VOICE 2010, Day 1 (Part 2)

(...continued from previous post)

Next up, I headed off to Liz de Nesnera ‘s presentation on “Talking Telephony”. I don’t get many jobs for that type of voice over, but I know that telephony-based voiceovers are some of most ubiquitous out there, and for people like Liz, it’s a way of life.

This was a sleeper of a panel for me. Before the hate mail starts rolling in, I mean a sleeper, not a snoozer. I wasn’t expecting to get a lot out of this panel, but I was still drawn to learn more about it. I have often said that I’ve learned the most when I didn’t think there was much to learn… this held true for Liz’s panel. Yeah, the technical stuff was pretty easy for me, and not too much was new there (although I can see some great uses for Word2Wav, especially with some of the industrials I have to do). However, the actual voice acting, general schema, etc. related to things such as IVR, voice prompts, and the like were completely new to me and a total 180 from what I expected. Add to that the approach that Liz defined, the marketing techniques she identified, and the simple (yet effective) methods of finding clients (either via direct contact, or by finding production houses which specialize in telephony VO) made this panel a very educational and entertaining one for me.




After the 11AM panel, I headed down to the exhibit hall and toured through the place to see what was being offered. Popped by the Voice Over Extra booth, and greeted John Florian. One of the big things that hit me during VOICE so far was the number of great people whom I met and converse with on a regular basis, but rarely get to see in person. If there’s one thing I do like about VOICE, it’s the ability to meet and catch up with so many people in the industry that I wouldn’t normally get to see otherwise. Unfortunatley, I’m digressing though…

John was nice enough to let me use some space at his booth to set up some gear and get a few roving interviews to share with others. First off was John himself, who was gracious enough to take some time away from what he was doing to give me a few minutes of his time to test out the recording chain. Unfortunately, I only had time for one more interview before the next panel, and I was lucky enough to get Pete Rofe’ to agree to join me for what turned into a monster interview (but a really good one, as Peter’s insights into voice over and acting in general are spot on). Once I get a chance to upload the clips, I’ll share them via the blog (and John was very kind to host the clips as well). I can’t promise the best quality due to the environment, but for those who wanted to attend, but couldn’t or weren’t sure that VOICE was for them, I think these clips will be a great way to see just what you’re missing.


After snagging those two interviews, I was able to bounce between George Whittam's panel on the Technology of Voiceover and Erik Sheppard's panel on Simple Mistakes that Talent Make. Now for those who don't know George Whittam, he's the guy behind Eldorado Recording Services. Prior to VOICE 2010, I heard one talent who was critiquing the Guests of Honor ask the question "who is George Whittam... I've never heard of him." Well, this is George Whittam, and any guy who can build a studio for the likes of the late Don LaFontaine, Joe Cipriano, and a veritable "who's who" within the voice acting community (not to mention the Don LaFontaine Voiceover Lab) is A-ok in my book. George's panel is always a good one, especially for new talent or those who don't have some kind of recording background. Even gearheads like me can pick up a few things with some of the newer technologies out there which we may have otherwise ignored. For example, I would never have bothered to utilize something like a CEntrance MicPort Pro for my "VO 2 Go" kit if I hadn't read George's reviews of the device.

(Besides, George originally hails from my hometown, West Chester PA. You've got to support the locals :)


Erik Sheppard's panel was also very good, and highlighted mistakes that pretty much any voice actor has made over the course of their career (most of which he probably enocuntered first hand in his position with Voice Talent Productions). I heard more than a few groans and such from folks who'd committed the very same faux pas that Erick discussed. It was a great panel which discussed ways in which voice over talent manage to work themselves out of a job via oversights, snafus, and by not following directions.


That last one is in bold for a reason, because while some items can be overlooked (one of my better clients was landed by a fauz pas on my part which might have seemed fatal at the time, but was turned into a positive experience for the client by the way in which I handled it), an unwillingness to follow client/agent/casting director/director directions is a very quick way to make certain that your demo gets tossed into the "ignore" pile.


