The point was to have a vacation with just Mrs. audio’connell and me while baby audio’connell played with the grandparents (baby, btw, seems not even to have noticed the parents had gone missing because of all the fun provided from the grandparents). The destination was New York City, where the missus is originally from.

Early flight out Friday morning with an incredibly long line at security out of BNIA (made even more interesting by some young, strong dude who may have come straight from the bars to the airport and promptly fainted while in line causing a tremor (“thud”) when he hit the airport’s marble floor; “the bigger they are…”) then straight in to JFK, SOHO and the sister-in-law’s apartment.

It was decided naps were in order and it was from that nap that I was awakened by a call from one of my agent’s advising that Shell wanted to use me for a VO. Groggily I replied in the affirmative inquiring only how much and when (though I’m not sure in which order). Numbers came first and since they were in the “proper sequential order” ($), I went on to the “date” which was to be the following Monday. I would still be in NYC, would they do ISDN? Sure, where would I like to record from? Give me an hour, I said, and I’ll price out a couple of studios.

Like a fireman answering the bell I was fully awake now, knowing I had to work fast to find facilities, availabilities and rates. Remember, this is NYC, many studios are not as available as other studios in other cities on short notice. I had made one brief attempt pre-trip to ensure I had available VO facilities in the area, only to find my contact had moved to Australia…I decided that might not work for me.

The sister in law had a video production friend who had a lead on an ISDN studio and I had the internet. I gave the client’s agency three choices, they picked one and all was booked. This job would pay for the vacation!

Monday comes and I show up at the studio off 5th Avenue in mid-town early to review the script (ha!). There were voice actors (or more likely actors looking for voice work) auditioning for a group of spots; unfortunately they were union spots, so I didn’t get a shot at them. The studio was also having some technical problems with the client’s ISDN hookup so we got started about a ½ hour late. I walked in, was handed the script, set up in the booth (Neumann U87) did four takes of the main read, about nine takes of the tag and I was outta there in about 15 minutes. The clients were very happy and I made some nice new business contacts.

Post script: as the plane was landing, coming back home today, I got an email and a call from the client: they screwed up the script and need to me to record again. That means I get paid again!

I’ll post a few other New York notes a little later.

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

There are like 6.7 billion people in our world (need an update, click here) and I think there may be 12 billion blogs*.

RSS (really simple syndication) helps (like in the upper left corner of this blog). You click on the link and you can subscribe (or bookmark) to a blog on your browser (I use Internet Explorer 7.0 ) under the heading “Feeds” which is on your “Favorites” tab and is positioned right next to all your web site book marks (if you are now saying “ooooh, thaaaat’s what that heading is for!” don’t worry, I did too). When a new post on a blog you’ve subscribed to comes up, your subscription link title in the “Feeds” is bolded so you’ll know if you click it, you’re likely find some new content. At least that’s the way mine works.

Want to see a REALLY cool (because its soooo simple) explaination? Click here!

Lately a tool I’ve been using is a RSS “reader”. Now trust me when I say when it comes to stuff like “readers” and other tools of the internet, my knowledge based is firmly entrenched in the 19th Century (did you know that they make phones that are actually portable!)

But I very much like this reader tool. There are likely a ton out there (most I am assuming are free); the one I am using is Google Reader. The reason I like the reader more than a browser feed listing because the reader can present portions of the posts content for me to skim. If I want to read the whole post (if it is an especially long post) I can click on the headline and be taken directly to the blog.

It’s been a helpful way for me to review and control the information I want to get, I hope it can to the same for you.

* This number may be a slight exaggeration 🙂

Tags: blogs, media, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
1 Comment »

There are many good reasons to subscribe to blogs. One of the reasons I like to subscribe to certain blogs is that I feel fairly confident I’m going to find hard, useful information or the “Cliff Notes” version of same as a subscribee (this may be a new word cause I just thought it up in my head as I was writing and if it is I am copyrighting it right now subscribee©).

Sometimes I come across great writing in my on going searches and sometimes I met individuals at conferences whose presentations and general knowledge (nay, disposition) impress me so much that I want to see if their blogs convey that positive impression. Usually they do.

Such was the case when I met Mitch Joel of Twist Image at Podcamp Toronto. As much as I took away from that experience regarding podcasting and blogging, in Mitch I also came across a savvy marketing thinker (and because there are so few of us…oh to finish that sentence would just be bragging}kidding). Point is he’s a sharp marketing guy.

Like me, on a constant search for good, summary data, Mitch got a heads up on the Digital Fact Pack Guide To The Digital Marketing World, produced by Ad Age. I’ve finished going through it once (and I imagine I’ll be culling more data from it soon) but it would be worth your time to visit Mitch’s site and see for yourself.

Thanks Mitch.

Tags: advertising, blogs, internet, marketing, media, podcasting, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
2 Comments »

Editor’s Note: In the daily observation of life around him, the author occasionally feels the need to point out ridiculously inane behavior and general thoughtlessness. These are called “Rants” and this is one of those times.

As it’s kind of a quiet Saturday afternoon with folks sleeping or running errands from the house, I took the opportunity to visit Voice 123 and submit some auditions.  As I’ve mentioned before here, my bookings, auditions from agents and production schedule offer me less and less time to fiddle with the cattle call that Voice 123 has really become. But I still have months left on my paid subscription so I figured I better get to it. 

