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Seriously? Unimagineable!

March 25, 2013 By 5 Comments

email1 (1)Every once in a while, I’ll get a particular email response back from one of my blog subscribers.

It’s an automatic message, and it says the following:

Hello there, 
In order for me to appropriately delegate my time properly to high priority tasks, I only check Emails twice a week. My Email operation times are: 
Monday and Thursday. 
12pm to 1pm And 4pm to 5pm. 

All I’ll say about the respondent is that this person is a freelancer (not VO).

First of all, I give this person kudos for a ballsy move.  He’s got his priorities, and he’s sticking to them.  I give him extra points for a clear vision, and excellent follow-through.

But I ask you…could your freelance VO business thrive…no…survive, if you only checked it twice-a-week?

Mine couldn’t.

I’m married to email.  I get all my FaceBook, G+, Twitter, Google Alerts, V123, Voices.com, Bodalgo, Nutshell mail, and most every other notice funneled through email.

People pooh-pooh email, saying it’s importance is behind us in the new digital age.  My 20-ish kids tell me only “old people” use email.  They use texting, and FB messaging instead.  My guess is our friend above would put THOSE messages on a similar restrictive diet.

The bottom line is that I think clients prefer email first over even phone calls on first contact.  A good 70% of my first-time contact from prospective/future clients comes from email –  maybe more — I’ve never done the exact metric on that.

Tellya what…just to prove how valuable email is, let’s do this.  Send a message to me at courvo@courvo.com with the subject heading GREAT TIPS, and I’ll send you a link to a website I just found that has links to some amazing online tools.

I truly hope the above-mentioned person has found a groove with this time-saving priority.

Is this something you do? / are doing?

CourVO

 

Filed Under: Techniques Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

12+ Ways to Avoid VO Fatigue

March 5, 2013 By 4 Comments

fatigueYou’ll find it right there in the Voice Over Dictionary:

VO Fatigue:  ”…a psycho/physiological syndrome exhibited by the accumulative stress and exhaustion resulting from the endless pursuit of freelance voice over success…”

We’ve all been there.  The syndrome strikes irrespective of age, gender, race, time of year, time of day, or relative humidity.

Some of the ore obvious signs and signals are:

  • irascibility
  • depression
  • dry mouth
  • sleeplessness
  • despair
  • frustration
  • tears
  • (and sometimes, hair-loss, gout, and vertigo)

I kid.  But I think you get the picture, and it’s not necessarily unique to voice acting, but it IS common among those who strive to run their own business.

Everything is ultimately on YOUR shoulders.  That can mean good things… like when that big fat check comes in for a long project you just completed.  But more often than not, it means the strain of constantly propping-up the business with the sheer force of your will.  Day after day, week after week, the success of this endeavour depends on you.  Your energy.  Your talent.  Your determination.  Your resourcefulness.

Unless you take some intercessory steps here ‘n’ there, the pressure of it can lead to VO Fatigue.

Herewith, then, my 12+ Ways to Avoid VO Fatigue:

Walk Away  Leave the premises.  See a movie.  Waste time in the park with your dog.  You’d be surprised how much good an hour can do engaged in something mindless.  Severe cases may require a coupla days…even a week.  Plan for it.  Then do it.  Everybody needs a break, even freelancers.

Call a Friend  No one is going to “get” your situation more than a trusted friend (esp. a VO friend).  If a friend called you, wouldn’t you listen?  Reverse the roles, and fire away.  One of these days he/she will call, and you can return the favor.

Cut Your Losses   Two ways this works:  1)  Dump clients who pay too little, and bother you too much.  2)  Unsubscribe from services that are giving you little-to-no return on your investment.  Either way, be sensible and realistic.  Why continue in relationships that don’t benefit your bottom line?

Maintain Your Health   How many times have you heard “if you have your health, you have everything”?  A strong constitution will see you through a lot of trials and troubles.  Not that you should abuse it, but when you are in good shape, you can push the envelope a little more and not suffer for it.  This includes getting enough sleep!

Ask for Help   Chances are someone has just the answer to your quandary, or your predicament, or frustration.  Like “call a friend”, there is no shame in raising a red flag and seeking assistance.  Online.  On the phone.  Via Skype.  Float a balloon, be amazed how quickly someone grabs it.

Keep a Routine  Routines are funny things.  On a creative day, routine can seem like a ball ‘n’ chain, but when you’re reached a point of fatigue, the comfort factor of a routine can put you back on the rails.  A routine adds structure that will see you through frustration.

