Dave Courvoisier's Blog

Archive for the ‘Rant/Off-Topic’ Category

A couple of weekends ago, I stayed with a friend who is about as connected to the virtual world as one can be.  He makes me look like I’m still pulling an oxcart.

‘Retired an internet millionaire at 35. ‘Built several internet-related companies from the ground up.  ’Launched one of the very FIRST websites. Uber-smart.  His house is a porcupine of wires, routers, cameras, studios, monitors, keyboards, and remotes.

But, one morning as I strayed into his main office — there…on the desktop… a pen and a pad of paper filled with line after line of his to-do list.  Written in pen and ink.

Some of man’s most basic ideas are hard to beat.  I think e-books will eventually replace paperbacks, but mark my words, there will be a “Book Anachronistic Society” to ballyhoo the advantages of words printed in ink on a page of paper.

Excellence and good content never go out of style.  You can change the medium, but there will ALWAYS be a need for good writers, creative performers, and fresh ideas.  As a unique and genuine voice performer, you will always be someone’s pen and paper.

CourVO

‘Last time I checked, there were no institutions of higher learning that offered a BS, or BA, or BFA, or ANY alphabet-soup-degree in voice-acting, voiceover, or movie trailers.

Communications?  Sure!
Theatre?  Yep.
Broadcasting?  Uh-huh.

But if there’s a degree in “voice” anywhere, you can bet it has to do with singing.

So how does one fall into this business?

About as many ways as there are people in it.

My guess is the preponderance of accomplished voice-actors today had their start in radio.  They’re the same ones telling eager radio graduates/VO wannabees to lose the radio style of delivery.  Probably because THEY had to.

So I feel as I’m in the good company of the Joe Cipriano’s, the Randy Thomas’, the Frank Frederick’s of the world who graduated with a BS in radio BS.  My first job was at KCCC radio “The Golden Country Sound” of  Carlsbad, NM.

I loved radio, but the camera liked my face.  I was lured by the TV anchor salaries, too, and got waylaid for the better part of the last 30 years in TV news.

I wrestle with the question of whether to tout that experience when marketing my voice-acting business.

One school of thought claims it’s a detriment to potential commercial clients. In their minds, 30 years of delivering the news has left me permanently scarred.  I couldn’t possibly deliver ad copy in anything else but a stilted, announcery, pedantic manner. Hence, I’m only good for e-learning, medical narrations, and an occasional IVR job.

The other school of thought bids me to build on my TV anchor reputation to vault me into voice acting.  After all, a successful TV news anchor obviously has presence, reliability, likability, a good work ethic, and knows a few things about holding audience attention. TV News Anchors have been admonished by their consultants for decades to “be yourself”…”talk directly TO your viewers on a personal level”…and make it conversational.

Sound familiar?

Don’t those qualities count for something in creating a successful VO business?

I prefer to build on the latter, and focus on losing the news patter.  My feloniously perceptive voice coach – Nancy Wolfson – claims my crutch is not falling into “announcery”…it’s shifting into the comfortable “happy” mode when I don’t know how else to inflect a line.  Most news anchors are approval junkies…so the default is say it in a way that will make the viewer feel comfortable.  However, a good bit of commercial copy has attitude, sarcasm, and cynicism…none of which is considered good form in a middle-of-the-road, keep-all-viewers-at-all-costs newscast!

So until Tufts or Tulane or TCU breaks rank and offers that BA in voice-acting, the rest of us are going to have to make our own way…the pioneering and enterprising of it will only make us more marketable anyway.

CourVO

I have an iPhone.
 
I also have a rant about iPhone…well, actually the rant is about a misguided misnomer that’s gaining momentum in regards to a new iPhone 3GS feature.

LOVE the iPhone!  Love the new 3GS…it comes with a VoiceControl feature that lets you press a button, call out a name, and the phone dials the number. Cool!

It is VoiceControl though, not VoiceOver. (see here, iPhone 3GS feature website) Yet, iPhone’s avid proselytes are consistently referring to it as “VoiceOver”. 

Here’s why you should be intolerant of this.  From now on, every time you do a search for voiceover, a keyword selection for voiceover, look up an e-mail reference, or depend on the singular integrity of the word “voiceover” ANYWHERE, it’ll be trashed, sullied, and laden with numerous references to iPhone 3GS.

I’ve already noticed this when I configure my Tweetdeck columns to include the searchword “voiceover” as a topic.  About half of the recent returns for that word refer to iPhone 3GS’s VoiceControl feature…being misnamed as VoiceOver by all its users.

I thought Mac aficionados were supposed to be smart! (ooops…I will pay for that one… but I’m leaving it in the final publish).

My rant is probably worthless in the real world.  The cat is out of the bag, and I don’t think it’ll go back in the bag with the legs it has among users now.

