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“In a World” Flic Gets Distribution Deal

February 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment

lakeIf you were a plumber, wouldn’t you be jazzed that a quality Hollywood movie about your profession is getting rave reviews?

Cops and doctors have been enjoying that film bounty for years (and Hobbits).

But how ’bout a movie dealing with the profession of voice-acting?

You’ve probably heard that Lake Bell’s movie “In A World” won raves at the Sundance Film Festival.  Everybody’s favorite Promo voice actor Joe Cipriano (who is in the movie) has been promoting the flic, and even attended a premiere in San Fran not too long ago.

Now the movie has been (as they say) “picked up” by Roadside Attractions for the distribution rights.  That’s no small feat, and means it’s coming soon to a small (probably independent) theatre near you soon…or maybe one of the big movie chains.  Who knows?

I just know I can’t wait to see it…’cause it’s supposed to be hilarious…and of course it’s gotta be full of inside jokes only WE will get, right?

More info on this development in links below, and watch for an interview I’m scheduled to do with Lake Bell for VoiceOverXtra soon!

 http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-talk/world-where-lake-bell-directorial-debut-lands-distribution-231246299.html

http://www.firstshowing.net/2013/lake-bells-movie-trailer-voice-over-comedy-in-a-world-picked-up/

http://www.slashfilm.com/lake-bells-movie-trailer-voice-over-comedy-in-a-world-gets-distribution/

CourVO

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Helping One of Our Own

January 30, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Nicole-HeaderEverybody’s favorite voice instructor, Pat Fraley brought to my attention the crucial need of a voice actor he’s very familiar with.

Her name is Nicole Nielson, and she has the rare Parry Romberg disease.

I don’t personally know Nicole, but I know Pat, and he wouldn’t put out the word on something like this if it didn’t deserve your attention.

Click here for Pat’s brief explanation, more about Parry Romberg disease, and a link where you can give a little.

Who knows?…the shoe could be on the other foot…and then what?

CourVO

Filed Under: Heads Up! Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

4 Fer Tuesday

July 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

(1) 

VoiceOverCity.com looks like another one of those sites I’ve been writing about lately…the proliferation of online VO places where you can interact, be a part, and get some information, maybe even some new clients.

I think Steven Lowell of V123 is behind this one, but I haven’t had the chance to ask him yet.

Included, but not yet apparently developed or populated yet, is a forum, a classifieds section, a blog, an events calendar, and a directory.

There’s also a few blog posts already included, and a newsletter subscriber form.  This is a WordPress.com site, and a nicely-designed one at that.  ‘Wish I knew more, but just thought you should maybe put that on your radar screen.

(2)

Also, as of yesterday, a posting on WattPad.com was still looking for voice-actors for a video sims series.  ‘Might want to check it out…she apparently needs lots of voices…but no mention of what compensation is involved.

See:  http://www.wattpad.com/forums/discussion/253810/need-voice-actors-for-my-story-anyone-interested

(3)

THAT’S VOICEOVER is getting closer, and if you can make it to Chicago for this one-day blockbuster event August 25th, I’d highly recommend it.  Rudy Gaskins and his wife Joan Baker pack a lot into the day, and some of my favorite people will be contributing:  Nancy Wolfson, Dave Fennoy, Pat Fraley, Christopher Currier (fr. Sennheiser/Neumann), and Bill Ratner just to name a few.

(4)

If you were at VOICE2012, your ship has come in!  Executive Producer Penny Abshire writes:  the VOICE 2012 recordings are now available for FREE to those who were paid attendees if the convention and FOR SALE to those who were not. Just go to www.voiceconvention.com and click on the DOWNLOADS menu tab on the left. Follow the instructions and you’re good to go!  (or see:  http://voiceacting.com/voice2012/Downloads/downloads.html)

CourVO

Filed Under: Heads Up!, VOICE 2012 Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

TwoFer Monday

May 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Yeah, I know…it doesn’t exactly sound right, but on this first day of the work week, these two reminders:

ONE:

The Voices.com iPhone app is now available for free download and install.  I first noticed it being in the App Store at 2am PST.  There is no iPad app per se…but like all other iPhone apps, you can install and run it on your iPad too

I blogged about the Voices.com app Friday.  Right from the installation and on through the log-in and use of the app, you’ll feel right at home with the branding look and feel of this app (that is, if you’re a subscriber).  Voice seekers, too, will recognize the familiar navigation and feature elements of the web-based Voices.com.  The interface is very intuitive, visually appealing, and a cinch to navigate. The Ciccarelli’s — as usual — have done their homework with the seamless marriage of content and technology here.

