Dave Courvoisier's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘voice’

September holds special promise for Voice Actors everywhere…an opportunity to bring better understanding to our business…a chance to extend your brand with a timely message, and the possibility of growing your business through a unique marketing tool.

I’d love to tell you about it now, but timing is everything.  Please check back here Wednesday morning to hear the details.

CourVO

Robert Downey Jr.

….otherwise, why would he agree to be the voice for Nissan?

No, I get it…these big companies need a REAL actor to give their multi-million-dollar campaigns distinction… not someone who’s worked at the craft of voiceover for years.  Yes, I’m unabashedly jealous.

However, in the spot they don’t SAY it’s Robert Downey Jr (just like Lowe’s doesn’t give Gene Hackman credit, or Hyundai doesn’t identify Jeff Bridges)..so, do Nissan and Lowe’s and Hyundai get a benefit from hiring a “NAME” to voice their spots?

How many viewwers are REALLY good at identifying the voices on commercials?

Most viewers:
a) aren’t watching
b) aren’t listening
c)  perhaps mildly recognize the voice as “some celebrity”
d) knock themselves out trying to identify the voice for the whole commercial, and miss the point of the spot.

Either way, what’s with these advertising firms going for Hollywood actors’ voices?  A REAL voice-actor like Doug Turkel or Thom Wilkins or Deb Grattan, or sheesh…any one of hundreds of qualified voices could do a better job for (probably) less than what Robert Downey Jr. is getting, and EVERYONE would be happier!…except Robert.

That’s my highly-biased opinion.  That’s my sour grapes.

What’s yours?

CourVO

[author's note in P.S.:  this blog is generating interesting comments...please see below.]

Thanks to Twitter, I found out Peter O’Connell likes my idea of naming September National VoiceOver Month (hey, maybe we can get a legitimate movement going here!)…but more than that, I found on Twitter the same job listed on THREE different freelancer websites.

Don’t believe me?

Click:   HERE.  HERE. HERE.

…and yes, I think there’s still time to submit.

Who says you can’t find VO job leads in Social Media?

CourVO

….or Congress should declare it as such.

I know there are always workshops and conferences and meet-ups going on EVERY month, but for some reason September seems to be a veritable cornucopia of opportunities.

First and foremost, there’s FAFFCON.  Ho, boy!  Have you signed up for this yet?  Do. Be part of the first-ever VO UNconference.  Portland.  2nd weekend in September.  Click on the logo for all the info.

Then, there’s THAT’S VOICEOVER, Septemer 22nd.  Hosted in NYC by David Letterman’s Alan Kalter and created by Rudy Gaskins and Joan Baker.  This is an event that just keeps getting better.

And then, there’s Marice Tobias — that elusive, but coveted coach holding an “Established Men in VoiceOver” event in my own hometown of Vegas on the last weekend of September.

Will I  make all three?  Nope…but 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

Sleep?

It’s so unnecessary…don’t you think?

CourvO

Maxine Dunn is a voiceover constant.  Work in the business long enough, you’ll hear of, or run into Maxine.

While her natural dialect is British, Maxine excels at North American-speak, on-camera work, and live as a spokesperson.

With all that, should I be surprised that she’s turned out a cracker-jack primer for VoiceOver Marketing?

Click HERE to read her concise, meaty, and helpful guide to strategizing a better VO marketing plan.

Nice work, Maxine!

CourVO

Every day I’m reminded that we live in swashbuckling times.  Not that we should have parrot on our shoulder, or a snarl on our breath…rather a swashbuckler — in the truest sense — is an adventurer.

Every generation has it’s opportunities for adventure.  Think of the explorers, the railroad or oil barons, even Bill Gates.  Each met a challenge on the frontier — be it Cape Horn, the Wild West, or a threshold of digital technology.

What is the world-changing opportunity lying right under our noses, that history will look back on in 50 years and say:  “Ya know, it really began in 2010…starting small with _________.”?

THE OUTBACK

The last such frontier was computer technology, the internet, the dot.com bubble…each building on the platform of the technology preceding it.  Microsoft and Apple were revolutionary outcomes of electricity, the phone system, and vacuum tubes.  And THOSE advances were built on advances in metallurgy, glassware, and the assembly line.

Make no mistake, THE NEXT BIG THING is forming right now…right here in the US…its nascent stem cells so defying prediction that we can’t see the thing-it-will-be.

Here’s my take on it anyway:  that “next big thing” will be some sort of paradigm, cultural revolution, or gizmo that binds us even more to one another — almost telepathically…and it’s being born in Social Media.

Ah…so that’s what you’re getting at, CourVO!!!…too many late nights on FaceBook!

…JUST AROUND THE CORNER!

But hear me out.  Three little recent developments — perhaps just insignificant baubles in the corporate world — that will be swallowed up by a Google, or a Lenovo, or a Zappos, may be the harbingers.

Gist.  This golden little software/cloud/assistive chunk of digital awareness will help put online social connections in perspective.  You can join online at Gist.com.  You can download the add-on version to MS Outlook, and you can further utilize Gist on your smartphone.  Gist is quietly amazing.  In Outlook (which BTW is not-so-slowly embracing social media itself: see the new OutLook Social Connector), Gist immediately adjusts to each email highlighted, telling you more…much more, about the person who just sent you a message, in the form of links, contact info, and social media sites.  Another great program of this ilk is XOBNI (inbox backwards).

StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit.  I group these together, ’cause they share a similar approach, which is to let YOU choose the headline, the trend, the hot topic. NewsVine is in this category.  Digg — a surprising survivor of Social Media competition — is about to launch a whole new site revamp that everybody is anticipating, and StumbleUpon just launched it’s new iPhone/Android app.  Actually, mobile is EVERYTHING.  Forget, radio, TV, computers…the trend is all towards personal info & communication on the go.

THE NEW WORLD

Which leads to the capper of my little diatribe today:  GeoLocation services.  This sector is going wild. Yelp and Loopt and a hundred other start-ups launched into this sector, built upon the capabilities of  GPS (remember the history lesson above?)   FourSquare popularized it, but over the weekend, FaceBook got on the bandwagon, and Google is right in the mix too, with “Google Places“.

Detractors caution about too freely sharing your whereabouts.  But advertisers are lovin’ this one…offering incentives, coupons, and special buys for those who check-in, reach out and take-advantage.  Amazing stories are emerging of people finding the very person they’re looking for (!) in the next store over, all because they both checked into FourSquare within minutes of each other on their smartphones.

WITHER VO?

Don’t ask me this question!  I’m just a blogger, not Rasputin…but let’s brainstorm for a minute.  Gist is easy:  it puts lots of handy information about possible voice clients and leads right where you can use it… on your computer and your smartphone.  StumbleUpon, Digg, etc. are like mini RSS readers that keep you up on business trends, and might give you ideas for warm-calling certain leads.

But Geo-Location?  I’m coming up blank on this one.  I gotta call my VO bud Terry Daniel who is absolutely rabid about this technology, and have him explain the big advantage for my voice-over business.  Will it help me to know, for instance, that the production supervisor hired by McDonald’s advertising agency is having coffee at the Starbucks just down from where I’m picking up my dry cleaning?  Hmmmm.

Will there be “places” barons in our near future?

CourVO

.

One quirky word can ruin an otherwise flawless narration.

Reading along in presentation copy for a Conference on Shopping malls once, I kept coming across GmBh…it’s an acronym used internationally, much like Ltd. is for some companies in the English-speaking world.  I searched high and low for more than an hour to figure out how to SAY it correctly (Guh-Em’-Buh-Hah, BTW).

If I had only had the list below, it may have taken me considerably less time.

Below, you’ll find some of the most eminent sites for finding pronouncers in all sorts of situations, words, dialects, languages, and countries.  It was provided to me by
Sean Crisden, “The Voice of Reason” www.seancrisden.com. He has graciously permitted me to re-post it here for you.  Thanks, Sean!

I ran across Sean’s list in the Audiobook Community Forum for Narrators, and the original post noted the handy and usable pronunciation site FORVO, which I’ve blogged about under the heading: Global Spoken Words.  Besides, using the moniker CourVO…FORVO is a natch.

Here’s Sean’s list:

http://dictionary.reference.com/
http://www.howjsay.com/
http://www.fonetiks.org/
http://accent.gmu.edu/
http://web.ku.edu/~idea
http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/
http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/
http://names.voa.gov/
http://text-to-speech.imtranslator.net/ – type text and hear in various accents
http://www2.research.att.com/%7Ettsweb/tts/demo.php – type text and hear in various accents
http://inogolo.com – pronunciation of people places and stuff
http://www.loc.gov/nls/other/ABC.html – pronunciation for brands and companies
http://www.loc.gov/nls/other/sayhow.html – names and public figures

CourVO

Anyone run across this before?

Not that it would be that difficult technically to come up with a software program like this, but would a voice-actor actually USE something like this to do radio imaging?…game voices?…special effects?

Jus’ wondrin’.

BTW, much more voice morphing software can be found HERE.

And if you’re interested in the VoiceChanger software don’t pay the full price quoted on that website. It’s available for half that price HERE.

…and no, I’m not an affiliate for AV Voice Changer.

CourVO

FaffCon is fast coming.

Read THIS previous blog for the basics.  For those of you too impatient to do so, FaffCon is an “unconference” being organized by voice-actors FOR voice-actors, and it happens in September in Portland, OR.

From casual chatter, to catalyst, to serious planning, to scheduling and reality, this event took shape in what seems like a whirlwind of time.  Many many voice-actors have contributed, but probably none more so than the true force behind it all: Amy Snively, the event producer.

See below the line for an official PR release on FaffCon, but check out the video below for a fun video presentation of the upcoming event.  The video is populated by many of the people attending (moi included), and it was written, produced and edited by the highly talented Peter O’Connell.

If you’d like to come, though…better get on the stick…the special room rate at Hyatt Place Portland runs out on August 9th.  Everything you need is on the FaffCon site.

Read the rest of this entry »

Social Media and Social Networking is at the heart of my VO Marketing plan (heh), and if you haven’t yet seen or visited, my friend Terry Daniel and I offer a resource site on Social Media techniques for voice-actors HERE.

Below, I’m repurposing a single page of content from a publication heralding the upcoming Affiliate  Summit in NYC  in a couple of weeks

(already sold out!).  I’m not an affiliate marketer in the truest sense, but the successful ones are staunch apostles of good Social Networking techniques.

Lots of people claim an expertise in Social Media, but over time, you look for the ones that tend to make sense, have good referrals, and offer consistently good content.  Brian Solis is certainly among those who fit that criteria.

He lists below 21 “Best Practices” to navigate almost any Social Media Platform.  Do these, and  reap the rewards!

CourVO

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