The final panel for the afternoon session I attended was Beverley Bremer's panel on "How to Weat 3 Hats". I viewed this as a panel which was really good for beginner and intermediate voice talent, as too often they focus on one aspect of the voice over process (usually the talent). While that's not a bad thing per se, it can quickly lead to a myopic view that causes the talent to lose out on various opportunities. Within the voice over world, the voice actor needs to put themselves in the position of talent, director, and engineer. The talent portion of the presentation is pretty self-explanatory, however the other two are often overlooked by voice talent that is less experienced. Interpretation of what the director wants, and the ability to self-direct are as important as the acting ability according to Bremers, and I wholeheartedly agree. There's an old VO adage which states that your first take needs to be what the specs ask for, but the second should be what you think they actually want. That's self-direction for VO in a nutshell... you need to be able to understand what the copy is really asking for and then to do it.


The final item, Engineering, is a bit of a no-brainer if you have a home studio, but you'd be amazed how often people forget to do a little audio engineering during their auditions. A poorly edited file is a quick way to work yourself out of a booking that would have otherwise been yours. Especially in today's VO market, it's become more and more of a critical skill to have, and one which cannot be ignored.

On that note, I'm going to try and get some rest before Day 2. There's nothing worse than trying to attend these panels when you're batteries need major recharging.


By the end of Beverly's panel, I was pretty well wiped out. That's the thing with VOICE. If you try to hit everything, you're going to be wiped out at the end of the day. It's not a bad thing, but you need to be judicious when it comes to what you choose to attend, because some panels are more intensive than others.

Cheers!

-Greg

How to choose a Voice Over microphone.

Procomm has a great blog post up about Choosing a Voice Over Microphone.

Since the question of "which microphone should I choose?" is one of the most common questions voice actors ask each other, it's definitely worth reading if you don't already know the answer to the question.

On the side, I think I have an unattributed quote in the article.

The most important tool in your studio.

Any guesses?

C'mon... take a guess. What do you think the most important thing in your voiceover studio is?

I'll even make it easy, it's not the microphone (though God knows, most voice over folks seem to think that it is).

It's not your preamp.

It's not the interface.

It's not the room.

It's not even your voice (again, a lot of voice over folks think that it's all about the voice... I want to blog about this later, but I assure you that voice is just one part of voice acting, and not the most important).

Know what it is? It's your ears. Seriously, can you tell anything about any aspect of recording or voice over without your ears? If so, please let me know, because I can't tell whether a room has reflection issues without my ears (unless I want to crunch some numbers... walking around a room and using my ears while generating a tone is much easier), I can't tell whether or not a preamp, microphone, or other piece of equipment is doing anything for the track I'm working on without my ears, and I surely can't tell how my work as a voice actor is fitting in the mix without my ears.

You'd be amazed how hard it is for some folks to get the message. Just the other day I was reading a post from a well-known and respected talent who decided in their own clever way to take a shot at folks for the poor production value of their self-made demos and various other clips. It was a deserved comment (though perhaps not so acerbic, but that's a personal choice), but the one thing that really, REALLY concerned me about this person's comment was that they didn't explain the easiest way to identify and fix this problem. It was obvious that the folks doing the work had some talent, but whomever did the mixing wasn't trusting their ears. Anyone listening realized that was the main problem, but instead the online conversation focused more on other issues. The point, which was unfortunately lost, was that if someone had trusted their ears a bit more, the final product from their work would have probably been much better.

This brings me back to my original point; your ears are the most important thing in your studio. And yet, most voice talent don't give them a second thought, and even fewer spend the time and effort to find a good way to use them properly. If you're doing a voice over for a website, then by all mean use computer speakers at some point during the process since that's what most of your audience is going to use, but do not negate the need for actual studio monitors to use while tracking and during the later phases of mixing and mastering. If you're not doing the actual production of your recorded tracks then there's no need to invest a huge amount into your studio monitors, but it's still a worthwhile investment for yourself (it's easier to deal with issues when tracking then it is to try to edit them out afterward). Good studio monitors aren't going to make your work sound better, but they will give you a level of accuracy which will allow you to make your final product better. At the end of the day, isn't that the point?

If you're not sure whether or not your ears are sensitive enough to pick up issues in your tracking or mixing, there's only one way to deal with that... practice. Just like everything else, you've got to start at the bottom if you truly want to improve you skills.

So the next time you're sitting around thinking about what wonderful toy you have to have for your studio, think about your ears for a bit and figure out what they need to do their job. Sure, that shiny Neumann looks nice, but for the money I'm willing to bet you that a nice pair of Klein & Hummel, Adam, or Dynaudio monitors will end up giving you a lot more bang for your buck. And don't get me wrong, you'll love anything from those guys, and even the boutique manufacturers, but any studio monitor that's got a relatively un-biased sound will do the trick and they can be had at nearly all price points. Price is not necessarily a barrier to entry for good monitors, at least not quite as bad as it it for other pieces of studio equipment.