TWO:

We Sooooo take our physical speaking apparatus for granted, don’t we?  We just expect the ole voice to BE there whenever we need it.  That is, unless you’ve had allergies, or some laryngeal illness, or you yelled too hard for too long at your daughter’s soccer game.  THEN you start to think maybe the vocal cords are NOT an endless resource.

The voice-box is an organ that deserves to be protected, nurtured, and methodically cared-for.  Among her many other talents and abilities, VO coach Bettye Zoller is passionate about vocal health.  There’s a helpful webinar on that tonite with Bettye, but first try taking this quick quiz on the topic:  http://www.voiceoverxtra.com/article.htm?id=nmslirag.

Yeah, I didn’t get ‘em all either.

If you noticed at the bottom of that article, you’ll see this link to the VoiceOverXtra webinar on vocal health: Your Vocal Health
Learn Truths - Shatter Myths.

This would be a worthwhile and affordable webinar to brush-up on the basics of vocal cord health, as she’ll be joined by a leading voice physician from the Dallas area for the session.

CourVO

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5 End-of-Year VO Reminders

December 14, 2011 By 4 Comments

2011.

Was it good to your business?…a “growth” year?…a “development” year?…the “payoff” year?

Regardless, if you want to continue to build momentum into 2012, some 2011 housekeeping duties will put you in a good position for the New Year.  Just a couple of items that come up about this time of year that might be easy to overlook.

My short-list of end-of-year reminders:

1)  Are you a Sub-S Corp?  Then you need to pay your shareholder (usually you) at least once a year to meet your legal commitment.  It can be a dollar or $1,000 but if you overlook this…then the IRS will start looking at you.  Call your accountant and share with them an estimated profit/loss comparison, you write yourself a check, and they will file this report for you electronically.  Done!  This may vary according to the state you’re in, but call and ask either the IRS or your accountant for the details.  Not a Sub-S?…maybe you’re a Sole Proprietor?…Incorporated?…and LLC?  There may be a similar consideration you overlooked before.  It won’t hurt to check.

2)  Download bank and credit records before Dec 31st.  Some of these financial institutions may cut off the easy download of data after that.  My bank cuts off access every three months.  Most credit card companies will let you download your month-by-month transactions into a QuickBooks, Microsoft Money, or Quicken format right from your accounting software up until the end of the year.  Failure to do so could result in you having to manually enter each individual transaction for your tax return.  I haven’t…uh…had to uh…do that…but I’ve er, ah…heard it’s time-consuming.

3)  Back up any and every file on your computer that constitutes personal data, creative effort, or irreplaceable information.  Programs can be re-installed, but not that demo file you worked so hard on.  All those recordings your clients are expecting you to keep archived, and invoices, documents, and personal letters or emails may be part of your business record  you’ll need to prove binding agreements and a trail of  decisions.  I recommend Carbonite for a seamless, painless, inexpensive, behind-the-scenes back-up of important files all year round.  Now might be a good time to defragment and do some file housekeeping to optimize your hard drives, too.

4)  Get paid for 2011′s work in 2011.  Send out those invoices, follow-up reminders and maybe not-so-gentle notices to clients who still have not coughed up the compensation for the hard work you did in…August?…September?  This is YOUR business, of course, but don’t let someone take advantage of you with hair-brain excuses.

5)  Take advantage of Santa.  Need something for your Studio?  Hey!…you’re hard to buy for!…so tell your loved-one what it is you really need to make you happy for Christmas.  Online sales are through the roof…many are offering free shipping, and unbelievable Holiday deals.  Ebay sales also increase this time of year, as people dump stuff they don’t need to get cash for buying gifts.  Search for and bid on that TLM-103 you wanted.  Some vendors are planning new products for 2012, and are trying to dump 2011′s inventory.  I’m just sayin’.