No Excuses, No Procrastination  If it gets that bad, utilize #1 above (take a walk).  Put your big britches on and face the music.  Like Nike, Just Do It.  I’ve often convinced myself that a 5 minute hurdle is bigger than Mt. Everest.  It’s not. Think through the task, and you’ll realize it’s not that bad.

Realize rejection is not personal  This is HUGE in our business.  What’s the saying?  ”audition, then forget it”.  Get more coaching, sure.  Improve your demo, yeah.  But hand-wringing over a lost audition is wasted tears.  Move on.

Have a Strategy for Eventuality  You KNOW fatigue is gonna hit you sooner or later.  Plan for it.  I’m serious.  Write out a step-by-step escape plan, seal it in an envelope, and keep it in a safe place.  When the gremlins get to be too much…break open the envelope, and follow your plan to the letter.

Curry Non-VO friendships  Not that voice actors aren’t the most charming people in the world, but balance is a good thing.  Don’t neglect old friendships from school or an earlier career, or even the next-door-neighbor who re-upholsters furniture for a living.  It helps you to put things in perspective.

Get One Thing Done  It can be really small.  Just do it, and do it right.  Take a moment to revel in the instant of the achievement, then maybe tackle something a little harder.  We all want a “win”.  Parlay one win into another.

Take a  Social Media Break (or watch mindless TV)  You’ll soon realize one of two things: 1)  Everyone else’s troubles are worse than yours  2)  The world is a crazy place, and you have more than earned your place in it.  A half-hour on FaceBook or Twitter will usually shake you out of your blues.

HONORABLE MENTION:  Laughter really is the best medicine  When I least wanted to, my daughter used to call to me to come and see something.  It was usually stupid cat videos on YouTube, but I gotta admit, the chuckle (or belly-laugh) it gave me brought me out of my funk.  Keep good humor, and spread good humor.  Making others laugh is magical.

CourVO

Filed Under: Techniques Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Getting Dialectic

February 18, 2013 By Leave a Comment

accentsVery few of us can carry off an absolutely believable accent for some regionalism of our own language, much less that of another.   The key is:  could you fool a native of Mobile, Alabama with a Southern Accent, or would someone from Liverpool, buy your variation on the multi-faceted Queen’s English?  Is someone  from Brisbane going to believe your Aussie accent?

[I'll not tackle the topic of believable multi-lingualism in this blog article...only accents and dialects]

Best rule of thumb?   If you’re not trained, or you haven’t grown up around people speaking those dialects, then it’s probably not something that’s going to win you an audition.  Interestingly, you can probably better fake a foreign-language accent (not the language itself) IF your only audience is other English-speakers.

Yet dialect coaches and training modules proliferate.  These are nuances of spoken language that CAN be taught if you have that capacity, and you practice a lot.  Pat Fraley is a master at this stuff…train with him if you’re interested.

If you’re in the middle of an audiobook, though, and all the sudden are presented with the challenge of delivering a line or two for a character from Dusseldorf, you might get by with a couple of the following resources:

Paul Meier is a name you’ll run across if you do research in this area.  His website is: Paul Meier Dialect Services.  He’ll do Skype/Phone coaching,  and has this resource available:  Accents and Dialects for Stage and Screen, $100, includes 12 CD’s (available at Harlan Hogan’s VoiceOver Essentials).  Paul also has a website called International Dialects of English Archive, which could be valuable for, say, a Scottish brogue now that Craig Ferguson is mostly Americanized.

Jerry Blunt is another name that shows up in searches about dialect.  Here’s one of his resources:  Stage Dialects CD Set.

Here’s another helpful site:  The Dialect Resource: The Premiere Source for Accent and Dialect Training for Actors.

And finally, this site also might be useful to you: Dialect Accent Specialists, Inc., Dialect Coaching and Instructional Recordings.

Ciao!

CourVO

Filed Under: BiLingual, International, Techniques Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Finding Your Way Through the InfoNoise

February 5, 2013 By Leave a Comment

infooverload-aYesterday, word spread fast that Scott Fortney had a heart attack.  Scott is known to us all as a helpful voice actor who often posts Adobe Audition tutorials on YouTube, and started the Adobe Audition FaceBook group.  His wife had just emerged from an illness, and now this.  Prayers needed.

On the same day, a wonderful video was circulated about Audio Engineers, which was a take on the Dodge Ram commercial with the Paul Harvey soliloquy  on farmers.  It’s called 9th Day, and it was composed by my vo friend Zak Miller. Nice work, Zak!

