The VO Meter Episode 23, The Public Address Roundtable

The VO Meter… Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Episode 23 of the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Today, we’re going to talk about public announcing. It’s a really interesting genre of voiceover. We’ve got a whole panel of guests who are talking about how they transition from public announce into voiceover, and sort of the challenges and pitfalls that that might actually have coming with it.
But before that, we’re going to talk about current events. So what’s been going on with you, Paul?
Well, I’ve got a few things going on. I just finished my first book for Find Away Voices. I completed it and uploaded the audio last night.
It’s my longest book to date. It’s 41 chapters, total of about nine hours. So that was interesting.
I hadn’t done one that long before. It was sort of intimidating at first, right? I looked at it and said, oh man, how am I going to tackle this?
But it was interesting. I found that once I got into it, it was sort of like when you’re reading a book and you really get absorbed in the story, I just couldn’t stop. So I sort of set a budget of two chapters a night to try and get through it by the deadline they wanted.
I sort of kept going. Every night I kept doing more and more because I got into the characters so much and I didn’t want to lose the momentum I had. So it was interesting to see that play out.
No, that’s wonderful. I kind of had the… One of my first books was actually or Volunteer for Learning Ally and that one’s probably at least six hours.
I’m like, man, I really wish I had started with something like a children’s story or a short story other than that. But yeah, like you said, there are some days where you just get that spark of motivation and inspiration and you really get immersed. And those are, like, that’s what we live for, you know?
That’s ideally what you have every time. But I’m curious how you find that motivation when it’s, like, when you don’t wake up in the morning and you’re, like, feeling great and ready to record.
Well, for me, it was pure necessity. This book specifically had several voices and several different characters, and it was even more interesting. I won’t give the title, so people…
I don’t want to do any plot spoiling for people who may be listening once the book comes out, but it was about espionage and several spies working for the CIA and other world spy organizations. So, there might have been one character who had three different voices because she was speaking in English, North American English, and then speaking in British English and then Arabic. And I had to maintain the same tone with the same character for all three voices.
And basically, I didn’t want to lose that. So once I got down the character voices and I knew that I was sort of rolling with them, I wanted to make sure I could maintain that. So I was trying to get through it as quickly as possible so I wouldn’t lose those tones of voices.
And there was like ten different characters that were like that. So it was kind of interesting.
Very cool. And were you collaborating with the author, like sending like, hey, this is the voice that I want to do for this character? Or did they just trust you to handle it on your own?
Well, the first 15 minutes I did, sort of, it was through, like I mentioned, find a way, but they operate similar to the ACX model where you submit the first 15 minutes and the author approves. So in that, there were several different chapters they wanted me to do to make sure I could do the woman’s voice, to make sure I could do the British accent, to make sure I could do the Arabic. So they had already gotten a taste of all the voices.
Not every one, because there were 10 to 15 different characters, but they got a taste of the different dialects I could do to make sure it would come off as well as they would expect.
Wonderful, wonderful. Now I want to hear your accents, because you never really do them around me, actually.
And you’ll never hear them.
And you never will.
You never will. It will be a surprise. So you can go buy that book when it comes out.
Now that I’ve ruined the plot for some people, I’ll mention the title at the next episodes when it will actually be released on Audible so people can go download it.
Very, very cool. Oh, that’s some good mystery marketing there.
There we go. Some teasing, we call it, in the biz. But other than that, all of my focus lately has been with my VO empire as a friend of the show.
Marisha Teppera dubbed it.
AKA your family.
Right, exactly. So right before VO Atlanta, actually the day before, my son Matthew did a job for Bodalgo. And we sent it off to the client.
I got paid while we were in VO Atlanta, I think while I was talking to Armand, almost the exact same time. So I want to thank Armand for that. For those of you that don’t know, I think we might have mentioned this, but if not, it’s worth re-mentioning that Bodalgo offers free premium accounts to child actors.
So if you’re interested in having your child, or your child already is a voice actor, you can get a free premium account with Bodalgo, which means they can receive direct auditions and audition for jobs, and that’s what my one son did. He booked a job, got it paid right away from the client in Italy, and had that out on… It was a corporate video, so I’m assuming they’re playing it, I haven’t actually seen it, but yeah, we’re pretty excited about that.
And then my other, my daughter, who has been dabbling in it as well, is about to embark on her first audiobook.
Cool.
And interesting, actually, I don’t want to prompt you on how to do your job, but could you ask me how we secured that job?
So how did you go about getting that job? But actually, before I ask that, I just wanted to point out that it’s, if you do have children that you want to exploit, I mean, who are talented actors, and you should definitely look into, because Armand’s situation, as wonderful as he is, isn’t completely unique. You’ll find a lot of agencies are a little bit more lenient about how they hire younger talent, just because the jobs don’t come in as often, but I mean, they still need to be hired, obviously.
And so it doesn’t make sense for them to charge a child for a year-long membership if there’s only going to be two or three appropriate gigs. But there’s still a valuable resource to have when they do come in. So you might find an agent or a casting site like Bedalgo offering incentives like that.
So if you’re involved with Voice Over and your children are interested too, it’s something you should look into. But back to your daughter, how exactly did you get that audiobook gig for her?
Well, I’m glad you asked. Because it was part of an in-person marketing effort I put forth. I reached out to a local author who was a friend of a friend and contacted her about her book that I had seen was just published on Amazon, the print version.
And it immediately shot up to the bestseller rankings of this category. So it’s a book about a young girl who has anxiety disorder and how her mom helps her deal with those feelings. So I reached out to the author about doing the book, not necessarily for me, but for my daughter, sort of an ulterior motive.
And she ended up referring me to her publisher. So I went to the publisher, who’s also a local company, and we had coffee over a Tuesday morning. And we talked about all of the authors that might have some benefit from doing audio.
So this one was immediately put out there, and they said, yes, we’d like to have your daughter do it, so we’re going to work on that in the next couple of weeks. And then meeting with the publisher, she said, there’s actually several authors that we would like to maybe investigate doing an audio version. So that could be more fruitful than I even imagined to begin with.
So word to the wise, if you haven’t started marketing locally, do that because there’s opportunities out there you may not even know exist.
We’ve talked about this a number of times on the podcast. You really are only limited by your own imagination in your marketing efforts. And as you’re just getting started, as long as you have a certain level of competitiveness, like you have a competitive sounding studio and some training under your belt and demos preferably and all that, by all means, reach out, find out what local businesses are out there and just figure out what their personal needs might be.
Like do they have radio advertising? Do they need it? Do they have IVR messaging systems taken care of?
Or do they suck? And could they be improved? These are all questions that you should look into and not really feel like you have to just, like your first step should be finding an agent and expecting them to do all that work for you.
Because as we’ve talked about before, that’s only one egg in your basket. As lucrative and as like, I don’t know, what’s the word I’m looking for? As fancy and celebrity sounding as it does to have an agent or agents, you can’t rely on them for all of your work.
You still, they still expect you to be trying to market yourself and finding gigs for yourself as well.
Yeah, it’s a really good point. Now, speaking of marketing your local services, one more thing I want to mention, current events-wise, is I rented out my studio recently to a demo producer. So a friend of the show also, Terry Daniel, who’s a demo producer out in Minneapolis, as well as voice talent and coach, he was looking for somewhere in Baltimore to have a demo producer for one of his talent.
He actually had a bit of a bad experience with a studio he booked in the city, and said, hey, Paul Stefano, you have a studio in Baltimore? And I said, yeah, we’ve recorded out of it for my own demos, but anyway, it’s neither here nor there. He said, would you be willing to host this person?
You know, rent the studio out, I’ll pay you for it, and have her do the demo with me doing the remote session in Minneapolis. And I said, sure. So talent came over.
I sat outside the other side of the window and engineered while she did the remote session with Terry, and it came off great. So another way you can leverage the resources you have and the investment you’ve made in yourself and your business to maybe have some additional income. Exactly.
