The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Welcome everybody to Episode 8 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We are going to talk about lots of events today. We have a VO Meter shit coming up from Heather Masters, and of course, questionable gear purchases. But first, how are you today, Sean?
I’m doing all right. I’m actually in Seattle right now recording from a hotel room. So that’s why things, you might hear the occasional vacuum cleaner or siren outside.
But at least the acoustics problems are taken care of for the most part. I’m using the review unit that I got from Adil Aliyev for the carry-on vocal booth version 2.0. We can talk a little bit more about him later, but he’s actually working on a newer version of that.
Aside from having to deal with like less than ideal recording situation, I’m having a good time. What about you, Paul?
Things are good. Work every couple of days, if not every day. Couple of new agents signed with over the last couple of weeks.
That’s exciting.
Very nice.
And yeah, just plugging along as always.
Very cool.
So what’s in Seattle?
Some of you know I was an English teacher or an ESL. English is a second language teacher for several years. And my older brother is as well.
And there’s actually a TESL, or Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language Conference, going on at the Convention Center. So him being in Boston, I helped sort of coordinate the travel plans and booked the hotel and found a place that’s a wonderful location. It’s like a 10, 15 minute walk from the Convention Center.
But it’s also, that’s about all it has going for it.
Interesting. I didn’t know there was a way to properly pronounce that acronym.
TESOL?
Yeah. Interesting. I would have always just said T-O-E-S-L.
Oh no. Yeah, well, I mean, if you have to write it or say it enough, you’ll say TESOL.
Yeah, there’s a way to pronounce every acronym. It’s one of the challenges of working with certain industries. They all have their own jargon that you need to learn before you can actually converse with everybody.
Speak the language, yeah.
Yeah, exactly. So one other thing I wanted to mention is that you and I have actually been booked on another show. Do you want to talk a little bit to the listeners about that?
Yeah, that’s really cool. We’ve actually been booked on VOBS, that’s a voiceover body shop, starring audio engineer George Widom and the home studio master and voice actor, Dan Leonard. So this is, I don’t know about you, Paul, but this is really exciting for me.
You guys have heard us mention the show several times on the podcast, and honestly, almost everything that Paul and I know about audio was from these two guys.
It’s like a kid in a candy store. I can’t believe they actually asked us to do it, but we’ll do our best to impress and hopefully have some fun at the same time.
Absolutely, I mean, it’s gonna be way better than our earlier show. We’ve appeared a couple times on their fan round table, and I was in Japan at the time, so the internet quality was less than stellar, and the delay was just awful, but the guys were really great sports, and it was just fun to be there live.
Yeah, we’ll have to tease them, because two weeks ago, I think it was Anthony Mendez was on, and he was saying that he thinks he may be the most return trip guest, or the guest that has made the most return trips, and I was thinking, well, if you count our crazy round tables, you and I are gonna be on three times now.
Yeah, absolutely, well, I mean, but that’s a little bit different. They brought, like, he’s a paid guest.
I know, I’m just trying to make myself feel better. But anyway, that should be a lot of fun. And join us on April 3rd at 6 p.m. Pacific Time, 9 p.m. Eastern at www.vobs.tv.
Should be a lot of fun.
Okay, so that pretty much wraps things up for current events. We are actually going to get to our main topic, which is VO conferences and industry-related events in a few minutes. But right now, our good friend Heather Masters is going to entertain us all with her VO Meter shtick.
Okay, 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.
I’m Heather Masters, and I have, oh, so many embarrassing experiences, but I shall choose one. When I was first starting out and I got my very first live session, I had no idea what to expect, and I’m all on my own up here in Alaska, so pretty much everything that I have learned has been via internet or via long-distance coaching. So I was all on my own and super nervous.
So whenever he called in, I had all my Skype accounts set up just right, which, by the way, I suck at technology, and that was in and of itself a feat for me to learn how to Skype and pretend like I knew what I was doing, which apparently I proved I didn’t because I had the video on. It never occurred to me. I didn’t even know you could turn it off.
And so as we were going in the session, he didn’t have his video camera on. And as we’re going through the session, I’m doing his directions. And there was one part of the section where he kept saying something for me to do, and I just wasn’t getting it.
I think I was just super nervous and I could hear it in my head, but I couldn’t do it with my mouth. And so I kept like having this weird face and making these like idiot, you know, faces because I was frustrated with myself for not getting it. And at one point he said, you know, maybe you should turn your video camera off.
And I laughed awkwardly. Oh, ha ha ha, I know, I make such funny facial expressions. Sorry, I’m really expressive.
Ha ha ha. I didn’t realize he was being serious. And I didn’t know how.
So I just left it on and we continued the session for a couple more minutes and then it ended. And I didn’t realize until later when I talked to some other VOs that you don’t turn your video camera on because you’re a voice and don’t nobody care what you look like. So I emailed him and said, oh, and I’m sorry about the session this morning and about forgetting to turn my camera off.
And then when you mentioned turning my camera off, still forgetting it. It was early on a Monday morning for me and I still hadn’t had my coffee. Smiley face.
Yeah. I don’t think he thought that was very funny. I never heard from him again.
And let’s just say, if I ever see an audition from this studio, I’m all steer clear because I felt really stupid. So, lesson learned, and it’s all part of the journey.
So, yeah, I love that story. Heather actually told us that personally a few weeks ago. Have you ever done anything like that, Sean?
Oh, any large mistakes like that?
With a client on the line, yeah.
So, actually, yeah, I mean, when one of my first coaches, Terry Daniel, like he just suggested just leave, whenever we talked, it would always be audio only, so. Which makes sense, because usually, a lot of us don’t have our computers near our mics, so you couldn’t see us if you wanted to.
Yeah, and actually, I don’t know about you, but when I’m listening to somebody else, I try to critique, I usually close my eyes anyway, because it helps me focus. If I’m seeing their face, it sort of messes with my head, and I can’t give a proper critique.
One of my favorite voice actors, James Arnold Taylor, has this great story. He’s been the voice of Fred Flintstone for almost two decades, but when he went to audition for the part, I mean, this guy, he’s a shorter guy, he’s like five foot five, maybe barely over 100 pounds. They would actually look over him, because they were like, are you sure you’re here for the right audition?
And the original voice of Fred Flintstone was actually listening to his audition. He’s like, will you just shut your eyes and listen to him? He’s the right guy.
