In this episode of “Desperate Bloviating”, Stu asks a very introspective question that takes us Back to The Future.

3. What advice would you give a young VO professional?

If I were me talking to me 25 years ago and I wasn’t allowed to tell myself which stocks to buy, which teams to bet on and which hot girl actually thought I was cute but young me didn’t know it and I blew my shot with her but I’m over it and its not an issue, then I guess the only thing left to offer myself would be voice over advice.

But boy there sure would be a lot more stuff I would like to tell me. Anyway, here goes:

Peter, your professional reputation in voice over is everything.

In business, try and treat people the same way you want to be treated. Talk to people, not at them and for God sake LISTEN. You have two ears and one mouth and your opinion sounds brilliant to you but others sometimes think you are a babbling idiot so stop proving them right and be quiet more! When blogging is invented, then you can babble to your hearts content and people will just delete you and I’ll explain what delete is and what computers are later.

Humor is good, obnoxious is bad. Learn the difference quickly.

You are going to make mistakes, you are going to offend. Make sure it’s not intentional and that it is infrequent. Sometimes these situations will be obvious and sometimes you won’t know who you’ve alienated. When you screw up, own up to it and apologize. It may not fix it, but it’s the right thing (and sometimes the only thing) to do. Then move on.

While you need to be careful not to be arrogant it is OK to be confident. If that line gets blurred, refer to the paragraph above. You are talented but you can build on that talent by learning from everyone in your industry, even the idiots (if they go left, you go right…don’t do what they do)

Finally, appreciate that there is much in your career you can control but much more that you cannot control. Flexibility and patience will be in great demand throughout your life and it will test you mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. Sometimes you will encounter the odd client who is in a bad mood on recording day and your shirt is his least favorite color and how were you supposed know. Remember what your Dad told you “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

Oh, you’re going to have at least two children and wife all of whom are too good for you and none of whom you deserve. Take great care of that fortune and try not to be a burden to them.

Our story concludes tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: blogs, commentary, peter o'connell, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Sometimes I am such a schmoe.

Back in March Stu Gray tagged me (which is blog speak for taking a topic one writer has started and either responding to it or building on it “tag you’re it”) about how voice talents become successful.

Well, I missed the tag…it totally blew by me for reasons I cannot explain (or as has become my truthful response “blame the kids”) and were it not for Kara Edwards response to Stu’s tag in her blog, I would have totally missed it.

So thanks Kara and sorry Stu.

But under the heading of better late than never I shall offer my usually long and fairly self effacing answers (I don’t want/like to sound all puffy) to this multiple choice essay test which will prove yet again why everyone in my family was amazed I graduated high school and stunned when I graduated college (both were on the “pity the poor stupid bastard scholarship”….oops, can you say “pity” on the web).

I’ll do this daily (it should wrap up Thursday) so what I lacked in timeliness I will try and make up via sheer bloviating.

1. What habits have enabled you to become successful?

Is there a better word than passion to describe the professional sensation I feel working in the voice over field and managing my business? I get a rush every time someone calls with a new project and the rush is not money based…truly!

It’s a new project, a new creative start. When I get to work with other voice actors in the studio or during a training class, there are endorphins that kick in that are just blissful. When I get to visit with other voice talents and talk about the business I find pure enjoyment. I’m lousy at articulating it (I’m a VO, I need a script!) but I know it when I experience it…maybe you do too.

So to look to habits or tricks to be effective seems to miss the core of anyone’s true success (in my dictionary anyway). You must have a passion for what you do, it must consume you (in a non-addictive, not-so-much-a-hermit way), almost a part of your central nervous system and drive you to succeed. If you love something (voice over) that much, your success isn’t guaranteed but it is more assured because of it.

But I do mean to answer the question.

So with passion as your base, you must have true talent to succeed in voice over and one must be honest about whether that is the case. Talent isn’t a habit but the best habits cannot replace talent. Do you have it? Please try not to fool yourself because our business has too many fools already (see this blog’s masthead as exhibit A).

Just because someone says “you have a nice voice” or because you did the voice for your company’s in-house video doesn’t mean you have talent. Heck there are some radio announcers that aren’t very good but the station needed a warm body (consistent quality has long ago left the radio station biz). Most people, if they are honest know if they really have talent. But if you’re not sure, find an honest, reputable teacher and have a heart to heart. Here’s the puffy part: I have talent and it’s a key part of my success.