Honorable mention:  Start thinking about 2012.  In the back of your head, what did you do right, where did you fail, and what do you want to put on your VO New Year’s resolution for 2012?  These things need to percolate.  Get the creative and analytical juices flowing so you can come up with a realistic list of goals for the new year.  I’ll revisit this final admonition later in December.

What did I miss?

CourVO

Filed Under: Advice, Business-end-of-things, Heads Up! Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

A Statue for Mary

May 24, 2011 By 1 Comment

Mary McKitrick is a rock. (just check her website).  Which is to say she’s rock solid as a voice talent. She’s a seasoned VO professional, a talented and humble person, and I SHOULD be able to say she’s an Emmy-Award-Winner…and technically she is (Congratulations, Mary!)…but she doesn’t really have the statue to prove it.

(you have a chance to help fix this, please read to the bottom)

Sure, the picture above  shows her holding a statue, but she didn’t get to bring it home.  The other audio professionals on the documentary team that won an Emmy got to take a statue home…but not the voice talent.  Apparently there isn’t a category for that.  Yet, the directory, the engineer, the producer, and the editor on the documentary got THEIR statue.

For a good many of us, that seems unfair.

Peter O’Connell was the first to write about this.  See Voice Over Talent Mary McKitrick Wind an Emmy. Erik Sheppard, her agent, was also onto the seeming disparity.  Enough so that he called me and others with the idea of going viral with an appeal. ..a call for Mary to get a statue.

Here’s Peter’s explanation:

Mary McKitrick, an experienced and talented voice over artist, was recently engaged to serve as narrator in the beautifully produced wild life series “Wild View” (www.wildviewseries.org).

With Mary as one part of a truly talented team of media pros on this series, “Wild View” has received many deserving honors, including the regional Emmy Award for “Best Audio”.

Unfortunately, the Emmy Awards do not recognize the narrator (in this case, Mary) as part of the audio team in spite of a narrator’s significant contribution to project’s like “Wild View” and many series and documentary programs like it.

So the attention getting goals of  (our appeal), completely created without Mary McKitrick’s participation, is twofold:

  1. 1. Secure for Mary McKitrick her well-deserved EMMY Award as narrator on the “Wild View” EMMY Award winning audio production team
  2. 2. Encourage the National Association of Television Arts and Sciences to review and update its award criteria to include either categories for or the inclusion of narrators as EMMY Award recipients in its regional and national awards

Actors get EMMY’s. Voice Actors (narrators) evidently get bupkis. That just seems wrong.

If you agree that these two goals are worth supporting:

  1. 1. Please add your “LIKE” to the page noted below.
  2. 2. Please share this information with others who you think would support the page’s goals and ask them to come “LIKE” it too
  3. 3. Please also write about the page, it’s goals and your supportive thoughts about this project on your blog, twitter page or any other social media channel you feel worthwhile (links to this page are a good thing)

OK…here’s THE page.  A FaceBook entitled A STATUE FOR MARY. or here:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Statue-for-Mary/116980121720583?sk=wall

Please “like” the page, spread the word, Tweet it, FaceBook it, tell your friends, and help Mary get her statue.

CourVO

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VO Scam Alert

April 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

No, I don’t have a VO scam alert, but I know where you can go to see the latest alerts, and even post one you may know about.

The idea takes shape on Taji’s VoiceOverEmporium.  Egypt’s most prolific and enterprising VO talent and marketing guru designed a site just for this purpose, and traffic is brisk.  Personally, I think there is a lot of pent-up demand for this, and there just might be a strong spate of these kinds of scams right now, too.

Click HERE to go to the SCAMALERT site.

Click HERE to see Taj’s blog on this new venture (and some collateral damage that sprouted up almost immediately)

And click HERE to go to his new forum: Taji’s VoiceOver Oasis,  an offshoot obviated by the ScamAlert site in short order.

CourVO

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Synthetic Voices — this time with digital code!

October 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment

computer voicesThe thread I began a couple of weeks ago on the topic on Next-Gen synthetic voices still has legs.

