Voice-Over Talent Peter K. O’Connell inside the infamous Studio a @audio’connell Voice-Over Talent supporting #cans4can

John Taylor is a talented voice actor and a very funny guy but he was kindly serious this week in his post to support a charitable food collection drive called #cans4cans.

The idea for #cans4cans came from Benztown, a company that produces and distributes imaging, voice-over, broadcast programming, and jingles to broadcast and other media outlets.

Simply, for any one who posts a picture of themselves (they can be in voiceover or recording or I suppose even folks not in the audio or media industries) Benztown will donate a can of food to LA Food Bank on your behalf. Just use the hashtag #cans4cans with your post.

Early this week when I saw John’s post about this on Facebook, I was (surprise) on the road, so I published a 1985 radio station shot of me on the air. It was requested that I publish something more current. Comparing the two I think now you’ll agree my first choice was a better one.

No matter, I hope you’ll participate in #cans4cans. Thanks.

Tags: commentary, community, voice talent, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Voice-Over Talents Jaye Delai, Peter K. O’Connell, Dan Friedman, Faith Coons & Doug Turkel at Randy Thomas’ Voice-Over Mastery Event in Ft. Meyers, FL

There had never before been a Voice-Over Mastery Event and I’m not sure even its producer and well-respected voice talent Randy Thomas knew how her event would turn out. But I think it was better than even she expected.

Randy brought together speakers including Joe Cipriano, Melissa Disney, Chris Corley, Anne Ganguzza, David Goldberg & Graeme Spicer among others to have them offer their insights and experience. If I was going to pick my favorite part, it would definitely be the networking with…everybody.

I’ll be very interested to see who Randy brings together next year. Thanks Randy.

Tags: commentary, voice over training, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover meet-ups by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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A Winter Storm Whips Across Lake Erie South of Buffalo, NY

Saturday, I willingly left the 75 degrees and Sunny skies of Ft. Meyers, FL to come back to all this. Oy.

Some of you may have come across a little item in your local newspaper about some snow that’s currently surrounding Buffalo, NY, where I have my voice-over studio. My voice-over business has been more impacted by some brief laryngitis than the crazy snowfall, fortunately.

We’re all fine here inside audio’connell’s Studio A as the City of Buffalo and everything North has not been bothered by much snow (we had about 4 inches come down in a few hours this AM ((11/19/14)), then bright sunshine). The audio’connell-ettes are enjoying Snow Days off from school and Mrs. audio’connell would just like to get out of the house for a little while. My VO pal Leslie Diamond who lives about 25 minutes north of me in Clarence, New York was in a Google Hangout with me last night and reported no real weather issues either.

The majority of this storm has dramatically and adversely impacted areas SOUTH of Buffalo, NY (know here as the Southern Tier Snowbelt). Over 70 inches of snow has covered some (not all areas), leaving some cars, trucks and buses stranded on highways and, to date, 4 storm related deaths have been reported (which is 4 too many).

But, these hardy, resourceful folks in the Southern Tier know well what the winters are like there (this is not their first winter rodeo) so most are well equipped to deal with snow. Probably not 70 inches of snow, I’ll grant you but I believe they will get through this…it’s a the City of Good Neighbors, we help each other out.

Tonight, things will get interesting again. The Southern Tier has been given today off by Mother Nature with their storm system moving off to the North (hence our morning snowfall today at Studio A) so Southern Tier can try and dig out. However a new band of snow trouble will start in the North (my neck of the woods) during the overnight Thursday and then (sorry to say) head South again to the same area that got walloped Tuesday.

Snow storms aren’t fun but I’ll take them any day over hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes and tsunamis. Now back to the voice-over recording, already in progress.

Tags: voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Heard Around Buffalo is a monthly meetup group of Western New York-based professional voice-over talents

In the spring of 2013, I made some phone calls that voice-over talents Dan Lenard and Leslie Diamond probably wished they wouldn’t have answered or at least would have let go to voice-mail. But they answered the call. They always do.

I wanted to put together a group of truly professional voice-over talents who were running voice-over businesses. There are some great performance-based voice-over classes in Western New York and I have attended them and learned plenty. But mixed with some pros in those fine groups are people who are honestly not working in the voice-over industry…they’re thinking about it, they’re toying with the idea or they’ve got a voice-over gig…once.

For me, I needed to get together with fellow professionals who not only faced voice-over performance challenges and were great to run scripts with but who ALSO could also focus on the other NINETY PERCENT of being a voice talent – the BUSINESS of voice-over.

