7/11/09 UPDATE: Please note that I have been notified that Justine Martin has been found alive and safe. I’ll leave this post up for a few days so the internet can catch up with this great news, then I will delete the post.
Thanks for your help!
– Peter
Voice Over Talent Terry Daniel has asked for help from the voiceover community (and anyone who could help) because his voice over agent, Julie Martin, has a family member named Justine Martin that is missing.
Terry has posted a video on YouTube with the details. Please watch the video and help if you can.
MISSING PERSON: Justine Martin
If you have any information that could assist in Justine’s safe return, please contact the Cobb County Police Department at 770-499-3900.
Thank you.
Tags: commentary, video by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent Comments Off on your help is requested to find a missing person – 7/11/09 UPDATE: She has been found safe.
Sometime ago a voiceover friend gave me a tip on how to monitor craigslist.org through my Google reader. He threatened me with certain harm if I dared share this tip with anyone and, as I promised I wouldn’t, I won’t.
You have Google, you don’t need me.
I wanted to monitor craigslist.org because I was always hearing about voice over jobs on the site. If you’ve been on the site you know you’d have to click through every city and some drill down menus before you get to listings. This, to me, was an unworthy time suck.
So with the unmentioned tool, I can now receive these postings into my reader. The only problem being that for the past two to three months, the jobs posted have either been low to no pay or geographically prejudicial.
Therefore, for me, craigslist.org went from being a time suck to time waste. That’s like going from bad to worse.
If craigslist.org is going to be a cheap floozy of a classified ad site, so be it. On it, you can find crappy voice talent jobs, many other lousy jobs, hookers (allegedly), murders (allegedly) and antiques ((allegedly)).
Clearly, based on the web site’s success, there is a market for this schlock. But it comes across as being less than a bargain and more like an on line junk yard with the occasional treasure found.
Am I being an elitist? Is this just me being bitter about crappy voice jobs on craigslist.org? Did I go in expecting too much?
It’s just that I saw such potential for the site and it makes me feel a bit disappointed. We should all want to aspire to buy more than cheap crap on line, shouldn’t we?
My hometown of Buffalo, NY gets picked on for many things (most of them deservedly so- except the weather, it’s not nearly has bad as people think) but one proud fact that this city doesn’t get credit for is its broadcasting and announcing talent. It is historically outstanding!
Before you go blathering about how this post will be self-serving (no, this has nothing to do with my voiceover business) or how every city has great announcers (yes many do), I just want to share with you here one example of a great, not properly recognized voice talent that I briefly worked near (not with, I wasn’t that lucky).
When I was a high school intern (yes, high school, not college) at WFXZ-FM (originally WBUF-FM), I worked with legendary Buffalo broadcaster Jack Mahl. I understood then that he was talented, but I didn’t understand how much he had accomplished.
Have you ever been in the presence of greatness but not understood at the time how lucky you were? That was me in 1981 with Jack Mahl (pronounced “mall”). At the time I was working as a news intern in the morning with Susan Hunt and in the afternoons with PD/MD Jeff Appleton. The afternoon news man was Jack Mahl who worked with the afternoon DJ’s Steve Mitchell and Chuck Stevens (who is now over at WJYE-FM).
Great googly-moogly what a powerful, resonate yet calming voice Jack Mahl had. To me, he could read the phone book and it would sound interesting. I knew he had worked for many years in local radio and television but it felt very much for the teen-aged me when I worked with him like Jack was in the Fall of his career.
That was likely a misguided teenager’s opinion based only on what I saw. You see Jack was an extremely tall man who I think had leg problems exacerbated by the fact that the on-air studio was on the first floor and his office was on the second floor; the stairs he had to ascend after each newscast made his pain obvious. I never actually asked about his condition for fear of prying into something that really wasn’t my business, and likely his issue could just as easily have been temporary and fixed medically. The point here was he seemed old to me at ae time when I didn’t understand what old was.
Nevertheless, I loved to listen to his newscasts.
At some point during my internship, Jack was replaced as afternoon news anchor by Dwayne Walker with whom I did a bit of interning work. I remember being surprised by this change (my first experience into what is an everyday occurrence in radio). I don’t recall whether this was Jack’s choice or the station’s choice and ultimately that’s not my business either. Jack worked on-air up until December 29, 2000, his last job at all-news WNED-AM. But having come across Steve Cichon’s terrific staffannouncer.com site and seeing Jack Mahl on it, I felt like I wanted to share my small story about Jack Mahl.
