Entries Tagged as 'voice over podcast'

the voice over cafe live at faffcamp

The Voice Over Cafe made its way to Charlotte, NC, for FaffCamp and recorded its latest episode there….what a blast.

Female Voice-Over Talent Trish Basanyi and Male Voice-Over Talent Terry Daniel have been hosting and producing the Voice-Over Cafe for a while and it was a special treat for me to be invited on to this live recording session as there was a room full of interesting people with whom they could have spoken. Terry and Trish are supported in their production by the lovely and talented Sean Caldwell, Tom Dheere and Peter Bishop – each a bad ass voice-over talent in their own right and all loyal Faffers to the core.

The episode stars Amy Snively and features Bob Souer, Liz deNesnera, Dan Friedman, (movie star) Melissa Exelberth, Connie Terwilliger and Cliff Zellman.

You can listen here. And I hope you will.

wendy edwards interviews mahmoud taji about egyptian revolution

Voice Talent Wendy Edwards interviews voice talent Mahmoud Taji – who lives in Cairo – about what life was like during the revolution.

You can check it out here.

audio follow friday, faffcon and me

So I’m standing in Detroit airport Wednesday evening when I get a call from Tim Keenan of Creative Media Recording.

He said that he produces a podcast called “Audio Follow Friday” and he wants to do an interview with me about Faffcon because everybody else he really wanted to interview about Faffcon said no and he knew I was too narcissistic to turn him down.

Well I never!…turn down an interview so we recorded it today and here it is. Thanks Tim!

voice over experts with peter k. o’connell

Well I bet of all those seven words, you never thought you’d see “expert” near my name.

Me neither.

But I am this week’s Voice Over Expert on Voices.com‘s regular podcast.

Stephanie had been after me for almost a year and maybe longer to host one of their podcasts and there was no good excuse for not having gotten around to it except to say life got in the way.

But I look at it this way: THIS was the time the podcast was supposed to come out and so it did. Fate now, explanations later.

The topic is “The First 15 Seconds” and while you might think it a review of my wedding night, it is, rather, an overview of how to look at voice over auditions in a more critical way.

Specifically, to try and tie in all that you can about every aspect of the script and your performance into the first 15 seconds of your audition; that’s likely the amount of time it will take for a producer to listen to your audition and know if your voice is the right voice for the project the producer is working on.

This is stuff I work on all the time with folks at the Voice Over Workshop but the overview in the podcast will give you a good start if you want to work on this on your own.

Voices.com was very nice to include me and while I don’t believe listenership to my podcast will be so large as to fry their servers, I hope it gives the Voice Over Experts podcast a good start to the new year…please give it a listen. Thanks!

new york voiceover mixer 2009

<em>New York Voiceover Mixer 2009</em>

New York Voiceover Mixer 2009

My sincere congratulations to Eric Sheppard at Voice Talent Productions for putting together the upcoming 2nd Annual New York City Voiceover Mixer that will take place on December 5, 2009. Special congrats to Lindsay Reiss, Eric’s associate at the company (and his fiancée) for her work in selling out the event.

There are 205 people on the list and they had to stop there….three weeks away and its sold out! I am assuming all the guests are related to the world of voiceover either as active performers, producers, agents or wannabes in any of those categories. Of those 205, I am long time friends (personally or on-line) with the following attendees: September Day, Liz de Nesnera, John Florian of Voice Over X-tra, Philip Banks, DB Cooper, Lee Gordon, Melissa Exelberth, Tom Dheere, Moe Egan, Bob Souer, Pam Tierney, Dave Courvoisier, Mandy Nelson, Patrick O’Connor, Elaine Singer, Doug Turkel and Mary McKitrick.

Then there are those whose reputations I wouldn’t sully by branding them a friend of mine as ours is more of a social media kinship but I am still very much looking forward to meeting: certainly our hosts Eric and Lindsay, Bob Bergen, Ron Levine, Diane Havens, Michael Schoen, Terry Daniel, Bobbi Owens, James Lorenz, Julie-Ann Dean, Chip Joel and Linda Ristig.

As for everybody else, I don’t think I know them know but I very much hope to know all of them by the end of the event which I predict will last long over the 10:00 p.m. closing date on the invite. I hope if you are there and you see me before I see you, you’ll all say hi.

a voice over year in review

voices.com_logo_all_rights_acknowledged

I was pinged this morning (and I think we all know painful that can be …ba-dum-bump) by David Ciccarelli who, with his wife Stephanie, own Voices.com. David asked if I would review, post and comment on his annual “Report on The Voice Over Industry 2009”.

OK then, a review with some general perspective and information upfront.

• While I am not a fan of the pay-for-play voice over model upon which Voices.com, Voice 123 and others have built their business, I have stated that if I were to choose one service of that ilk it would be Voices.com because even before I knew the Ciccarellis personally, the customer service and responsiveness their Voices.com offered me when I was an early member was better than any competitor.

• This is at least the second if not third year David has done this report and I give him great credit for seeing an opening for information sharing and promotion of his own business and going for it.

• I also give him credit for daring to ask the opinion of a loud mouth putz like me ‘cause he knows I pull no punches on industry issues or in reviews. He and I must ascribe to the same theory that some publicity is better than none at all.

• Over the years I have become friends with David and Stephanie and know them to be honest people whose opinions and talents I respect. Others in their business, not so much.

So enough preamble, on to the meat-

The 23 page report is more PowerPoint than e-book with each slide offering one or two nuggets of information ranging from various market overviews to drilldowns on pertinent business segments.

My likes:
• I like that David’s established an annual tome that summarizes the industry. It adds credibility to the business but to be taken seriously it needs some additional info (see dislikes).

• I have seen “state of the industry reports” or prognostications from Voices.com’s competitors and comparably this is the most credible and informative of all of them at this moment in time.

• Information like $4.05 for the ad word voice over on Google is good to know (a stupidly high price to pay when its competitors who do most of the clicking on such ads but let’s not kill the messenger here)

• I like the format for both conveying information and for its readability.

My dislikes:
• The content has only a few bits of information that I think are new or enlightening to the industry. To become a must read it has to reveal trends and statistics that offer more insight for voice talents and producers. That requires a great deal more research which this document does not have and it shows rather clearly.

• Some topics struck me as grossly self-serving: a report on Social Networks conveniently notes the growth of a Voice.com sponsored group on Facebook and the Time Spent Online chart had Voices.com’s site crushing Voice 123’s statistically and visually while also noting most industry players spend most of their time on Voices.com. This smacks a bit more like a sales presentation than a industry report.

• The salary statistics chart – probably the most important page for both talent and producers – had no quoted sources for the stated figures (which were much too broad) and was only one page (versus three pages on podcasting). This was a big miss.

• The Touch Graph tool wasn’t simplistic enough or easy enough to immediately digest key information (like a good graph should). As just one (possibly self-serving in keeping here with a developing theme) example this graph had the audio’connell web site listed on the web site graph on “voiceovers” and on the same graph an Oxford biography link to Peter O’Connell who I think is a professor or a Bishop but sure ain’t me (no, I do not believe there are any other Peter O’Connell voice overs but me). The graph was gimmicky and not informative.

In summary, I believe that this report reads more like a sophomore’s term paper rather than a senior thesis. What it can, should and I truly hope will be in the future is a report that has a lot more facts in it, much more pertinent data and more information to help talent and producers manage their businesses. It will take much more time and research from Voices.com to make this annual report a widely respected annual state of the industry. Today, the report is not yet there but there is a foundation of a good idea.

We need that “stuff” as well as the promise of what this report could someday be.