And then the casting director did, he’s like, all right, you’re right, we’ll do him, we’ll do him.
See, it helps.
So it’s really interesting, even in an audio medium, how much the visuals can affect us.
Yeah, indeed. So once again, we will get to our main topic of discussion, industry events, in just a moment, but once again, because we just can’t help ourselves, here’s this week’s…
All right, so for this week’s Questionable Gear Purchases, I’m actually doing okay. So, but I do want to talk about that because I was looking at a couple of, I was looking at a new mic, so let me back up a little bit. I have about three mics right now.
I have the Jay-Z J1, which we talked about in an earlier episode. The Sennheiser 416, which is what I’m using right now. It’s a great travel mic and a great, great for a lot of things.
Great for radio imaging, great for promo, great for most commercial work. I know a couple of friends doing animation auditions with it as well. So it’s definitely a good mic to have in the locker if you can afford it.
And then I have my Blue Mouse, which is my fancy, pretty mic. But I was looking at more neutral options for say like e-learning or audiobook work. And so I sat down with some audio engineer friends of mine and be like, do I actually need another mic?
And they’re like, no Sean, you don’t. So it’s really good, like if you don’t know enough about this stuff, it’s always great to get an expert opinion. And who knows, you could save $500, $1,000 on a purchase you didn’t need to make.
Yeah, or even ask friends. One of our colleague, Mike Nordgaard, recently bought a new mic and sent the samples of an A-B test with his existing 416 to us. And my comments were basically, I really think it’s a waste for you to stick with what works.
Yeah, unless you don’t have a backup. Because I mean, these two mics sounded very similar. And…
On mic tests, you mean, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, on his test, exactly. And it was very difficult. There were a couple of parts where we were like, did he, is he messing with us?
Is he switching the samples? So, like, making it harder to guess? But yeah, I mean, if he doesn’t have a backup, he does now, or he can just sell it, and still be fine with the 416.
Yeah, at some point, you reach a point of diminishing returns, where what you have is not going to get any better.
It could, yeah, and you can fall under confirmation bias. You’re like, so you’re like, you wanna justify the purchase, so you’re like, yeah, it sounds great. But what about you, Paul?
Any questionable gear purchases?
Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. So, there was a couple of reasons, or at least rationalizations, that I’d make to myself for this, but I swapped out one mic, the mic I use for audiobooks and long-form narration, because I was looking for something less sensitive, and there was two reasons for that. One, I have problems with mouth clicks, as I think I’ve mentioned, and it helps to have something that’s not as sensitive for long-form.
And then also, I had an author friend who came into the studio, and I recorded her doing audiobook for the first time, where I was the engineer, and she was doing the narration. And she had maybe the worst mouth clicks I’ve ever heard. And in case she’s listening, I’ve told her this in person.
But this was just a normal conversation. So we sat down and we’re sort of talking to the process about how it works and how long it will take, and I said, wow, this is gonna be challenging. So I went out and bought an SM58 by Shure, which is a stage mic used for lots of music and on stage live singers.
And I put it in the booth and it sounds fantastic. It does have some background noise, which is to be expected with a dynamic mic like that.
So when you say background noise, you mean like the self noise in the mic?
It has some self noise, yes. You can definitely hear some self noise in the mic. It’s not the quietest.
But for what I needed, it was absolutely perfect. I put it way up high, almost to the ceiling for the author I was recording, and it almost completely eliminated the mouth noises, just physically. And it was basically a godsend.
And then I use it for myself now for audiobooks, same thing. The less sensitivity really helps. And then I run a little noise reduction on the files, and it sounds great at the end of the day.
And that’s something that I’ve learned. I mean, the more experienced you get with mic technique, you find all sorts of interesting tricks that you can do just with your position in relation to the mic. At first, you might be familiar with say proximity effect, which is where you get really close up onto that mic for that, those intimate reads.
Oh yeah. And then you automatically turn into Barry White or Don LaFontaine. But, but one thing that people don’t try is to actually back off the mic.
Like we, I mean, we have this generic sign. We say, we call it a hang ten, where you extend your thumb and your pinky. And then that helps you dictate about five to six inches away from the mic, which is a good starting point.
But lately, I’ve actually been backing up further, closer to 10 inches away. And say, with the blue mouse, my recordings have gotten a lot clearer. And with the 416 as well, it takes some of the edge off.
Yeah, that actually brings me to my next questionable gear purchase. I went out and bought a Sennheiser 415T, MKH 415T, which is the predecessor to the 416, so to speak. I heard some good recommendations about it.
How it’s like the 416, but less edgy, especially on the top end and a little bit warmer. So I found one at a good price and I just couldn’t resist. So I put it in the booth, I’m talking on it now.
And again, it sounds fantastic. I have to admit, all my… I know I sound like a complete hypocrite based on my last blog post and all my talking about less is more, but my gosh, it’s just like butter.
There are certain products that are worth the high price tag. So it’s unfortunate, but I mean, if you can afford it, then get it.
And one other thing I wanted to mention, because some people, some fans actually have reached out to me about this. Another thing I did was put in a channel strip into my signal chain. And it’s ironic because the very last episode of VOBS before the anniversary one, so basically the day after I bought this thing, George and Dan talked about how channel strips are a complete waste of time, that all they do is introduce extra noise.
And they mentioned the specific model that I had just bought, the DBX 286. There’s an A and S version, I bought the A. But what I’m gonna say is very specific to my situation.
I have highway rumble that I’ve talked about for every episode now. The trucks in the background on the four lane highway just can’t, I can’t block it out with after, with after the fact processing, and…
And you’ve been fighting that problem for like two years now.
Yes, so another friend of the program, Alan Taylor, actually suggested using the channel strip and specifically the 286 by DBX to cut out that noise before it gets into the chain. This particular model has an expander built in and a high pass filter. So I thought a good deal, it was 140 bucks with shipping, got it here and plugged it in, and it does exactly what Alan was suggesting.
I turned on the expander very lightly, so I took some time to adjust it to make sure I had the settings right, and it blocks out that highway rumble along with the high pass filter and allows me to turn the gain up a little bit more on the mic, and with the shotgun, it’s like it’s not even there. So it’s the cleanest signal I’ve had by far. In my particular situation where I needed it, it works well.