But I can rant, can’t I?

CourVO

A frustrating weekend of trying to locate the correct pronunciation of a few foreign words and names made me realize there are precious few resources on the web organized around this simple concept (the client flat-out refused to help).

In a 9,000-word narration, I was challenged with German, Spanish, Danish, Arabic, French, Chinese, Polish, and (hardest of all) Turkish pronunciations.

Sometimes just putting the word "pronounce" in the Google search box, followed by the word in question,  would reap rewards.  Other times, Wikipedia would cough up an .ogg file with a native-speaker.  Another occasional resource is Dictionary.com.

The only site that comes close to being designed JUST FOR THIS is Forvo.com. 
I like it a lot not only 'cause it sounds alot like "CourVO", but also 'cause it's quite functional and free.  This easy-to-digest site really does have its head on straight.  It just didn't happen to have on file the words I needed, and will not typically have pronunciations for personal names, which are the biggest challenge of all.

Also frustrating are abbreviations:  GmBh, Ste, Sp, Pvt, Ltd, etc., which can have different meanings in different countries and languages, and even dialects.

Below are some other sites that will help with arcane pronunciations, and I post it here with full credit to the VO-BB, it's board misstress DB Cooper, and the man who offered it as help to me, Voice Actor Greg Phelps:

Bacterial Pathogen pronunciation

For medcine pro nown cing

Another pronunciation guide

A link to many medical dictionaries

Another medical one

CourVO

Hatfields v. McCoys
Pepsi v. Coke
Mac v. PC
Mounds v. Almond Joy
Cassius Clay v. Sonny Liston
Dems v. Repubs
Voice actors v. voice pretenders

What's your favorite rift?

I judge a: client…copy…software…first phone calls…and chance encounters much the same way. 

They either click, or they don't.

Sure, once in a while with a product, first exposure will fall in-between, but mostly it's a slam-dunk.  You're either cozy or cramped.  Pepsi or Coke.

I think I've found a new one.

WordPress v. [just about any other blogging service]

I started out with the GoDaddy blogging service.  It was actually pretty OK, but I started looking for something else when I decided to go with the 3-column format.

Bob Souer was most effusive about WordPress.  That was good enough for me.  I'm not Robert Scoble, but I consider myself to be very adept on PC's.  I've been at it since 1989.  MSDOS.  All the iterations of Windows.  I'm a geek.

Out of the gate, WordPress seemed unnecessarily happy about it's difficulty.  The "5-minute Install"  ended up taking me days.  I dug in.  i don't give up easily. 

In WordPress' defense, I DO obsess and AM a perfectionist.  But I'm also dogged.  I bought the "WordPress for Dummies" book.  I asked a lot of questions, queried my WordPress friends.  I WAS GOING TO BEAT THIS CHALLENGE!

In the end, it beat me…and I'm not proud of that.  I stuck with my Pro-Tools and ISDN installation for MONTHS.

But blogging software???!!!

Now I face the specter again.  A new-found friend from Twitter who lives in Las Vegas has prompted me to re-consider my blog…it's look…how slow it loads. 

He likes WordPress…'says Google does too.

Then, coincidentally, I see a Twitter post that says the new WordPress 2.7 is out.  Newer!  Faster!  Easier! 

I download it, and WHAM…back to that same ole sick feeling.  Again:  "The 5-minute Install"

1. Download and unzip the WordPress package, if you haven't already.
   
2. Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.
   
3. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.
   
4. Open wp-config.php in your favorite text editor and fill in your database details.
   
5. Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server:
   • If you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/),
     move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (but
     excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web
     server.
   • If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g. http://example.com/blog/), rename the directory wordpress
     to the name you'd like the subdirectory to have and move or upload it
     to your web server. For example if you want the WordPress installation
     in a subdirectory called "blog", you should rename the directory called
     "wordpress" to "blog" and upload it to the root directory of your web
     server.

My friends, in today's short-attention-span world…THAT is not 5 minutes.  It IS unnecessarily difficult and complicated.

I set up this TypePad blog in less than 5.  Blogger in just 2 mins.

Sure, OK…got it…WordPress is the 800 lb. gorilla in the room… all those templates, the widgets, an incredible user-base!!!  But sheesh, people…make it easier!!!!!

Am I missing something here?  Is there an easier way to set-up WordPress?  Do I really want to get into importing all these TypePad blogs for more than a year?  Can I (do I really want to) really redirect Courvo.biz to yet another blog assignment? 

And further:  DOES my blog load slowly for you?  Is it too…"packed"?…too "busy"?…to much stuff going on?  Is simplicity better?…or tons of resources?

Your honest feedback v. unadulterated praise appreciated.