I just kind of want to just gush about Paul for a second. I mean, look at how… Because so many people focus on just one aspect of how they can help a client, which is with their voice, and that’s wonderful.
But as a voiceover studio, Paul has already got this whole list of possible, or added values for ways that he can help potential clients, and whether it be as renting out a studio or exploiting, I mean, hiring his children or…
And producing to local authors doing their audiobooks too.
Exactly. So don’t feel like… And it’s all building connections, and I’m sure sometime down the line, these are all going to come back to him in spades in opportunities for work and all other sorts of networking opportunities as well.
So good on you, Paul. You always inspire me to get my butt to the pavement and make some phone calls and build some connections like that.
Oh, thank you. So speaking of, what’s going on with you?
What’s going on with me? Well, things have slowed down a little bit after VO Atlanta finally. I was riding high on all those positive energies and vibes for about three weeks, but things are finally starting to level out.
Still just been working consistently with my regular e-learning clients. My work with GVA has really ramped up, and I wanted to talk to you about that because you actually got to experience our membership program firsthand. Newt said some really nice things about it.
Yeah, I did. I signed up for your promotion at VO Atlanta and participated in one live coach workout with Steven Reisberg, and that was a lot of fun. Got some great feedback and reinforced some things I knew I needed to work on, and then took advantage of some of the marketing materials that were sent out.
So do you want to talk about how that works, and then I can talk about how I took advantage of it?
Oh, sure, sure. So yeah, we had this promotion at VO Atlanta where attendees were able to join their first month for $1. The usual cost is about $60 a month, $59.95.
And so for that level of our membership, it’s at our most exclusive tier, the pro level, you get one coach-led workout, which is led by one of our great coaches, like Steven Reisberg. He’s a Hollywood booth director. He’s even worked with greats like Don LaFontaine and some of the best in the industry, both celebrity talent and strictly voice-over talent.
Who else leads those? We also have Christina Melizia and David Rosenthal, as well as our other cadre of great coaches like Carol Monda and Katie Lee, MJ. Lalo, Brian Summer.
Brian Summer is great. He’s worked on a number of the Telltale Game Series, and he’s got a pension for Villain Voices, so it’s always fun to go to a workout or a workshop that he’s leading. And then on top of that, you also get a peer-led workout with myself, which is just kind of a safe space.
We’ve talked a little bit about accountability groups and workout groups in the past, and that’s essentially what this is. It’s just an opportunity to experiment with your performances and get feedback with your peers, and then practice giving feedback as well, because, I mean, it helps your ability to direct and self-direct by directing others. And so I know in my own experience, they’ve been just incredibly helpful just leading these things, and I’ve gotten nothing but positive feedback from the people who attend.
And on top of that, we also have just an hour-long Q&A session once a month where you get to pick the brain of a pro voice actor and get, like, career strategy advice or audition or demo feedback. And on top of that, we also send out just a small list of, like, production companies or agencies that have said that they were, or openly said that they are accepting submissions from Talent. So just a little, like, thank you and a little boost to your marketing efforts each month.
So as you were saying, Paul, how did you take advantage of those benefits?
Well, that last one, I took those leads, and they were from a marketing company, right, that you work with as a partnership?
Yes, it’s called Tailored Products Group, or TPG, and that’s with Al Richardson, who is another voice talent and has a number of connections with e-learning and video production companies. Excuse me, he’s got these large lists of companies that you can purchase in different regions, but he gives us a small sample of his current findings each month just because of the positive relationship we have with him and the Inspire Goodwill that way. But it’s a wonderful resource, and then that way for talent who are newer in self-marketing, this is almost a surefire way to get your foot in the door with a couple of these different companies and to build clients like that.
And you mentioned that you had quite a deal of success with this list.
Yeah, well, I mean, one. So the list was nine companies, right?
You lied to me!
I mean, that’s actually a pretty good shooting percentage, so to speak. So there was nine sample leads, three from each of the different lists. One was an animation company, one was a production company, and one was, I think, a production studio.
So I contacted all of them and immediately got a response from one of the production studios that said, yeah, we’d love to add you to our roster. So that may not sound great, but I mean, based on the thousands and thousands of cold calls I’ve done over the years, one out of nine is actually a really good percentage. So I was really happy with that.
And yeah, that brings up a good point, too, is just how much or how many contacts you need to make before you really start gaining traction and getting responses back. I remember I took Jonathan Tilley’s League of List Builders course a few years ago, and he’s like, if you’re limiting your potential contact list to a hundred or less, you are doing far too little. You need hundreds of potential contacts before you start really building those numbers into the dozens even.
So just keep building that list and keep building those potentials and then reach out to them every couple of months if you haven’t gotten a response back.
Right. So yeah, I enjoyed the membership with the GBAA. I was actually surprised to see how much work was involved from you.
I mean, I know some of the stuff is scheduled probably to automate the email process, but I was getting either Facebook posts or emails from you. It felt like every ten minutes.
I don’t know about that often, but it just depends on when workouts are scheduled and things like that because I’ll host a workout and then I’ll edit the recording of it and then we’ll upload that and then let people know that it’s available. Because not everyone can attend these things live, but one of the things that I love is that we have a huge library of all of our previous workouts and webinars. So even if you weren’t able to attend, you could still watch it.
You can still… And believe it or not, I’m a big fan of this. I think you can still learn quite a bit just from watching other people perform.
I know a lot of us really want to get that personal experience, that on-mic experience, and you can get that. But even just watching and taking notes, there’s still so much more you can learn from just doing that. So I think that’s a huge resource.
And we stockpile these things for an entire year before we start updating it with the current year’s workouts and webinars. So it’s just a huge, huge resource. And I love being a part of it.
Based on my previous educational experience in English teaching, it’s kind of like the perfect marriage of my educational experience and my love of voice over, because I get to teach people how to become better talent. I mean, it’s awesome. I love it.
Yeah, it’s good stuff.
Before we transition to our more light-hearted VO Meter stick, we did have some serious and downright startling news. A good friend and mentor of the podcast, Paul Struquerda, we recently discovered… He just suffered from a stroke recently, and it was just a shock to us, because if you’ve ever seen Paul, he’s just in the picture of health, and you would never have suspected him being liable to a stroke at his age right now.
But luckily, he’s his typical self. He’s in good spirits. He contacted everyone, letting us know that he was okay, and sent a few smiling pictures on Facebook, and just conducting himself with his usual grace and humor.
Paul, we just wanted to say we’re so glad you’re all right, and we hope you have a speedy recovery, and we hope that your family is doing all right as well. Hugs and healing thoughts going out to you, my friend, and we hope to hear from you more soon.
Yeah, same from here. It was really startling, like Sean said, but we’re glad to hear that at least you’re in good spirits and doing well so far. And as luck would have it, because of the Easter holiday, I’m actually going to be in his hometown this weekend, so I’m going to try and stop by and see him if he’s up to it and hopefully wish him well there in person.
I’m sure if he’s feeling well enough, he’d really appreciate that. That’s awesome, Paul.
Indeed. So we’ll get to our main discussion with our public address slash live event announcers in just a moment. But before we do that, we have our VO Meter stick.
Check.
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.
So this episode’s VO Meter shtick is actually done by me. Yay! Live and in person.
So I’m going to talk about a funny experience I had while doing public address for my local university, Towson University here in Towson, Maryland. So I was the public address announcer for the basketball team, and the men’s basketball team. And we were doing a game, I think it was towards the end of the season, the team was not doing very well, they were sort of out of contention for the playoffs, and I think the coach was tinkering with the lineup.
So, what you do as a public address announcer normally is get the lineup from both coaches, go over it and make sure you can announce, sorry, pronounce all the names in case you don’t wanna pronounce them wrong on the microphone and embarrass the kid, maybe his parents. So both coaches, you go get the lineups, go through the names, make sure there’s no surprises, make sure the star player is out that day for an injury, so on and so forth. So in this case, I got the lineup and the star point guard was on the bench and I wasn’t quite sure why.