More is coming out about the destructive behavior of VoiceJockeys (VOICEJOCKEYED…which I just blogged about) in this blog, posted by the BenzTown Blog: A Pay-to-Play Site You Should Avoid.

I could go on.  There are anywhere from 10-20 influential VO blogs…probably 50-100 VO forums on all the Social Media platforms.  There are newsletters, Twitter lists, and Google +communities. I admit I contribute to the info overload.  I’m a news junkie at heart, and I relish the free exchange of info.

But many have raised the question of whether all this shared stream-of-consciousness has a measurable return on investment of time.  Just yesterday, my Social Media maniac VO friend Terry Daniel lamented that there was yet another VO FaceBook group being launched.  Long and vociferous are the debates on these very groups about the over-proliferation of such forums.  Such are the challenges of an open, democratic society.

Not that there’s any easy answer, but here’s my analysis of the pros and cons:

THE UPSIDE

  • Professions that come of age experience this knowledge explosion.  It’s a good sign that we’ve arrived.
  • There is no such thing as “too much” knowledge.
  • The sharing of information benefits everyone.
  • You wouldn’t want the opposite of a free exchange of info.  Think North Korea.
  • Your contribution matters, and is rewarding to you.
  • Some of those information nuggets directly benefit your business and its implementation.

THE DOWNSIDE

  • Information distribution streams are chaotic and unreliable.
  • There is almost no way to measure your return on investment for time spent on data/info mining.
  • Being an info bon vivant can be addictive.
  • Your marketing or information contribution easily gets lost in the noise.
  • A lot of repitition and reduncancy appears.
  • Not all information can be or has been verified/vetted.

BEST PRACTICES

  • Find the handful of reliable sources you know and trust through experience over time, and  stay loyal to those.
  • Don’t extend beyond those sources unless you see a direct benefit to your business (but keep an open mind –  but if you add a source, maybe drop another?)
  • Set a time limit per day to be online.  I could be a half hour 3 times a day, or once in the evening for an hour, etc.  Stick to your “time promise”!
  • Contribute when you have unique content you find valuable, and don’t see it anywhere else.
  • Pay it forward on forums, groups, and communities (share links, info, or tidbits with no expectation of reward).
  • Share info on other sites, keeping in mind that the more you do, the closer you get to the threshold of spamming.

In the foreseeable future, the laws of a free market culture will determine who survives this info onslaught (MySpace?).  Until then, the part you play helps to determine those who will succeed in this competitive milieu.  Choose wisely!

CourVO

Filed Under: Connecting, Ruminations, Social Media/Networking, Techniques Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Death to Dry Mouth

December 12, 2012 By 9 Comments

biotene

Tonite, I’ll climb into my studio, and once again face the spectre of dry mouth.  Dry mouth equals mouth clicks, and mouth clicks equals a noisy recording.

Long-format narrating can really do it to ya.

Yes, I drink gallons of distilled water every day (I get kidneystones if I don’t).  I’ve also heard about the green apple remedy…the pectin in the fruit helps…but how many apples can I eat during a long narration?  Amy Snively, at FaffCon4 introduced the medically-related glycerin swabs.  They work too, but don’t taste great.

Now, I’m going to try Biotène.  This product has a whole line of solutions for dry mouth…gum, mouthwash, toothpaste, and mouthspray.  I’ve already purchased the mouthwash, and tasted it.  Not great, but if it does the trick in the studio, who cares?

(I just wish I had one of those little porcelain sinks your dentist used to have you spit into…in my studio…heh)

Let me know if you have a better solution that works for you.

CourVO

Filed Under: Techniques Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Days and Times

November 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

If you collect enough data, you start to see patterns.

Being a pack-rat, I tend to keep things a long time. You never know when you might need it, right?

My wife wants to throw away perfectly good 6-week old food, and it just hurts me to see it go in the wastebasket when there’s no mold on it.  Yeah.  That bad.

I’m the same way with email…I’ll save it until my provider tells me I absolutely can’t buy any more storage, and I HAVE to delete something.  Outlook lets you pretty much save email forever, though, and I’ve got years of ‘em saved back.  So much so, that when I apply a neat little Outlook plug-in called Xobni to the data, patterns emerge.  (Xobni, BTW is “inbox” backwards…and is a great little program that doesn’t cost a lot)  I’ve blogged about Xobni before…almost exactly three years ago...it was good then, and it’s a better product now.

