Take some time to judge your own work

I recently uploaded a Fauxdition (that’s a fake audition) to Internet Voice Coach.

I joined that site recently and I must say that it has been a great help for a student Voice Actor! Tons of articles and advice and interviews. You can upload a sound clip for them to critique roughly once a month, and they have an audition contest each month.

The contest is sorta fun for a newbie. First you have to try to record something that sounds vaguely professional, then you have to work over the file, clean it up, turn it into an MP3 and then upload it. Good practice all the way around!

Anyway, I recorded a bunch of different takes on the audition script, and then just saved them on my computer and spent the next several days chasing my kids around the house – completely forgetting all about the recording.

Went back yesterday and listened to the clips — and it was GREAT! I came to the clips completely cold, having forgotten most everything about them (Early Alzheimer’s, I know) and it was almost like listening to a total stranger!

I could easily identify things that sounded amateurish (yeah, most of the clip, I know) and also things that I liked. It was a completely different experience from listening to your recording right after you do it.

So why don’t you practice with some scripts and record your efforts and then let them lie around for a few days before you listen to them? I think you will be surprised.

And yes, I know you can’t do that in real life — but we are learning here! Cut yourself some slack!

When Do You Need a Voice Over? « The Lowry Agency Blog

Here is a quick, interesting article about voice overs and when you might use one. When Do You Need a Voice Over? « The Lowry Agency Blog.

The Intellectual Leap

What IS it that a Voice Actor is paid to do?

The copy writer thinks you’re an illiterate mouth breather, the director thinks you’re a prima dona who can’t listen, the engineer thinks you are the luckiest SOB on earth to make what you make for reading out loud, the client thinks you’re a large, needless, debit on his personal compensation, and the target audience out there trudges on regardless, unaware that you even exist!

Just what the heck IS IT that you are DOING?

You, my friend, are performing magic.

Free 3 day trial at Internet Voice Coach

I have already written a little about Internet Voice Coach before, but now Paul Strikwerda has an article about it on his blog (which I have already mentioned as well and it is a great blog too) as well as a link to a three day trial membership.

You can use this to try out the site and see how you like it.

Definitely give it a shot, click here.

Last Class (of my beginner’s course that is)

Had the last class of the beginner’s course last night. Sort of bittersweet experience.  I am glad that I have learned all this stuff and made it through, but now I have to go scratch around and dig up some cash to start the next one!

We did some character work (hilarious – although mostly unintentionally hilarious) and some script stuff, and then the teacher just asked us a question:  “So one of your good friends comes up to you and says: ‘Hey!  Voice Acting huh?  What the heck is that all about?'”

What to do when the Director can’t Direct

Ok, well, this one dovetails in here nicely with the last two posts, not only concerning directing, but also falling right smack dab into the general silliness category.

Listen and learn from the thoughtful way that William Shatner assists this struggling director!

Thanks to Voices.com for the clip.

Daaaad! How much longer til we get to the Death Star?

Ok, I just had to put this on here,  as you may or may not know, Tom Tom has signed up the voice of Darth Vader for Star Wars Day (Who knew there was such a thing?) on May 4th.  Enjoy — and May the 4Th be with you.

Thanks to Bob Souer over at the Boblog

Online Ad Revenue Jumps in 1st. Quarter

Facebook | Voicebank.net has put up a link on facebook to an article about ad revenue, which jumped in the last quarter almost 15% to 8.8 Billion!

This is really good news for anyone who hopes to make money off the Advertising Industry!

This is also a good time to bring up the fact that many great sites like Voicebank, Voiceactors in the News, Voicetraxsf, Voiceone,  etc. have facebook presences.  You can follow these and receive constant updates on things going on in the voice over world .  Some of them are also quite active on Twitter, so if you really want to stay connected, you should check it out.

You can simply run a search on Voice Actors, Voice Overs, etc. on facebook and bring up a lot of sites.

Social networking sites are great places to meet people, get information, and establish your own presence in the voice over community.  There have been a lot of good articles done on social networking, both for fun AND profit! and we will get a little deeper into that later.

Voice Bank Blog

Well Crud!!  Here’s something I missed completely! I have posted about the VoiceBank site where there are huge listings of agencies, studios, producers, etc. — Including Agency Demos of all their talent!

Well somehow I completely missed the fact that they also have a blog!  And what a blog!  Several years worth of articles concerning every aspect of the VO world, and lots of interviews, and even the occasional funny video.

Check this out, there’s hours of good stuff here.

Internetvoicecoach.com

Just got an e-mail from Voice One in San Fran.  That is Elaine Clark’s school which I have spoken about before and linked to on the right side there.

They have begun working with Internet Voice Coach and their instructors will be adding article periodically.

To quote from their e-mail. IVC.com is:

“The first website devoted exclusively to every facet of voice-over, with online video and audio tutorials, monthly webinars, interviews with casting directors, agents, and producers, as well as some of today’s top voice-over celebrities. Internet Voice Coach has monthly audition contests, a huge database of practice scripts from all areas of the industry, and yearly members get personal feedback (sent directly to their email inbox as an mp3 file) on any audio samples sent to IVC for critique”.

There is a monthly or yearly fee to join, and there is a special deal on the price through May 31.

Yes, there are a lot of online training facilities that would love to get your money and it is hard to know when they are worthy and when they are not — But! — I have some knowledge of Ms. Clark and her operation and her bona fides – and I suspect that if she is lending her name to an operation, then it has some real value.

Check it out! If you don’t live close to any kind of training facility, this might be your best bet. In fact, it might be a good bet even if you do live close to a training facility.