to have some more.
So go on there, download it, and let me know what you think.
Will do, yeah. I’ll do that after the show. And I meant to say, though, that was really smart.
Actually contacting Marisha to have someone to play off of for that dialogue was a really good idea. And you guys are similar age range and voice types. I think it would be totally believable.
Yeah, it worked out pretty well. It’s always nice to have somebody to bounce off of when you’re doing an audition.
You know how Facebook has those ridiculous… Do you want to find out who your soulmate is of your contacts? Like quizzes?
I clicked on it and Marisha was my soulmate. Yeah.
Okay, well I thought you would just come back from your girlfriend’s house.
This was a long time ago. I just thought it was funny. Obviously my girlfriend is my soulmate.
Obviously.
Perfect for each other.
So before we get to Paul, we have to go through our regular segments with the show. Our fans literally clamor for it. So before we go any further, let’s get to this week’s Questionable Gear Purchase.
So this week, like I said, I’m on vacation. And that’s really probably the only reason I wasn’t able to buy anything. But just before I left, I decided to upgrade my headphones in the studio.
And I picked up some Biodynamic DT-770. They’re pretty popular with a lot of our colleagues. And I plugged them in, and they sound really good.
I’m wearing a pair right now.
Oh, really?
Yeah, no, they were my first big headphone purchase, for sure.
Okay, yeah, I got a pretty good deal on them. And I wasn’t sure if they would be a big improvement. But I gotta say, if nothing else, they’re much more silent than what I was using before.
The ones that came with the Scarlett Studio Kit.
Oh, there’s no hissing or electrical noise?
Well, I just mean actual noise canceling.
Oh, yeah, the isolation in these is fantastic.
That’s the word, isolation.
Yeah, yeah. And they’re so freaking comfortable. I think someone described them as kittens on your ears.
Yeah, I will say I don’t find them as comfortable. Oh, is it the Scarlett? Maybe because I have this big giant head.
Well, I do too. I got a big old pumpkin head.
What hat size do you wear?
I don’t wear hats.
What kind of statement is that? I don’t wear hats. They’re not cool enough.
No, but when I wear a baseball cap, like a fitted one, it’s a seven and a quarter. So I know that’s on the big side. So these are a little tight, but they do, like you said, they isolate fantastically, and they’ll work great for the podcast and also for editing.
Yeah, because you won’t have any headphone bleed-through issues. But hold on to those buyers. I’m sure they don’t…
It’s mostly metal. The spine that holds the earcups is completely metal, so it takes a little bit more time to break in.
I’m not planning on getting rid of them. I know they sound great, and they’re definitely an improvement for editing, which is really what I wanted them for.
I actually got a new pair of headphones as well, because I was very lucky. I actually won a pair of really nice headphones when my team won the Team Challenge at VO Atlanta. Those were like the Sennheiser 280 Pros.
And those are about $100 headphones. And I found out after the fact that voice actor Crispin Freeman is also a big fan of those, right at the $100 mark. But they were talking about head size.
They’re just a little bit too uncomfortable, because they’re very springy plastic, so it really wants to stay closed, clamped on your head. And just after long sessions, I’d be getting these pressure headaches, because it’s digging into my temples.
It’s because you got a big head. It’s too big for your body. Seinfeld reference.
You might be a little young for that.
Just barely. So I got another pair that I see recommended a lot, which are actually very affordable ones, the AKG 240s. They’re super comfortable.
They look really nice. They’ve got all these golden trim on the earcups and looks very nice design-wise. Some issues though is that they’re semi-open.
So like the isolation we were talking about with the Biodynamics, you don’t have. So if you turn up too much or your volume too much during a directed session or recording a podcast, you might have some bleed through. But if you’re just editing playback from a recorded session you did earlier, they’re perfect.
They do add a little bit more bass, but for… they’re $120 less than the buyers, so if your budget is limited, they’re definitely ones to look into.
Awesome. I also forgot to mention, I bought some monitor speakers. Which I’ve never used before.
But I bought them because they have someone else coming in to record an audiobook when I get back on Monday. I wanted them to be able to hear themselves with decent audio.
What did you get?
I got the Behringer MS-16.
I don’t know if it’s Behringer or Behringer. Pretty sure it’s Behringer. It’s from the Germans.
Whatever, I don’t work for them. At least not yet. If you’re listening, we’d be happy to be a sponsor.