But as you can see, this is all evolutionary stuff. So I mean, Paul had a very specific problem, and then this one product offered the solution. You might be fine with just the mic interface combo yourself.
So don’t go running out and buying this DBX just because Paul suggested it.
Right. Somebody contacted me this week. It was actually the gentleman, I’m not sure if he wants me to mention his name, but the same VOBS episode where George and Dan were trashing the DBX, it was because this gentleman sent in a sample to them.
And they said, well, you shouldn’t have the DBX, that’s why it sounds terrible. So he was talking to me about it offline, saying, do you think I should get rid of it? And I said, actually, I just bought one.
So it’s different strokes for different folks, definitely know your situation, and I would say don’t mess with things unless you really know how to set them up.
Speaking of which, because you mentioned having an expander, and that’s something we haven’t really talked about before. I have a general idea of what that is and what that does, but I’d love to hear your description since you’re actually using it.
My description? But what I think it does, and who knows if I’m really accurate, is that it cuts out the dead space between sounds. So it’s basically a gate that will clamp down when the sound is not coming to the mic and then rise back up when the sound is coming into the mic.
Now, one of the reasons I like the channel strip is because it has actual dials. I don’t have to punch in numbers or settings on a plugin. I can just adjust the dials until it sounds good.
And that has helped a lot.
Awesome, very cool. One less questionable gear purchase. So as I mentioned, I have the 416.
And once you get all the big purchases out of the way, I’m a big fan of smaller ones to sort of improve your workflow or to help the things you already have work better. So I picked up two little things for the 416. One of them is this very discreet pop screen or pop filter that goes right onto the barrel of the mic.
So I hate dealing with goosenecks. I know it’s a traditional design and a lot of pop filters use it, but I’ve never liked it. I don’t even like the fact that they scratch up whatever mic stand you put them on.
So I mean, this one’s low profile. It looks cool. It works well.
It’s even portable. It’s great. And then the other one was a shock mount for it, which is also very small and low profile.
It’s actually from Rode, who has partnered with Rycote, who specialize in just making shock mounts. And they’ve got this really interesting, they call it their lyre system. So rather than having, say, rubber bands sort of form this web that wraps around a mic and detaches it from shocks, or like helps it absorb shocks, this actually uses sort of rubble, er, rubble, rubber.
Too many Flintstone references.
Barney Rubble, hey Fred. But anyways, it uses these little, they call them lyres, because they’re sort of like bow shaped, but they’re made out of rubber, they’re still very sturdy and lightweight, and it looks good with the 416. And if I wanted to, I could even use it on a boom pole, or like with a camera rig, or something like that.
So I’m happy with those purchases, and it wasn’t too expensive for both.
Awesome. So I guess the moral of the story is, there can be not so questionable gear purchases as well.
Well, if you put enough thought into them, none of them are.
There you go. All right, so let’s get to the meat and potatoes of the program. We want to talk about events.
So, VO Atlanta just wrapped up, and you and I were both there. Let’s talk about that. First of all, what were your expectations going in, especially as a second timer?
So, as a second timer, that’s a good point. So, my first year, I actually won attendance to come to the conference because Anne Gangusa and Gerald Griffith, the main coordinators of the conference, have this sort of scholarship through Anne Gangusa’s Facebook group, The VO Peeps. At the time, I was living in Japan, so I qualified for their international scholarship, and I won attendance to the conference.
I got a nice travel stipend, and I was able to come, which was great, because at the time, I couldn’t have afforded it otherwise. And I had an amazing time. I was just blown away.
The atmosphere is so electric and positive and encouraging. I met people from all walks of life, at all stages of their career. Everyone had something to offer, and I was surprised with how much people were paying attention to my advice.
And it’s funny, because this year, I’m pretty active on social media, so people are like, oh yeah, I know, I’ve seen all of your posts and your videos. Like, what cartoons are you in? I’m like, not quite at that level yet, but you’re so…
But it’s just so great to be able to connect with people that I’ve followed online for a number of years. And meet them in person and talk shop. It was great.
Awesome. So, as a first timer, I think I mentioned this in the episode leading up to the conference. I didn’t really have any expectations.
I was showing up as a sponge, basically, to absorb as much as I could and see what happens. So, I tried to do that, basically. I showed up and just waited to see what happened.
And that was interesting.
See, that was my plan, too, but then about a week or so before the conference, Cliff Selman, he’s an audio engineer and sort of automotive commercial specialist out of Texas. He and another audio engineer, VO, Dan Friedman, were organizing what’s called the Team Challenge. And this was their fourth one.
I believe the first event didn’t have one. But basically, what happens is you get nine teams who are assigned at random. You have team leaders who decided before the conference, but the teams themselves are decided at random.
And then they’re given a client, and then they have 24 hours to write a script, cast the script using the team members, record it in your hotel room with whatever devices you have available, and then mix it together, and then submit it, and hope for the best. So originally, I wanted to be like Paul and have a very, like, since I was so, since my schedule was so planned out the year before, and I had certain expectations being a scholarship winner, my original plan was to just enjoy the conference like a newbie and absorb everything that comes my way. But the team challenge is quite the time commitment, and it literally took up half of my conference time.
Yeah, I barely saw you. I mean, that was partially my issue, too, but yeah.
And when you did see me, I was usually sweating profusely and quietly saying expletives under my breath.
And holding your knees and rocking back and forth slowly.
Challenge. Exactly. But there is a happy ending to the story.
We did finish relatively early. I mean, yeah, it was half the conference, but there were some people working on theirs into the third day. But even though we were competing with each other and there was some joking jabs at each other’s expense, it was all good fun.
There was no real sense of cutthroat competition. Everyone just wanted to make a good spot. So it was a good event.
And I’m happy to report that my team actually won the challenge. So even though I missed half of this year’s conference, I get to go next year for free.
There are videos out there of Sean’s acceptance speech. You should definitely try and catch it if you can. It was pretty epic.
Oh, wow, I didn’t know that got recorded. And I’m all teary-eyed and emotional because I’m just running on three hours of sleep a night.
And also possibly concussed as you bang your head on the way up the stairs.
Oh, dude, I have pictures. I have this giant bruise on my shin because I was so happy. I was so excited.
First off, I looked like freaking Hugh Jackman because I’m like, yeah, when he’s about to go, Berserker Barrage, but I was just so happy. And first off, I never thought I could do what was required of the challenge before. And then we won first prize.