So being also a fan and alumnus of this school, I was kinda perturbed. I thought, hey, why is he sitting this guy? This coach doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Ugh, frustrated, but you still have to do your job the right way. So the game starts and I’m doing the lineups and I go through the list, I announce the center, the forwards, I get to the point guard, and I announce who I think should be in the lineup. They get the star point guard that was on the bench.
I forget his name exactly, but I just go ahead and announce him and didn’t realize anything had happened. But then I look up and the entire bench and the coach are all giving me the stink eye, like, what the heck? What are you doing?
And then I look back down and thought, uh-oh, giant Freudian slip. So I had to say, excuse me, it’s actually Brian starting at point guard. Then everything was fine, we did the rest of the line up.
But I felt like an idiot because I had basically just inserted my own ideas of who should be in the line up into the live announce and that was not good. I came to find out later it was a disciplinary thing where the player had done something and that’s why the coach benched him. But it was just funny to see that reaction from the crowd.
Now I will say that was the last men’s basketball game I did. May have had something to do with it. After that I was relegated to just women’s basketball, soccer, field hockey and volleyball.
But just a funny little story about live announcing and how things can go wrong.
Your rise to PA announcing, or what was it, was that your journey to PA announcing ended before it began.
Yeah, I mean, it was just funny.
I’m actually really interested about our panel today because I dabbled in it when it was very young. We’re talking high school and college. They asked me to MC a few events at our school because I was in the theater program, and I remember having to announce Junior Prom, or whatever, the pep rally for that and stuff like that.
And I had to announce people’s names, and then one, I just straight up said the wrong girl who was coming up, but maybe I forget if it was how it was listed, or if I had skipped ahead on the list, or whatever, but I was just like, this poor girl just looks terrified as she’s halfway down the aisle, and then she just looks up at me. I’m like, oh, my bad. And then I just kept going.
17-year-old Sean, I didn’t care at all.
Well, that stuff happens all the time, even to people who have been doing it for years, as I’m sure our panel can attest to.
Yeah, and then, but like I said, I was really interested in hearing from a more professional side because my only other experiences was in college when I was doing this sort of media internship where we got to try all sorts of different aspects of media production, whether it be sports announce or color commentary or on camera work or working behind the camera and all sorts of things like that. And so I tried one of, or just color commenting, one of the basketball teams, and it was ridiculously hard.
I’d love to hear your perspective on that because it’s just like you have to be so attentive, you have to really familiarize yourself with these people’s names, and you have to be able to comment on what’s going on quick enough that it’s relevant, that people are actually able to see what you’re talking about rather than a few minutes afterwards and stuff like that.
Yeah, it’s a lot of hard work, as I mentioned. It takes a lot of prep. I would go to the game usually an hour, sometimes an hour and a half before, to make sure I had everything in my head and everything down on paper.
You take a lot of notes to make sure you don’t have to just remember everything in your head. And as our guests will tell us, it’s a similar situation for almost all sports or all events. There really is a lot of prep work both before and after.
Justin, during the call, Justin Brown mentioned that he was usually the first one there and the last one to leave when he was at Talladega, and that became an issue for him because he’d be leaving the racetrack after the race, two or three hours after the race, and it was a danger for him to drive home because people don’t necessarily take the best precautions when they’re at a NASCAR race as far as designated drivers. And it was bad, actually dangerous for him to get back to his house from the track with people weaving it out of traffic.
And wheeling around the parking lot, whoo, NASCAR!
But yeah, and I have friends even now that are still the announcers for local teams, and it’s the same way. You’re one of the first ones there, you’re one of the last ones to leave, and it’s in a lot of ways a thankless job.
Yeah, but you’ve got to be passionate about it, I’m sure. Like, otherwise, for each one alive.
I think that’s where it comes from, yeah. Everybody’s really passionate about what they do.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, we’ll get to that in a few minutes, but before that we have our…
Questionable Gear Purchase.
Why don’t you go first this time?
All right, so Questionable Gear Purchases. So, I’m in the middle of one right now, actually, because one of the coolest things about VO Atlanta this year is that, I mean, it’s… I’ve told Gerald Griffith and Ann Gangooza and all the head honchos or VO Atlantis, like, my life has changed for the better every time I go, because, like, the first time I went was when I was in Japan and I won the International Scholarship.
That was huge, and then by the end, like, I met Global Voice Acting Academy that weekend, and then that was the beginning of our relationship together, or, like, our working relationship together, and then by the end of that first conference, I won a 416, so, like, I mean, you don’t think you can even top that, but then the year after that, like, luckily I was able to pay my own way this time with my voiceover funds that I had made for my clients. Woohoo! And, but then I had been asked to do the team challenge led by Cliff Selman and I think it was, or, and Dan Friedman that year.
They tend to be the ones who lead that. And so this was something that I was completely unconfident in, and I was just blessed with a wonderful team that we had a great rapport with, and our team won that challenge, and so we got to come back to VO Atlanta again, and on top of getting some kick-ass headphones and a chaotic eyeball and some other cool stuff. And so we got to come back.
And then fast forward to this year, I find out that I have been nominated for the Unicorn Grant, which is just this amazing opportunity for where just a number of agents, casting sites, branding strategists all offer their services, or donate their services to one lucky recipient who kind of encapsulates the generous spirit of the VO community. And so just being a nominee, my travel and attendance were gratis, were compensated. And you don’t find out who actually wins until the last day of the conference, but the finalists end up receiving a $500 gift card to Sweetwater, which is like my favorite audio store.
And I’m like, woohoo! And so I was elected a finalist. I didn’t get the full grant, but I still got all of those wonderful benefits.
And then I had this weird situation where I’m like, I have $500 to my favorite audio store, but I don’t really need anything.
Oh, poor baby.
Oh, poor baby, right? I know, it’s just like a lot of people, like our audience just want to throttle me right now.
Yeah, they’re all vomiting in their booths right now.
But no, that’s the truth. And it’s just like, I mean, you guys know me and you know Paul, we’re just unrelenting, not gear snobs, but we’re always drooling over new gear and there’s all these things that… Like, part of me, honestly, I was like, this would just be like a line of credit and I’m just going to use this as an excuse to buy all the things that I want to review and then send them back.
Just try them out, make videos and then send them back. But the truth is, one thing that I don’t have in my studio, because I’ve got great mics, I’ve got a good interface and all the accessories you need, like cables and all the unexciting stuff or whatever, well, one thing I don’t have are studio monitors. And those are something that I had been putting off getting for a long time because it’s like one of those less fun aspects of voiceover and they can get pretty expensive.
Most people recommend that you spend at least $300 a pair on them, and I mean, that can be prohibitive for a lot of people. But, so I had limited my choices down to two monitors, one being the Yamaha HS5s and then the PreSonus Aris E5s, which are like a newer monitor thing. PreSonus has made a name for themselves with their Studio One software and a number of interfaces since their AudioBox units a few years ago.
And honestly, the quality of their products has just steadily increased over the years, and they’re really building a name for themselves. And they come in these… Appearances aren’t that important, but they’re blue and they look cool and they’re compact, and I’m just like, ah, I want them.
And so now I have an opportunity to get them, but it was funny because you see that one purchase and they’re like, all right, that’s great, but then I need to spend this much money on monitor stands to get the best out of them. And I’m like, oh crap, my desk is too small to accommodate that, so I need a new studio desk.
Oh my gosh, spirals, huh?
It really does. We talked about this a few times on the podcast. Rarely is one link in the chain going to cause an overall difference.