Or have you as a sponsor. Yeah, so they sound pretty good. I just have them sitting on top of my bookcase where I have the rest of my studio equipment.
Hopefully they’ll be good enough for my guest on Monday.
Nice, nice. Well, I’m sure. And there are some other affordable options.
I know the Personus Eris E5s are recommended a lot, as well as the KRK5s. So right at the 150 per pair price point.
Yeah, awesome. So any other purchases from you?
Actually, well, a bit of a bet. I got the Yamaha AGO3. I got rid of it because of personal reasons.
It was a gift from an ex. And then I got it back because it made the podcast and playback for some of the Zoom room meetings that I have that much easier. So I was just like, curses, there’s nothing at this price point that does quite what that unit does.
And a lot of our fellow talent rave about it, too. So I’m like, well, it’s all right to have a backup. Still waiting on Mixerface, though.
Lord knows if that’s going to happen at this point.
Oh, boy.
But then other than that, sort of a backup option, I got another SKB case with that, where you can sort of adjust… It’s just a really nice mic case where you can adjust all of the cushioning inside of it to fit whatever mics or mounts or interfaces you want.
I remember you talking about that a couple episodes ago. You love that thing.
Yeah, I know, I know. Well, someone gave me a Neumann TLM 103 wrapped in bubble wrap, so I needed a better case for it.
It rides safely, didn’t it?
It did, I’ll give you that. Sounds good. So good that I don’t use it very often because my space is not quite that isolated.
416 isolated, not 103 isolated. Which brings me back to another point about traveling. With equipment, I really recommend that USB mics can be great because they tend to have a smaller capsule and a smaller pickup pattern than your average large condenser mic.
And actually, there are some like the Yeti and the new MK4, which are pretty much just like digital versions of analog mics. So I wouldn’t recommend taking those. You just have to be aware of how much ambient noise is in whatever space you’re recording in because just like in your home studio, the space is the most important factor.
Yeah, that’s a great point. As you can hear with my USB setup right now, it’s not isolating at all. You’ll hear every seagull, every crow, even probably the fly that’s on my arm right now that I’m swatting away.
So the space, as always, is the most important thing. So with that, before we get to our special guest, let’s move on to this week’s VO MeterStick. We have a demo from one of our fans, Sonny James, who sent this along along with a question about mic placement.
Hey, everybody, it’s time for the VO Meter Strik. What did he say? It’s time for the VO…
Oh, never mind. The VO Meter Strik? Oh, got it.
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But to some extent, we all have a network of people we’re comfortable with. This module is about your capacity to develop relationships with people who are very different than you.
So, Sean, what Sonny really wanted to know was how to properly place a shotgun mic within his booth. He’s interested in buying a 416 or an NTG-3, and he asked me what’s the best mic position for him, and how do we normally address that?
You have to experiment and find out yourself.
Yeah, and that’s kind of exactly what I told him. We sound like a broken record, but it really is true. I’ve tried both of those mics, and what I found was neither of them was really good fit for my booth and my voice, and really in any position.
I tried above the nose. I tried below the chest, pointing up. I tried at my right ear, at my left ear, pretty much every possible combination, and it didn’t work for me.
And that doesn’t mean it won’t work for Sonny, but the point is you really have to get it in your space and experiment.
The 416 is definitely one worth trying. It’s probably the most accessible industry microphone out there. It’s still very cost prohibitive for some, but still, if you can afford it, you should definitely try it.
But my 416, it took me almost a year to get a placement where I’m like, oh, that sounds really good. And it wasn’t until I was with a place with better acoustic treatment that I was able to find a better placement for myself. So you really just have to keep experimenting and exhaust all your options before you give up on a mic.
Yeah, and I would say, find a place where you can either borrow the mic or maybe rent the mic and get it in your space before you make a commitment. And then send it out to friends or colleagues that you know that would give it a listen and tell you, hey, that’s not the best placement. Maybe try it in a different space.
Send it to us.
Exactly.
We’d be happy to play the audio and say, or play it on the show and tell you how it sounds.
We are cruel but kind. So with our feedback, so. So like I was saying, we offer cruel, but we like to think instructive feedback.
We want all of our listeners who reach out to us asking to help improve some aspect of their sound or their business to be receptive to our feedback. So speaking of being receptive to feedback, our next guest is actually extremely generous with his time and his experience and in the education that he tries to bring to new talents who are trying to get into the voiceover industry. So without further ado, we’re gonna take you guys into our interview room at Source Connect Now and bring you our guest today, Paul Strikwerda.
