Buffalo Bills Wide Receiver Terrell Owens, January 4, 2010. Photo copyright James P. McCoy, Buffalo News, all rights reserved

I don’t talk sports that much here because it’s not the primary focus of the blog (unless I do voice over for a sports team or if it’s about the Olympics because of my logo fascination therein). Also, the sports I really like are golf and hockey (I play the former not the latter albeit very infrequently). As far as the Buffalo Bills are concerned, I am certainly a fair-weather fan.

I also don’t talk that much about Buffalo, NY here because unless you are from the area, you probably don’t care. But today for truly a brief moment, I hope you read this digression.

The picture above this post was taken by the Buffalo News‘ James P. McCoy and shows Buffalo Bills wide-receiver Terrell Owens on January 4, 2010 holding a newspaper picture of him taken on January 3, 2010 during the Bills-Colts football game in which Owens scored a touchdown. I couldn’t find the picture he’s holding on line but it is a tremendous photo of a truly excited football player scoring a touchdown while playing a meaningless game in a blizzard. In the photo Owens is celebrating his 41-yard reception, good for six points in the game which simultaneously moved him into third place on the NFL’s all-time receiving yardage list at 14,951.

At the beginning of this past season, the Buffalo Bills signed the infamous wide receiver Terrell Owens to the team. This was a player who was bigger than life for his on-field performance (very impressive) and his off-field chatter (very unimpressive). It seemed clear to me that the Owens signing was an opportunistic move by the Bills to sell tickets (which is their job) and the area would have to put up with the seemingly bombastic Owens for one year.

The Bills season is now thankfully over. I will not take you down the disastrous path that led to the team’s 6-10 finish (others will, ad nauseam, oy vey!) But I would like to note that Mr. Owens’ public persona was professional, courtesy and patient throughout the entire year here in Buffalo. At a time and place where he could have been easily excused for mouthing off and getting angry via on-field antics or through the media…he did not. He played well (not amazingly well as he has admitted) but he did his job with very little (if any) complaint.

Based on how I had seen him perform elsewhere, I thought when he came to the Bills, Terrell Owens would be a pain in the ass to deal with and to have to listen to via our local media. I pre-judged him harshly in the privacy of my own head. He proved me completely wrong and I would like to first publicly apologize for judging him and then thank him for being a part of our team.

If both sides see fit to stay together in 2010, based on his performance and behavior this season, I – for one – would be glad to have him on our team.

Tags: buffalo, silliness by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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James Brown - the Hardest Working Man in Show Business

While James Brown may have been the hardest working man in show business (correctly pronounced by those of us in the industry as “bid-nez”), I am going to canonize myself as the hardest working man in voice over (correctly pronounced by those of us in the industry as “voice talking”).

Picture if you will (channeling Rod Serling) a vigorous lake effect snow storm with 30 m.p.h. gusts and blinding snow falls and an even earlier than usual darkness that falls over the city from the ginormous (that’s a meteorological term…maybe) snow cloud that had covered the area. The snow drifts alone had to be 25 miles high! And those were the small ones.

These tsu-nado-zzard conditions made travel unfit for neither man nor beast. But being a beast of a man and having a commercial recording session in a downtown studio scheduled in the midst of this blizz-tor-nami, I grabbed my dogs and my sled (and my light spring jacket…I’m a native Buffalonian after all) and sprang into action.

Buffalo, NY on December 28, 2009 at the corner of Delaware and Chippewa - about two miles from the recording studio

I dodged stalled cars and busses, ran over old ladies on the sidewalks (when I could find them) and flew around turns like an Olympic luge driver who’d failed his drug tests multiple times all to make it to my appointed recording session where, of course, I performed spectacularly for the people in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware.

They won’t know how hard I worked for them when they hear my spots or what a bombastic, egotistical, self-aggrandizing bone-head I am….but now you do.

Tags: buffalo, commentary, peter o'connell, silliness, voice talent, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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The life of a voice actor is an arduous one. Creating a voice, setting a mood, transmitting a message within only a finite time period. Lesser performers would quake and fall under the pressure.

Not yours truly.

When called upon by my agent in a recent audition to portray fear, panic, intense medical distress and possibly public mortification I rose the occasion…well, for this role, I actually sat down. It was but a brief utterance I had through which to convey all those emotions.