Your studio is only as strong as its weakest link, and you can’t just buy things willy-nilly and expect a world of difference. There is a level of thought and planning that has to go into it. So yeah, luckily, with the gift card, I’m able to get all of those things except for the studio desk because it’s not at Sweetwater, but I was able to find one that would actually fit inside my booth and would make a much more ergonomic and professional-looking space, so I’m really happy about that.
And whatever I decide to get, I just wanted to thank everyone who offered their advice and Gerald and J. Michael Collins and Marilyn Whistler and all the other contributors to the Unicorn Grant for giving me this wonderful, wonderful gift. And I even had some leftover to donate to our local music programs because Sweetwater has a wonderful donation suggestion where they want to contribute to national music programs because of their own love of music, and I think it’s a wonderful idea.
So thank you Sweetwater, thank you Gerald Griffith and Anne Gangusa and all of the contributors and coordinators of VO Atlanta for inspiring this wonderful grant and for choosing me, of all people, to be a finalist. It’s huge. It’s really huge.
So thank you very much. But I mean, that’s me. Sorry I’ve been droning on about that for so long.
But I mean, it really was just kind of just an amazing experience to be rewarded just for helping people out in the industry I love so well, you know? But enough about me, Paul. You got any questions or gear purchases you want to talk about?
Actually, no. I know. Well, I have some bills coming due, which is why I haven’t been able to do that.
So along with finishing that last book, I have to pay my editor. So until I get the funds from Findaway, I need to fund that myself. So I’ll be paying him.
And then I had one leftover bill from the redo of my website that I have to take care of as well. So yeah, definitely not a good time to make any purchases. Plus, doing taxes this week.
Yeah, there’s one for you. Do you have to pay those, really?
I know. I wish we didn’t. I guess it’s the next two weeks, but still.
Well, that’s fun. I’m sure your wife’s happy about that.
Yeah, definitely. So with that, we’ll bring it to the main portion of this episode, our interview with public address announcers or reformed public address announcers and how that might affect their voiceover career.
Welcome to the roundtable portion of this episode of The VO Meter. We’re really excited to have our Public Address Roundtable with folks who either are currently doing public address or have done so in the past. And the reason this came about is because I myself have done public address announcing.
I was the public address announcer for a state university here in Maryland, the Towson State University. Or sorry, it was Towson University when I was doing the public address announcing, but my degree still says Towson State. I’m kind of partial to that.
And I did, let’s see, women’s soccer, men’s soccer, women’s basketball, volleyball, and one men’s basketball game. Apparently, they didn’t like me very much because they only got that one chance. But we have people that have done public address for a whole host of other events.
We’re going to jump into how that might have affected their voice over career, either negatively or positively. So first, let’s go around the room and have everybody introduce themselves. Let’s start with on my screen, Justin.
How are you doing today, Justin?
Yes, I’m Justin Brown. I used to be the PA announcer for the Talladega Super Speedway.
Great. And where are you out of now?
I’m in Birmingham now and I’m currently doing radio.
Okay, great. Next we have Mike. Mike introduce yourself, please.
Well, I’m Mike Norgaard and I’m full-time voice over artist and part-time sports public address announcer. And I do Gravevine Colleyville ISD football and former college basketball and baseball at high school collegiate and professional levels as well. And hockey too.
Okay, great. And Jay, welcome.
Hey there. Hey, great. Thanks.
Yeah. Jay Harper, my name. And I’m actually in Charleston, South Carolina based here currently, and I have done voiceover work for, gosh, almost 30-some-odd years.
But doing Public Address Announcing VO, you know, for gosh, a good part of that time as well at the high school and collegiate levels, the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, where I’m currently based, I’ve done a PA for baseball. I’ve helped with football pretty much at the high school level. Gosh, everything from hockey to soccer to baseball, softball, football.
It’s been an entertaining and educational experience to work all these different types of sports and get a real feel for each of these sports, being up in the booth and watching things from a PA announcer’s perspective.
Awesome. And Bob, tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am currently the public address announcer for University of Maryland. I’ve done upwards of 12 Division I sports for them. This will be my ninth year on the mic for them.
I had been doing some internal voiceover for the federal government when I was employed there. And then as a long-term, long-time season ticket holder to Maryland basketball, I was watching their public address announcer and I said, well, there’s a guy behind the mic. So maybe I might give that a try.
And so wrote to the University of Maryland back in 2010 and was picked up for a number of their sports. I currently do men’s and women’s soccer in the fall, women’s basketball, gymnastics in the winter, and lacrosse and softball in the spring. So I’ve been doing that ever since.
I switched over to full-time voiceover when I retired from the federal government in 2013 and have been doing a host of different genres in that realm, including audio books, narrations, documentaries and things of that sort.
Okay, great. So thanks for going around the room and talking about your voiceover experience. What we want to talk about is how you got into other forms of VO and transitioned or are working on transitioning or if you’re just trying to do both at the same time.
So who would like to start with that? I think that was Justin, so go ahead, Justin.
Sure. I was in radio and have been and still am in radio, started back in 1990. And when I was in another market in Amarillo, Texas, I was contacted by a local studio that said, when you get off the air at 9 a.m., would you be interested in coming down and recording some commercials?
We’ll pay you for it. And I thought, well, that sounds like the best thing I’ve heard all day. So I went down and read scripts, and they wrote me a check on the spot before I got out to the car.
And that really intrigued me a lot. And so I kind of have been playing around with VO part time for the last eight or nine years. And then I finally, with my wife’s blessing and urging to build a home studio, have been able to keep a couple of clients, but not really a whole lot of work, just kind of side work.
And then I just happened to, down the hallway at one of our other studios, a friend that was actually a full time VO actor, Scott Chambers…
Oh, I know Scott. Scott’s a good friend.
He was down the hall, and word got around, and everybody started coming up to me one at a time saying, you know, he’s a full time voice over actor. So I asked him to lunch and started picking his brain. Next thing you know, I’ve got a coach.
I’m going to VO Atlanta. I’m sitting with you, Paul, in an X session with Mary Lynn Wissner. So things are starting to move pretty rapidly in that area.
So I’ve got a goal to transition out of radio before radio transitions out of me to get into full time VO if I can. So that’s the big goal for the next couple of years.
That’s awesome. So you’ve made this transition pretty quickly, over the last couple of months?
Yeah, I started in December and I reached out to Eric Romanowski and he suggested that I get a coach. I had looked back at my email from Scott Chambers and he suggested that I get a coach. There was one name that was common on both of those lists and it was Jody Gottlieb and I reached out to her and asked her if she would take on a new client.
She said yes. That shocked me. So my first coaching session was the week between Christmas and New Year’s and so I have had basically one session a month and now I’ve booked my flight and studio time to do my demo in Los Angeles.
So that will be in April, so I’m looking forward to see what the next step would be.
Okay, so Bob, why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you started the transition to VO?
I had been doing some voice work for the federal government which got me the idea of trying to get into the voiceover world. As I was explaining to before, I’ve been a 35 year ticket holder for Maryland basketball and noticed the PA announcer behind the mic and I thought, well, there’s something I might be able to try. So actually, the PA work was actually my first outside paying gigs outside of what I was doing for the federal government.
Once I retired in 2013, I decided to branch out into other voiceover realms. And again, but just kept the PA announcing one. It was a nice paying gig.
It’s always great to get paid to watch Maryland sports as well, but I just saw it as an extension of the different types of voiceover work that was out there. My work as a PA announcer has led to transitioning more to live event announcing. I just had a demo produced by J.
Michael Collins on live event announcing. And so I’ve been able to market myself as a live event announcer to include work that I’ve done for the University of Maryland. So in that realm, in that vein, it’s worked out pretty well.
I still continue to pursue audio books, corporate narrations and the like. One thing I like about the PA world is that generally when you talk about being a voice actor, people always ask, is there anything that I’ve heard you in? And again, not referring to commercials or anything else.