All right, so we are using Source Connect Now right now and we have a very special guest today on the VO Meter. He’s a dear friend. I’ve been following his blog and his book for the last several years.
We have today, I hope I get his name right, Paul Strikwerda.
Very good. Woohoo, thank you.
How are you doing today, sir?
I’m doing great. Looking forward to this. I’ve been looking forward to this for a couple of months now.
I’ve been following you guys too. And we met up in Atlanta finally. And I remember you asking me, would you like to be a guest on the podcast?
And I said, can we do it tomorrow? It took us a little while, but finally we’re here in different places on the planet, but we’re together.
Yeah, I just want to make sure you actually said yes under your own free will. But thank you so much.
Because people can be so much more polite in person and then just kind of quietly fade away over email, you know.
Oh, no, I would never do that.
I would, but apparently you’re nicer.
Hey, he’s a real mentions this.
You know I’m almost the nicest guy in voice overs. The nicest guy that must be Bob Sauer, right? That’s how he advertises himself.
And I’m the third, so that makes you the fourth, I guess, at least. So for some people in the voiceover community who might not know who you are, Paul, why wouldn’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to the States and became a voice talent?
Ooh, I could fill the entire podcast with my life story. But it begins in the Netherlands. Because many people know that I am from the Netherlands and a lot of them still believe that I live and work in the Netherlands.
But I came to the United States at the end of the last century, which is so long ago now, 1999, December. I remember it well. I came in the same plane that took the boy band in sync back to the United States.
Are you kidding me?
So I have no idea who these guys were. But imagine this, the door swung open. I came out as one of the first people and all I saw was a whole group of teens yelling, yelling, yelling.
I said, what a warm welcome.
And they all ignored me.
They said, Lance Bass, will you marry me? Oh dear. But anyway, I came to the States because I wanted to start a new life.
I’d been in radio and in television for most of my life in the Netherlands, working for public radio and television and our Dutch World Service. And it’s kind of this, Holland is a very small place. It’s this been there, done that part of thing.
I was coming out of a relationship and I decided to pack my bags and I literally arrived at Philadelphia Airport with two suitcases in my hand. And then I came to a nice place called New Hope in Pennsylvania. And I looked at myself in the mirror and said, okay, I’m here, now what?
And I said, okay, I want to do something with microphone, with my voice, but how, where to start? And I found a note in the paper talking about a talent agent in Philadelphia, Mike Lemon Casting. And Mike Lemon casts all the actors in the M.
Night Shyamalan movies, but he also has a big voiceover roster. And so what I did was I went to one of those cattle calls. There were like 500 people wanting on-camera work.
There were like four people for voiceover work, and they hired me on the spot. And I spoke with a very British accent at this time, and that’s because a lot of Dutch kids grew up being taught English with the Queen’s English. So they thought I was English, and that’s how I got my start, pretending to be an Englishman, doing all kinds of commercials, like for Dorney Park.
I remember that was the first one that I did, and said, boy, this is fun. I could do this for a living. And I’ve never looked back ever since.
That’s fantastic.
Well, Paul, I know you eventually settled down in the borough of Easton, or technically you’re in Wilson, I think. And as we’ve talked about, that is where most of my family is from. My grandfather made a similar trek from Italy and settled in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, and eventually moved across the river to Easton.
And my dad grew up in a house. The address was 1621 Northampton Street in Wilson, which is so close to you, it just boggles my mind. My first introduction to you was the interview on East West Audio Body Shop with George and Dan.
And I turned around when you mentioned where you were living and I said, did he just say Easton? So that’s when I immediately looked you up. And tell me a little bit about how you ended up in the Lehigh Valley and how that is for your voiceover business.
Oh yeah, that’s a great story. It’s a fantastic neighborhood. It’s only 19 blocks from New Jersey and probably a two minute walk from your family.
And I absolutely love it here. People in the Netherlands and Europe who know me just don’t believe this when I tell them that yesterday, we had a bear in our neighborhood. They had to sedate the bear who was up in a tree and he fell down eventually and they caught him and now he’s in a better place.
Doesn’t mean they killed him, but…
It’s like humane treatment, right?
Yeah, we have roaming bears and deer and sometimes a wild coyote too. So those things do not happen in the Netherlands. So I really feel that I’m in the United States right now.