In the end, the important thing is that whatever you do to your recording environment and whatever gear you get, if you feel the need to get anything at all, so long as you learn to trust your ears and give them the right resources to judge your recording sessions, then whatever cash outflow you've expended will eventually be returned to you with interest, whatever time you spend learning to train your ears to be more sensitive to the things which plague any voice over production will make you more efficient and profitable.

Hmmnn... adding value to the business. Regardless of how you do it, isn't that the very definition of success?

Why I don't like microphone shootouts.

Okay, let me clarify that statement. I don't like most microphone shootouts, especially for voiceover. Here's a few reasons why:

1. Most people doing them don't know how - I'm sorry for having to be the one to say it, but I am. You need to maintain a certain standard of quality and impartiality when you do any kind of comparison, and normally I just don't see it in the shootouts people use on most boards and websites.
   
2. Different sources are used for different microphones, which makes it impossible to judge any of the microphones used - I want you to think about this. How can you know how one microphone sounds when compared to another when two different sources are being recorded. A microphone sounds different from person to person, so once you've injected two people on two different mics, you've just invalidated your experiement and any conclusions that you draw from it. Sure, mic A might be darker than mic B, but if one of the sources is a low baritone and the other is a tenor 2, then how much difference can I really tell is between the two mics tested? The answer is "not much".
3. Different mics are used on different recording chains - If reason #2 didn't point out the problem, then the fact that so many "shootouts" and "comparisons" use different preamps, cables, DAWs, EQs, etc. (i.e., your recording chain) should raise a big flag to you. In the recording chain, your microphone and preamp are two of the biggest factors in the quality and characterization of sound that are going to affect the recording of your source (the source itself and the environment of the recording space are the most important things to any recording, but for the recording chain, your mic and preamp are the biggest factors to take into consideration IME). If I'm recording a U87 using a John Hardy preamp and trying to compare that mic to an AK-47 recorded through a D.W. Fearn, then I'm going to have a really difficult time being able to determine where the line is drawn between microphone and preamp. It's going to be impossible to properly compare the two microphones. You need to have consistency within the recording chain so that when you change one element within that chain (the microphone) to compare it to another, the listener can habituate everything else in the chain and concentrate on the two items being compared. Makes sense, right? And yet few people compare microphones that way.
4. Observational bias and sound quality - If you don't like one brand of microphone, then you're going to be hard pressed to be subjective about it when your compare it to other brands. That's observational bias and it's a common trait. If you're human, you've got it... accept it and move on. There's not a whole lot you can do about it unless you're the listener, in which case you need to learn to recognize when you're doing it. The quality of recording though... different story. Most microphone shootouts I hear use MP3 formatted clips. It's a lossy format, so I know from the start that I'm not getting the full sound that I ought to be getting. That's kind of bad. What makes it worse, is that some folks reduce the bit rate of the recording to the lowest level they can in order to save space. Listen, I know that you don't want folks to have to download a 100MB file just to hear a pair of microphones, but the more you take away from the quality of the recording, the harder it is for the rest of us to be able to judge the difference in the two sounds. In the attempts to make life easy for the listener, you've just taken away our ability to properly critique what you're doing. It's not worth it.
5. It's not you that they're recording - This is the most important factor to consider when dealing with a microphone shootout. Everybody sounds different, so every microphone is going to sound a little different. The same holds true for your recording environment. Put it together, and you quickly realize that the best way for a person to understand which microphone is going to work best for them is for them to take the microphone into their own place and record it with their own voice. It's going to be the most accurate way to learn how two different microphones affect a source. Microphone shootouts (when done properly) can give you a good starting indication, but until you get some face time with the tools themselves, you're working from a generalized point of view instead of your own working knowledge of the device,

Transom Tools has one of the best microphone shootouts I've ever heard. That the shootout is over three years old and is still considered to be one of the best comparison of voice over mics out there is a testament to the care and quality they put into their testing. If you're looking for a mic shootout, I can't think of anything online that is as well done as what these guys put together.

If only they could have offered the files as WAV... still, they're light years beyond anything else I've found online.

Cheers!