So it was a wonderful feeling. And so in my rush to get to the stage, I tripped on an audio cable and almost concussed myself on the railing. But thank God my spider-like reflexes saved me at the last minute.
Yeah, that was fantastic.
Oh Lord, thank God that wasn’t on camera.
But congratulations to you and the whole team. I know you worked really hard because I saw, I witnessed it. I actually crashed one of your sessions and ate dinner with your team.
Yeah, yeah. And it was quick because you guys had to go back out and work right away. So it was exciting.
But yeah, speaking of which, I hardly saw you at the conference. And I don’t think you got much of what you expected out of it either.
Well, yeah, speaking about expectations, my experience turned out quite different as well. And that’s because I volunteered to work as part of the conference team, specifically the audio visual team or ABS team. And that involved setting up all the audio and video for each of the presentation rooms and the main room.
So I had to be there on Wednesday and we had a team meeting. And I thought we’d just sort of hang out after that. But no, immediately, we had to take all the equipment.
We had it all stashed in one room, which is basically a staging room where we could inventory all the equipment to make sure we knew what we had and then assign it to each room. And it was the most crazy logistics plan I’ve ever seen. A great job done by Ron Minitry, who was heading up the logistics for that.
And a well-oiled machine. We set up all the equipment in that room and then we moved it to each of the rooms as we could. So the challenge was, and one of the reasons they’re moving next year to a new facility is that we didn’t actually have access to all the rooms, because there was another conference going on.
There was a Sisters of Mercy conference, of all things, in all the rooms, in most of the rooms. And the other half was filled with Chick-fil-A employees doing some sort of corporate retreat.
Oh, I did see that, that’s right.
So we only had access to, I think, one of the rooms the first night. So we put some stuff in there, ran the cables, ran the mics, set up the mixers. But then we had to get up at the Crack of Dawn the next day, and, or sorry, not even, that’s next day, we didn’t have access to the rooms until 11 o’clock.
So basically, as registration was happening, me and my colleagues were running back and forth like crazy people, taking all the equipment to the rooms that we could get access to. And then some, we had to take the equipment and move it to another room once the session was over. So for instance, the one session where Jeffrey Kafer was, once he was done on Thursday, or on Friday, we took that equipment out and ran it to the bar so we could set up karaoke with the same speakers and mixer.
So it was constant movement, constant work. It was not what I was expecting, but it was really interesting to see the conference from that side because there was a lot of fringe benefits involved. First of all, the most obvious is a discount on registration, so when you volunteer for the conference, they have a thing called the Ambassador Program.
And if you go to the website, you can actually register for this now, for next year to apply. You can get a registration for $250, which is half the cost of the registration. And as an ambassador, you only have to commit to eight hours of work during the conference.
And that can be maybe doing registration, maybe doing set up, maybe doing audio visual stuff like I was doing. It might be a room attendant, where you offer water to the presenter, or make sure they have the chair they need. Just eight hours of your time throughout the conference, you can get half off the registration.
So check that out if you’re interested next year. It might be a way to get to the conference that you might not have thought about. So that was one benefit.
And honestly, I could not have gone to the conference without that discount. So that was the one reason I did it. But the other, and I knew this would be the case from my history with other businesses, is that when you’re on the team like that, there’s a lot of behind the scenes contact that you get that really isn’t possible any other way.
So for instance, the first day, within seconds of being there, I was in the room alone with Mary Lynn Wissner and chatting her up. And I met Tom Pinto before anybody else did, same way I was helping him get set up with the microphone and the TVs that he was using to present. So that was cool.
The morning of the keynote speech, Bill Farmer, the voice of Goofy for the last 40 years. He was in the room, and it was me and Uncle Roy and Kerry Donovan, I think, and that was it, and Bill. So we just sat down and started talking about our families, and I was showing him pictures of my kids with Goofy.
So there’s really no way to get that sort of access without being part of the team, and that was really awesome. And I’ll share one story about how that went even further on the way out. I was at the airport on my way out of town, and I walked into the terminal, and there was really no seats at all, except for the one seat next to Tom Pinto.
So he remembered me, I said hi, I asked him if I could sit there, I did. And we had a half an hour conversation about nothing VO related, just about our families. Turns out that his ancestors and mine are from very similar areas in Sicily, and we talked about Italian heritage and all kinds of cool stuff that wasn’t at all related to business, but I got to know him really well personally, and that was awesome.
And that would not have happened if I hadn’t had the chance to meet him one-on-one in the conference room before it started.
And that’s one thing, that’s actually a really good point that I wanna bring up since it’s fresh, is when you go to these events, yeah, we’re all in a similar industry, and many people are happy to talk shop, but a great way to actually build a relationship is to not talk about voiceover, is to ask people questions about their family and what they’re up to. People are usually quite happy to talk about something else, cause that’s their job, that’s their nine to five. So sometimes it’s nice to move away from that.
Yeah, exactly. So just to wrap up the discussion on volunteering, I will say that Gerald Griffith, the organizer, is really about people getting the experience they need. So even though I was on the team, I was able to go to any X sessions I wanted to if I paid for them, and any of the sessions that I wanted to be in that were general breakouts, I could make sure I was in that room.
So for instance, I really wanted to be in Scott Brick’s session because that’s what I wanted to learn about. So I made sure I was running the audio board for Scott Brick. And same thing happened with one of my colleagues, Andrew Bates.
He really wanted to be in the room with Ellie Ray. And he was because we just switched. I was supposed to be in that room and he said, can I be in this one because I really want to be with her for this session?
So we switched. So whatever things I really wanted to see, I could still do that. And Gerald was totally on board with that happening.
And it was really, really gracious of him to set it up that way.
And for people who might not know who these people are, so Ellie Ray Hennessey is this amazing character actress who’s based out of Toronto. And she had this fabulous workshop. I was actually at the one that Andrew wanted to attend.
And as he said, I think that is the first breakout session I’ve ever seen where there was a standing ovation. Like everyone was so moved. She has so much energy and charisma and she’s so physical in her acting that it was very inspiring.
And that’s one of the, like it really encapsulates what these events are about is how inspiring they can be to help you sort of like to push yourself to new heights in your career.
Yeah, I can say that one was really loud because I was next door with Rob Sigampaglia who was kind of quiet and he was constantly getting drowned out by cheers and laughter. I felt bad for him.
