Bravery is knowing your chances for success are slim and fighting anyway.
You fight because you have a reason to live.
Today, let’s all remember our reasons to live and say prayers for Tony Snow’s wife and especially his children.
Although I attend all too infrequently so that I can be at home with the growing fam, I am allowed back in to study occassionally with the great teacher and my friend Toni Silveri of The Voice Actor Workshop here in town.
Quick plug: Toni is bringing into Buffalo her long-time friend Pat Fraley on August 16-17 for two classes. The Saturday workshop “The Silly, The Serious and The Subtle” character voice class is full but there are a few spots left for the class I am attending on Recording Audio Books. Contact Toni through All Coast Talent to reserve your spot.
WHY ARE YOU IN A WORKSHOP?!
I was talking with my friend Amy Snively yesterday. She’s a marvelous voice talent in Los Angeles that you’ve probably heard on network shows as a promo voice or as a narrator (her commercial work is cool too). In a wonderfully wide ranging conversation she hit on a theme that that people have brought before me many times: why do you (me) attend voice over classes?
The question is usually meant in a complimentary way (I think) as if to say you’re very talented and knowledgeable about all things voice. You should be teaching not studying.
Well I do teach (if you can call it that, compared to the scores of more thoughtful tutors in our industry) but I am so knowledgeable about voice and about life that I know just how much I don’t know. You may have to read that again to grasp the intent. The point is: there is always something more to learn. Our brains may have a finite capacity for knowledge but I’m pretty sure I’m still only using a ¼ of the tank in my cranium. So I need to keep filling.
GROUP OR SOLO?
Amy wanted me to consider private coaching as all of my learning as been in a group environment when it comes to voice over. She and many of my peers have accomplished great things in this format. I probably should try private coaching to actually compare but my inner-sense (and certainly experience) tells me I learn more in a group setting. Your mileage may vary as we all learn in different ways (best to check under your own hood for directions on preference.)
Maybe I’ll change my mind after I try the private route.
It could be that I “think” I prefer the group setting because of the solitary nature of our business; the chance to interact and work with peers helps renew my joy for voice over. “There are others like me, I am not a freak!” (Or at least the other freaks are very nice and I enjoy their company.)
But I think it’s getting input and direction from my respected teachers and insight from my fellow students that helps me improve so much in both my performance and my mental game. I will grant you that in a workshop setting, you would have to respect and value the opinion of your fellow students for this to be applicable and if you didn’t get a good group at the outset, you’re pooched). There are nuggets of voice over and performance gold all around in a great VO group class.
HIDDEN TALENTS REVEALED
There is always some epiphany I come away with when I study with Toni and the rest of the class who are by and large some of the most talent and under credited voice talents I have worked with in twenty-five years. Their talents and mine are always magnified under Toni’s tutelage.
Last night I was encouraged to use a narrator voice that to my ear sounded awfully but the class went nuts over it!
That to me is just one great example of why voice talents need to study: we as voice artists cannot rely constantly on our own ears to ensure our performances nor can we rely on the clients’ ears. Why?
Our ears are too used to and accepting of our own VO quirks and short cuts that can (long term) hamper our performance. And clients are not professional voice talents; they’ve hired you because you sound great to them so even if you know you offered a slightly flawed performance, they may love it. Well great, the check cleared and the client’s happy but should that in itself be enough? If you are a true voice professional, I say no.
VOICE 2008 AND OTHER WORKSHOPS
As we approach VOICE 2008 in Los Angeles in early August, there’s a lot of talk now about voice training. That event will bring together voice talents from around the world with some tremendous teachers – it’s a group learning setting where I know I would learn lots but I am not going. Why?
Cost? Not really as I have airline mileage points and hotel stay points that make travel a minor cost issue and certainly the show is not cost prohibitive. But as I told Amy ultimately the time and travel commitment is – I have to justify to myself taking a lot of time away from my children and my wife to pursue my professional education. And I’ve already done a lot of training this year.
Deb Munroe who is based out of Vancouver, B.C., came into Toronto a few months back to hold an advanced training of her Mic & Me Workshop. It was a two day event but I came up for only one day. What a fireball of energy Deb is! She’s a very focused teacher who helped me further my “everyman” persona is a great way. She’s a charmer and a go-getter who really helped everyone with their VO needs. You’ll see her at VOICE. Please tell her I said hi.
Stevie Vallance presented her Tooned In Workshop on character voices also in Toronto this summer. She is a multi-talent performer, a three-time Emmy nominee and one-time Emmy Award winner who continues to excel in the animation field, having served as a voice actor and voice director on many network cartoon shows. That was a wonderful vocal work out where I again was introduced to some new talent while also working with old friends.