Calling on that talent, growing it, requires preparation and training (here’s some habit talk). While I chide radio, it was my great training ground back when radio offered some flexibility. Finding a group or one on one voice trainer is critical. In person is best but phone training is ok too. I don’t go near enough to my classes but every time I do I get energized.

I also often tell the story of being a teenager and reading magazine copy out loud in my room and having my parents peek in quizzically. I still do that today when I have the opportunity and people (well, mostly my wife) still look at me funny. At least I think that’s why they look at me funny. Basically, if you’re a voice talent, use your voice whether someone is paying you or not. Practice.

Then there’s the sales and marketing aspect of the voice over business. While you cannot succeed without passion, talent and training, all of that will get you no where if you don’t know how to market and sell yourself. I focus on it relentlessly (which I think qualifies as a habit) but breaking it down to a habit or trick is difficult except to say you need to scour the globe for leads, you need to track your leads and you need to manage your leads. One could quite seriously write a book on each of those three tasks. But you must learn how to do each of them or your business will fail (was that tough love or just too tough?)

If you had to focus on just one aspect of sales and marketing to make your VO business thrive, it is this: learn the internet. Every damn thing about the internet.

Voice over has become a virtually industry and you will never meet most of your clients (which I think is kind of shame). Your web site is your office. It’s the most construction you’ll likely ever have to do. Make it as easy and effective a place to access and operate as you possibly can. Or find people who know how to help you.

More tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: blogs, commentary, peter o'connell, social networking, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Some of my fellow voice professionals who loiter here may have seen my postings on VO-BB, Voice Over Savvy and Yahoo’s Voice Over Group requesting foreign language voice demos.

Well Mr. Social Media VO here neglected to post the darn thing right here! (Babies, no sleep, you know the drill)

I would like to secure your professional foreign language voice demos (male or female) if you can read and fluently speak the following languages (in your versatile pro voices of course):

• French
• Italian
• German
• Polish
• Japanese
• Chinese
• Korean
• Russian
• Hungarian
• Czech
• Portuguese
• Indonesian
• Hindi

Please send your :60 demo and complete contact info to me at peter at audioconnell dot com.

If there is a language you think I’ve omitted (and you’ve got an awesome demo for it), let me know too.

Further, as voice acting instructor Nancy Wolfson did, if you know folks who do foreign language VO very well, let them know about this possible opportunity.

Thanks.

Tags: commentary, social networking, voice actors, voice casting, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Talking about the strength of unions in the voice over business can be a bit like talking about politics and religion at a family gathering. You’re pretty sure a fight could break out but you’re just not sure what’s going to get broken.

In the past 24 hours, news of the day and a film festival I attended brought this issue to the fore.

This item from today’s New York Daily News:

Unions representing film and television actors will negotiate separately with producers in upcoming contract talks after board members of the TV actors union voted Saturday to sever a long-standing agreement between the two guilds.

The vote by the board of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists came hours before a meeting with the Screen Actors Guild and just three months before the expiration of the contract covering movies and prime-time shows.

Despite a sometimes rocky 27-year relationship the unions had shown recent signs of peace as they prepared for the upcoming talks.

The two groups had hoped at Saturday’s meeting to set a start date for negotiations. Instead of discussing strategies the sides swapped accusations.

I’m all about synergy and combinations of effort to save time and money. A merger between SAG and AFTRA should simply happen for the good of all and no one should be allowed to go home until it’s done. The above makes me think the strength of those unions will take a hit in negotiations because of their dispute. Regardless of the reasons (many of which could be valid on either side) their positions at the bargaining table will be weakened.

At the conclusion of the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival (what, you never heard of it?) there was a great presentation by New York City casting director Judy Henderson. Along with everyone in attendance, I wanted to learn more about the casting business she ran and how I might work with her.

The bottom line is all the work she casts is union. Her markets are New York, Los Angeles and some national commercial work. It’s all union work.

