I was able to visit the Voice Actor Workshop where my friend, teacher and agent Toni Silveri was up to her wonderful tricks again. As happens on occasion at the end of class sometimes, Toni, myself and another student, Kevin Iuzzini, just started talking and it ended up being 11:00 p.m.

By the way, Kevin is a helluva good voice talent, er, voice actor (as well as a great conversationalist) who you should absolutely check out.

But that above nomenclature was my mind as we all talked about voice training and methods and styles. Toni and Kevin are much more studied in the way of stage acting training and I just tried to shut and listen as I was waaay out of my league. Strassburg, Method Acting and Stanislavsky…plulease. I am a lazy voice over fella who just wants to know what time it is, I don’t need to know how the watch is made.

Their insights did cause me to think about the idea of actors training and whether, at its very root, stage actor training is that much different than voice actor training (stage direction and the much greater focus on physicality and movement for stage acting aside). My decision was it really isn’t and that’s probably is a good thing.

Then my next thought veered towards the name, the descriptions if you will: voice actor vs. voice talent. Why is one performer called a voice actor and another called a voice talent? Certainly both titles are part of the industry’s vernacular with those performers who do character voice work most often called voice actors. I refer to myself as a voice talent but I do lots of character work. Should I be calling myself a voice actor?

Does a voice actor get paid more than a voice talent? I don’t think so. Is there greater prestige having “actor” in the title? Nah, I don’t think so, or is there?

So my question is: which are you and why?

Tags: voice actors, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover meet-ups by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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And by props I mean propaganda film for the many culinary treasures my hometown offers its residents and visitors.

Thanks to a tip from my sister on Facebook, I was directed to this short film produced by John Paget (who I just met a few weeks ago) and his company Paget Films, for the Buffalo Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Two things of note in this piece, called “Eat It Up”:

1. I can vouch for the authenticity of the content in this film. We have an incredibly wide variety of terrific food choices in this city.

2. We have MANY days without snow and we’re darn good looking when we want to. I hope you’ll come taste and see for yourself someday.

Kudos to John and his team, the film was great.

Tags: buffalo, commentary, marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Pat Pappy Fraley, 1985-2009

Voice over coach Pat Fraley announced on his Facebook page the death of his eldest son, Pat, AKA “Pappy” Sunday.

Via Voiceover Universe, Pat’s Facebook message about his son was conveyed to me this morning:

Dear Beloved Extended Family,

I have some sad news. My eldest son, Pat, AKA “Pappy” died yesterday. He died of an overdose. He was 24. Although Renee, I, and his brothers grieve deeply – and I’m being bold as my son always encouraged me to be, Pappy knew Christ, and he awaits us in heaven; a place of no pain and no tears, but tears of joy. Please don’t respond to this on FB. My email is patfraley@aol.com. Just knowing you are sorry for our loss is abundant and a blessing. If you pray, please pray for Renee and me to have the strength and grace to comfort Pappy’s brothers.

With Gratitude,

Pat

While aware of Pat’s son’s problem, I still cannot fathom the challenge these parents faced to save their son, how his brothers sought to help their brother. Please continue to support Pat’s family through StopOverdoseIL.org.

I hope my family’s faith, our prayers for his family will some how strengthen their family’s faith in God and in each other, helping them now and in the weeks and months to come.

I hope your faith will too.

Tags: requiescat in pace by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I am well aware that this may be of interest to no one but me or it may encourage you to take a well-times critical eye to your own web site; it was time to clean up audioconnell.com

Let it be said up front that the clean up was on account of (bad english alert) stuff that I put on the site in the first place. Was I wrong then? Probably not…the web is an evolving place and our job as business owners is to stay on top of the changes for our site. What made sense then may not make sense now. Plus, refreshing a brand or at least tweaking it on occasion (note that) is not a bad thing.

My point is with the growth of the International Voice Talents, Voice Over Workshop and even the female voices, the site can revert back to its original platform – promoting my voice over business. The plan I developed when I started those businesses was to build on my web equity and that would mean sacrificing a little of my own voice over business to do that. Well, I got ‘er done enough for those two as they are up and running on their own; it was time to update the web site and I did…and will….forever.

I realize that my graphic abilities are not the best so the representation above may not look as beautiful as the site does on your browser but this is for demonstration purposes only. So here’s a rundown of the cleaning and polishing (maybe they will offer you some helpful ideas as well):

A. This is the first part of the changes involving the navigation of the site. It used to say male voice demos – which were all mine. Now it has my name on there which is clearer for the visitors (over 1,400 of you unique folks last month and I thank you). The other part was clarifying how to book/hire me…sort of asking for the order, if you will. This involved looking at some of the content on the site already and reordering it within the navigation.

B. This part involved cutting out some navigation stuff that was old or unnecessary. Just as a couple of quick examples: I dropped the client login button (I email an FTP address to clients which is easier and simpler) and dropped the voice over workshop link (people use www.voworkshop.com now). Much cleaner.

C. This is a bit of the pizazz and razzle dazzle . First, this spot used to have a variety of old mic pictures which were nice but used up important web real estate…bye bye mics. Hello audio’connell’s secondary logo (the “ao” logo as opposed to the full “audio’connell word mark logo with the microphone which is on the left of the site). Most social media pals are very familiar with this icon as is anyone who remembers the story of my favicon. BUT also I added some client logos up there on a rotating basis just to gently let people know some of the folks I’ve worked with. The cool fade process is done by adding pixie dust (and that stuff’s expensive!)

D. A break with lower case tradition, in just this one instance. We’ll see how that goes.

E. Pulled out about three demos here having everything to do with money. Thank you God it’s been an OK year for business and I’ve been making money in my core areas of commercial and narration. But message on hold sounds the same everywhere and podcasting is not an area where many folks focus on quality or expenditure…of any kind. So buh bye.

F. As mentioned earlier, a little branding paint has been applied to the site and this text area was a key place to convey this message. Plus it’s not a bad thing to freshen up the text for the bots occasionally.

G. A key part of my marketing effort is to get out a press release every month and yet I fall behind. Not because I don’t have stuff to write about but rather I don’t make the time to get the writing done. So there are two fresh press releases on the home page.

Just so we’re clear, this post isn’t meant as an ode to me but rather as a pot stirrer for you and your web site. Certainly if things are going exceedingly well, I am not encouraging you to screw with your formula. But a reflective and maybe even critical eye could help you see things on your site that need a little improvement. And there was no heavy lifting involved in this process.

Your thoughts?

Tags: commentary, internet, marketing, search engine marketing, social media by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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