Combine that with Fraley’s workshop coming up in August and that’s plenty of workshops for me. Though I would love the networking I would do in LA, its very unlikely that I’ll attend….this year.
What have been your training experiences this year and how did they go? Planning on any workshops and what are your goals for the workshops? Let me know.
Thanks for reading.
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Whether its blogging, podcasting, social networks (like LinkedIn etc) and the other tools, some folks either understand social media or they don’t.
But just because they don’t understand the tools and more importantly the community, doesn’t mean they don’t pick a channel and run amok. They just look a little foolish doing it.
New Blog
I was pinged to a new blog today being written by a fairly well know broadcasting name. That’s about as much information as I am willing to share as I’m not looking to bury the person. But in this individual’s frequent communications via various media over many years (long before social media was even a concept) this individual’s writing and attitude kind of rubbed me the wrong way.
Hyper-critical when critical would have been fine. Self-aggrandizing and always selling something (and for those who may be confused, I am not talking about myself in the third person here).
For what it’s worth, this same individual seems to make a good living at communicating and selling his/her wares. For my taste, it lacks a kind of style but maybe that’s just me.
So as I read this new blog I see some terrific content! Read some stuff, watch some stuff and think to myself “hey, good effort.” Then I read the very bottom of the blog.
Splat!
It’s a disclaimer about the content contained on the blog. I’ll have to offer a paraphrased summary to maintain the blog’s anonymity but also because as this disclaimer intimates – woe to the persons who tries to use any of my stuff elsewhere’. What?
Basically if you post something on this blog, you can use “your” content anywhere you want and (the author notes) so can they in her/his various communication tools. It goes on to say that no one can use any of his/her stuff anywhere.
This person does not understand social media and how to be successful in it.
Different Rules
I am no stranger to copyright and ownership laws etc. And those laws can be applied to content in social media. Certainly nobody wants their content stolen and repackaged under another author’s name. I get that.
But have you ever looked up the definition of social media. I don’t think this person had. Let’s check in with our friends at Wikipedia.
“Primarily, social media depends on interactions between people as the discussion and integration of words builds shared-meaning, using technology as a conduit.
Social media utilities create opportunities for the use of both inductive and deductive logos by its users. Claims or warrants are quickly transitioned into generalizations due to the manner in which shared statements are posted and viewed by all.”
Do you see a word that dominates in those graphs? Shared. In fact, in the blogosphere, the more you’re quoted or linked to the greater your popularity. People feel your content is worth sharing and discussing. That’s a compliment, hello!
To not allow sharing, indeed to forbid it, is akin to buying the car and not bothering with the gasoline. What’s the point?
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
If there is content you want to hold sacred (and that’s true in my case, on occasion) then don’t post it. The community (probably also a foreign concept to this person) will only absorb what you put out there. In social media, the rules are completely different from “what was”.
People can produce podcasts and twitter and blog until their blue in the face but if they don’t bother to understand the foundation of social media, they are only communicating with themselves.
And in high school they told me I could go blind doing that.
Woe is me for being so late (over a week) in posting the happenings of a great dinner with my voiceover peers in San Diego. The words were ready but WordPress was being technically malfeasant regarding the picture upload. With the problem solved and all apologies for the delay, I shall commence.
San Diego, California is quickly ranking right up there with Toronto, Ontario as one of my favorite cities, this time made all the more enjoyable by a great dinner with my voice over friends of the left coast.
I had warned Connie Terwilliger back in December during the NBC Nightly News Voice Off that duties for a marketing client of mine would bring me out to SD where she’s based. Usually women who are forewarned of my arrival scurry like mice uncovered by a flashlight but not Connie. She up and helps organize a dinner out there with some great voice talents and their better halves.
I was the only one flying solo as she-who-must-be-obeyed was at her Mother’s house with the little O’s at a family gathering that I obviously missed (or that was strategically scheduled…take your pick…kidding).
Some great voice over stories, secrets and ideas on marketing tools were shared and a successful trip was made even more so by the kindness and generosity of some amazingly talented voice actors.
My thanks to my fellow voice talents (pictured from left to right) Bobbin Beam, Awesome Voice (guess who), Connie Terwilliger, James Alburger and Penny Abshire for sharing their time with me. Thank you doesn’t cover it…but thanks.
I’m not sure if you’re on FriendFeed (which is a cool kind of all encompassing social media service) but if you are, please feel free to include me.