I just tell them I worked for the University of Maryland and many of them have been out to games and have heard me there, just didn’t realize it was me on the mic. So it’s been a nice sort of foot forward when talking about the voice world, especially here in the Mid-Atlantic region. And so it’s kind of helped me from a marketing standpoint as well being a public address announcer.
Awesome. One thing I was curious about, Bob, because you had a similar experience that I did. When I first started, I had the same way I started with public address.
I looked down during a basketball game and said, hey, that guy is not a college student. I wonder if they’re looking for any more people to hire. And I sort of put an application and audition and eventually was hired.
Were you surprised that they weren’t having students exclusively do the work?
You know, I’ve seen them use students and specifically at Maryland and a few other schools that I’ve worked at. They tend to use students for the game operations, a lot of the videotaping and some of the radio work. They’ll use students who are majoring in journalism or that stuff.
But they tend to go with professional public address announcers actually. So yeah, I mean, I was a little bit surprised, but now that I’ve been in it now for almost 10 years, I really have only seen the PA announcer as the more, I’ll say experienced person in the press box.
Yeah, it’s true. And obviously Jay has the same experience. So Jay, why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you’re working on transitioning to other forms of voiceover?
Well, Paul, for me, actually, I was and still continue to do the quote unquote, other types of voiceover. That’s what I was doing initially. You know, I started in radio 1978.
Yeah, I’m old. Actually was in high school. So, but in, you know, being on air and getting out and meeting people and those of our other guests here that have the radio backgrounds, you know, I mean, you get out and you kind of, depending on your size market, you know, you become somewhat of a known voice, perhaps a known quantity, and you get invited to be a part of things.
And that was kind of the way it worked for me to become part of the PA announcing realm of things. You know, I was already in the market on air and radio and was asked to fill in for some Public Address events. And that transitioned over into sporting events.
And this was all at the high school level. And we’re talking, you know, gosh, the last 30 some odd years, you know, being able to be a part of all that. But I’ve always enjoyed again with the radio background and the spontaneity that that affords you, you know, if you’re not voice tracking or what have you, but nonetheless, just having that, the ability to be spontaneous, granted, being structured and sounding somewhat structured, but not too structured in the live announcing world of things with VO and so forth for public address announcing.
You know, that in and of itself is a skill to be able to, you know, dodge and weave. And you know, you’re not calling the game per se on the public address announcer, you know, on the PA system, but still having the ability to do live reads, you know, that’s becoming more and more of a thing. You know, when I started, you didn’t do ads and stuff to the degree we do now from the PA booth, you know, so getting all the little promos in and all the sponsors in and all the little activities and whatnot that the gig demands you to be a part of now.
I have found, again, the radio background certainly helped with a lot of that. And then transitioning into other forms of VO. I too, you know, doing the audio books, the corporate narrate, I mean, just a little bit of everything.
And like one of the other guests had said through VO Atlanta, just attended my second one of those and actually met Paul the year before last. I was part of the ambassador program and kind of ran into Paul setting up mics and stuff there that first year, but actually sat in with him on some X session, I believe this year, and learned that there are a whole host of people out there that are continuing to kind of tackle all these different little types of voiceover work, but the training and the skills and the technique, while there are some similarities, depending on the area of concentration, if you think you’re gonna be, you know, Ron Radio doing a corporate narration or something, that doesn’t work. So anyway, just being able to immerse yourself in the different types of styles of voiceover work out there is one of the things I enjoy.
I know there are a number of that they find their niche and they hang with it and hey, that’s cool. That bores me. I like to tackle a little bit of everything, but certainly knowing my limits and not going out there and tackling something that I would suggest, hey, you need somebody else for this, that’s not gonna be me.
That’s great. And you’re right about the X session. I was surprised actually that I think of the 12 that were there, eight or nine of the people, maybe even 10, including the three of us that are on this call said, yeah, we’ve done some live announcing, some public address work and I found that to be eye-opening.
And this is why I actually re-energized myself to schedule this episode because Bob and Adrienne, I had talked about this almost a year ago.
And again, there are so many other realms to this. I mean, I have hosted award shows for corporations, live event award shows here at the Convention Center in Charleston, for example. So it’s not just, a lot of people think public address, they think primarily sporting events and whatnot, but as we know, there are certainly more avenues to tackle than just that.
Right, so you mentioned VO Atlanta and I actually met our next guest, Adrienne, at the Mid-Atlantic Voice Over Conference last year, although it turns out, as often happens in this area, we have a lot of mutual friends. But Adrienne, welcome again and tell us a little bit about the other types of VO you’re trying to get into.
Well, I really enjoy audiobooks and I’ve done a lot through ACX. So I’ve really found that I enjoy, especially the non-fiction, the crime books. But I also like to delve into a little bit of everything.
I do annually the Merkle Awards, which are held out in the West Coast and I record them here in my home studio. And it’s people from all over the world that have won awards in advertising and it’s their little own kind of Emmy thing. And I’m looking to do more voice work.
I’m so spread out between the Bowie Bay Sox and Georgetown. I do about six of their sports that sometimes I feel my time gets limited. But I have done some like on Sirius XM, the Fantasy Sports Channel, I’ve done some of their promos that are airing right now.
So I really try to get out there, but I do find limitations when you’re spread thin.
And Mike, Mike Norgaard, tell us a little bit about how you got into other forms of VO, which was first, the chicken or the egg, so to speak, was it Public Address or was it voice over?
It was the chicken. No, similar to Jay, I’ve got a radio background going back into the mid-1980s, and so I was on the radio for a while, and then I was kind of out of voice over and radio for a while, about 20 years or so. And as home studio equipment sort of became more of a viable option, I started exploring, well, I wonder what I could do from home here to generate some voice over stuff and get back into that, because I’ve always really just loved, let’s just clump it under communications.
In general, and so I’ve always loved communications in general, and voice over being part of that, audio books being part of that, you know, e-learning, you need your voicemail, you know, whatever. I just love voicing that stuff, doing that stuff. Did get back into radio eventually, just about four months ago, part-time radio job back here in Dallas where I hadn’t been on the air in forever and ever and ever, and hopped back on and just, you know, really enjoying that.
There’s no money in it anymore, but it is still fun to do. At one point, I was actually standing at a Chinese food restaurant behind the assistant athletic director for my local school district. And it just sort of on impulse, I said, hey, do you guys need any help over there with Public Address at the stadium?
And he said, well, is that something you’ve done? And I said, nah, I’ve never done any of that, but I do voiceover stuff and I bet I could do it. And he said, okay, I’ll tell you what, I’ll put you on the list and if we get any, you know, third party sort of engagements that come in, we’ll give you a call.
And about two weeks later, I got a call and they invited me to come out and do women’s professional football. Yeah, which was really kind of a neat thing. Unfortunately, we had two local teams and they both folded since then, but it was really neat while it lasted and it was here.
It was the WFA, the Women’s Football Alliance, and you can look that up online if you’ve got time and interest in doing so, but it’s kind of a neat thing. It’s full contact women’s football. And boy, when they’re out there and padded up, you can’t tell it’s not guys on the field.
They are serious about it and they have a good time. And it’s a lot of fun to announce as well. So enjoyed that.
And then that springboarded into some high school football. And then that expanded into college baseball and then college baseball into college basketball and volleyball and softball and every other ball that kind of came along. So got into that and I’ve been working pretty steady.
Hockey came along as an opportunity about five seasons ago. So I’ve learned a lot about hockey in the meantime. So had a lot of fun with that.
But again, there are a lot of opportunities, not only sports, but I think Jay and Adrienne were both talking about some of the interesting different things, graduations, for example, or awards banquets. A lot of those go on locally in almost every community. So there’s that opportunity if you’re interested in getting involved in this side of it.
