Over the past four days I have had the specific opportunity to meet a variety of new people who may or may not again come across my professional radar. That’s a really long sentence to describe networking but I could tell your brain needed the workout; no extra charge.

When I decide these folks I have met are database worthy (and if one is not database worthy, he or she is still likely an excellent person mind you), I do two things:

1. I enter them in my database (duh!)
2. I send them a handwritten note

I have thereby doubled my workload. Now I have to do twice as much as I would if I just entered them into my database. And let me tell you, creating hand written notes with my writing sometimes requires a retake or three. That’s a lot of extra time or about 90 minutes yesterday.

And it was the most worthwhile 90 minutes I could ever spend. Recognizing people, acknowledging success, thanking them is memorable. All the Facebooks and Twitters of the world can never have the same personal impact.

Personalization takes time, writing by hand takes even more time and a computer program works faster and more efficiently…but not as effectively.

Tags: branding, commentary, voiceover advice // 4 Comments »

FRONT ROW: Jill Perry, Pam Tierney, Kara Edwards MIDDLE ROW: Peter K. O'Connell, Caryn Clark, Melissa Exelberth BACK ROW: Bob Souer, Rowell Gorman, Alexander Vishniakoff, Debra Webb, Beth Whistler, Robert John Hughes CUT OFF ONLY DUE TO PHOTOGRAPHER ERROR: Mike Stoudt

So I packed a bag on Friday and flew down to Atlanta for the Marice Tobias workshop on Commercial and Narration voice over at the very nice Captive Sound Studios. My friend Bob Souer has been singing her praises for a long time; Kara Edwards and I were talking about maybe attending about 6 weeks ago and since I could see some family while I was there, I decided to pull the trigger.

Kara Edwards, Bob Souer and Melissa Exelberth

It was completely different than ANY other voice over workshop I have ever been to and I have been to many.

I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop and learned much. And while I participated in the workshop, I am at a bit of a loss as to how to effectively summarize it because I think unless you’ve been through it, it’s very difficult to understand it. So my first piece of advice would be to take a workshop with Marice.

Rowell Gorman

A lot of internal performer analysis (as it relates to vocal performance) for each student went on during her seminar. I think we all came away with a specific understanding of how effective personal analysis greatly affects the performance a voice talent gives. That kind of analysis helps performers to get out of their own way. The performance improvement was immediately evident and we (each workshop participant) all witnessed it and experienced it time and time again.

Now, you’ve likely just read that and had no understanding of what it meant. Well, some things must be personally experienced, not just read about. I’m not being coy or mean but instead honest.

Kara Edwards, Caryn Clark, Melissa Exelberth, Robert John Hughes

Each voice over talent (as does everyone) learns in different ways and her seminar needs to be personally experienced, not read about. I would recommend you look at Marice’s schedule and if it’s possible for you, take the seminar.

And if you are especially lucky, you’ll get into a class with as many incredibly talented voice over performers as I did. This might be a record because we had 6 of us – about ½ the class – who’ve been long time friends from the VO-BB. There was an immediate and invaluable comfort level learning, working and performing among friends.

Jill Perry and Pam Tierney

When I signed up for Marice’s workshop, I knew Bob was going and I knew there was a chance my friends Kara Edwards and Caryn Clark were coming (they did attend) but what I didn’t know for sure until I saw the list just before I came that the great character voice actor Rowell Gorman would be there, my pal Melissa Exelberth from New York would be there as well as the lovely and talent Pam Tierney from the toddlin’ town of Chicago. What a gift to have my friends there!

Mike Stoudt, Debra Webb and Beth Whistler

The voice talents whom I had never met previous to the workshop really capped off the experience for me and I am so grateful to have been included among them for a few days: Robert John Hughes, Alexander Vishniakoff, Beth Whistler (thank you for driving to the airport!), Debra Webb (who, I found out in setting up this link shares the same agent as me), Jill Perry and Mike Stoudt (who also shares mine and Debra’s agent).

Two VO folks who couldn’t make the seminar but who kindly came out to join our group at various times throughout the weekend were Smith Harrison and Craig Crumpton.

Not to put too strong a point on it, but there were certain voice over suspects who shall remain nameless (Karen Commins (complete with brand new web site), Lance Blair, September Day Leach) who call Atlanta home but had something (anything better) to do than visit with Team Tobias Atlanta after hours at our various pubs, taverns and dives (sometimes known as the mini-bar)! Hurmph! 😉

And finally, my most special thanks to my family in Atlanta who were so kind to let me stay with (or near) them. They had fresh hay in the stable for me to sleep on and let me borrow the mule’s blanket to avoid frostbite. 😉

I hope you get to enjoy a training experience at least once in your career a unique as the one I just enjoyed.

If you’ve trained with Marice, I would love to hear your general impression of the experience. And if you have already with any professional voice over teacher, tell us about it here.

PS. Here is a shot of the WHOLE group, (including and ESPECIALLY Mike Stoudt) courtesy of Bob Souer’s camera:

FRONT ROW: Jill Perry, Pam Tierney, Kara Edwards MIDDLE ROW: Peter K. O'Connell, Caryn Clark, Melissa Exelberth BACK ROW: Mike Stoudt, Bob Souer, Rowell Gorman, Alexander Vishniakoff, Debra Webb, Beth Whistler, Robert John Hughes

Tags: announcers, audio production, audio'connell voice over talent, commentary, community, voice over workshop, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover meet-ups // 25 Comments »

I got a call recently from my friend and fellow voice over professional Deb Stamp who works in lovely Raleigh, NC. She called me to ask about some of the voice over training I’ve done, about my upcoming workshop with Marice Tobias in Atlanta and to discuss some of the training Deb has done. And then of course we also shot the shi…I always enjoy talking biz with Deb.

