Dave Courvoisier's Blog

Worlds collided for Michael Minetree Wednesday. 

Part one of my published Q & A with Michael brought one of the highest visitation days for some time to my blog. 

On top of that, a blog HE published on his blog the same day, "got a lot of traction in the blogosphere" (according to the author).

But, as promised — more from the mind of Michael Minetree on THIS blog today. 

In Part 2 of our interview, Michael waxes eloquent on mostly the subject of (for lack of a better term right now): online subscriber services for voice seekers/talent.

You have voiced some strong opinions and
sensible advice about the realities of Voice acting to “newbies” in online
forums.  What are the main misconceptions
most people start with when they get serious about being a voice-actor?

One popular misconception would be that you can buy your way
into the business by handing your money to someone who says they can help you.
This rides sidecar to the belief that because someone says they know a lot
about the business and they spend a lot of money on advertising and marketing,
it means they must.

The biggest misconception is: This stuff is easy, anyone can
do it. "Everyone says I have a nice voice and should be doing this."
I know we have all heard that one more than we wish.

Another misconception is that it will be cheap. Some people
actually think that cutting audition demos on a hand held voice recorder will
get them by. It's sad really. It's the American Idol effect. Everyone can do
it, right?   Look at William Hung.

The one other giant misconception I notice is how fast
people think they'll be able to learn how to perform. So many people want it
done in a weekend or a week. Most of my voice over "business" is lost
by telling these people that they can’t.

You’ve also made no secret of your feelings
about certain online VO subscription services.  What is wrong with their
model?

Allow me to digress here for a moment and fall into my all
too comfortable realm of opinions…

If you’re in the business of taking money from hopeful voice
over talent, then you're in the right business and you do it well. In the early
days, they made a fortune leading people into joining highly promoted sites
which for many people later turned out to be little more than sites propped up
on half filled fantasies and promotional hype. Many of the early adopters, who
joined these sites without question, stuck around and made the conscious
decision to sell themselves out as the lowest bidder. While many others held
out for the occasional good job that came along instead of subscribing to the
bargain basement free-for-all that the sites eventually turned into.

The really good clients eventually jumped ship, and the
really good leads quickly followed, as did many older more established voice
talent. Some of us did quite well and made a lot of money the way the services
were when they started out, but were turned off by among other things, the many
fly-by-night producers and outright snakes-in-the-grass who lurked around the
sites looking for suckers, and finding them. So we eventually jumped ship as
well.

Overall this model has cheapened the business, it has
stained this craft, and has become fodder for many people’s ulcers, as well as
for round tables of laughing high-end producers and casting houses. Their push
for profit over substance has left them bleak and tarnished examples of how not
to do things. Am I a bitter ex-pat of them, yes. Well, at least of one of them.

To sum up what is wrong with their model, rather than
blather on with my opinions… Some of the sites hung their members out to dry
immediately after increasing their annual premiums by altering their service in
such a way that it ceased to provide the type of business it once had. Before
they made this mistake, which will most likely lead to their ultimate demise,
their services were generating tens of thousands of dollars for me. After the
change, they have yet to deliver 2000. That is yet another cold hard fact from
Capt. Honesty.

I just don't think the services are, in their entirety,
services solely for voice talent and with the talent's best interest at heart.
There will be a few talents who survive and do well on these sites in the long
run, but that doesn't remove the fact that the sites still want the same amount
of money from people even after some of them have come out and quite publicly
stated that they won't be sending people an equal number of leads. Why not,
your members all pay the same price, don't they?

What it means is that there are people fiddling with your
money, and throttling your leads, and determining whether or not you succeed on
the service. On one of the sites, some of the people who make high-level
decisions about a number of site operations and customer service related issues
are members of the service who also work for the company. Do these employees
pay for their subscriptions like everyone else, or at least claim their
subscriptions as a taxable benefit on their end of year statements? Who is
watching the watchmen?

Add to this that their "oh so prestigious and high
paying" clients can leave feedback about you if they think you charge too
much, their utter contempt for the people who pay for their service and their
complete lack of honest disclosure and it's a recipe for disaster, dishonesty
and distrust. They have done a lot of damage to people in a lot of different
ways. People will vote with their feet and their wallet. Eventually, I think
they will become very passe.