The other thing that’s been a route that I’ve heard a lot of people have taken into getting into the sports side of it, A, just to sort of see how they do with it, B, help a team out that otherwise wouldn’t have any announcing or would have sort of subpar announcing, and C, sort of get your foot in the door, is to approach a local high school or maybe even a junior high school if they have announcing facilities available where they play various sports and see if there’s any level of the sport that doesn’t currently have an announcer and just volunteer to jump in there and do it. And I think that that’s a great way for, if there’s anybody listening today that’s in VO that’s interested in, hey, how do I get started in this? That’s a great way to do it.
You can just pick up and call your local high school baseball coach or softball coach or whatever coach and say, hey, does your JV team have announcing? And if not, would you like me to come out and do that for you? And nine times out of 10, what I’ve found is the answer is, yeah, come on.
We’ll give you a free hot dog and a cap. And then you’re in and you’re started and you kind of at least can begin building that groundwork. So I think that’s kind of a neat avenue that a lot of people kind of take to get in.
That’s great. So talking about helping out your local school, your local rec council, if they have those facilities, that’s fantastic. But there’s a question I had before we jump into how The Public Address has maybe affected your reads and other genres.
What’s the biggest arena or stadium that each of you has announced in? I’ll go first. With the crowd was the 5,000 seat Towson Arena, or CQ Arena is called now.
And for an audition where I actually met Bob for the local arena football league team was the Verizon Center. Oh no, now it’s the… Oh, what’s it called?
Capital One Center? Bob, help me out. The Capital One Arena in Washington.
I got to do an audition there, and ultimately did not get the job, but to hear my voice in an 18,000 seat arena was pretty cool. So how about everybody else? What’s the biggest venue you’ve heard your voice?
Well, for me, it’s definitely Capital One Field at Maryland Stadium, which holds a good 50,000 plus. When I do lacrosse there, especially when Hopkins comes into town, we’ll generally have about 15,000 in there. After that would be Xfinity Center, which holds almost 18,500.
And when Connecticut came to play Maryland women, we had a full house there. So that’s the largest crowd I’ve announced in front of, about 19,000 people. And generally for women’s basketball, it will be anywhere from 5,000 to 7,500 people that you’re doing the work for.
That’s great. Adrienne.
My biggest one was the Baltimore Orioles, and I’ve done about 15 games for them. And on some of the games, there’s been about 42,000 people, some days less. But that was definitely the largest facility.
And I hope they’ll ask me again this year. It’s just incredible to do it at that volume and that amount of people and the energy you get back from the people. It’s just an amazing experience all around.
So my largest is the Baltimore Orioles, Cannon Yards.
Awesome. Mike, how about you?
The largest facility that I have worked is AT&T Stadium in Arlington. And well, I’m not sure, Cotton Bowl in Dallas as well. So I’ve worked both of those rooms.
And those are interesting. The Cotton Bowl was a very interesting experience for me. It was my first high school football game.
And it was the ESPN kickoff classic that they were showing, I think it was nationally on ESPN. And so we had a pretty full house for that. And it was kind of a neat experience.
But they’ve got this little bitty tiny thing, looks like a lapel mic on a stick at the Cotton Bowl. And you walk in there and I was like, oh my gosh, what in the world could this little tiny mic possibly do? And I popped it and did a couple of test announcements.
And I was very, very impressed with what that little tiny microphone could do. So I guess it’s not the size of the mic, it’s the punch behind it. And then AT&T, I did, that’s probably the biggest room that I’ve been in, but-
Is that the baseball stadium where the Rangers play?
That is the Cowboy Stadium.
Oh, okay.
And it’s about 100,000, I guess, is the seating capacity there. And we probably had about 4,000 for the game that I worked because it was a high school sort of reunion football weekend thing where they had a couple, three games go on. So I announced those.
So it certainly was not to a full house, but nonetheless need to be in there and be working.
Awesome. Jay, how about you?
Yeah, as I said here in Think Back on things, that’s a great question because I never really thought about that, to be honest. You’re just kind of in the moment and like the other guests here, you just, hey, you want to be a part of stuff and you enjoy doing it, whether there’s six people sitting out there or 60,000. But for me, I guess the biggest building would be the Superdome in New Orleans.
Granted, kind of like Mike was just saying, we didn’t fill the place up for the high school state championship that I was PA announcing for, but that was the biggest facility. I guess it’s the Mercedes-Benz Superdome now. And in terms of actual crowd, that would probably be my Arena Football League PA announcing Nashville Cats.
We’re going back a ways here. The facility’s gone through a myriad of different names. It was the Gaylord Entertainment Center back then.
It’s the Bridgestone Arena now, and that facility holds about 17,000, 17,000-something like that. Close to 18,000. And I’ve done a number of events there where they packed that place.
So I guess those would be the two up there for me in terms of size of facilities.
Okay, great. And I saved the best for last because I know he’s going to win. So Justin, can you still hear me?
What’s the biggest facility you’ve announced for?
The biggest event that I’ve been a PA announcer for is roughly around 200,000 people. It was the Talladega Super Speedway, and I tried not to blow that out of proportion. I looked it up on Wikipedia, and they had, at its peak, had seating for 175,000, and then when you add in the RVs and the people that are in the infield, it’s easily 200,000.
They joke about when the race comes to Talladega, it turns into the third largest city in the United States, in the state of Alabama. So it’s a pretty large venue and bigger than anything that I’ve ever been able to try to recreate in a stadium or an outdoor gathering. I’ve had 25,000 people I’ve been in front of on a stage, but to be able to be in that booth and on the microphone, realizing there’s 200,000 people, it’s just mind-boggling.
Yeah, that’s awesome, Justin. I knew you would win with that story. That’s why I wanted to have you last.
So now we’ve talked about our public address experience specifically. I wanted to talk about how doing public address or live announcing or maybe even radio has affected your auditions or work with other more traditional forms of voice over, commercial, narration, audiobooks. Because one of the things I noticed is that once I’m doing that kind of work, or I get that in my head, especially for specs that are announcer read, loud commercials, I get into that mode where I’m punching the end of sentences and getting really loud at the end to try and pump up the crowd.
And it’s hard to get out of it where they want to have a more conservative or conversational read. Has anyone else noticed that happening to them when they’re doing those types of reads?
I would definitely say that. I have not.
To me, being in front of a live crowd is just a whole different mindset. I think I’ve got a completely different hat on than when I’m in the studio doing reads. And I would say that probably initially I had to work pretty hard at getting rid of kind of the radio part of it when I started non-radio voiceover.
But I think that transition was more difficult than any sort of interference, at least in my case, that I’ve seen from bleeding over from live PA.
OK, who else had a comment? Was that Jay?
Yeah, I would agree with Bob. I mean, for me, getting out of that wrong radio thing, I mean, I still do radio today. And so being able to, you know, you gain experience and you get a little older and you’re able to kind of ascertain what kind of presentation is appropriate, then you’re able to transition between these different types of VO work.
But I’ll admit it, I find myself still falling back at times into the kind of Ron radio stuff and the, that in some PA situations, it’s kind of appropriate, but yeah, being able to just kind of weave in and out of that stuff. I mean, it takes some, at least for me, and that’s one reason I go to these conferences and do the coaching and work with various other professionals to just get different takes on things and to how to get my mindset and my presentation and my breathing and my vocal style and so forth to meet the needs of the project that I’m currently working on, whether it be live, recorded or what have you.
Bob, I think you started to say, how have you found your experience on a live mic has translated to your audiobook work and other voiceover types?
Yeah, I would echo what Jay was saying. It seems like I’ve been doing public address announcing now, this is my ninth year, that that type of read, that type of genre, that type of energy in the arena, I’ve developed sort of a muscle memory in terms of how to read it, how to punch it, how to get excited, when to get excited, and it comes very naturally to me. When I sit down in my booth and do a corporate narration, like Jay said, that idea that you have to consciously now take that level down and not punch in area, not punch in too much, you want a little bit, but at the same time, just keep it much flatter than you would say in an arena.