CourVO

…from all internet connections except the cell phone – and even THAT’S kinda dicey here on the farm in Greenville, IL.
That’s too bad…I had an unbelievable article to post. Now you’ll have to check back later to see what it was! (heh, heh)

CourVO

He's in a cell right now, but that's only temporary until Dec 5th, when he gets assigned to his permanent quarters.

Orenthal James Simpson was pronounced guilty on all 12 counts last night around 10pm in a Las Vegas courtroom, and for that I spent more than an hour-and-a-half on air, live, with no potty breaks, and no script. 

Such a circumstance is one of the few pleasures/challenges of my TV News career left to me.  It's almost like election night.  Fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants journalism.  Until it was over, I couldn't tell you how long I was sitting there.  It requires total concentration and creativity and composure. 

Yeah, sure, but sometimes I think all we did was really enrage thousands of viewers who only REALLY just wanted to see the season premiere of NUMB3RS.  And boy did we hear from them!  In droves!

At any rate, now OJ is in a cell in the Clark County Detention Center, and I'm exhausted.  His two kidnapping convictions carry a minimum 5 yrs to life, so if the judge puts them concurrent, the very LEAST that's mandated for his sentencing will be that: 5 years.  Consecutively: 10 years minimum.  He's 61.  That's not even counting the other convictions.

Odd that his conviction comes 13 years TO THE DAY that he was acquitted by an LA jury.  I was IN Los Angeles that night, reporting on the jury's decision.  'Never thought our paths would cross in this rather indirect way 13 years later.

I had some good ideas for a blog on the topic of voice acting tonite, but decided to do this instead.  'Hope you don't mind.  I'll be back on track tomorrow.

CourVO

…and in less than 18 hours, I’ll be on one. 

Preparing for that 6-hour drive to San Diego Friday, meant that today — Thurs — was pretty well taken up with last minute preps, so no blog that says a whole lot until I can get sequestered in my Hampton Inn room Friday night. 

FOUR DAY WEEKEND!  San Diego!  Yay!

My 16-yr-old daughter is under strong consideration by several Division I Universities for a soccer scholarship.  She’s a HS Sophomore.  That blows me away.  But these weekend "College Showcase"  tournaments are huge right now.  So…off to San Diego.  Next week, Temecula, CA.  It never ends.  I love watching her play, though, and it’s nice break from the routine.

I’ve got my trusty Zoom H4 portable recorder, and my HP Laptop with Adobe Audition 3.0 just in case, but I’m secretly hoping nothing comes up under deadline this weekend.

My next blog will be a good’n, though.  Some great thoughts I ran across about how TRUST and personal referrals are worth more than $1,000,000 in advertising.

CourVO

Did you know it’s National Pet Dental Health Month!?  Click here for more!

It is, actually, but that has very little to do with voice-overs (although it does seem a disparate proportion of voice-actors seem to have dogs…going by avatars, alone, I mean)

Uh, the latest on my saga with Pro-Tools and M-Audio descending into a spectacular crash of my computer continues. 

I am awaiting a call from a Digidesign product specialist out of LA to call me back.  That was a gift from Frank Frederick who noticed his name in VoiceOVer Savvy, the forum sponsored by Voices… and referred me.

‘Turns out the guy is a budding Voice-actor like many of us who frequent these sites.  He has the added plus of working for DigiDesign…now THAT is a leg-up!

‘Got a clean lead off the internet today.  When somebody calls me in Las Vegas from Boston… it’s probably not because of the flyers I posted on the local streetlight here.  When I asked, he said he saw my Google AdClicks add on the right side of the page when he googled "voice overs". 

YES!!!

Many thanks to quite a few people who have responded with offers of help, links, FAQ’s and other suggestions to assist in my quandary over the Pro-Tools/M-Audio issue.

CourVO

The TV news business can grind you down…incrementally.  You don’t even think about it until you realize you’ve got these huge emotional callouses.  Do they have Dr. Scholl’s corn-pads for that? 

I think not.

Friday, leaving school, a 15-yr-old boy was shot to death in a drive-by.  It was in a "nice" neighborhood, too — things like that aren’t supposed to happen THERE. 

In our afternoon news planning meeting, the issue came up of other shootings and drive-bys in recent months, and we sat around the table trying to remind each other of which shooting THAT was?  You remember: the one where             (fill in the blank with pertinent details)             .

In fairness, it does seem to all blend together day after day… until you see the parents of the SHOOTER in court with their 16-yr-old who will be tried as an adult for murder. 

One kid was shot that day, but two sons were lost.

It all hit me when I realized I was pouting over some software glitches in my DAW at home.  I was actually gloomy and muttering about the "hassle" of it all.

Then my wife came home with a heartfelt story of some threatened personal relationships at church.  Feelings hurt, things said, and misunderstandings made.

Somehow, whether or not my Pro-Tools software was working right just seemed pathetically inconsequential alla sudden.

Time to file down those callouses.

CourVO