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raleigh durham voiceover meet-up begins

Raleigh Durham Voiceover Meetup with Bill Jordan, Rowell Gormon, Wendy Zier, Peter K. O'Connell, Chadd PIerce & Pat Crosswhite

(l-r) Bill Jordan, Rowell Gormon, Wendy Zier, Peter K. O’Connell, Chadd Pierce & Pat Crosswhite attend the first gathering of the Raleigh-Durham Voiceover Meet-Up

June 28, 2017 is likely not going to be a date that will live in infamy.

Nonetheless, everyone who joined us this night for the first meeting of the Raleigh Durham Voiceover Meet-up had a really good time.

One of the sad parts of leaving Buffalo was that we had formed a really great voiceover meet-up group there. Not only did we have people from Buffalo but also some folks from Central New York would come in and even folks from Canada. And we had visiting voiceover pals too. It’s a great group that still gets together.

RDUVO Raleigh Durham Voiceover MeetupSo when my family moved to RDU last August (sheesh, it’s almost a year!) I was adamant that I would start a VO Meet-up group here. I knew a bunch of great talents here who had been long time friends and they all wanted to do it. I set up a meet up page on September 2, 2016.

Then I did nothing about the voiceover meet-up group for the next 9 months.

But about a month ago, I gave myself a kick in the ass and secured a location for the first RDUVO meetup. I then put out the word to all my local VO friends.

Tonight we had our first meeting!

It was a great experience. People showed up early to help set up the room and brought snacks, Then the conversations started and you couldn’t shut us up. It was great.

Plans are underway to host next month’s RDUVO Meet-up and hopefully even more folks will show.

My thanks to Bill Jordan, Rowell Gormon, Wendy Zier, Chadd Pierce and Pat Crosswhite for attending and making the conversation so terrific!

past presidents gather in raleigh, nc

Peter K. O'Connell and Timothy O'Shea Raleigh, NC 2017

Tim O’Shea of Timothy O’Shea Photography was visiting Raleigh Thursday which gave me a chance to visit with my old friend.

Tim and I were both past presidents of the Buffalo Niagara Sales and Marketing Executives, a professional sales association for top marketing and sales folks in Western New York.

This is the first BNSME Past Presidents meeting in Raleigh but hopefully it will not be the last.

There is now an open invitation to all BNSME Past Presidents to call me if they will be in Raleigh and I will let you buy me lunch or dinner or both. Because I am just that generous! 😉

 

check your mail, you may already be a winner

Peter K. O'Connell Voiceover Want Ad 2017Ok, well there’s actually nothing to win but certainly check your mail!

And maybe you already have, which is why you’re checking out this page. Welcome to my voiceover blog.

If we haven’t properly met yet, hi, I’m Peter.

Yes, I sent out a new direct mail postcard this week to about 900 of my media production peers who work in audio production, TV and radio production, TV promo, explainer video production, documentaries and darn near every other kind of electronic production worldwide that uses voiceover.

I hadn’t done a mailer in a while, and with this year being my 35 anniversary in voiceover, I figured that’s something to talk about on a big postcard.

Why direct mail?

People still love getting unique stuff in the mail, even an oversized postcard. It’s a reminder to those I’ve worked with before that I’m still around (give me a call). It’s also an introduction to folks who may have heard of me (or may not have heard of me) but might need some professional voice talent help – the card is a friendly hello (give me a call) to them as well.

I’ll still do email blasts every now and again but I fear those don’t get read as much as they used to…my open rates are still good and I keep the message short and sweet!

So if you’re just finding me for the first time, hi (welcome!), and if you’re returning, hi again and thanks for coming back.

Oh and if you do need to call me, I’m on +01 716-572-1800.

twitter screws with your branding again

Peter K. O'Connell Twitter Graphic CHange

You probably didn’t get the memo.

Or if you’re like me (and God help you if you are), you kinda noticed something different on your Twitter profile but ignored it and moved on…until you DID notice it.

Twitter changed the layout of your profile, not a ton but juuuust enough to screw with your branding.