Voice-actor, computer expert, and website wizard Chris Wagner linked to my article, then proceeded to further launch into a fresh vector, extending  the discussion in a way I never would’ve anticipated.

Click HERE to read Chris’ Blog: ”Computers as Narrators, really? naww…”

Thanks for contributing, Chris!

CourVO

Filed Under: Heads Up!, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

More Writing On the Wall

October 21, 2009 By 1 Comment

23689687  Insecurities are not one of my strong points…

…and by that I mean I’ve worked hard, found a certain measure of success in my family life and my professional career.  I have lots of friends, and food in the fridge.  At 56, I find self-assurance comes easily, ‘cause I feel I’ve earned it.

So when I wrote the blog about Synthetic Voices recently,I really wasn’t trying to sound the death knell of Voice Acting…nor was I terribly troubled by its implications.

JUST OVER THE NEXT HILL…

But that, along with other things happening in the world right now could almost begin to convince me that there may be cause for concern – long term – for opportunities in voiceover.

Here’s why:  yesterday, 4 more good people lost their jobs in our newsroom.  TV news, and TV stations in general are REALLY hurting.  Our General Manager likes to quote how many millions of advertising dollars are just “gone from the market”…and the number is in the tens of millions.  Car dealers (the core of TV advertising support) are folding.  Revenues at TV stations everywhere are down anywhere from 20% to 60% (conservative).

Have you listened to radio lately?  Formulaic.  Impersonal.  Repetitive.  Shrill.  They’re hurting too…but they’ve had years to adjust to life-after-TV.

TV is just getting accustomed to the juggernaut incursion of the internet. (more like whacked in the head!)

So…have you listened to radio lately?  I haven’t.  Millions of commuters are listening to their iPods or talking on their iPhones instead of the drivel that passes for entertainment on (most) Radio stations.

CAN’T IGNORE “THE CRUX” OF THE MATTER

So, my point is:  Radio and TV.  Hurting.  Ad dollars going away….and just where do you think the lion’s share of a voice-actor’s best jobs are?  Yep.  Radio and TV. 

At least that’s the paradigm to which we still pay homage. 

Folks…that paradigm is changing.

“Not to worry”, you say, “my bread ‘n’ butter VO niche is in medical narrations, audiobooks, and websites.”

God bless ya…I’m not talking to you.

YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

I’m talking to the entire COMPLEX of agents, unions, casting directors, advertising & PR firms, buyers, media-as-we-know it.  It’s all changing right under our noses!  Sure…slowly…. no doubt about it, and in fits and starts, but if you’re into the world of social media at all, you clearly see the pell-mell change of stream-of-conscious thinking, sharing, and marketing that is New Media.

“Wait a minute, Dave,” you say…”This recession thing will be over soon enough, and we’ll all be back to profitability.” 

AAaaaactually, no.  It’ll never be the same again (my humble opinoin)

 Because of the immediacy, the interaction, the I-want-what-I-want-when-I-want-it nature of  social media and the internet, TV viewers are switching allegiances.  Heck, the internet is where I’m getting MY news these days.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

Here’s the silver lining, and then I’ll shuddup.

Good content, quality writing, excellence of endeavour, and solid presentation will never go out of style…no matter the medium. 

Your golden tones are still needed…but…well….you may just…maybe wanna start not depending on the promise of Radio and TV as much.  Again, I could be totally wrong, but I don’t think so.

CourVO

Filed Under: Heads Up!, New Paradigms, Op/Ed, Social Media/Networking Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Voice Talent Production Site Launch

September 17, 2009 By 1 Comment

voicetalentproductions Erik Sheppard and his associates have launched the Voice Talent Production site.  Click HERE. 

A lot of work has gone into the back-end of this enterprise, and I find myself extremely honored to be the company of the other talent here.

Please take a moment to look around, and pass the word on to those who matter (ahem: clients) that this is the place to look first!

CourVO

Oh….BTW, two prominent VA talents are in Vegas this week, and if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to run into both of them:  Chris Flockton, a NYC-based British voice, and Ron Knight of Knight Mediacom.  ‘LOVE the way Vegas attracts all the right people!

Filed Under: Agents, Heads Up!, Jus' So You Know, Subscription Services Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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