And the reason I’m here is really love. I married the love of my life and she had a home here and she wanted me to move in and said, hey, do you have a soundproof basement?
And she said, of course.
This is Pennsylvania. Yeah, we have basements with nice thick walls. And I thought, hey, voiceover studio said, honey, I’ll be here tomorrow.
Well, it is a great town. I’m actually headed there right from the beach on Saturday to visit with my family who still lives there. And unfortunately, we’ll just miss each other, but I’ll have fun in your place.
Yes, but this is one of those places where you really are part of a community if you choose to be part of a community. And that’s what I love most about the borough of Wilson and Easton as well. One of the things that I do here is that I’m one of the announcers of the local farmer’s market.
And many people say, ah, farmer’s markets, that’s no big deal. And it, well, maybe it’s not. But on a Saturday, we get about 4,000 to 5,000 people and they don’t have a billboard, all these vendors, so they need somebody with a mic who really announces the specials on a Saturday.
But we also have live music and we play music, some kind of a DJ. I’m the lost and found department. So sometimes I get cell phones.
Sometimes I get lost husbands. It’s really fun to be there in the middle of my community doing some volunteer work. And I became part of a band of actors called the Bachman House.
Now the Bachman House is one of the historic public houses from 1753. And as actors, we are kind of reenacting history that is part of the roots of Easton. So you might find me on a good day dressed up in like 1750 clothes, pretending to be one of the founding fathers.
Isn’t that fun?
That’s great. I’m familiar with that farmers market. My cousin is a chief of police in your town and often has to be there to help with crowd control.
And my aunt is a big fan of the farmers market itself.
Well, it’s the oldest continuously ongoing outdoor farmers market of the entire United States. And I hope you can tell from my voice that I’m really, really proud of that. And we were, last year, we were voted the number one market in the United States.
And, of course, I didn’t know all these things when I came to Easton. But I’m really, really happy in this community. And if you were to walk down Main Street with me, you wouldn’t go far because every minute or two I see people I know and love, and it couldn’t be better.
Well, that’s great. So just to wrap up on the towns we are in at the moment, just so everybody knows, I’m at the beach. I don’t want to rub it in too much, but if you hear some stray seagulls or people yelling on their surfboards, I apologize, but that’s where I am, and I’m having fun.
So with that, let’s move on to talk about your business… Sorry, I muted myself for a second. Let’s move on to talk about your business and some of your publications.
Sean, can you ask the first question about that?
Yes, actually, one of the first resources that I found when I started researching voiceover about five years ago now was actually your blog, The Nether Voice Blog. So why don’t you tell us a little bit how you got started with that?
You know, when I started my voiceover business, I wanted to find a way to advertise myself without really advertising myself. Because nobody knew me, I knew nobody in the whole voiceover community, and I knew that I loved one thing, I’ve always loved to write. So I just out of the blue one day said, hey, why not write about my experience in Europe and my take on the voiceover business here in the United States?
That’s kind of an angle that not too many people cover who are blogging. And I love telling stories, you know, that’s part of our profession. We are storytellers.
So it started very simple with just one blog post, and three people read it. Second blog post, four people read it. And now I have over 38,000 subscribers.
And that’s in about seven years. So I find it a very efficient way to advertise my business, as well as becoming kind of someone who loves to stir the pot and push the envelope every once in a while. Because there’s lots of things that I like in my business, and there’s lots of things that I think could be improved.
And I write about that. And thirdly, I have this whole thing of giving back to the community who has given so much to me. So I don’t think that people need to reinvent the wheel who are part of the community, who are new to the community.
So as a service to them, I want to pass on my experience, and I do that in my blog.
And it’s a very generous experience. I just got to say, you can definitely tell that you love to write because it’s just filled with poetic devices, and there’s such a sense of wordplay and actual play. It’s really a joy to read.
And you mentioned how you do like to stir the pot, though. Could you talk about some of your less popular posts or less popular ideas that you talk about in your blog?
Oh, that is risky, isn’t it? But okay. I mean, I started it…
How about the ones that generate the most buzz?
I might as well dig in. Some people know me. At least that’s the impression I got when I was at VO Atlanta.
Some people know me for my criticism of pay-to-plays, in particular one Canadian one, voices.com. A couple of years ago, I wrote a number of blogs, and I wasn’t too flattering, and they got thousands and thousands of hits. Some people still tell me that if you type in the word voices.com in like a Google search engine, the things that come up, number two and number three, are my blogs.