The little profile picture on your Twitter profile, you know, the one the shows up next to every tweet? The size of that got changed last week.

It used to be a square and now it’s a circle.

Big deal, you say? Who cares, you say?

Well maybe it’s not Armageddon, but depending on the size of your profile picture, the image may have gotten cut off, leaving your branding looking a bit sloppier than you may prefer. Prospects look at social media accounts and judge you on your branding. Just like you judge others on their branding.

Now is it a bigger deal for you?

The fix is easy enough (just more unnecessary work). Take your original picture and make it a bit smaller so the rounded edges of the new circle don’t cut off your image.

Then re-upload the pic to Twitter, resize if necessary and save.

Then wait for some body else at Twitter to unnecessarily change something else without letting you know.

Hope this helps.

are you ready?

Are You Ready_VOSome years ago, the singer and Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth was in concert at the Hollywood Bowl. As part of her concert, she evidently pulled up a random audience member to sing one of Chenoweth’s biggest hits, “For Good” from the show Wicked.

On this night, she randomly chose a woman named Sarah Horn. Sarah identified herself as a voice teacher.

Unrehearsed, the orchestra began playing and this happened:

The video was an Internet sensation with millions and millions of views. It was a magnificent, inspiring performance and Chenoweth’s reactions were equally as wonderful.

Some years after that video, Sarah Horn was asked to give a TEDx talk in Riverside, California. Her presentation was entitled “Be Ready: Lessons from the Hollywood Bowl”.

Horn’s message was clear: random as her selection was, she had rehearsed that song before the show…. from a young age, in her bedroom singing to the cast album, literally hundreds of times.

She had rehearsed as a voice teacher, learning about music and the human voice. Because of her deep passion for singing, Horn was constantly preparing, never not rehearsing and always performance ready.

It was, in short, her life’s preparation for that thing that she was so passionate about (her singing) that allowed her to get up in front of that audience at the Hollywood Bowl with a performance that hit it out of the park. She didn’t know when she would get the call, but she was ready when she did get the call.

As a voiceover talent, are you THAT ready?

Have you been working scripts since you were old enough to know what a script was? Have you always consistently experimented with new tones in your voice. If some producer asks “give me a series of 3” can you say “I can give you a series of 33!” and mean it?

Do you even know what “give me a series of 3” means?

It’s those examples and more that most professional voice talents can say yes to…because they ARE ready. Performance ready for almost anything a producer can ask them to do.

In an old biography for myself, I wrote (rather un-poetically):

“As a high school student, Peter K. O’Connell garnered strange looks from his parents as they passed by his room when he would practice his announcing skills by reading magazine advertisement copy out loud. While they might have expected to hear a record from Bruce Springsteen, Peter’s parents got Ed McMahon instead.”

That sounds funny but it is a 100% true story. The quizzically look my Mother gave me through my bedroom door one time as I was reading commercial copy from a print magazine was very funny. She didn’t understand why I was ready out loud from a magazine. Was this what my puberty was going to be like, busting out into an open reading of magazine print ads? What will the neighbors say?!!!

But I wanted to be ready.

I’ve worked on voiceover and announcing since high school. At that time, I became brave enough to not be self-conscious about performing (and I was – and still can be – very self-conscious). I worked all the time on my reading, my pronunciation, my sound, my characters, all of it.

I still do.

This is not to brag but merely to serve as an example to those who want to be in voiceover that THIS kind of dedication (almost obsessiveness) IS what it takes to be a professional voice talent.  And to be ready.

To become so practiced, to able to do something so well that, when called upon in the most unprepared of circumstances, your mind, body and spirit instinctively over take any immediate nerves or challenges to allow you to easily do that thing you’ve worked your whole life to perfect. In this case, voiceover.

Voiceover is not about having a nice voice.

It IS an art. It DOES require consistent practice. You MUST be focused. Not because you HAVE to but rather because you *WANT* to!

That want, that desire, that very NEED to be a voice talent is what will fuel your engines to work so hard and to constantly improve as a voice talent.

Just so, one day, you too will be ready when you get the call.