And for me, that has been a bit of a difficult transition. As I’ve worked with different coaches, they immediately hear the announcer and provide me with techniques to sort of tamp that down a bit. And that’s really helped me in the last couple of years to develop as a voice actor in other genres as well.
Well, for me, I believe that it affected me negatively. I’ve heard both sides of the issue. But for me personally, and Paul, you were right there with me in the X-Session, when I’m trying to do…
I’m instructed to do a level above a whisper. And in my mind, what I thought was a level above a whisper, I was stopped in the middle of my first sentence that said, if you were doing that in my ear, you would have knocked me on the floor. So I think when you’re normally trying to project and you’re trying to get everybody rowdy and you’re trying to get people to cheer and you’re in the midst of a sporting event or you’re mentally trying to figure out if everybody can hear you, you probably project more than you normally do.
And for me and other people that have been in radio, the way that it was been described to me is that when you’ve been doing this a long time, it’s kind of in your DNA. You have to work really hard to get to a conversational read. So I think for me being a PA announcer and a radio announcer, I’ve heard and learned the hard way that it’s a complete different animal when it gets to VO work because it’s not about your voice in VO, it’s about the acting.
Yeah, and that’s the same experience I had. Your experience with Mary Lynn, as well as Jay and me, is what made me ultimately decide to do this episode now. I planned it a long time ago with Bob and Adrienne, but they were the only ones that I actually had on board to say yes.
And then when we had that experience, because I felt like all three of us were in the same boat where it was the same thing. What we were hearing in our heads was not quiet and above a whisper at all. And the way you made that turn at the end, it was so impressive that I thought to myself, wow, there really is something there.
And wishful thinking is that that’s part of what’s holding me back right now, because I’m not booking a ton, and I’m wondering if there’s other reasons. And that might be it, because I had the same issue where when I finally hit one with a coach and it’s conversational, it sounds to me like it sounds unnatural, and that it’s not even my natural. It’s not even my real voice, because I’m so used to hearing what’s coming out of the cans either at the stadium or on the radio.
Sure. And by the time that I got through with that read for the pomegranate juice, and I was having people in the room applaud for me, I thought that was the worst read that I’ve ever done. And Mary Lynn said, no, you’ve found your sexy voice.
And so I’ve tried to recreate that for a few auditions. It hasn’t booked me a job yet, but it is nice to know that I’ve got techniques, just like when I saw the technique that you used that was brilliant. When you walked over from the corner of the room, I don’t know if you were describing what you had for breakfast or whatever, but you didn’t take a beat and you started reading your script.
The amount of change from what we think in our head is a conversational read to those triggers and those techniques that a coach can give you is really, really necessary, in my opinion, to be able to get to a different type, one of those five different types of reads that we learned about.
Yeah, that was amazing. But pretty much everyone that Mary Lynn worked with, the transformation was amazing, it’s a matter of remembering that when you’re alone in your soundproof booth.
But that’s been the beauty of coaching. I’ve worked with some coaches just recently, Jay Michael Collins, for instance, and the techniques that he provides you specifically helped me instantly, one, to realize it, but two, to be able to immediately address it, and it’s almost a stair step, start completely flat, and then work your way up, whereas public address announcing, I mean, you’re at level 10 to begin with, and the idea that you very rarely actually come down from that. The other drawback to public address announcing, I do almost 80 events a year, it does put a bit of stress on your voice, and with all my other voice work, I’ve had to actually tailor that a bit.
If I know I have something to narrate, I’ll narrate it prior to my announcing gigs, and then use the following day where I can’t use my voice that much, and use that for editing and other things.
Good point. So Adrienne, how has your public address work affected your work in audio books?
With audio books, I feel that I transfer and change that hat, so to speak, pretty well. But I have noticed, as you said, when I’m doing voice overs, that it becomes a little staccato, that it’s not flowing as well because I’m so used to emphasizing points and putting a lot of emphasis on a certain word or a certain thing they really want to get them across at the stadium. So when I am trying to do voice work, I definitely feel that my sentence isn’t flowing as well as it should, and I kind of have to really redirect and bring the volume down and bring my energy down and sound a little bit more natural.
But in books, I feel like I get so into it that I don’t feel a problem in audiobooks, per se.
I guess at that point it all becomes about the acting chops and making sure that you’re getting your characters right.
Right, and I just get so… When I’m into reading and I get into the characters, I just get so involved because I love to read, I get so involved in the book I’m not thinking about it, and it just flows naturally. But I realize that occasionally when I do commercials, that it becomes a little more staccato.
Right. Any other further comments on that before we move on? So our last question, and we’ve talked about this a little bit, some of you mentioned it in your intros, but for those of you that are still doing PA or those that have stopped, what are your plans for the future?
Do you think it’s something you still want to continue to do? Or if you stopped, like me and Justin, is it something you think you might get back into? Or are you focusing more on commercial audio books, narration, those types of genres?
Why don’t we start with Bob?
Yeah, I’m going to continue with it. It remains a revenue stream for me for RJ Voices. So until I have something that overtakes that revenue stream, which maybe one day it will, I’m going to continue doing it.
Plus, I really do enjoy it. It does take a bit more time, though, than your normal voice over work. You might have a two-hour event for a PA announcer.
You have to get there a good hour ahead of time. And with traffic in the Mid-Atlantic region, for a three-hour game, I’m often away from the house for six hours at a time. So in that realm, it does put a bit of a time suck on things that you can do for other work that you might have.
But yeah, I’m going to continue it. Again, it provides me with FaceTime, if you will. It allows me to advertise, especially for women’s basketball, where people have more of a tendency to want to come up to you.
A lot of people say you have a great voice. I hand them a card. And just like that, they want to work with the Public Address announcer for Maryland basketball, women’s basketball.
So yeah, I’m going to continue it. I enjoy it. I like it.
And I think as I’ve gone through a lot of the training and conferencing, you often hear in the voice over world that where everyone might want to do commercials because that might pay the most. You really want to focus on a genre and just get really good at it. And for me, I kind of like PA announcing and I think I’m really good at it.
So I’m going to continue with it until something better comes along. But for me, as a lifelong Maryland Terrapin, I don’t see me leaving the Terps anytime soon.
Well, you are good at it, Bob. I’ve heard you live on several occasions and I’ve always been a fan.
Thank you very much.
And Adrienne, who I’ve also heard live, tell me a little bit about what your plans are for the future.
Face Talk starts out on April 5th. I’m still doing Georgetown Cross right now. And I’m really hoping to get into some voice work, more voice work.
I’m finishing up a book right now, a science fiction book. And I’m really hoping to start pursuing auditioning for more voice work and getting an agent like yourself. That is my…
Pursuing, I really want to be out there doing more commercials and online and e-learning.
Okay, great. Mike, how about you? Do you plan to continue your live announcing work?
Well, for the time being, yes. I always take the approach, particularly with sports and live PA, that if I’m having fun doing it, then I’m hoping the crowd is having fun with me. And so at whatever point it becomes, I’m not having fun doing it, then I’ll know that that’s probably the time to step out.
And same thing with radio. You know, I pretty much just do that for the fun and enjoyment of it. There’s no money in that anymore, really, unfortunately.
So voiceover, studio voiceover work is really what pays the bills, followed by PA, followed by radio. So I think that’s kind of my answer is, as long as I’m still having fun doing it, and they’ll still have me behind the mic, I’m happy to be there. And if either one of those two variables changes, then it’s time to hang it up.
Good advice. Jay, how about you?
Yeah, I was sitting here thinking what Mike was saying. I felt like just saying ditto. So much of what he said is kind of right, kind of where my wheelhouse is currently.
And he’s right about the radio thing. I mean, I’m just doing it for fun these days. It certainly doesn’t really pay that many bills, but still getting an opportunity for that live interaction.