And it really started the discussion, I think, or continued the discussion about this whole pay-to-play model. And I described how I first started off as being a fan. I even won a prize at one point from voices.com because I was so complimentary of what they did and how they had started my business.
But once I started doing better as a voice over and learned more about what their model was about and how their way of doing business was gradually changing, my opinion of pay-to-plays and particularly voices.com started changing. So people who have been following my blog probably have been following in my footsteps and noticed that shift in my perception. So, oddly enough, when I walked the halls of the hotel in Atlanta, some people looked at me and said, oh, he’s the guy who brought down voices.com.
Well, not too fast, my friends, because they’re still in business. And they attracted a big investor recently, as you probably have heard, and they are looking to expand. So they’re not going anywhere, just staying put and they’re expanding.
But I will continue to scrutinize whatever it is that they’re doing and hopefully write about it. Because I need to say a big thank you to voices.com, because every time I write about them, my blog goes through the roof. So I hope that they stay in business and keep on doing what they’re doing in the way they’re doing it, because it’s good for me.
Another thing that I write about is really the people who think it’s just so easy to break into this business. You don’t need to know anything. We’ve talked about this before many times on your podcast as well.
They think it’s easy money and you don’t need any education. And I hold up the mirror and say, is that really true? Do you really think that you can make a fortune in voice overs?
You know, I know a lot of people who are in voice overs, and they’re no millionaires. Have you ever heard of someone who’s doing voice overs as a millionaire? I don’t.
And I’m not in for the money, but it’s not a get rich quick scheme. So I write about that too. So one of the blogs that I wrote was about five reasons not to get into voice overs.
A lot of people hated me for that.
I remember that one.
Oh gosh, yes. But what they forgot is to read the very last line. So I give these five reasons why you shouldn’t get into voice over.
And at the end they say, well, I can’t really imagine doing anything else because I love it so much.
Well, Paul, I can say from being at VO Atlanta as well, I know that look you were getting from people because I kind of had a similar impression. Even though we had talked socially over social media and emails, I kind of did see you as the pot stir and antagonist. But I want to tell our fans that a nicer person both in VO and the whole world, you will not find.
I think within five seconds of seeing each other, we were embracing a big hug. So Paul is just so friendly. And really, I think what it comes down to is journalistic and professional integrity.
And that’s what you have above reproach. And I really admire you for that.
I can only say it takes one to know one, really, because I had the same thing. And there are, you know, so many people have a wrong impression because I tend to be very critical. But I also am admiring people who have reached the pinnacle of their careers in voice overs.
And I talk about those people too. It’s not just that I’m blogging to take people down. But as in blogging, as it is in the news, people tend to focus on things that are not positive.
That’s what they tend to remember. So they look at me and say, oh, that’s that guy that likes to push the envelope and be kind of a crumudgeonous type of writer. And I use some snarkasm too.
So I have to take credit for that. And I love stirring the pot because there’s so many people who are blogging these days, and they’re all fighting for your attention. They all want to be read.
So in order to attract an audience, you need to be controversial. So it’s also a tool that I use to attract new readers, and it seems to be working.
Well, let’s talk about so-called anybody blogging. You mentioned in your book, Making Money in Your PJs, which everybody should go out and get, by the way, that you really want to focus on advertising yourself without being a blowhard about it and tooting your own horn. So is it your opinion that everybody can and maybe should be blogging as a means to advertise their business?
Or is it really a specialized skill that only the people who are good at it should do?
I’d say that it’s not for everybody. Because first of all, it takes a lot of time. I think my average blog takes maybe five minutes to read, but I spend the morning or afternoon writing it and maybe even longer researching it.
And that’s a big chunk of your week. And not everybody enjoys writing either. It’s not everybody’s strength.
I’ve always loved writing. I’ve been a journalist in the Netherlands and I’m used to cranking out some copy and coming up with headlines and things like that. But there’s other people who are much more into vlogging or into podcasting.
I know people who are really good amateur photographers and their blog is filled with photos. So I’d say if you don’t feel that inner urge to share your ideas with the world, if you’re not ready for people to comment on those ideas, often in a negative way, then you really should not start vlogging. It takes a long time, in my case, six to seven years to really get an audience that gives you some clout as well.
So it’s not an immediate payoff. And we live in this time of instant gratification. So people, if they don’t immediately see results of their efforts, they’re ready to give up.
