It's a term I like to use every so often... especially when dealing with these:
Vicious critters... the cable snake
These days, these are the only snakes I've got in my house (if for no other reason than my fiancee would kill me, but not before leaving a hole in the front door that was approximately shaped like her as she fled for her life). I'm good with that, as there's enough going on right now that I'm more than busy with things. The snakes in the picture above
Back in the day I happened to work with a Herpetologist. Why would I do such a thing you ask? Simple... I was not the biggest fan of snakes. I wouldn't say abject terror at the sight of one, but if I could get out of the same room as one, I would do so, and do so quickly (much as I do when near a cast member from "Jersey Shore").
Now it may not make sense to you to directly confront something you dislike, or even fear, but the truth of the matter is this. What you do when faced with an unpleasant situation goes a large way towards defining the type of person you are, and the type of person you want to be. Too many of us never choose to face things, or to do what's hard (duh! That's because it's hard). When you take the time to think about it, it usually doesn't speak well to the type of people they are. Seriously, how many people do we as a society look to and associate with true greatness? Not many, right? When you take a look at nearly all of them, what made them a great person wasn't so much their success... but the obstacles they had to overcome in order to make that journey.
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.
Voice Over Xtra currently has part one of what I think will be a nice compendium of articles regarding home studio acoustics by William Williams.
From my own experience, I can tell you that soundproofing a pre-existing residential structure is problematic and expensive at best, downright impossible given most circumstances. You can do a lot to absorb and diffuse the sound, but true soundproofing requires DCID or ANSI style requirements to the room, and frankly there comes a time when even yours truly has to question the cost-benefit ratio (or in my case, the "would they lock me up for doing this..." ratio).
William takes a smarter approach IMO by assuming that the voice talent already has a setup and begins by addressing those items which can be removed from your recording chain that might be causing you to have a lower quality output than you should be, given the quality of equipment you're using (aka. "noise").
From an audio forensic perspective, I'm a huge fan of eliminating as much unnecessary interference from the chain as possible. This article looks like the first step in addressing such issues.
For those who are interested, the full article can be found here.
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.
It's late, I'm still up reading chapters from a book on SOA (don't ask), and I've got less than four hours before I have to be up for my day tomorrow.
So let me pass along a quick trick that might just help you out the next time you're in a voiceover session. It's my way of passing the time before I can actually fall asleep, but also gives me a chance to teach a trick that you might be able to put to good use.
For this trick, you're going to need a half-decent preamp, but really any preamp will do so long as it has the ability to trim the output. I'm going to use a Great River MP-2NV to illustrate what I mean:
You can see that there's a gain knob and an output level knob.
Here's the trick. We want to make this discrete, transformer preamp sound like a tube pre. Piece of cake, but most people who use these for spoken word don't try it. Maybe they don't know, or they just prefer to use the top end of the preamp... I don't know. What I do know is that when we over-saturate the transformer in this preamp (or any preamp with a good transformer; I think the MP-20 might be another good example... and it was less than $500 when it was originally available on the market) we get that "tubey" sound caused by the harmonic distortion achieved by squeezing the input in this fashion. In a lot of cases, this is a really fun, and useful means of giving some character to our voiceover tracks (I've found it to be particularly good for narrations or something that required a "tubey" sound when I didn't want to actually use a tube preamp; on some preamps, you'll have an effect that is similar to using a compressor... each preamp is a little different).
Your recorded tracks will be a little more defined in the mix using this technique, but be warned that this is a trick you want to use sparingly. For the most part, it's smarter practice to track your voice over clean and go from there (and yes, you can run a prerecorded track into certain preamps and do this trick if you'd like; the LMNOPre is a personal favorite of mine, but personally I'm addicted to that preamp... God only knows how I'd react to an NPNG preamp).
BTW: you can also do this trick with tube-based preamps as well, but you'll probably notice that you quickly move from and extremely tubey sound to something that sounds like it just went through a limiter (especially with the LaChapell preamps using stock tubes for some reason).
Each preamp is a bit different, but that's part of the fun. You can find many different ways to get to the same end result so long as you have the skill.
Sorry, but I couldn't resist since it's up on the artist's website:
In case you're wondering whether this sign is in the studio... you betcha!
I wouldn't have had it custom made otherwise. Sometimes, you just have to let your branding win out when it comes to the decoration in your studio.
On the flip side... I've no doubt that now I'll be stuck with a minor shrine to the Philadelphia Phillies when the time comes (which won't be long now... looking at houses as we speak). While I have some voice over memorabilia from the Phils, she's the sports nut.
I'm just nuts... =-)
BTW: for those wondering who the artist is, the studio sign came from the mind and talent of a very groovy individual by the name of Steve Cambronne.
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?