For the record, I get calls like this and questions like this all the time – why do you train, who do you train with, what goes on in a workshop, why do you need to train since you’ve been doing voice over for 27 years?!

And usually the questions are asked just that fast with little or no punctuation 😉

I’ll answer those oft asked questions (most of which Deb did not directly ask) with the same question most voice over teachers have asked of me at the beginning of their sessions: “Peter, what do you want to learn/take away from this workshop?”

My answer is usually the same: “The more experience I get in my industry, the more I know just how much I don’t know about performing in voice over. There are many ways one can approach a script and performance for an audition or client; many times my ways work and sometimes they do not. So (today) I want to learn your approaches to voice over and see if there are new ideas or twists that I can apply to my work. I’m also interested to get your opinion on my performance and how you think it might be improved or tweaked.”

Is your answer the same? Is it different? It might vary based on the topic of the seminar or you may have a completely different approach to why you consider professional voice training.

Each performer’s needs are different and certainly personal. Some voice over teachers you’ll click with and some you won’t (just like in school).

But the need for regular, professional voice over training is an imperative for everyone in our business…bar none. And I mean no one.

What about your expectations for voice over training? Generally, what do expect to get out of a training session? Or if you care to share, what specifically do you hope to work on with a voice teacher or what are you currently working on with your teacher?

Tags: commentary, voiceover, voiceover advice // Comments Off on ’cause ya ain’t never done learnin’

So I visited friendorfollow.com to catch up on those nice folks who are following me on Twitter but who I don’t currently follow. Boy it really feels like a “job” when I do this (who are they, where are they, what do they do, do they say anything interesting etc.) and yet I force myself to because there are people who I do want to follow on that list and just never got around to it.

I’m not an immediate follower of people who follow me. Mostly because of time and also because some people’s tweets don’t interest me. Hey, there are lots of people who I follow who don’t follow me so it works both ways and it ain’t personal, either way.

But going through this exercise yet again, I thought about these three things in no particular order:

• Who has the time to try and follow thousands of people and then make any sense of it while having a professional and personal life?
• Why don’t some people put up a picture in their profile? If you have that stupid twitter bird for your picture, I can’t be bothered with you…sorry, it’s a “thing” with me
• What’s the deal with people who block their tweets? If you need to hide anything from Twitter (and its cool if you do) you shouldn’t be on Twitter

What about you? Agree? Disagree? Do you have other pet Twitter peeves?

Tags: commentary, community, social media, social networking, twitter // 2 Comments »

Voice Actor & Teacher Bob Bergen

I believe it was my friend and voiceover compatriot Liz de Nesnera who posted a notice in social media circles about an upcoming Bob Bergen Voice Over Workshop that will teach you how to buy foreclosed homes for pennies on the dollar and become rich, rich, rich!

Um wait, that might be wrong.

Actually, Bob’s hosting a “2-Day ADVANCED Animation Voice-over Workshop” December 5-6, 2009 in New York City, (“Advanced” meaning you must have previous animation voice-over technique training or experience).

Eschewing the hype found in many one-sheets for workshops (har-har), this workshop’s flyer promises the following:

This work shop takes you through the entire process of what it’s like to audition and record a cartoon! Each student will have the opportunity to “audition” for up to 15 characters . Based on their” auditions” Bob will then cast and record an episode of the cartoon.! Each student will receive an audio copy of the finished product! This is a great opportunity to know what it’s like to actually work as a voice-over artist in an animated film.

I have not trained with Bob but that only means he’s selective about who he teaches and he has good taste – I’m kidding! All the people I know who have trained with Bob speak very, very well of the experience and if they didn’t you wouldn’t be reading about this workshop here. If you’d like more information, you can find it here.

Tags: animation, character voices, commentary, voiceover advice // 1 Comment »

OK, look, for all the nice comments people make about my business’ marketing and what I know about marketing (and thank you) I did miss the boat on a Facebook fan page for the Voice Over Entrance Exam as previously noted.

Worse than that, I kind of forgot about the page entirely which is strictly a marketing no-no. Even worse than that, I almost admitted all of that in a blog post which is completely verboten.

So yesterday I check the page and see that there are 55 fans of the Voice Over Entrance Exam’s Facebook book page. The last time I looked I remember like, 5. And sadly I was quite thrilled with that number, even given the fact that 1 of those fans was the author.

For those of you playing the home game, that would be an increase of over 1,000,000,000,000 percent or 15 terabytes; not that I like to brag because I’m supposedly an introvert, according to Myers and Briggs (who also make very nice engines).

So thank you to all of you that pitied me by becoming a fan of an e-book that came out in May 2009 and which inaugurated a Facebook fan page about, ooooo, a month ago. I may have missed the Facebook fan page boat but I appreciate you throwing me a life ring.

Tags: commentary, facebook, marketing, voice over entrance exam, voiceover advice // 1 Comment »