And you have to have, I think, a unique point of view. So you need to, I think, talk about topics that a huge group of people is interested in, but you need to give your spin. And if you have to think about what that is, maybe then you’re not ready to blog either.
Well, good. I’m glad you clarified that, because, yeah, frankly, there are people who shouldn’t be blogging and people who shouldn’t be hosting a podcast. Maybe some that are talking right now.
Maybe, maybe. So another thing we wanted to ask you, one of the chapters in your book focuses on equipment. And how maybe the most expensive mic isn’t good for you.
Maybe the most inexpensive mic isn’t good for you. I know you, at least last I checked, were using the Gafel M930. Talk to us about how a newbie, because frankly that’s a lot of our audience, should go about looking for their first VO equipment.
You know, I am very lucky, because the mic that I’m using right now, the Gafel that you just mentioned, was a mic that I won. In a raffle, they literally took my name out of a hat.
That’s great.
There is this website called Recording Hacks. I don’t know how active they are, but it’s basically a review of all kinds of microphones. So if you want to find out what new model Blue came out with, what the difference is between one shotgun microphone and another shotgun microphone, go to recordinghacks.com.
And they used to have this giveaway, so I entered and out came my name and they gave me this very expensive German microphone. It’s $1,750. Well, you don’t…
It’s a wonderful thing. I love it to pieces, but you do not need a $1,700 microphone to get started. I would advise against it.
What I would do is just not get the cheapest of the cheap, but one microphone that I particularly like is the CAD-E100S microphone. Every now and then, you can buy it new for about $300, and it’s type of a shotgun microphone because it has… It focuses on your voice like a laser beam almost.
It has very low self-noise. It’s very well made. It’s built in America, and it looks fun too.
And it just has this great sound that sounds really good on most voices.
I actually use that at home.
See?
There’s a really funny story about how I acquired it in our last episode. I’m sure we won’t bore our fans again with that.
Exactly. Well, you know, then you know all about the CAD E100S, and I’m not getting paid by CAD to advertise them, but I mentioned that microphone in my blog about five years ago or so, and I called it the best microphone for voiceovers you’ve never heard of. And after that, I think it really took off, and I still see lots of people talking about the microphone.
They’ve had some quality control issues, but there’s a good warranty, so if you get one that’s not to your liking, they’ll fix whatever the problem is. But most people seem to be really happy. So I’d say get something that’s not too cheap, not too expensive, but something that at least will give you a good shot at producing quality audio.
I’m also a big fan of the British company Audient. I have a preamplifier. It’s an ID22 from Audient.
But you can get an ID4 for about $300 as well. And once again, it’s very well built, built like a tank, so you can take it on the road with you. It has very quiet preamps, and it’s just solid.
It will never ever let you down. And I use Twisted Wave as my digital audio workstation. And really, apart from getting some monitors, and my monitors are not more than $100 a pop, then you should be in business.
And I want to say, Paul, your gear reviews and that mindset really helped me along my journey, because I got an Audient as soon as I could afford it, and I’ve had a long loving relationship with them since. I’ve tried their ID14 and ID4, it’s still my favorite portable unit yet. And what’s really funny is my 416, I also wanted a raffle last year.
Yeah, it was at VO Atlanta, actually. Oh, right! You should talk to our mutual friend David Rosenthal about that one.
Which reminds me, because I found out, like, I do a lot of… I’m what’s called our membership liaison for the Global Voice Acting Academy, which David Rosenthal is our president of. And I know that you did a lot of sort of educational materials with him through the Internet Voice Coach.
So I’d love to know a little bit about sort of the mentoring role and the coaching role that you play with voiceover students.
Right. Well, David, he is just an all-around great, phenomenal, wonderful guy. Super talented and a nice person.
And we immediately clicked. And he had this idea way before, well, this was a couple of years ago, Internet Voice Coach. And he had read my blogs and he said, hey, could you start writing, from the international perspective, some blog posts specifically for my site?
And that’s what I started doing. I did one every week. And I did a blog for my website as well.
So at some point it became a little bit too much and I stopped writing for him. But I think that I produced about maybe 20 different blogs for Internet Voice Coach. And what I do with my company is that I also coach people.
It’s not easy to become one of my students because I want people to go through several hoops and different layers before they are accepted by me. Because I want to make sure that they are so motivated and totally committed to the whole process. Because I notice that people who just want to try things out and experiment are just not in it for the right reasons.