You are proposing to launch a competing
service based on a different model.  What was the final impetus for you to
do this?

I had been working behind the scenes on a casting site for a
while. It never made it past the "This is a really bad shell of what I
want" stage. I joined up with someone for a short period of time and
launched a concept site. It was hideous, and I didn't like the direction it was
heading, so I trashed it.

Months later I began working on another shell, and got it to
a functional point where it did what I wanted, to a certain degree. At least it
was enough to where another developer could look at it and get a rough idea of
what I was looking for. Out of the graces of the gods, another VO, who happens
to be a good developer and a friend of mine, came into the fold and I showed
him the project. He took one look at it and we began working on what will
eventually become the new web site.

Temporarily, some of the data-collection aspects of that
site live on the MineWurx Studio site simply because it's a place I visit
everyday anyway and it's nice to have it on the same server for now. Once
demand steps up and there is enough information to warrant it, the new site
will be plopped on a dedicated server and all of the current database
information will be transferred over.

I have been after a casting site for
a while, because like everything else in this business, I have my own way of
looking at things. Call it distorted if you like, but it's mine….

I can't say there was any one thing
that got me headed in this direction, or was the impetus of it all, but I do
know the current state of affairs in online voice talent casting is defiantly
what got the vehicle in motion. There are a lot of things that have gone on in
the past year or two that brought a certain group of minds together on this
project. Some for very different reasons, but all for wanting something better.
If we cant make it better, then I don't know what we're doing here.

What is the philosophy
behind this new service: “MineWurx Studio: Online Voice Over Talent Casting
Directory”? 

Here's something we have to clear
up, and I really don't know of a better time to try to bite it in the can…
The "Online Voice Talent Directory" which currently resides on the
MineWurx Studio site is not the database we are developing, nor does it have
anything to do with it, or how it will look or function. That online directory
was something I set up as a way of saying "Thank you" to the people
who took the time to upload their demos early and give us some data to move
around.

It is there exclusively for people
who have uploaded their demos to the database to enable them to list their site
and get a link to it. Beyond that, it has no other purpose or function. It's
just a display directory for the talent who got in early. I had said in many of
my newsletters that I was going to try to do some special things for the people
who helped us get the new site off the ground. That directory is one of them,
for now, until I think of something else. It is purely a stop-gap measure meant
to give people something to look at while they're waiting for the real site. I
would be absolutely thrilled if someone were contacted from that directory, but
I don't have my hopes up in any way.

Now, in the event we were talking
about the philosophy behind the new web site:

Let me sum it up this way…

I want a site for voice over people.
Real voice over people. Not people who think they are, or wish they were, but a
site for real voice over people. My definition of "Real Voice Over
People" is people who have taken all the right steps in becoming a voice
talent; some sort of training, whether it be on the job or in the conservatory,
a good demo, a website, the ability to function in a recording studio or home
studio capacity, and the ability to read at a level where they can be
competitive amongst their peers in an online casting environment. This
isn't meant to be exclusionary as much as it is inclusionary. I don't want to
build barriers to keep people out, though to some extent I must. My focus has
to remain on providing incentives to keep good people in.

I know and speak to on a regular
basis, several casting people, producers and agents who believe that many good
talent have been poorly represented by some of the existing online casting
services. There is a consensus that some of the sites, in their quest for
money, have improperly introduced many people who do not belong in this
business into the ranks of those who do. They have muddied the waters, driven
down rates and flooded in-boxes across the globe with content from poorly
qualified individuals.

With us, my new site, that all
stops…Now.

No more crap from either end of the
bull.

Talent get a great site, and
producers get great talent. Talent profit from the site, producers profit from
the talent. Talent are protected from schmucks, producers are protected from
schmucks. That is the philosophy, without getting in to the how of everything.

I know what resides in my heart as a
talent who has had to fight like Balboa for everything he has ever wanted.

I know what I want the site to look
like. I know what I want it to do.

I know who I want as members and I
know who I want for producers.

I know how I want the talent treated
and I know how I want the producers treated.