I played the part of the “Man” in this audition:

VO: When diarrhea hits…
MAN: Uh-oh.
VO: KAO. Kaopectate stops it fast.
Powerful liquid relief speeds to the source fast,
to stop diarrhea and get your system back to normal…
Woman: Fast.
VO: Kaopectate. Stop the uh-oh fast, with Kao

And I did so with various choices thusly:
[audio:http://www.audioconnell.com/clientuploads/mp3/PeterOConnell_KMale.mp3]

You may stand in awe of my voice acting greatness. And you’ll laugh at me a little less if I get the job cause for that one phrase I’ll cash a very healthy check.

Feel free to pick your favorite uh oh.

Tags: commentary, commercials, silliness, voice actors, voice casting, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
8 Comments »

Some folks may already know this but I didn’t.

If you like, when you open your internet browser, you can have it open to more than one home page at one time at start-up.

Depending on your browser (and I think this trick only works with the VERY latest versions of most popular web browsers), you can usually set your opening home page under “Preferences” or “Options”. Then in the bar where you type in the address of what you would like to have as your home page, you add the trick.

On your computer, in your symbols area (usually found in the drop down window of Word and its heading “Insert”) is a vertical straight line symbol that is not an “l”. I’ll show you here but your computer might not have its own equivalent as mine does; the symbol is | .

So the trick is to put your first favorite home page (as an example, Google) then that | symbol (and I don’t know its proper name , if you do, please share with the class) and then the next web address (as an example, audio’connell Voice Over Talent).

So in your homepage set up bar you would type http://www.google.com | http://www.audioconnell.com . When you hit save, close your browser and open it again, there should be two tabs that open up in that order to the pages you set. I think you can probably do 3-4 of those start up web addresses in your start up.

Now for the conundrum.

I set my tabs recently to open on each of the most popular search engines (as ranked by Hitwise: Google, Yahoo, Bing (the progeny of a recent search merger agreement between MSN and Yahoo although Yahoo.com still exists), and Ask.com. The reason for this arrangement is I’m trying to just randomly check some of my search placements on these sites as a bit of an experiment – the web is my main business pipeline (it’s the store, if you will) so it’s important.

The challenge that I’ve seen recently, always known about and have in common with everyone with cares about SEO and SEM is that there is no consistency in how search engines rank sites in order of importance. 3 search engines, 3 different ranking systems and usually three varying placements depending on key words, links, etc.

As just a user of these search engines, one likely cares not a fig about what comes up, assuming their search contains the most reputable, qualified providers of service/product/information that they’ll need. They check the front page, maybe the second and move on.

As a business trying to get their message out there, it’s a bit of a challenge. The important word in this next sentence is “supposedly”: Google is supposedly more key word based in their search algorithm while Bing is supposedly more links based. Ask.com strikes me as very Google-ish in my algorithmic naiveté and Yahoo is Bing so who the heck is Yahoo and I am the Walrus, koo-koo-ka-chew!

I get that if all the search engines searched the same way, there probably wouldn’t be need for so many; even WITH their various search methodologies, there probably isn’t a need for so many. So I do what most folks do and default to Google. But it still bugs me that I have to be so many things to so many search engines.

This last sentence reads back to me as a bit of a whine. That’s not good.

Unless it puts me at the #1 position for the keyword “whine”, which would be fine especially if I get search points for rhyme; to end this post now I think it’s time.

Tags: bing, commentary, internet, silliness, yahoo by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
3 Comments »

My dear brothers and sisters in voice over,

There comes a time in each person’s life when they need to use their blog to bloviate, purge and otherwise sound-off on urgent pressing matters of state. Today is that day for me and I hope for you too.

And by state I mean the state of voice over auditioning in our world. Too often we are given mixed directions on how to submit auditions by our various talent representatives. From useless cattle call auditions, to slating to file names and so much more, we are forced to suffer the indignities of reading directions and following through.

Suddenly, voice over has become like a real job and this is completely unacceptable. We are sloth-like, we are sleepy, we are….voice talents!

Join my ridiculous crusade to make our lives better and more importantly to make our lives easier when we audition for new voice over jobs.

Sign your name in the comment section of this blog and begin your path to an easier auditioning experience for all!

Thank you!

Dear Voice Over Agents,

On behalf of all voice talents (none of whom know I am writing this letter which will never be mailed) who are pleased to work in partnership with you to deliver sacks of cash to all our front doors, thank you for your efforts on our behalf. It is appreciated!