I want really people who want to become a professional voice over and not explore options. So I think it’s so important. And it’s so much fun to teach people.
And I learn so much from my students every time that I coach them that when I start listening back to myself, I learn a lot too simply by listening to other people. And I did that the other day in a kind of a different context, because one of my clients said, I’ve recorded something with a different Dutch voice talent. I have no idea what he is saying.
And if he’s reading the script, could you review it for me? So I was actually proof listening, and I got paid for it. And my goodness, I couldn’t believe my ears what I was hearing, and it wasn’t good at all.
There was so much noise from the mouth, from the environment. He wasn’t reading the script. He was putting emphasis on the wrong words.
It was really rubbish. I couldn’t believe that this guy got hired. So I did a very comprehensive review, and it was like four pages for five minutes of audio.
And the next thing I hear from the client was, thank you very much for the review. I just fired your Dutch colleague. Can I hire you?
That wasn’t intended, but that’s certainly an interesting way to get clients.
Yeah, kind of an ideal turnout for that situation. Yes!
It was not one of those things where I was begging for a job, but I thought, hey, maybe this is a new model, because there’s so many people who hire us that also need proof listeners. So even if you’re not suitable for the job, we can all check whether someone is listening to the script, reading the script or interpreting in the right way. So who knows?
I’m going to try this again.
Exactly. And I’ve done some proofreading and transcription work because I do work for a lot of international clients and Asian and European clients. And sometimes the scripts are just riddled with spelling errors or just don’t sound natural in American English at all.
Absolutely. And that’s one of those, I call it, hidden powers that we have. You know, I think the ideal voiceover should be like a superhero for their clients.
But people don’t realize it. If you’re working, especially with clients abroad who have to translate scripts, and you’re right, a lot of clients have to not spend too much money, and so they hire somebody who’s not really good at translating.
Or they use software.
It shows. So one of the things that I offer my clients as well is I’d be happy to go over this script. Of course, I’ll charge you for it, but then you know that you don’t embarrass yourself by having somebody read a script that simply is unprofessional.
Wonderful. And that’s something that I encourage a lot of people too. I know that costs can be prohibitive, but if there are certain things, and I learned this from a lot of your blogs, if there are certain things that you’re not good at, or not as good at as, say, just acting into a microphone, try and outsource it.
Work with a team, because you’ll eventually come up with a much better product than you would by yourself.
I think that’s so important. And I started to realize that as I got busier and busier and busier, you have to play your strengths. So I’m really okay with words, but I stink with numbers.
But I happen to be married to somebody who is really good with numbers, and who even seems to enjoy balancing the books.
That’s my secret weapon, too. My wife’s a CPA.
Yeah, exactly. Aren’t we lucky, right? And that allows me to focus on what I think I’m good at.
The same thing with editing. You can make much more money narrating an audiobook than editing it. So why do that stuff yourself?
I mean, Richard Branschland didn’t get to be one of the richest people on earth by doing everything himself. When you look at people who have so-called made it in life, they made it in part because they found people who were brilliant at the things that they were not. So I use the same model for my voice over business.
Wonderful. And one thing that I’ve always liked about you, Paul, is that you’re so generous with your experience and you offer so many educational materials. I mean, you’re a coach.
And I know, again, coaching, like many other aspects, people have to prioritize what they can invest in. But if they can’t afford coaching, one of the first places I send them to is your blog. And if they can afford a little bit, then I send them to your book.
So why don’t you tell us about your eponymous Making Monies in Your PJs book?
Well, it’s just one of the ways I make money in my PJs.
Because at some point, I’ve written so many, many blogs. And the thing about a blog and a little bit about podcasts as well is just it comes and it goes. It doesn’t have a lot of staying power.
A book, though, you buy it and you can put on the shelf and you can pick it up and then read a chapter and put it away again. So I thought I need to find some way to give my blogs some staying power. So I selected, I think, the best 40 or 50 blogs and I put them in a certain order, different chapters, and all of a sudden I realized, my goodness, I have a book!
And it’s over 400 pages. And it’s so easy these days to self-publish. I was a little bit impatient.
I didn’t want to go from publisher to publisher and say, can you please do this? You can just go to Amazon and they have a machine that spits them out on demand. And not only that, you have the version in paper, of course, the paperback, but also the digital one for the Kindles, the iPads.