Way to get his name right though. We mentioned a few other people. We had Mary Lynn Whistler.
She’s actually a casting director and voice talent herself. I did an X session with her last year at VO Atlanta. So you hear Paul and I mentioning X sessions and breakout sessions.
The breakout session is just a general session that is open to any attendee. It comes with your registration. And these can, even though they’re general sessions, they may not just cater to newbies.
Like Paul was saying before, Gerald does a really good job of offering differentiated experiences based on people’s experience level and their niche of VO and their interests. So, and then the X sessions are basically private workshops. They’re smaller.
Limited amount of attendees can register.
Limited amount of attendees, like maybe 12 or less. And there’s an additional fee. But honestly, if you look up some of these coaches or casting directors or voice talent services, it’s actually usually more cost effective to do it as an X session than a one-on-one.
So that’s a huge added value to the conference itself.
It’s a little less stressful too.
A lot less stressful too.
Because you have camaraderie.
Yeah, yeah.
One thing I want to mention about the X sessions, I was setting up Melissa Exelberth in one of the rooms, and in the middle of the room, she stopped me with all the attendees there and said, hey, I really heard great things about your podcast. I’m gonna start listening and check it out. So thank you, Melissa.
Hopefully you’re listening now. That was a really nice shout out in the middle of a crowded room. Thank you.
Yeah, it was great. She said the same to me afterwards. And she’s a talent at the top of her game.
And so just getting compliments and words of encouragement from her is huge for my fragile ego.
Yeah, me too. So we talked about what the experience was like. What was the biggest thing you learned or from who did you learn the most, you think?
Well, since Ellie Ray is fresh on my mind, probably her. So she taught me two things that were like, first off, she’s very, very physical. And she talks about how very, she’s got this great, sort of a podcast about just different vocal placements.
Vocal placement is just where the air flow is going through your instrument and what kind of sounds that makes. So I mean, you might be familiar with nasal. It’s in your nose.
You’re passing it through. But then you could make it even more complicated character if you push it through your sort of soft palate.
And then you could slow it down, bring it down a little bit and have a really dumb character.
That kind of thing. But yeah, that’s all vocal placement. And if you familiarize yourself with the different areas of it, you can create a pretty healthy stable of characters.
So that was one point. And then another thing that she said is that even though as voice actors, it’s important to practice diaphragmatic breathing, like breathing from the diaphragm, so you can have that resonance and power and stamina to help get you through four hour sessions, recording sessions. But the thing that was really revelatory for me was the fact that she’s like, your emotional core is actually in your chest, which makes sense, because that’s where your heart is.
But she’s like, go ahead and laugh for a second. Like, ha ha ha, ha ha ha. Where is that coming from?
It’s in your chest. And if you’re angry, or if you’re frustrated, or sad, it’s still in the chest, but it’s choked off. And that was huge.
The fact that negative emotion was just like a choking off of positive ones. And so that was really cool. And then she said one other thing that was really motivating for me, because it kind of ties up into another experience I had the week before.
But she just said, if I learn something from an experience, I can never fail. And so as a VO, as a new VO, you’re gonna make mistakes all the time. But if you learn from it, it’s not a failure.
You’re not, it’s not the end of the world. You can move on and improve. So that was pretty huge too.
What about you?
Yeah, I think the thing I learned most was from Rob Sigmung Pogli. And it was all about business acumen and how to protect yourself from possible lawsuits and make sure you’ve done all the proper paperwork. So one of the things he mentioned was that another voice talent is being sued right now for a picture on his website that used to be royalty free and now is being bought up or has been bought up by a company and they filed a lawsuit.
So Rob said there’s this whole new business out there of companies going around and buying behind the scenes pictures that used to be on royalty free sites, securing the rights to them, and then finding where they are on the web and just sending out lawsuits to people and saying, ding, ding, ding.
That’s ridiculous.
Horrible. And Rob said get ready because it’s coming in full force. It’s a whole new business model.
So that was eye opening. And he talked about talent agreements and how important those are, that basically you need to have a talent agreement when you work with a client to protect yourself, not necessarily them, but make sure you know what you’re getting into. So if they come back and try and misuse your voice, then you have that in place.
And the biggest takeaway from the session was that you always own your own voice recordings. So even if you do a recording for an audio book, you own the recording of your voice doing it, and you need to protect yourself accordingly. So make sure no one else uses that without your permission.
So if an audio book publisher, for instance, is using your audition to promote their book, that’s not okay unless you say it is, because that’s your property. So I found that really interesting.
Yeah, and I understand that contracts and actor agreements can be intimidating for many, but Rob actually wrote an entire book about it called Voice Over Legal, and he actually has templates for contracts and certain other agreements that he gives you permission to use. So if you haven’t picked it up, I highly recommend that. And you can find that either at voiceoverlegal.com or voiceoverextra.com.
It’s a big green book. It’s got little judge’s gavel on it, and it’s a fantastic read. So he really breaks it down and gets you to think about all the stuff that we never would otherwise, unless you happen to be a lawyer and on-camera talent like he is.
Right, exactly. All right, so we talked about what we learned and the overall experience. Let’s talk a little bit about actionable steps, things you should do after any conference, really, to make sure you get the most out of it.
So probably the biggest thing is follow up. Because when you go to these events, you’re gonna be meeting a lot of other voice talent and you’re gonna be getting a lot of business cards. So it’s always great to spread those out when you get home, enter everyone into your whatever database you use, at least their name, their email, their website and stuff like that.
And one thing that I feel like I need to remind you and remind people of who go to these events is because you’ll hear people who are on the fence about whether they should go. And usually it’s like, does it lead to any work? How does this help me?
And you really can’t answer that question for someone because there’s no guarantee. And you’re gonna be surrounding yourself with fellow voice talent who don’t necessarily hire voice talent. But still, honestly, I have gotten more work through networking, like this conference and almost any other avenue, just because of the dreaded word exposure.
But this is positive exposure. This puts face to a name. There are talent agents, there are casting directors at these events, and if you build up a positive relationship, it could lead to future work.
I happened, like this last year, I got an agent because they were so impressed with how the team challenge spot turned out. So, you really never know.