Xobni (among other things) tells me when the email frequency from certain senders most often occurs.  So when I get email from, say Voices.com throughout the day, over months and months, a pattern emerges for when those leads come in.  Here’s the analysis from Voices.com:

…and here’s the frequency graph from Voice123:

Both show the bulk of the leads being emailed out in the late morning hours, with V123 never really trailing off, and Voices dropping precipitously in the overnight hours.

Interestingly, I also ran across an online site that seems to have arrived at the conclusion that the best day to land a VO job is Thursday.

Apparently the good folks over at VoiceRealm, a UK online casting site, crunched some numbers and did some analysis of over 8 months of data and came up with that conclusion.  Sundays were the quietest.

Results from the study were released on PRWeb, and published by the San Francisco Chronicle site SFGate.

Worth a look.

Sidenote:  in the world of digital journalism, finding patterns in large batches of data (now possible more than ever with online tools) is becoming THE newest and most productive investigative paradigm.

Apparently, those who best understand the numbers will get the worm…not the early bird.

CourVO

Filed Under: Techniques Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

You Are What You Write

June 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Think about it.  If you’re old enough…how much did you write every day BEFORE social media came along?

Not everyone has made the transition to the New Media world with grace.

Yet…in a day’s time, you (1) text (2) email (3) post on FaceBook (4) post on some other social network and (5) create content of some other sort (newsletter,  ad copy, bio, blog, etc.).

In most cases, you don’t have body language, facial expressions, voice intonations, or attitude at your disposal.  You have your keyboard (and maybe some emoticons).

With those limitations, can you afford to be misunderstood?

Right.  This is how flame-wars get started on FaceBook threads between two of the nicest people you thought were your friends.

Even more, can you risk your unique humor with a client prospect?  It works…sometimes.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, but can you maybe insert the humor in a more diplomatic way, and still be safe?

Consider these two opening statements in an email to a possible client you recently met in a brief encounter at a conference:

Exhibit A:  Dear Joe, It was so cool running into you at VoiceCon…like, I could tell you were the MAN because you were so hard to get to after your talk with that long line of people…it was like, too much! Anyway, I wanted to let you know I’m available to work for you anytime.

Exhibit B:  Dear Joe,  My hope is you won’t mind my calling you by first name, as your talk at VoiceCon made everyone in the room feel like your best friend.  Thanks for that!  I learned a lot.  Your approachability gave me the hope that you might consider me as a possible talent for your company.

Exhibit A shows enthusiasm, and a certain colloquial flair, but since you really don’t know Joe, you run the risk of being too familiar and taking too much for granted with someone who is basically a stranger.

Exhibit B is more formal – yes – but remains in safe, cordial-but-reserved territory that is still universally accepted in the business world between client and prospect.

Here’s my bottom line in the world of written social media-attention-span writing:

The first few words of ANY written appeal are just as important as the first 10-seconds of your demo.

If you don’t grab ‘em at the first opportunity…you’ll not likely keep their attention.

Here’s my “honorable mention” suggestion for writing believable, engaging, humanized messages that get attention (besides spell checking):  PROOFREAD everything you write before hitting “send”.  Even better…set it aside, go do something else, then come back to it with fresh eyes, and read it again before sending.

OK, I just read this blog through about three times, and found two misspellings…and before social media, the only serious writing I did was college essays.

See?  The internet is making us all better writers?

CourVO

Filed Under: Techniques, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tagging for Jobs and Profit

June 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Admissions with a hush.

Producer and Voice Over Coach Nancy Wolfson creates her own original lingo for getting her point across in acting for advertising, and it’s spot-on.   Admit the obvious, and tinge it with an urgency or a hush.

In this 13th and final video excerpt from her HOW TO SOUND REAL AND NAIL THE SALE package of VO tips, Wolfson dishes on one of the most ubiquitous copywriting devices: the tag.  The tag is usually a short phrase, that — as Wolfson says — engenders trust in the product or the company…and gets you to buy their stuff.  You’ll encounter “the tag” in what?…4 out of 5 radio and TV spots?  That’s a guess…but you might as well learn now how to deliver it…because you WILL see it — a lot!

So, watch this meaty excerpt, and learn another word Wolfson invented:  “happify”.

You can also watch the video here:  http://www.braintracksaudio.com/soundreal/13.html

See? You don’t need to make the listener feel happy about it, you just need to explain it.  OMG that sounds so simple, but when we try to DO it in the booth we wanna put so much on it, and “spin” it…but it just needs to be said or admitted.