I’m a sideline reporter for Citadel football and color analyst for Citadel baseball on radio. So those experiences have kind of morphed into other things that I truly enjoy. But for me, it’s the studio work that pays the majority of my bills, everything from the commercial work to the e-learning, the on-hold messaging, so on and so forth.
And the radio just kind of, as we know, the cliché, getting your blood and all that stuff. And it’s true. I mean, it’s just an itch that I scratch that only seems radio can do it in one particular way.
And then the public address announcing for me, it’s all about the fun, frankly. I’m not doing it to the degree I once did, but I do get called occasionally to handle some things. I will be honest that I’m so pressed for time.
As one of your guests said, I believe it was Bob. You know, heck, you can put a good six hours into the one event gig there. And not that you’re not willing to put in the hours, but hey, you got to economize and maximize and prioritize.
So there are times when I just don’t have the time, frankly, to really actively go after the PA sort of announcing gigs. But I really do enjoy them. I do enjoy that live energy that everyone has spoken about.
And for me, PA announcing has just become a fun thing that if I could do more of and make more money at, yeah, I’d probably do it. But it’s not something that I’m out there marketing myself as.
Well, I didn’t really enjoy it as much as I thought that I would on paper. Being a PA announcer, I thought was going to be fantastic. I did a little on the radio at my first radio job as a color commentator at a high school football stadium.
But when I got the opportunity to fill in at the Talladega Super Speedway, I thought, boy, that’s the cool factor to be able to tell people that you’re the PA announcer at Talladega Super Speedway. It went great on Facebook, but when you’re there live and you’re only reading ads while MRN is taking their break, it gets really stressful because you’re having to wait for somebody next to you looking at the radio producer, giving them a countdown for when they go back live and you have to wrap up your script. So you’ve got people tapping you on the shoulder, giving you a wrap-up signal, and you’re basically reading whether or not, you know, who the sponsor is for the caution flags or when the bar opens at 10 a.m. in the infield or please don’t throw trash on the racetrack.
So it wasn’t as glamorous as I had hoped that it would. Plus, it didn’t pay that great. So that’s why I’m not planning on doing that anymore and hoping to transfer and transition into full-time VO work.
My wife just recently gave me the green light because I told her that you were kind enough to invite me to be a part of this podcast, and I was excited about being a part of it. But she said, well, you know, if you really want to do that again, that’ll be fine. And I said, you know what?
Getting there before the race starts, getting your credentials and having to get up in the exterior outdoor elevator and you’re sharing a bathroom that doesn’t have a cover over when you’re waiting in the rain with all the TV folks is not the most glamorous thing. And then when you have to be there after the race is over with and you’re the last one to leave behind all of those drunk people trying to drive home on a back road and almost getting hit head on kind of made me say, no, you know, I think I’ll just stay out of that and watch it on TV if I wanted to keep following the race.
Yeah, that makes sense. PA in general is much more work than I think people think.
Yeah, it’s really high stress and high pressure and low pay.
Yeah, I remember going hours early to a game and you have to interview each coach to make sure you know how to pronounce everyone’s name. You have to find out if anyone didn’t travel with the team so you don’t have them on your substitution list. You have to know which number goes with each player.
That can be a lot of time out of your schedule.
Well, I also had my job threatened one time when I was a color commentator for the high school football team and I was challenging the coach’s decision to keep rotating in and out quarterbacks. And I made the comment that I didn’t think that the offensive line ever got into the rhythm that they needed to because once they got used to one quarterback, they would change them to another quarterback. Well, the coach decided to call up the radio station and tell them in no uncertain terms he did not want me ever broadcasting for their high school football game again.
Oh, my gosh. What would they pay you, like $25 a game?
Maybe. Then you would have to help break down the equipment, bring it back to the station, and then get up to be on the air at 5 o’clock the next morning. It really didn’t pan out the way that I really wanted it to.
Well, that’s great. So Jay, you mentioned studio work pays the bill, so let’s try and help you do that. How can folks find you if they want to hire you for their project?
Sure, sure. Well, thank you, Paul. That’s kind.
Yeah, you know, like everybody, I’ve got the website that at the moment is… Seriously, I mean it is in transition, so when you do open it and go, eugh, then, you know, it is… I’m telling the truth, it is in transition.
I’m just moving it from a San Diego provider to a local provider, but jharperproductions.com, J-A-Y-H-A-R-P-E-R, productions.com, all spelled out. They can track me down there and hear a couple of demos and stuff, but again, here probably in the next two weeks, you’ll have a more concise, streamlined site that will be a little more user-friendly.
Great. And Mike, how can folks find you?
Well, if you’re looking for me, I encourage you to search Fiverr, and when you don’t find me there, then you can come to my real website at voiceovermike.com.
Great. Adrienne, how can people hire you?
Adrienne underscore Roberson at hotmail.com. I’m also on a WIC site web page under Adrienne dot Roberson. And at Facebook, I really…
At Facebook and LinkedIn, I believe LinkedIn has really helped me get a lot of work, especially in the sports community.
Okay. And Bob, how can we find you?
I’m at rjvoices.com. I just updated my website with new corporate narration, explainer and e-learning demos, as well as the live event demo that I just did to help me transition, really, some of my work that I’ve done with PA Announcing over to other type of live event work. So, rjvoices.com.
Well, thanks everybody for joining us today. As I said at the beginning, I was excited about this. I’ve been thinking about this probably for about a year and a half, ever since I ran into Bob at the Capital One Center for that arena football league audition I mentioned.
And it’s something I’ve always wanted to talk about, and I appreciate everyone taking their time and sort of dispelling some myths, as well as confirming some of my thoughts about the live announcing and public address as it relates to other forms of VO.
I appreciate it. Thanks for including me.
Same here, Paul. I enjoyed meeting the others as well.
So once again, that was our PA Public Address Panel, or Reformed Public Address Announcers Panel. And I just wanted to say thank you to all of our guests, and apologize that I was not able to join you in this meeting. We had a couple of glitches trying to get our conferencing software to work.
I think we were really just kind of pushing the limits of what Bodago Call was capable of, trying to have a conference with six people, some being on phone, some being in areas with questionable internet connections. And so, I just thought it would be easiest if I removed myself from the equation and tried to put less of a choke on the bandwidth that way. So thanks again for bearing with us in those technical difficulties.
And hopefully we can have a more stable call if we try this again.
Yeah, still, it was interesting there. It was fun putting together and challenging putting together. Really tested my editing skills.
But in the end, it was a lot of fun. I’ve been trying to put this together for a long time. Way back at the last Mid-Atlantic VoiceOver Conference where I met Adrienne and we talked about our experiences doing Public Address, I really wanted to get some people on that had had a similar experience to me.
And I was glad that we were finally able to do it with the awesome cast of characters we had.
So thank you for that, Paul. And thank you to our guests once again. So that pretty much wraps up this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Stick with us. We’ve got some exciting episodes coming up in the months ahead, particularly our International Talent Roundtable. So why don’t you talk about that, Paul?
Yeah, that’s gonna be a lot of fun. This came together after Voice Over Atlanta, where I met a bunch of people who were international voice talents. We’re gonna have Simone Clias from Brazil, Humberto Franco from Portugal, Susie Valerio from, I think she lives in the UK, but she’s a native Spanish speaker from Spain.
And we’re going to have Sofia Cruz, and as well as Christian Lanz. So we’re really excited about that panel. I can’t wait to hear what they have to say about how their international flavor affects their voiceover career.
Ooh, fancy. So I can’t wait for that panel. I’m really excited about the guests that we’re gonna be having on, but I just wanted to say thank you to our audience for listening in every month.
We hope you’re enjoying all the things that we’re spouting out, and we hope that… I don’t even know. I don’t know, Paul, what am I trying to say?
Say goodnight, Gracie.
Goodnight, Gracie.
Thanks for listening, everybody. We’ll see you next time. And once again, get well soon.
Paul Strickverda.
Get well soon, Paul. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.