Thanksgiving in the ATL was great (once I finally got there). It was lovely fall weather there and we even brought them some much needed rain.

One of the real treats was having lunch with September Day Leach, an Atlanta voice over talent and soon to be Los Angeles voice over talent (yes Bob, I forgot the camera again). She’ll not be falling off the Greyhound bus with stars in her eyes once she reaches the west coast…this young woman has some tremendous voice credits already including serving as the voice/announcer for the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards (check out the name on the cast list right after Avril Lavigne).

We shared many fun stories and helped lay the ground work for some seriously impressive marketing opportunities for her. Expect to be hearing her even more in the near future.

My thanks to Karen Commins, Lance Blair and Scott Pollack, September’s fellow Atlantan voice talents who wanted to join us but had commitments that didn’t allow time for my (as per usual with me) last minute get together. Maybe next time.

Tags: announcers, voice actors, voice casting, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover meet-ups by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Bob Souer and Kara Edwards were so kind to join me for dinner last night as I stopped by Charlotte, NC. And I also enjoyed having lunch with Brett Mason who has a great story about how he started in radio.

In the voice over business, it’s rare you could go into a city and NOT have someone in your voiceover network who you would know. For such a individualistic business, our networks are getting stronger all the time. My thanks to Kara, Bob and Brett.

Tags: commentary, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog, voiceover meet-ups by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane had hoped Fox wouldn’t continue production of his show without him when MacFarlane did not report to work in support of the Writers Guild of America strike, saying of the idea of producing his show without him: “it would just be a colossal dick move if they did.”

Well they are and it is.

Look, I get that they may own the show (at least partially assuming MacFarlane didn’t entirely get squashed during the last negotiations to bring it back after it was cancelled) and I also get that Fox has a network to program.

But these characters are critical to the show and while others can impersonate the voices, it would be a bad move long term. This strike will end but the bad feelings may not regardless of future revenue possibilities.

And woe to the voice talent who takes the interim gig…like he won’t be black balled. Except for maybe one or two exceptions, he may get lots of money short term but he’ll likely be back to doing convenience store ads for basic cable as soon as the strike is over.

Tags: tv, voice actors, voice casting, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I simply have no idea how the woman does it but Stephanie Ciccarelli at Voices.com has come up with another very niche and cool blog post featuring an interview with professional golf voice over talent David Cook (well I suppose the fact he’s a Voices.com member might have something to do with it).

Yes, I said professional golf voice over talent.

“What the…?”

Just read it, it’s a very nice short story.

Tags: blogs, commentary, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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The great thing about being asked “what do you do for a living?” is telling people that I am a voice over talent which often times is followed up by “what’s a voice over talent?” I get to tell them about my business because they asked me…I didn’t force explaination on them. That is a sales person’s dream!

The bad thing about that scenario is how often it happens and how monotonous the explaination can feel after a while.

Well leave it to voice talent and teacher Bettye Zoller to spend the time to define it for all of us so we can just send people to a web site after they back up the Brinks truck with the oodles of money they’re going to pay us for our voice over talent.

I really enjoyed the part where she rattled off examples of the type of work we do because I often forget a few:

Voiceover talents today are hired to narrate audio books, anime, cartoons, videos, films, and cable TV programs. They are the voices of toys, talking picture frames, cell phone messages, talking greeting cards, your car’s GPS navigation system, and everything else that’s manufactured with a computer chip inside of it on which a voice track can be stored and played. Voiceover talents greet you (and annoy you!) on thousands upon thousands of those pesky recorded telephone messages and IVR systems. They talk to you through ceiling speakers while you shop in stores. You hear voiceover talents trying to convince you to buy cosmetics at your department store on a video playing over and over (looping) next to those expensive cosmetic products! The military uses voiceovers in training projects and the educational field also uses voice actors for educational endeavors. Nearly every classroom today, kindergarten through post-graduate study in universities sports a large TV monitor in a corner on which educational videos are played. Sometimes, it seems that a teacher doesn’t talk very much anymore. Rather, schools teach a majority of the time with videos.

Thanks Bettye for taking the time to slap that together. You can read the whole article here if you like.

Tags: announcers, character voices, commentary, narrations, podcasting, radio, tv, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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The question has been buzzing around my brain because I wonder if I am writing too many words? Should I edit my posts more for length? These folks say maybe.

Editing is not a bad thing.

Are readers put off by long posts? Is just the shape and the length of the post enough to make somebody want to click off (and is “click off” a new kind of social media vulgarity that I just ignorantly/innocently spewed forth? Hope not, if yes, sorry.)

I have a short attention span sometimes, so does that mean that all content has to be boiled down to 10-20 words to be read, let alone understood by most readers?

Is there too much rambling in my posts? Am I writing with the voice inside my head, a voice which many readers (regardless of my demos) have never heard when maybe I should be writing with a more informational style, like a journalist?

Blogs serve a myriad of purposes: creative and emotional outlet, search engine optimization tool, community builder, credibility enhancer and on and on.

I want to build the on-line presence for audio’connell Voice Over Talent and SEO-wise, this blog is one tool that helps that happen. It’s also good that I have a great deal of experience and a great many contacts in the fields of voiceover, marketing and advertising so that I have many resources and topics about which I can write and podcast about.

And I think the posts are interesting (including the posts that have nothing to do with the above).

So while I write about topics that I think will be of interest to my friends (known and unknown) in those industries, I guess if I am honest, I am writing for me.

Well, and you, because you and I are really the only two people who read this stuff. And thanks for that 🙂

Let me know what you think (and I am not fishing for compliments either, just taking the reader’s “pulse”, if you will).

Tags: advertising, blogs, commentary, internet, marketing, podcast, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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