I will say, though, you have to make sure that while you’re there, you put yourself out there. You do something that either win the team challenge or put yourself out there as a volunteer, as a team leader, or like I did, be with a conference team, or get involved with any of the activities that are going on there. Maybe it’s just singing karaoke.
Get out there so people see you and you can leave a memorable impression.
And form a positive association.
Yeah, you’ve definitely done that. Everywhere I went, I would mention the podcast and say, do you know Sean Daeley? And everyone would say, oh, of course, we love Sean.
I honestly don’t know how I’ve developed this reputation for myself, but I don’t know. If you’re likable, it helps.
And the other thing about follow-up, I would recommend is to, when you send out an email, or if you’re gonna send even a personal letter, try and talk about something not VO related. Like something, a conversation, hopefully you had a meaningful conversation and you’re not just blasting everybody. That’s the other point I would make, is that don’t just blast everybody at once and say, hey, name, nice to meet you at VO Atlanta.
Hope we can work together sometime soon. Make it personal. And try to reference something that happened at the conference.
For instance, I mentioned Rob. I was talking to him later on that night about baseball, because he mentioned he was a college baseball player and I do a lot of coaching of youth baseball. In fact, I have a draft tomorrow night for my eight-year-old son’s team.
So we spent an hour talking about baseball. So when I sent him a follow-up, I said, it was great talking to you about baseball. That’s a personal connection.
Try and do that instead of saying, hey, it was great seeing you at the conference. What mic do you use?
Yeah, and honestly, it gives some people something to remember you by. So, like, they… Because there were, what, 500 people at the conference this year, and Rob was a presenter, so he was…
Might have been inundated by a numerous people talking to him. So just having something like, hey, we talked about this, or I met you at the bar, and had a great conversation. All of these things really help solidify you in that person’s mind.
And you never know. It might lead to, or they might be happy to refer you for a job that they’re not appropriate for. You know what else works great?
Bringing food, or buying food. I’ll be forever indebted to Fraser for buying me a drink that one night.
Oh yeah, no, he’s a good…
And Uncle Roy made a lot of friends by bringing bagels all the way from New Jersey to hand out to people. He got the joysy bagels. He had a carry-on bag just for bagels.
Hey, when I came from Japan last year, I actually brought bags of Japanese Kit Kats.
Awesome.
Because people may or may not know this, but Kit Kats are really popular in Japan, and they come up with all of these crazy flavors. Some of them are more tame, like strawberry, or strawberry cheesecake, or creme brulee. Some of them get quite original and very Japanese, like sweet potato or wasabi.
Wow, interesting, I didn’t know that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or pumpkin, they have seasonal flavors, they have all of these different things. It’s something like 42 original flavors at one point.
It’s ridiculous. But Uncle Roy still has them from last year because he’s just been rationing them out.
Awesome. All right, so that more or less wraps up the experience at VO Atlanta. I would recommend anyone considering or on the fence to go.
It’s the most fun you can have in a voiceover. I’m just gonna go ahead and say it. That was the big takeaway, is that everybody was so happy to be there.
Just big smiles on their faces, people giving hugs to people that they’ve only known from Facebook and so happy to meet in person. And it’s just a great way to commune with the voiceover industry as a whole.
And it’s a great, it’s a huge motivator because it gives you, you’re increasing your knowledge base, you’re working with your peers, and it’s just so much fun. It’s like everyone leaves exhausted, but really just accomplished, or feeling accomplished and content. And it’s just an amazing feeling.
Indeed. So with that in mind, let’s talk about some of the other industry events that are out there for voiceover that may be of interest to people. And any that you have actually been to?
Let’s see. So there are numerous conferences that crop up throughout the year. I’ve been to Via Atlanta, and we were both at MAVO, or the Mid-Atlantic Voice Over Conference in Herndon, Virginia.
Unfortunately, that won’t be returning until 2018, but there are a few other smaller conferences that crop up throughout the US. I’m actually looking forward to WovoCon, or World Voices Organization, and that’s going to be in Las Vegas in June.
April, actually. It’s coming up, oh wait, sorry, it’s last year. Sorry.
That was last year, yes, that is in June. So I think it’s the 23rd through the 25th. And so really looking forward to that.
This is sort of like, cause VO Atlanta is like an event. Like if you’ve ever been to something like Comic-Con, it has that almost, that similar level of fandom to it.
You’re right about the dates, by the way. Just wanna confirm, 23rd to 25th June 2017. Vegas, baby.
Yeah, yeah, Vegas, baby. And then, it’s a huge event. It’s sort of a formal planned event.
And WovoCon’s a little bit different because it’s much, you got a smaller level of attendees. A lot of the workshops are sort of peer-led. And I haven’t been to it, so I don’t know the exact procedure.
But if you’ve ever been to the events FafCon or FafCamp, these are just people at the top of their game who are willing to just sort of take on a workshop and then share their experience and expertise. Maybe it has to do with their marketing efforts or personal branding or studio help. So it’s really sort of like, it’s not so much like a newbie conference, like not to exclude anyone, but it’s just people who are already established trying to up their game.
Yeah, and FafCon actually, there’s another one coming up, FafCon 9. I think it’s too late to register. You have to, I’ve already been in by invitation only.
But it’s October of 2017.
Yeah, that’s unfortunate, because they’re only going to do a total of 10 of those, and that’s quickly approaching. So I don’t know if I’m gonna get an invite, because I hear, once there’s a wait list of 500 people, and it just, it books so quickly. So, I mean, that just shows the value that people are placing on the event.
Right, and the last one I wanna mention is APAC, the Audio Publishers Association Conference. And that is May 31st, with a pre-event on May 30th in New York City. So that’s specific to audiobooks, but I sat in the session with Amy Roubenet at VO Atlanta, and she raved about this, that basically this is what launched her career, was going to this conference with a concerted marketing effort to get herself out there, and it worked, apparently.
Very cool. Yeah, so once again, that’s APAC, the Audio Publishers Association, and that’s a great way to, like if you’re an audiobook narrator, and say you’ve been doing ACX projects for a while, but want to work with actual publishers, this is a great way to sort of like set up shop and then let people know what you do.
Yeah, and one thing Amy said, another takeaway from VO Atlanta, and it really makes sense for any conference, is don’t go there until you’re ready. Have a fantastic demo, know who you want to talk to, have business cards, be ready before you introduce yourself to a publisher.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Because like I said, we want to make positive associations. So, like you don’t want to be remembered as the guy who is swinging from the chandelier after one too many drinks, you know?