Not knowing yesterday about the SAG-AFTRA tiff, I asked what I prefaced as possibly an impertinent (though that was not the intent of the question). Could she gauge the strengths of the unions based on her current experience? She was unabashedly pro-union (being a member of the new Casting Directors union) and said the unions were strong and necessary. Given the examples she offered and the markets she primarily works in, I fully understood and respected her position.

The reason I asked the question is because in many markets outside New York and LA, my non-union work is skyrocketing. That’s an observation, nothing scientific about it but I keep getting a sense that business owners and some production companies cannot be bothered with the expense and paper trail forced upon them by the unions. Of course, the reasons performing unions were needed in the first place was because wages and conditions companies offered were abysmal. So can there be a happy medium?

I’m really not for one side or the other. You really have only two choices…if you’re not in the union at some level, you are non-union. I am non-union. For many performers, a union membership is very valuable. That’s cool. It is strictly a business decision…one that on any other day could change for either group.

My choice was made because ultimately it gives me more opportunity to work than union work does. Its also less complicated than tracking the union work and payment rules. Certainly the down side is that there is opportunity in some cases to make much more money as a union performer. But for my business, I can currently, consistently make more money as a non-union voiceover.

Were I based in New York City or Los Angeles, I would likely be a union performer as those are primarily union towns and most of the work they do goes around the country. That said I have done work in both cities as a non-union performer.

What does dishearten me is how the two main performance unions cannot either get along or better yet merge into one stronger union. The politics of it all, the turf battles and what seem to be egos in this battle must certainly be a turnoff for other observers besides me.

I hope it gets worked out amicably for my performing peers.

Whatever your opinions, I look forward to a civil discussion here 🙂

California voice talent Bobbin Beam also writes on her blog about this situation, from the perspective of a union member.

Tags: commentary, radio, tv, voice actors, voice casting, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Not everyone will remember the 1984 re-election campaign of President Ronald Reagan but it featured not only one of the best made political commercials ever but simply one of the most effective commercials of any kind ever made.

It was made by a San Francisco ad man named Hal Riney, who owned Hal Riney & Partners, and some other prominent ad men who were part of the “Tuesday Team” who helped ensure Reagan and Bush were reelected that year.

Besides the fact that Riney and his partners did amazing work for clients like General Motors and Gallo Wines (great interview on the campaign here from KCBS-AM), he was among one of the great voice talents ever to breath into a microphone. He was one of two ad men that I would qualify as outstanding voice talents (the other being Ferdinand Jay Smith from Jay Advertising).

Hal Riney died today at age 75. His creativity and his voice are but two small parts of his legacy.

I’d be happy with just one of them.

Tags: announcers, commentary, commercials, marketing, radio, tv, voice actors, voice casting, voice talent, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Writing is an art and any performer in almost any medium will tell you that without good writing you have only a good chance at success. But with great writing, you have a very good chance at success.

As voice over talents, our profession honestly sees mostly average writing, especially when it comes to advertising copy. There can be a myriad of reasons that foster such mediocrity primarily due to the medium itself and the message.

In :30 or :60 seconds, you don’t have a lot of time to flush out an interesting premise AND get the product’s name mentioned and make sure they know what the special offer or point of difference is. Also, sometimes the product or service just isn’t that interesting.

I will grant you that one of the tasks a writer must deal with is making it interesting…that is their job. But sometimes that is really hard.

I got a piece of audition copy last week that I loved. I didn’t get the job but I thought I did a great job on the audition. Bottom line: the client obviously didn’t. That’s show biz and I’m OK with that. I spent a lot more time than normal on the audition (which, unusually, came with it own music bed) because the copy triggered my voice over endorphins.

There may be a better and even more accurate term for the rush I get when I read some copy but that’s how I’ve always defined that sensation I get when I read the copy, review the product and it triggers so clearly in my mind the perfect voice I must use to embrace the language on the page that to alter the clarity of my performance path would almost be insulting to the writer and the client in that order.

The bad news about this chemical reaction is that while it works for me, it may be an abysmal failure in the client’s ears. Yikes! There’s your truth in advertising, buddy!

But with such sparse meaningful direction for auditions done via email today, you absolutely have to go with your performance gut. Because while I didn’t get the job, in my ego-tastic voice over head, I produced a great spot…for, um, which I was….uh, not hired.

Do you get this sensation when you read certain copy? Does it affect your performance and/or audition? How would you describe it?

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