It has been awhile since I sent in some auditions.  I threw out the ones I didn’t think I’d be the right voice for and the ever present low ball audition (especially those folks requesting custom auditions for message on hold…who are they kidding?)  I was reading one audition that had a low price for the amount of work required and the usage of the voice and was about to delete it when I read down a little further and notice an addition to the usually inane Voice 123 disclaimer on price which read: 

“Voice123 Team Note: We recognize that this project may be below Voice123 pricing recommendations. We have become more flexible with budgets as it was brought to our attention that we could be violating United States federal anti-trust laws by limiting the participation of voice seekers in our marketplace when they don’t met our budget recommendations. It seems that, legally speaking, it is up to the providers (the talents and voice producers) and not the marketplace (Voice123) to determine to exclude the voice seekers they don’t want to work with.

Right after the release of the new Voice123, we will be working on several improvements that will help talents and voice producers filter the types of projects they want and better match projects with talent and voice producers depending on the budget and experience of the talent. On (sic) the meantime we are trying to be flexible to keep everybody happy.”

 “It seems that, legally speaking,…” Wow, what impressive attorney filed that hard hitting legal brief? 

As you might guess, I find this disclaimer highly suspect.  But I am also not an attorney. I am however a big David Letterman fan (not the stalking kind, I just like the show) and I thought of a Dave quote when he interviewed Bill O’Reilly from Fox News as I read the Voice 123 disclaimer. To paraphrase, it went along the lines of “I’m probably not as smart as you are but my gut tells me 60% of what comes out of your mouth is crap.” 

If Voice 123 is going to be “filtering” projects and pricing in their “next” version (which it seems they’ve been working on since 1950 and which might be ready by 2010) why can’t they filter now? Likely, they can.  In my opinion, the real answer is Voice 123 will take any voice job that comes through, slap it up on the board and let all the $50 announcers quote that price on a $2000 job just so Voice 123 can jack up the number of leads they provide VO subscribers and thereby justify the company’s existence.  

As always….I could be wrong.

Tags: advertising, character voices, commentary, commercials, internet, marketing, message on-hold, narrations, podcasting, radio, rants, technology, voice 123, voice actors, voice casting, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
6 Comments »

If you’ve ever had to travel on biz and you didn’t have a wireless card in your laptop, you’ve no doubt been in search of free wi-fi (like my friend Bob Souer was on his recent trip to Vegas but his was more like an expedition than a search).

While there’s money that can be made on almost anything internet, smart restaurateurs and cafe owners hooked up free wi-fi in their establishments and promoted it. It’s not always easy to find either because smaller establishments don’t always think to find free wi-fi directories and submit their information.

Chains like Panera Bread let people come on in (assuming they’ll spend some money while they are there, as wi-fi patrons should). I was talking with the manager of my breakfast place, Bagel Jay’s, and they’re planning on adding wi-fi for customers as well (a little late to the party maybe, but welcome on in!) And unless your some totally ignorant student (and granted, there are a few of them around) you’re unlikely to loiter their all day. 

So I’m in Charlotte last week and I need to get connected and I must have had a brain fart of something because I thought ‘oh I’ll go to Starbucks, they have free wi-fi’. Uh – no they don’t. They also consistently make fairly poor hot chocolate (which is a critical point of difference if you’re not a coffee guy). So since it was lunch time, I left Starbucks and looked around this very nice mall-like set of stores in Sycamore Commons in Matthews, NC and saw a sign that said “deli”. Well when I got closer, I saw it said McAlister’s Deli. I’d not come across this name (turns out it’s a chain, nothing wrong with that) but it looked like a fair amount of people were eating there so I walked only to see a sign on the door that said “free wi-fi”.

Well the food was great, prices were fair, the service was outstanding, I made a couple of business contacts with a few patrons (who also had laptops, I might add), the wi-fi was strong and free and you won’t see me in Starbucks anytime soon.

Tags: commentary, internet, marketing, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
2 Comments »

(Read the FULL PRESS RELEASE here)

Oh, I know it’s the 21^st century but my blogging knowledge has really always been more about the “words” and less about the technology. But I came to understand that blogging without technology is like painting a white canvas with white paint…what’s the point? So I decided to finally embrace blogging technology a bit more.

The target date for all this was November 1, 2006 when I unveiled the redesigned the audio’connell Voice Over Talent. My web hosting company was led to believe by their software provider that the blog module the software company provided would offer me everything I needed to be a technically proficient blogger. Everything else the software provider had “provided” in the past had worked smashingly, so I hade no reason for concern…I thought.

There was very little “technology” in the blogging software I had until this weekend and this new blog version. Aside from looking nice, not much else of that old software resembled a blog. It was a web page with text and headlines. Crap.

The software provider, who evidently didn’t get much call for blogging from previous customers, wouldn’t be able to “upgrade” the blogging software until sometime this summer…maybe. Double crap!

The only sure solution, I determined, would be to use a 3^rd party provider and try and develop a style sheet that had the look of the web site with usable blogging technology. That would be a lot of work, triple crap!

Well, much like an all night birth, the morning finally came and all that pushing (by me…I can be sorta pushy) has given birth (through the efforts of Rare Earth Interactive Design…many thanks) to a bouncing baby blog that, while it will constantly evolve and develop, really meets all my needs.

I hope you enjoy the words and the technology.

Tags: commentary, internet, marketing, media, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
2 Comments »