Well, maybe.
Unless you did some really cool back flips afterward.
Yeah, exactly. So that wraps up most of the industry events, at least the ones of which we’re aware. Let’s talk about some sort of ancillary or related events that may be beneficial to your VO career.
You just went to one, right?
Yeah, I actually… So a little about me. I’m a big comic book fan, or geek or whatever.
I’m a big comic book geek. And love superheroes, love cartoons, love comics. So for the last five years, my dad and I have actually been going to Comic-Con together, because he’s a big Trekkie.
And so we can both kind of satisfy our inner nerds. So my dad and I have been going to this event and since about five years ago, there’s been a lot of… There’s been a call to have voice actors as celebrity guests, because they had popular TV and on-camera celebrities coming, but no voice actors.
And so that was a big draw for me. I mean, I’ve gotten more autographs and signed pictures from that event than anything else, but I’ve met all of my voiceover idols. And they’re actually like, just like every one of them we met at VO Atlanta, they are so generous with their time and their expertise, and they are so encouraging of new talent.
Rob Paulson was telling me, so if you don’t know who Rob Paulson is, he was Yakko Warner in Animaniacs, in Warner Brothers Animaniacs. He was Pinky from Pinky in the Brain. He was the original Raphael in the 1980s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and he’s now the current Donatello in the current Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
So, how often does that happen? Awesome. Yeah, and so when I told him, he was like, you’re doing all the right steps, and he’s like, and at some point, you will have to sort of lead the way for people who come after you.
And then I mentioned our podcast and how we’re trying to do just that, you know? So…
Did he say he’d be a guest?
Why? Oh, that was a perfect opportunity wasted. But, I mean, these things are great because to see people at the top of their game and if you ask the right questions, they are very happy to tell you some golden nuggets.
Because very often you have people who haven’t done their research, you’re just like, how do I get into voice acting? Can you submit me to your agent? And yeah, exactly.
I mean, even us, we’re like, oh no. They don’t… Like, first off, they do not have time to answer that question in a panel.
And there’s no way… Like, everyone’s journey is personal. There’s no right or wrong way about it.
Like, Jim Cummings, the voice of Pete, and Winnie the Pooh for Disney, like, he had all sorts of odd jobs. Like, he worked on a steamboat. He was a drummer in a rock band.
He, like, he helped build floats for Mardi Gras. Like, he worked in a strip joint, like, yeah, you don’t know. Like, who’s to say?
And apparently, it was all, like, it was all relevant skills for him, so.
Well, we actually have a clip of you asking the right question and with the right voice. So, let’s play that now.
I’m Sean, Sean Daeley from Fort Orchard, Washington. And I got two questions for Tress. First one’s a little personal and very important to me.
And believe me, I’ll pass along the word.
No, yes, Donald and Daisy have been engaged for 75 years. And so, it’s nice to have the question popped at home.
It’s a very difficult voice to do, the voice of Donald. I cannot do it. And I was so relieved when I was auditioning for the voice of Daisy, because you don’t hear of Daisy much at all in Disney cartoons until the mid-80s.
And I was so afraid that they were going to want me to be a female, you have to quack, like Tony, because I can no can do, in a very beautiful and feminine way, of course. So anyway, very, very difficult job to do.
So the actual question was, we were talking about this a little bit on Friday, but I’ve been doing professional voice over for about three years now, commercial and narration. How do you transition from that more straight stuff into animation and video game work?
Well, I take any job that they’ll offer me. And I didn’t know, and I didn’t specify. You want me to do an insurance narration, or an industrial, or a trailer, whatever.
It’s House of Tile, Bob’s Law School, all… Todd’s House of Formica. It’s all work, yes.
And you get better and better and better. You just fail up. And it’s practice, you’re being paid to practice.
So it never turned out any kind of a voiceover. I never say no. Yeah, I didn’t get a cartoon for the first 10 years of my career.
Yeah, and then slowly, just kind of, once I got my foot in the door at Hanna-Barbera, yeah, fix that up, I’m good. So, yeah. So gradually it transitioned, which is a very good thing for me, because I prefer the cartoons now, but there was a time when I liked the radio and television commercials better.
So I hope you guys enjoyed that. I mean, I’ve been a fan of Tress McNeil for decades. Honestly, she was like my first voice crush.
Like, I remember watching Rescue Rangers, that show with Chibb and Dale, and a couple of other rodent sidekicks, and she was Gadget on that show, and then she was Babs Bunny on Tiny Tunes. And she’s more than half of the female voices on The Simpsons, so this was just amazing to be able to say, Donald Duck. Or to her, you know, express my feelings like only Donald can.
Yeah, that was really cool.
Yeah, it was very unique. Actually, at my voiceover meetup group in Seattle yesterday, one of the other talents had seen that. So like, oh, did you go to that panel?
I was like, yeah, it was Donald Duck.
And she’s like, that was you?
Awesome.
And then that was televised, who knows? Maybe someone at Disney saw that and was like, we need more people, we need another Donald. So, not keeping my fingers crossed for that one, though.
Or at least, we need Donald in 15 years.
Yeah, we’ll see. Yeah, maybe I gotta work on that one. But yeah, it’s just, like, one of the reasons I love going to these events is that it really kind of reminds me why I wanted to get into voiceover in the first place.
It’s incredibly encouraging and they’re just fun. So, because, like, once again, you see people at the top of their game and you see what kind of skills that you might want to emulate. For example, improv is huge and is a very valuable skill for an animation or character voice actor to have because they might ask you to make a voice for a character on the spot, or they might ask you to supply dialogue.
So it’s very valuable. And so we’re gonna show you one more clip. So starting about a few years ago, they have this thing called Twisted Tunes at Emerald City Comic Con, which is a panel where all of the voice actor guests do a table read of a Star Wars film.
So when they started this five years ago, it was a new hope. So last year they did The Empire Strikes Back, and then this year they’re gonna finish off the original trilogy with Return of the Jedi. So they just go through the screenplay scene by scene.
They assign the actors roles to be read in character. And so it’s always very entertaining.
And not characters from the movie.
Yes, not characters from the movie. So for example, you might have say Dot from Animaniacs playing Luke Skywalker, or Kermit the Frog playing Jabba the Hutt, or Eric Cartman playing Yoda. So it gets really, it’s some hilarious stuff.
