Share
Maybe it’s because I talk for a living.
Whatever the cause, when I was in an ISDN session this week (and I don’t do too many of them, much to Dan Friedman’s chagrin) the commercial producer at the other end had me do my line readings (literally two lines) in sets of threes and sixes (or until I lost count) and then turned off the mic after saying she’d get right back to me. So I stayed on hold, in the announce booth, waiting.
Why they didn’t have the instrumental version of “The Girl from Ipanema” playing in the background while I waited, I’ll never know.
All I heard was….silence. For minutes.
While I made small talk with my ISDN host, in my mind, I’m imagining a conversation across to the other codec as the silence continued.
Producer: Why was this guy chosen again?
Assistant: We can probably still get some of the other voices, it’s not too late.
Engineer: Can we just fire him so I can go to lunch now?
Now, in fact what they were likely doing was listening back, matching my reads with the female voice talent whom they recorded earlier, Catherine Sheehan, whose sentences I was finishing as part of the script.
Mr. Everyman Voice wins again!
Anyway, then everything was fine and they said thanks and I went on my merry way.
But for a brief moment, inside this only occasionally paranoid voice actor’s head, the silence was deafening.
Did this ever happen to you?
Tags: commentary, commercials, isdn, voice talent, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
14 Comments »