And so a number of years ago, I decided to take the plunge and produce this book. And it’s been doing really, really well. Like I said, it’s making money for me and my PJs.
And it’s one way for me to monetize my blog. But again, not just for the money, because I don’t feel very motivated by money. If I were, I probably would be driving a different car.
But it’s also because I know that the book is making the rounds. A couple of months ago, one of the guys I saw on that TV series, Mad Men, he contacted me out of the blue and said, Hey, my name is so-and-so, and you may have seen me on Mad Men. And I said, Yeah, yeah, I just watched your episode on Netflix the other day.
He said, Well, what many people don’t know is that I’m teaching voice overs in New York. And I’ve just read your book. And is it okay if I use it in my class?
So I know it’s making the rounds. And I thought, my gosh, that’s the best compliment someone ever paid me.
And what I love is that… Whatever happened in the audiobook version? Oh, you know…
I know a guy. I started it. I started it.
And then I got so busy with stuff that would make me more money that I kind of put it on the back burner.
Gotcha.
And now I’m at the stage where I said, I need to work on a second edition. I need to update the information in the book. So that’s one of my projects for the next couple of weeks after my vacation.
I’m going to update this Making Money in Your PJ’s Book. And then if I have time, I will record it.
Well, if you need an editor, I’m pretty familiar with the content. So I’d be happy to take a look at it for you.
Yes.
Hey, practice what you preach. Very nice.
I was thinking of outsourcing it.
Well, Paul, that pretty much wraps it all that we had planned to ask you today. I just wanted to say thank you so much. It’s a little surreal, actually, to have followed your work for so long and then to actually become a bit of a friend and mentee to you.
So thanks again for everything that you offer the voiceover community, just your unique voice and just your generosity of spirit. And thank you so much.
Oh, it was an absolute pleasure getting to know you in person and now being your guest. And I think the next time we got to get together, you’re welcome here in Easton. I’ll show you the town, and I’m sure that Paul knows a couple of other places that I might not know.
And we’ll have a pint here and a pint there, and we’ll talk voiceover, we’ll talk life, and I’m looking forward to that day.
Sounds wonderful. Thanks so much again, Paul. Enjoy your vacation.
Maybe I’ll pass you on the turnpike on my way there while you’re leaving.
Be sure to wave. As we say in the Netherlands, hartelijk bedankt, ik heb het met heel veel plezier gedaan.
I have no idea what that means, but it was eloquent.
Thank you so much, it was a great pleasure to do this interview.
Wonderful.
Fabulous.
And how can people get a hold of you or find out about your blog?
Good question. nethervoice.com. That’s all you need.
nethervoice.com. It’s one word. Nether is in Netherlands.
Voice is in voice.
And that’s some brilliant marketing right there.
And that’s where I find my blog, my demos, and how you can get in touch with the Dutch guy.
Awesome. Well, thanks again, Paul. It’s been a real pleasure.
All right. So we are back. And wow.
And that, like, talk about generosity of spirit. It was so great to have Paul on again. How are you feeling after that, Paul?
Yeah, he’s just a breath of fresh air. Like I mentioned, meeting him personally in VO Atlanta, when you talk to him in person, you just want to give him a big hug.
Exactly. He always has, like, a big smile on his face. He’s so genuine.
And he’s just a very charming guy.
Yeah, indeed.
So, and speaking of which, he has generously offered the first 15 people to comment to this podcast.
A free copy of his book, Making Money in Your PJs by Paul Strikwerda. I’ve read this book at least five times already. I read it almost annually just to make sure that my voice over business is as good as it could be.
And it’s one of the first books I recommend to new talent who are interested in the kind of mindset that you need to have in order to have a successful voice over business. So, once again, if you’re one of the first 15 people to respond to this podcast in our Facebook comments section, we will contact you and we will get you a copy of Paul’s excellent book, Making Money in Your PJs.
So if you haven’t found us yet on Facebook, please go to our page. It’s The VO Meter, in case you didn’t know that. On Facebook, make a comment.
If you’re one of the first 15, we will send you that book.
Awesome. Thanks again, Paul, for that incredibly generous offer. And then once again, if you want to contact Paul or if you want to read his blog, that’s the nethervoice.com.
So nether, as in the Netherlands, where he’s from, and voice, as in voiceover.com. And then you can thank him as well for being on the podcast. So that wraps up this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Thanks again for listening, everybody. Have a great summer. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.