And so I thought we’d like to share a little clip from that for you. And I hope you guys enjoy it. Here it is.
This is the Animaniac scene, folks.
As the Emperor, Yakko Warner. As, all right, in this scene, we’re splitting, yeah, okay. Yoda, Whacko, Luke, Dot.
And we are going to have it narrated by Jim, Richard Pryor. What? And Darth Vader, Troy, is gonna be Patrick Warburton.
All right, whenever you are ready, start her up.
The next 12 pages have Luke doing a backflip on a plank. A flying hard solo comically taking out Boba Fett with his dangerous ass and a lot of princess skin being shown, you know what I’m saying? And a ship being destroyed, oh yes, and Luke went to Dango Bar.
Moving on to the Death Star and the Steel Rise, my friend.
The Death Star will be completed on its schedule.
You have done well, Lord Vader. And now, I sense you wish to continue your search for young Skywalker, am I correct?
My goodness, your head is gonna explode, isn’t it? Patent, my friend, in time, he will seek you out. And when he does, you must bring him before me.
Before me, he has grown strong. Only together can we turn him to the dark side of the Force.
Yeah, I’m not gonna ask too many questions about that, but as you wish.
Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.
When the Emperor get done laughing, we’re finna be in the oldest house, y’all.
All right, so once again, that is from the Emerald City Con. And there’s a lot of those events actually around the country. And one that I wanted to mention, friend of the program and featured in this episode, is Heather Masters, who’s one of the voices in the Five Nights at Freddy’s Sister Location Game, as well as Andy Field, who I just met at VO Atlanta, are both going to be at the Connecticon, which is in Connecticut on July 6th through the 9th.
So check that out if you can.
Very cool. And congratulations, Heather, that’s wonderful. You’ve made it.
Yeah, that’s really awesome.
So yeah, so Comic-Con, you can sort of see the connection because you have animation voice actors coming there. And what was cool is there was another panel of local Seattle talent, like the voice of Gladys from the Portal Games was there. And then a couple, or Gin Hammond, a woman who does a lot of voices for Defense of the Ancients, which is an online multiplayer game.
And then, they were just talking about sort of breaking into the biz. And they actually offer classes through the Seattle Voice Institute, which I’ll be joining this weekend, actually. So for, gonna have a character workshop.
Oh, cool. So I’m really looking forward to that. And those kind of in-person workshops are another great way to get your name in people’s ear and to say, like, hey, this guy’s pretty good.
I got this video game that would be great for him. So moving away from like lesser, maybe less obviously connected events, Seattle also has this thing called PAX, or Penny Arcade Expo, which is a huge gaming conference. So, because we have a lot of indie developers in the Washington area, it’s something like 50, actually, and they all need voices for their games.
So that would be a great way if you could just buy, like buy a booth or a table for yourself and have your business cards out and some of your, or like maybe audio samples of your work playing at your booth and just explain to people what you do. And who knows, the connections you make could lead to future work.
Yeah, and that brings me to the last sort of related events I want to talk about. And it’s something that I’ve done in other businesses is to find the events for the industries with which you want to work that relate to your business. So, for instance, if you’re doing a lot of medical narration, then you may want to join some of the associations that are related to surgeons or the American Urological Association, for example.
A lot of these are based on the East Coast, particularly in Northern Virginia, but they have events all around the country. Or let’s say you want to do work for automotive dealers, then go to your local automotive dealers association and join that, or at the very least, see if you can go to their events and set up a table. And what you can do is, like Sean was saying, set up a booth, maybe offer to do recordings on the spot.
I’m actually doing this with a local networking group where I’m going to go to their event, set up a portable booth, and record messages for them on the spot. And send them out to them so they can have them. And it won’t be the greatest quality, although you never know, depends on what I bring with me.
But they’ll see what I can do and they’ll have that opportunity to contact me for future work. So, networking groups, chambers of commerce are great to look for. They also have events.
Other civic organizations, like the Police Athletic League, the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts. Any of those organizations need public service announcements, need phone messages, all the voice work that is out there. Join those organizations and be part of the community and you can get yourself out there as a trusted expert in the voice over field.
I believe it was Voice Talent John Melley. He’s got his own podcast that’s specific for marketing. And he’s got the series of articles where he mentions that he actually went to a dentist or a dental trade show.
And as you might guess, he was the only Voice Talent there and he had a booth set up and he actually made a commercial, like a sample commercial of like dental services. So…
Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. I plan to do the exact same thing. I thought I created it, but I guess not.
Just great minds think alike.
So, I mean, once again, it’s like it’s just remembering to go to the places where people are hiring, not necessarily, like, I mean, don’t get me wrong. As you probably guessed, we love VO Atlanta, we love Voice Over Conferences. They’re wonderful places.
But there’s no guarantee that you’re gonna get work from that. But if you go to a place where you are the commodity, then, like, your chances are much, much higher.
Yeah, and sometimes you can actually barter the entry fee. So, I tried this time, it didn’t work out. But you may be able to say, if I do this service for all of your attendees, can you comp me the registration fee?
Or the table? A lot of times there’ll be a charge for setting up the table for electric and say, if I provide this service to everyone who walks in the door, how about you comp me the registration? And oftentimes that’ll work out.
So, just thinking outside the box for other events, ways to create business for your voice over business.
Very cool. So that pretty much wraps up this episode of The VO Meter. We hope that we’ve planted the seed for you to think outside the box with some of your marketing efforts, whether it be in person at a trade show, or the people that you reach out to.
Doesn’t always have to be industry or direct industry related stuff. Thanks again so much to our listeners. Thank you to Heather Masters for her great VO Meter shtick.
And thank you to Ann Gangusa and Gerald Griffith over at VO Atlanta for having another amazing conference. It literally gets better and better every year. And I’m really glad that it get to go again next year.
Anyone you want to thank, Paul?
I was gonna thank Ann and Gerald, but you stole it from me. Yeah, I want to also thank Ann Gangusa and Gerald Griffith for having me as part of the team. That was fantastic.
I can’t even explain the effect it’s had on me over the last two weeks. It was really fantastic, and I can’t wait to be back next year.
Awesome. So, this is Sean and Paul for The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Thanks again.
See you next time.
Thanks for listening to The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.