I have a very clear picture of
everything, and with everything I do, I will feel good about it or I won't do
it.

I know there are a lot of
"I'"s in there and that may make this seem like some sort of vanity
project. I can assure you it's not. This site won't be about promoting myself
or trying to make me look good. It is entirely about the talent. I have even
questioned whether or not I will have a profile on it.

What will distinguish this service compared to
“the other guys”?

If the above didn't sum it up, we're gonna have a really
cute logo… Actually, the display features will be one of the biggest
differences. People haven't ever seen talent the way we're going to display
them. It's a feature that we really like and are very proud of. I'm sure we'll have
to test the hell out of it – but so far it really looks good. Don't let me crow
about it too much though. These casting sites have a tendency of hyping
everyone up for some new feature that turns out to be a turd when it's
revealed. We haven't seen any of that recently have we?

We're also working with a different type of search indexing,
which allows for absolute precision in talent searches. Much better than any
highly touted, brainless algorithm can come up with. When a producer wants
something, they will find it. Also, everything is very hands on and verified by
experienced human eyes. There are those of us that have been doing this since
long before there were casting web sites. We just did it on table-tops with
stacks of head shots and cassette tapes.

 Is this an endeavour you
are managing on your own?  Do you have a
staff, or plan to develop one as you proceed?

My hand is heaviest in the
concept and visual design. The language, the words, the philosophy, branding
and marketing are all me. Of course, I bounce things off of people all the
time. Or I'll float them out there and see if they sink or swim. The day-to-day
email stuff and customer related stuff is also all me for the moment. It will
be a long time before I release customer service issues to anyone else. It's
the same as running a restaurant; the place runs great as long as the owner is
walking around and seems to run at half speed when he isn't.

Everything else is done by committee. Even if it's a committee of two at
times. My teammate developer is the other hands on guy, dealing with all of the
crazy crap I want done on the design and making computer languages integrate.
There are so many little things that are spaced out from one another right now
so they don't affect other systems should they decide to go kablooey on us.
Piece by piece we are bringing them together and letting them all play in the
same schoolyard.

I will most certainly expand as demand requires. Right now an official
"staff" would be in violation of my business license, so that part
will have to wait. For now, if it's difficult, or customer oriented, I'm the
man. Seeing as how we haven't charged a penny for anything yet, there is a
certain flexibility in the word customer. But we still treat every issue that
crops up with the same importance.

What time commitment has this project demanded of you thus far?

 A pretty big one. There are a lot of things going on that are self
inflicted when it comes to time. There is a lot of research to do. A lot of web
related stuff. A lot of projects that are up in the air waiting for one element
or another to be completed before we can proceed. Recently we've started
putting out some videos for the site as well and video takes a ton of time
depending on how you do it.

 So far the least amount of time has been spent answering questions or
helping people with login information or problems. The little tiny upload feature
we have right now has not caused us too much heartache. We're really rolling
things out very, very slowly in little pieces so as not to get bogged down in
any one detail. The biggest time hog is concept and design. We can spend an
entire day on one silly feature. That is what kills you. 

Did you have any idea what would be involved with launching a project of this magnitude beforehand?  Has the effort surprised you?

We knew going in what the big issues were going to be. The real X-Factor
is the users. You can predict what users might do with a utility when you
release it to them, but that prediction and what people actually do with it are
two completely different things. Even with the upload feature, which is pretty
straight forward and a really small app, you would be surprised at the
ingenious ways people have been able to monkey up the process. You can never
really predict what the people will do. No matter how you design your system.

 One part that is working in our favor is the fact we are going for
simplicity in the design. There is no reason for another bloated albatross of a
web site out there. Form, function and usability are the most important factors
for us. Because we're not swinging open the doors to every TD&H with a USB
microphone, there is a lot of extra stuff we don't have to do to accommodate
them. There is no way we'll be getting bogged down in that quagmire like the
last one.

 NEXT QUESTION FOR MICHAEL WHEN WE WRAP THINGS UP WITH PART 3 TOMORROW:

What sort of hands-on support do you expect to
be able to provide to those who sign-on to your new service?

 CourvO

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