We would like to address an administrative (thinking of the right word here….challenge, problem, nope…wait) opportunity that we think will help make all our lives (yours and your voice talents) much simpler and certainly more organized.

Following a week long summit of all the world’s voice over talent at a resort in the Poconos, where there were speakers, group meetings, break-out sessions and even a few make-out sessions, the following document was contrived and entitled:

The World-wide Audition Completion Keys Enjoinment (WACKE)

The root of this WACKE idea is to establish universal standards and formatting rules for each and every voice over audition that, once implemented on the professional level (between professional voice talents and professional voice talent agents), will eventually become the standard for every organization requesting voice over auditions from talent (not that we ever get any leads from anyone other than our agents, of course).

Item 1: No More Customized Voice Over Auditions Ever – It was unanimously decided that we as voice talent have either personally produced or paid ridiculously large gobs of money to have produced voice over demos that clearly outline our individual vocal skill sets and that jonesing by a client to hear his/her brand name melodiously uttered by hundreds of voice talents just so the client can ultimately pick his cousin Morty as the voice talent because he/she owes him a favor. This clearly makes customized auditions a fairly antiquated process.

Item 1, Subsection 1: Because we’re all pretty much voice over strumpets, we will agree to do a customized audition…occasionally!

Item 1, Subsection 2: Cattle Call Auditions Terminated – The practice of emailing an audition to every man on an agency roster because the specs include the word “male” (same for female) must immediate cease and desist. Agents are required to know all the voice types on their rosters and request auditions ONLY from the voice types that fairly match the description set forth by the client.

Item 2: Audition Voice Slating: All auditions will require a voice slate identifying the voice talent performing the audition. The current trend where some agents require a slate and some do not needlessly confuses small minded voice talents (which practically describes all of us on our side of the microphone).

Item 2, Subsection 2: It must be universally agreed upon by the agents where to place said slate on the audition’s audio file. Voice talents will not place the slate at the beginning of an audition for some agents and at the end of an audition for others. Front OR back, pick one and ONLY one from this point forward.

Item 2, Subsection 3: The text for every voice over audition voice slate henceforth will be as follows: “For (Agent Name) and (Client Name), this is (Voice Talent Name).” There will be no variations in text as any character names that might be needed can be included in the file name (See Item 3).

Item 3: Audition File Naming: Henceforth, all voice over audition files shall be named thusly: Client Name, Character Name, Agency Name, Voice Talent First Initial_Last Name.

Example: McDonalds, Announcer, All Coast Talent, P_O’CONNELL

Item 4: Audition File Format: The standard file format for all voice over auditions will be MP3 until such time as voice talents reconvene to recognize a new file format industry standard as dictated by advances in audio technology, assuming there are any.

Item 5: Transmission of Audition to Agent: Forthwith all agents will establish one email address for the receipt of all auditions and it will read as follows: auditions@agencydomain.suffix . Please note that any agent using a public email domain currently (like @gmail.com or @yahoo.com) needs to man-up (or woman-up) and get a professional email domain like most grown-up companies. It’s not that expense…even voice talents have them, THAT’S how cheap email domain extensions are! 🙂

Item 5, Subsection 2: Acknowledgment of Receipt of an Audition: Agents will set up an auto-responder that will issue an email back to each voice talent who has submitted an audition to them.

Adopted herein this Twenty-Fifth Day of August in the Year of our Lord two thousand and nine by the undersigned who are silly (and yet hopeful) enough to believe that such specifications could ever be universally agreed to by….anybody!

Tags: commentary, rants, silliness, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
31 Comments »

People with a vested interest in any marketing tool tend to take it waaay to seriously sometimes. I understand why, to a point – it is how they make their living and they are also passionate about what they do. In that passion, sometimes we all go a bit overboard.

Which brings us today to the froth that continues – even after the weekend – over Ashton, Oprah and Twitter; I never really thought I’d write about two of those three on this blog but never say never.

Is Oprah (who had Ashton on her show last week after he broke the one million followers mark) going to ruin Twitter? Lots of back and forth on the net over this but I’ll summarize it in a word: no.

But as with all this “deep dive” nonsense comes someone with a bright idea and a good sense of humor which makes great fun of all of the discussion: herebeforeoprah.com. You type in your Twitter handle and it figures out if you were B.O. or A.O. in the Twitterverse.

Silly? Yes. A time-suck? Under a minute, but it’s a great way to make fun of the whole discussion and ourselves in the process.

Tags: commentary, silliness, social media, twitter by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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