In many ways, I wish I was smart enough with Jack to pry just a little but I was too young, too shy and too stupid. I could have heard stories about his career, a summary of which was taken from his 2000 induction in to the Buffalo Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
JACK MAHL’s booming voice, warm smile, friendly manner and snappy salute became the stuff of legend during more than a decade as “Your Atlantic Weatherman” each weeknight on WGR-TV (Channel 2) starting in the mid-1950s. But his career goes far deeper than that indelible impression. A prime member of the original Channel 2 air staff, Mahl earlier had gained the attention of listeners with his radio newscasting and DJ stints at WKBW, WGR and WHLD, becoming a late-night favorite of GIs stationed in Greenland during his KB tenure as host of “Spotlight Serenade.” Not long after Atlantic stopped sponsoring TV weathercasts, Mahl returned to radio and helped pioneer the introduction of all-news radio to Buffalo at WEBR. After serving a 10-year stint as news director at WBUF-FM, he returned to WEBR (which later became WNED-AM). For 13 years Mahl also was the live announcer for the Mark Russell comedy specials on PBS. He was often asked by longtime fans to deliver his signature TV sign-off phrase: “That’s all for Mahl, good night!”
Jack Mahl died in 2002. He certainly wouldn’t have remembered me but I remember him. That man had a wonderful voice. Here’s a sample (about :21 seconds in) from a Mark Russell comedy special for which Jack served as announcer for 13 years.
When adults fall all over themselves with accolades for or accusations against a dead person, leave it to a child to remind us of the real truth.
Three children buried their Daddy today. Nothing, not one other thing matters.
Their lives have been unfairly and irreparably changed forever.
For them and for all the children who have lost their parents to sickness, war or hatred, please offer a daily prayer for their mental, physical, spiritual and emotional well-being.
Over time, we will forget their saddest day. They never will.
Tags: commentary by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent 6 Comments »
It is possible that maybe no one else but me finds fascinating the stories of how some famous logos were born. Further, it is possible that people would disagree with me about what constitutes a famous logo.
Well, it’s my blog and I’ll logo-verse (I call copyright on that and all iterations) if I want to!
Music Television International has deemed sacred the original black and white MTV logo so that’s the only version of the logo they will use in their on-air identity (you know, until they create ANOTHER on-air identity)
But I never knew the story behind the original logo’s creation.
Working with John Lack, the executive vice president of Warner Satellite Entertainment Company (WASEC), Robert Pittman, a successful radio programmer, helped establish a groundbreaking cable television channel: MTV, the music channel. Fred Seibert, a former jazz record producer and radio station promotion coordinator, was hired by Pittman to oversee the identity of the channel. Seibert turned to his lifelong friend Frank Olinsky, who had just established Manhattan Design with two partners, Pat Gorman and Patty Rogoff, to create the logo. The process was remarkably collaborative: Rogoff first drew the big M and worked with Gorman to determine its perspective; then Gorman suggested a pointy TV to its side, which Olinsky took and spray-painted it. Meanwhile, the M was subjected to productive tomfoolery, with the partners rendering it in bricks, polka dots, and zebra stripes, and suggesting the logo could be all these things.
Seibert presented the mutating logo to Pittman and Lack, and met resistance to both the solution and the firm behind it. Seibert was asked to hire a big-name designer like Push Pin Studios or Lou Dorfsman to do the logo. He did, but as the process extended and time became a problem, Manhattan Design’s was approved. Seibert next focused on the station identifications for broadcast, which Pittman equaled to radio jingles, instantly recognizable and memorable. The first pool of collaborators comprised production houses like Broadcast Arts, Colossal Pictures, and Perpetual Motion Pictures, who created surreal ten-second animations that gave life to the MTV logo. For MTV’s top-of-the-hour identification, illustrator Candy Kugel at Perpetual took the still images of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing (available in the public domain) and colorized the MTV logo on top of the American flag. On August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m., to the unmistakable sound of MTV’s guitar riff, this image launched a new generation of viewers, artists, designers, and citizens.
— From our own Graphic Design, Referenced
NOTE: this was supposed to publish two days ago and I thought it had. Obviously this is WordPress’ fault because I NEVER make mistakes! Stupid WordPress!
The nicest man (and one of the most talented) in voice over has updated his brand.
Bob Souer has unveiled his new web site and blog (likely the most widely read in the business) which now boldly proclaims him to be a “Professional Story Teller”. A more accurate description couldn’t have been created by Shakespeare himself.
Please stop by and have a look around. Now doubt he’ll be adding new pieces in the days and weeks to come but no one deserves the kudos more than Bob. Great job!