All of Wolfson’s material is original and smart.  She’s dissected this corner of the universe with surgical precision, and is the grand poobah of all she surveys, ’cause she created it from experience, analysis and real-world results.  Ask any one of a barrel-full of working graduates, and they’ll all tell you the same:  Nancy Wolfson knows her stuff.

While there’s nothing quite like the visceral time you spend in session with Wolfson one-on-one, this packaged video of 127 tips from her Acting for Advertising treatise is by far the next-best value.  A steal, really.  Check it out at HOW TO SOUND REAL AND NAIL THE SALE.

Braintracks Audio:  A logical approach to Voice Acting.

A TRUE tag!

CourVO

(P.S. My thanks to Nancy Wolfson for involving me in her 13 week promotion for this video)

Filed Under: Coaching, Techniques, Training/Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Seminar Preview

May 31, 2012 By 4 Comments

The month of May is gone, and I’m still trying to figure out where February went.

June brings with it the VOICE2012 Conference.  There’s still time to sign-up, BTW, although travel costs are starting to get expensive at this late juncture.

During the event, I’ll be presenting on the finer points of social media as it pertains to your VO marketing plan.  My cohorts in the seminar are Terry Daniel and Trish Basanyi.  Terry is presenting on FaceBook, and Trish will be explaining how she’s made Twitter work in her favor.

I’ll be presenting on the LinkedIn social network.  I’ve talked about this before this week here on my blog (LinkedIn Lip Service), and I’m hammering away at it, ’cause I think there’s a lot of value here for any voice talent in her/his search for new clients.

I’m also working hard on gathering resources for the presentation, and you’re my guinea pigs.  Below is a brief video I’ve recorded that profiles a particular tool on the LinkedIn site called “LinkedIn Signal”. It’s a great way to sift your way through the stream-of-consciousness on your social networks.

Take less than two minutes to watch:

I hope that tips you off to something about LinkedIn you were not aware of before.  The entire LI platform is riddled with opportunities to refine and advance your search in this manner…almost from every screen.

CourVO

Filed Under: Social Media/Networking, Social/Professional Networking, Techniques, Training/Education, VOICE 2012 Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Truth About Lying

April 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A famous actor is said to have once remarked that “…acting is all about being genuine and true to yourself…once you can fake that, you’ve got it made…”  (generally attributed to Spencer Tracy).

Today’s Nancy Wolfson mini video lesson about lying struck me almost as hard as the one where she asks you to cuss (in your mind) to reach a certain attitude.  [Being an on-air talent, I purged swear words from my daily life as protection from getting fired...and here is my trusted coach telling me to do exactly that!  Never mind... she was right!]

The thing about Wolfson’s approach to voice-coaching is that it always moves you out of a place of comfort (read: rut), and bids you discover something you didn’t realize you had in you, until somebody (Wolfson) forces you off the cliff.

But as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself.  You’ll see what I mean about that in today’s video about not judging the copy.

Watch:

You can also see the video on her website:  http://www.braintracksaudio.com/soundreal/6.html

Politics is a great example here, but it could be a food item, a hotel, or a car that you don’t like…reading a spot for something that has a negative connotation for you.

I like the politics example, though.  It comes up regularly in election cycles because the liberal/conservative passion brings out strong emotions and allegiances in us.  Some voice-actors simply find they cannot retain their integrity and do a spot for an opposing viewpoint.  The typical rejoinder is that the political client WILL find someone to pay good money to do the spot…it might as well be you.  Personal decision, I guess.  But if you find you have to lie at some point in life, ‘might as well be openly disingenuous about it AND get paid for it.

The lying lesson is but a smidge of the total wisdom you’ll find in the complete video offering called: HOW TO SOUND REAL AND NAIL THE SALE.  Wolfson’s shrewd analysis of acting specifically for advertising speaks for itself in this insanely-inexpensively-priced video of 127 valuable Coursework Tips from Nancy’s private curriculum.

The result is, you’re gonna want to hire Wolfson for the Olympic-scale Circuit-training Triathalon series of real-time lessons anyway, and THERE you’ll get the swearing lesson and the lesson on lying and oodles of other career-changing tips right from the source.  No subsitute!

So start with the video (HOW TO SOUND REAL AND NAIL THE SALE), and if you don’t believe me, call:  702-610-6288 and I’ll give ya the straight poop on Wolfson….I don’t get any kickbacks for it.

CourVO

Filed Under: Coaching, Techniques, Training/Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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