A lunch time email from Faffy – actually a “frantic Faffy-gram” because evidently dolphins are not only smarter than we assume, they are also more high-strung – advises that only 8 (eight – the number less than nine but more than seven) spots remain for Faffcon – the Voiceover Unconference on September 23-25 in Hershey, PA.
This third iteration of the event has been selling faster than ever before – no video promotion necessary.
Faffy also advised: “Wanna go but need some dough? If you, or a deserving VO pro you know, would benefit from coming to FaffCon, but would need financial assistance to make that happen, please check out the FaffCon Peer-to-Peer Scholarship. It was generously funded by FaffCon 2 participants after the Atlanta event.”
Hope to see you there.
Like many of you on this Sunday evening, I took a lovely evening stroll (which was lovely except for the sweltering heat and building humidity).
My Sunday stroll took place in one of my favorite cities, Washington, D.C.
I’m here because tomorrow morning I’m scheduled to testify before Congress in a closed session on the ethics of watermarking voice over auditions. Even with the wars, unemployment and the looming fiscal crisis (well, there’s always one hanging out there, isn’t there) Congress has its priorities clearly in order – investigate the voice over watermark.
Rest assured, on behalf of the industry, I shall give it my all.
You can see some other D.C. stroll shots here.
There are two or three voiceover coaches who post so much on Facebook, Voiceover Universe and Twitter et al about their latest seminars in Tupelo, Mississippi or where ever that I’ve simply unfriended them. Social media for them is an endless informercial, I guess.
Oy.
Evidently so many voice talents have sooo much new business – based on all the Facebinkedinwitter posts I read from them – that there may be no voice over jobs left for me (or you for that matter) so we all should just quit. It’s like an accountant in April posting “I just completed another tax return!” Um, pal, that what you’re supposed to do.
The debate over the best microphone has become so intense that two voiceover talents will duel to the death tomorrow morning– their weapons of choice will be a Neumann TLM 103 and a Sennheiser 416. It begs the question if two voice over talents die in the forest, who will announce it?
And it will surprise you to learn that voxmarketising is NOT the only blog on the topic of voiceover – at last count there were 14 billion voice over blogs, all of them debating whether breaths should or should not be edited out of narrations.
Obviously I’m being silly but the truth is: in the voiceover business, we talk a lot.
When it’s not on mic, it’s on line.
The trouble is we’re ALL talking about the same things…over and over. And I think I’m getting burnt out.
That’s a bad thing because while I thought I was contributing to the conversation, I wondering now if I’ve simply been contributing to the noise.
Paul Strikwerda, my Double Dutch voiceover friend, recently wrote about this issue, which I have been bandying about in my head for a while. He’s felt tad bored by what he’s read.
My concern is not that I’m bored (I know how to fix that – change the channel, hit the off switch) but rather that I’m the one being boring. I’ve actually cut back a bit on my social media and blogging because I didn’t feel I had anything interesting to contribute. I’m not sure “my perspective” is always enough.
Thinking about it that way made me feel a little better because at least I was thinking before typing. I think when it comes to Social Media, that’s not done a lot (and it’s not an issue exclusive to voice over talents, believe me). I’ve also been guilty as charged so don’t think I’m casting aspersions (so please, no emails from aspersions looking for voice work).
It seems we’re now all (and that “all” was a lot smaller when I started in Social Media) talking about the same voice over topics and from where I sit (just one man’s opinion here) the individual perspectives don’t always seem unique enough or even thought-provoking…and again, myself included.
I know we all just want to be heard and we all enjoy freedom of expression and that’s great. I don’t want it stifled but shouldn’t we all consider a little self-editing? Just a little?
I don’t know about you but I do NOT want to be the “oh not THAT guy again” brand. The line between frequency and obnoxious gets thin fast in social media; brands are now suffering (and not reaping).
SEO and marketing opportunities available through Social Media are so enticing (based on cost) that I think we all forget sometimes that for Social Media to be effective, we have to be maybe less frequent but certainly more interesting. And that’s not always easy.
Nor should it be.
What do you think? Or are you even paying attention anymore? 🙂
For voiceover aficionados, there are a ton sites offering information about voice over (I’ll address that informational abundance in a future post).
But a newer service called Scoop.it basically allows people to pick a topic and then cull their favorite blog posts into a daily email that people sign up to receive. It’s kinda like RSS wrapped up in a prettier bow.
FM Voiceovers & Dave Courvoisier put together one on voiceover that features posts from a variety of sources (today all three stories in their daily email were from this very blog which is a synonym for “slow news day”) and it’s a great read.
There’s probably a billion pages on VO out there within Scoop.it but the ones I quickly found were:
George Washington III has a collection of his voice over posts here.
David Houston has corralled his posts on this page .
Sirenetta Leoni has a nice selection of blog posts here.
You should check them all out and sign up for the ones you like.