With Leslie and Dan, I knew they would understand. They are past attendees of FaffCon, an unconference for professional voice talents who get together once or twice a year to talk about and share best practices on the complete spectrum of being a voice talent — normally a very individualistic business practice. They’ve each directly experienced the professional benefits of the FaffCon experience and could easily see the benefits of doing something somewhat similar (but not exactly the same) on a local level.

Leslie named us Heard Around Buffalo. Nobody owns it, nobody profits from it. It’s just a bunch of voice-over folks sharing the wealth together.

Well in a year, we’ve grown nicely with many great Western New York voice talents participating and we have welcomed to our group visiting voice talents from as far away as California, South Carolina, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and even Canada (or maybe especially Canada, since we all have so many friends there and they let us come up to their Meetup groups in Toronto as well).

In addition to myself, the other regulars include Dan, Leslie, Chris Nichter, Fred Filbrich, Alexis Williams, Glad Faith Klassen and Jen Deyo.

If you are a professional voice-over talent in Western New York and you want to check us out, look here.

Tags: buffalo, commentary, voice talent, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Legendary NBC Announcer Don Pardo

It’s unfortunate that two successive blog posts are remembrances of the dead. First Robin Williams and now legendary NBC announcer Don Pardo.

But the emotions for me surrounding the news regarding these two talented people could not be more different.

Of course when I woke up to the news this morning about Don’s death, I was startled but not shocked. For some reason (maybe I’m a long distance, harmless stalker who is just not that good at this stalking gig) I knew of Don’s age and that he had long been pre-recording his SNL intros. He was 96 years old when he died.

It’s a loss to be sure but that’s a great life run.

And he was STILL WORKING! I remember thinking at the beginning of each recent SNL season “how long can Don keeping doing this?” I got my answer: to the very end.

Awesome.

And kudos to Lorne Michaels for ensuring that as long as Don wanted the job, he had the job.

Yes, I’ve already been asked who I think they’d get to replace Don as the SNL announcer. I don’t know but I’m pretty sure the new person will be shaking in their boots for about a season and a half before feeling comfortable taking over for a voice-over legend.

“Legend”, you say? Oh yes, let me expound.

So let’s go back to early this morning. I learned the news of Don Pardo’s death by listening to an AM news radio station in Buffalo, NY. Not via their network feed, the local announcers read the news of Pardo’s passing.

Digest that for a second.

The local news radio station read a story about the death of an off-camera network announcer.

To be clear, I would not consider today to be a slow news day.

That told me one or two amazing things before I even got out of bed – this was going to be Don Pardo’s national day of respect and possibly a day of respect for the announcing / voice-over industry itself.

I was filled with joy, a much different emotion than I felt last week at this time.

As the day has progressed, I have seen my assumption become fact. I am so happy for Don right now and for everyone in our business. Everybody knows who Don Pardo is – and they should!!!!

He’s been a multi-generational announcer and been an active broadcaster throughout some of the most amazing transitions in broadcasting. Forget SNL for a second, Pardo was the booth announcer at WNBC in New York who broke the news about Kennedy having been shot in Dallas. Wow.

If you’ve never seen the series featuring an interview with Don at emmytvlegends.org (here’s that stalker thing again) there are some great stories from Don about his work in broadcasting. I’m hoping the YouTube views on that puppy skyrocket in the weeks and months ahead.

So today, I will pray for Don’s family and that they experience God’s healing power as they mourn Don’s loss. But I will also smile and enjoy for him (and us) the national tributes Don Pardo is justifiably receiving for his life’s work.

There are two great voice-over Dons in heaven now and I suppose both will have to either audition for the “voice of God” role or just split the week between them.

P.S.

The day after posting this I received notice of the tribute done last night to Don Pardo by NBC Nightly News Anchor and Managing Editor Brian Williams, who went so far to switch studios during the newscast and deliver the final segment of his broadcast from Studio 8H. Just one word to the Anchor and his co-workers: Classy. See for yourself.

Tags: announcers, NBC Television Network, requiescat in pace, video, voice talent, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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FaffCamp is scheduled to be held in San Antonio, TX on March 19-22, 2014.

We’re holding registration for Faff Camp II Kickstarter-style: we only have until July 10th at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time to reach our attendance and hotel reservation targets. If we fall short of the break-even point, we’ll send everyone a refund and, sadly…no Faff Camp.

But we don’t think that’s the way it’s going to go–not if we all pull together and make it happen!

To register for FaffCamp II click here soon!!!!!!

Tags: commentary, Faff Camp, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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