This is my opinion: as an “advanced”voice talent – I don’t want to train with an “intermediate” voice talent.

If you are an intermediate voice talent, you shouldn’t want to train with me either.

I saw a post from somebody for a future “Intermediate/Advanced” voiceover training session and it simply ticked me off.

I have many friends are various stages of their voice over careers whom I deeply respect and with whom I will gladly spend hours professionally and socially – but I only want to train with those voice over talents who have my experience level.

Here’s my self-fish but I think smart reason why: I am focused on moving forward from where I am to a better performance place when I train. If my instructors have to take two steps back in a group training to help someone catch up, I lose. I lose time, I lose momentum and I lose direction.

I paid my money and I want to get my money’s worth from a professional voice over teacher. Voice over trainers also need to stay focused on one level of talent, not be switching back and forth – their concentration falters and their students lose.

An intermediate voice talent may get some benefit working around advanced voice talents by learning from example but it also may (probably more than “may”) intimidate the hell outta these intermediate voice talents who (like all of us) have our moments of self-doubt. A training session is not the optimal time for such unnecessary self-doubt.

I see traveling teachers do this combination Intermediate and Advanced training all the time during their weekend sessions. I understand it’s a factor of the amount of time available. And that’s an inexcusable response.

“Whoa! O’Connell, you’re pretty full of yourself today, aren’t you?!”

No more than usual, actually, but time is not the real reason: don’t focus on the economics of ensuring a full class for the training day or weekend (training is a business, no shame in that) by mixing the class to benefit the house.

Better I think to focus on the students’ abilities, build THAT class and let the learning flow. Teachers will enhance their reputations and their pocket books at the same time.

And, oh by the way, the voice over students will learn a lot more.

Ain’t dat da point?

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

I got a surprise email today advising me that Dan Lenard is bringing Marc Cashman to Buffalo for a weekend training session on May 14 & 15.

For beginners/intermediates, you are invited for a session with Marc on Saturday and the Advanced / Working Pros are invited on Sunday. Both sessions are limited to 10 participants and will be held over at Crosswater Studios.

For more information, click here.

Tags: commentary, voice actors, voice over training, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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With those words above, Amy Snively kicked off Faffcon 2 in Atlanta and crystallized for me what the weekend was all about.

Voice Over Talents from Around the Globe at Faffcon 2 - Atlanta, 2011

I specifically took some time following Sunday’s close (which came quicker than any of us wanted) to really reflect on what I came away with.

* I came away with a greater respect for voice talents – who we are, what we do and how we do it

* I heard some voice over performances that infused me with the desire to get better – some were so good I’d quit now if I had any talent at all to do anything else but, oh well

* The challenges people in our industry face are universal – we don’t train enough, we don’t market enough and we are all held back by something – sometimes external and often times internal

I noticed that I think we (me too) are all too often held back by some level of self doubt with in our business. When it is paralyzing, our voice business stalls or worse, fails.

But when we force ourselves to move past or at least forward from our self doubt, we succeed, even a little. I saw this more than I expected among my new and old friends and I saw it most often in the mirror. Because I was among peers, that realization felt a little safer to recognize and build upon for me.

I don’t know if this reads as earth shattering or game changing – it felt that way for me. Your mileage may vary.

What happens at Faffcon stays at Faffcon – many talents generously share intellectual property that rightly shouldn’t be spread everywhere. So if you want diagrams and recordings, you will not find them here.

Besides, the greatest value of what is learned by participants at Faffcon is ingrained individually based on what each Faffcon participant gleans from a shared presentation or conversation. What helped me might be useless to you and vice versa.

I will say this: it is that act of universal giving and sharing -that spirit – that permeates the air of Faffcon and provides maybe the best reason to secure your spot in Hershey this September.

If you can trust in that thought, you’d probably benefit from Faffcon.

If not (and that’s OK) you’ll probably want to pass.

Thanks, Amy, very much.

Tags: commentary, faffcon, voice actors, voice over training, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover meet-ups by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
7 Comments »

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!

Tags: commentary, voice over podcast, voice over training, voice over workshop, voice talent, voiceover, voices.com by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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OK look, every since we had kids, I have been a coupon slave. When I was single, I was careless about such things but when you have kids you start seeing this free money via discounts and you realize you’d be NUTS to ignore it since it was something I was GOING TO BUY LATER ANYWAYS.

So the Faffcon2 early bird discount is $169 until midnight, December 31, 2010 – meaning on January 1, 2011 the price will be $199.00.

Using both my toes AND fingers (with a little abacus help) I see that means you can save $30 on your Faffcon registration fee until midnight tonight.

$30 dollars! FREE.

If I put three ten dollar bills in front of you right now and said “take them, they’re free” you’d be pretty happy.

Well that’s what Amy has done. I took advantage of the discount and I didn’t even need a coupon.

I hope you’ll sign up for Faffcon today and join your talented peers (with one notable exception, ahem)

Please understand, I’ve got no financial stake in this event…none of the attending voice talents do…we just believe in the event and know its success is based on having the brightest, most talent professionals in our industry attend and most importantly participate.

The sharing of knowledge, insight and experience, as Doug Turkel has wisely noted, is the very reason for this unconference.

You absolutely can sign up for Faffcon after today and you’ll be very glad you did, but the price goes up.

As the ad slogan once said: “you could pay more, but why?”

Tags: commentary, faffcon, voice actors, voice over training, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
1 Comment »

But please don’t let that deter you from registering as well. 🙂

And the Early Bird Registration (read DISCOUNT!!!) ENDS AT 23:59 hrs ON DECEMBER 31, 2010 (which I’m guessing is Pacific Time cause that’s Faffcon founder Amy Snivley’s time zone).

If you are an experienced, professional voice over talent and want to attend a conference that will provide you with unlimited access to the incredible knowledge bank that is your fellow, widely experienced voice talents, you need to attend Faffcon 2.

If you want to attend a conference where no one is trying to sell you anything but rather where your peers freely share information in a comfortable, intelligent environment, you must attend Faffcon 2.

If you feel your career is a bit adrift or you need some nuggets of information to take you to the next level of your professional voice over career, you need to get your sorry ass to Faffcon 2!

Make every excuse to world why you can’t go to Faffcon 2 but for goodness sake don’t lie to yourself. From many folks, it’s not a “can’t”, it’s a “won’t” and their reticence is too bad for them.

Faffcon is low cost with a minimal time commitment and the opportunity to learn as much as you will allow yourself to learn.

I hope you’ll join us in Atlanta. You’ll miss us if you’re not there.

Tags: commentary, faffcon, voice over training, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover meet-ups by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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