voiceover

I was the kid in school who LOVED being picked to read the textbook out loud for the class. Seriously, in my head it was the spotlight on me, as I read page 192 in World Civ, and please please when I get to the bottom of the page, have the teacher tell me to continue reading. I can remember feeling like I was performing for an audience. My speedy sight-reading came in handy for the various instruments I played, too, and it was something that I knew I was good at, but never thought it would amount to anything professionally.

Now I’ve really turned my voiceover focus toward narrating audiobooks. That is, I’m reconfiguring gear, and doing lots of practicing and marketing in order to make publishers and producers aware of me, and surely to get myself ready in all aspects to voice any books that I may be assigned. I have found the optimal outlet for that handy sight-reading skill. Reading the book in advance is ideal, but even a 10th time going through any script, you’re still performing it on the fly, in the moment, and you have to know the nuances and curves in the story as you go so you can choose a better performance. The ability to sight-read and see ahead without jumping ahead in the performance, or letting what is about to happen bleed through into your read leading up to it and ruin the moment – that’s the balancing act.

It’s reassuring to be able to look into my past and see the spark – reading aloud to my classmates – that over time and through much introspection, training with experts and practice on my own has become a huge flame for audiobook narration.

Obviously I’ve neglected my blog. If it was a kid, it’d be taken away and I wouldn’t even get visitation. Sorry, those of you who have added this to your RSS feed, but I do think that over this summer I’ll be able to be a bit more diligent about SOME kind of update.

I have a lot of things I wanted to write about:
Audiobook Publishers’ Association Conference in NYC
B&H – ah yes, a sweet, sweet candy shop for anyone even remotely techie
Book Expo America (a few days later)
A personal trip to North Carolina and a week later a couples’ trip to Vegas (and my first time there!)
A shift is coming

So, I’ll be brief on most of these but want to get something posted, so I’ll start with my NY trip.

APAC was the single most amazing conference I’ve attended directly related to my career. I haven’t been to VOICE in LA yet, I think I’ll plan for next year, but otherwise APAC was phenomenal. The workshops were great, but several time slots were double-booked so I had to choose which ones to attend. Oh man, to have a little mini-me running around to those other workshops just to absorb it all! However, in lieu of a mini-me, I have great friends and we’ve shared notes on all the workshops. Specifically, there’s 4 of us from Pat Fraley’s Audiobook workshop called the Billion Dollar Read in ‘09 (he’s offering another one in LA in July, if you’re considering it then jump on this!) and we’ve stuck together, encouraging, critiquing, sharing, and it’s just more evidence that people in the voice over industry are selfless givers. These awesome ladies are Rachel Fulginiti, Heather Henderson and Amy Rubinate. Together, when our powers are combined– ok no… just when we all reunited at APAC, we called our group the Fraley Four! That group has been my mirror in voice overs, showing me bits of myself and reassuring me that I’m in the right place and doing the right things. The workshops at APAC were eye-opening, networking and getting to actually talk to people who can use you on a book was an incredible opportunity, and between some very open and kind publishers and the awesome people I knew I’d see and the new ones I met, the best part was still the people. Oh please, stop rolling your eyes, I mean it!!

BEA was overwhelming. It was a book lover’s dream, and a strategic nightmare to navigate in the 6 hours I had until we had to head to the airport. The Javitz Center was filled with people from all walks of the publishing industry – from librarians, book club members and authors to presidents of publishing companies and the top tiers of management who were there to make distribution deals. It was totally nutty but Rachel and I were able to get around to quite a few independent publishers to tell them about our collective of narrators. A few seemed pretty interested, thankfully the ones whose books and general topics we were most interested in. We’ll see if there’s any love connections that form from BEA down the road. It was a great side-conference to attend on exhibitor day, but much like APAC, I could have used a 2nd day to take it all in.

I just skipped over the other fantastic thing I enjoyed while in New York: B&H Photo/Video. The best thing to me was the mic room. I was able to spend some time with 2 well-trained sets of ears, Tony Willson and unfortunately I don’t have the woman’s name handy, but they were awesome. I tried out many mics and we all agreed that while I came in expecting the Neumann TLM 103 to be a perfect fit for my voice, it was actually the TLM 102 that brought out all the best aspects of my voice, and gave me enough options to play around with distance and warmth. That’s been my new standard mic since I came home, and my poor RE20 has been stored in its case until I need it. It’ll still be the mic I use on the road, since it travels so well, but for daily use I can’t bear to take my new 102 off my mic stand. :)

I spent 5 days in or traveling to and from New York and Andy met with photo editors in NYC, so he was no slacker on this trip, and while he had to go home (he shot the midweek wedding of our talented massage therapist, Amy and her new husband Nick) I flew to North Carolina to see family and friends. It’s only fair, he was just in North Carolina a week or two earlier to shoot another wedding, so this trip would be just me and slightly less running around than last time I was there.

I’m doing some targeted advertising right now to build up other aspects of my business, and still finishing my follow-ups from APAC and BEA. I’m happy to be working on projects for new clients and to also have continued work from clients I’ve worked with for a while. I’ve gotten some good feedback from my contacts so far from APAC, which is very encouraging. I’m busy, but it’s that good kind of sustainable, manageable busy and I can fit a blog post in here or there. My personal life is busy with an attempt to shift my waking hours to accommodate for a grueling early yoga class, adding in some volunteer work to my day and Andy and I are grilling anything we can think of with our new outdoor grill.

I feel like we’re embarking on another big change or shift. I’m not sure what it is but I think I’ve turned a corner in the balance between my business, Andy’s business and my full time job doing voice and production work. I know, with all this going on, doesn’t it sound busy enough without a 40 hr/week job, too? Maybe it’ll be the addition of audiobooks and more station imaging to tip me towards going 100% freelance, maybe Andy’s wedding or commercial business will get too busy for him to handle without getting extra help in a bigger capacity. Who knows. As of yesterday, I’ve been in Phoenix for 3 years now, and I sense a positive shift is on its way. While change can be scary, I’m not closing any doors but I’m just watching for new ones to open. This blog post has been in my mind a lot lately.

I don’t remember anything specific about the movie Renaissance Man, aside from the fact that we were watching part of it during high school history class and I don’t think it really tied into anything being taught in the class. And I’m pretty sure Robin Williams was in it. I did, however, take away the idea of a Renaissance Man… and I liked it, and at that moment I thought it’d be a good thing to strive for.

My friend Jill, a multi-talented photographer/crafter/amazing cook/gracious party host, wanted someone to take gardening classes with her. When my family lived in upstate New York, my pastry chef-turned-Realtor dad grew vegetables in a huge 30×50ft garden, and also had probably 20-30 fruit trees in a large orchard AND we had several flower beds on our 3+ acres, all beautiful and blooming and producing so much we had to give it away. While that’s a great example of what can be done in more ideal growing conditions, it also stands as a great example of what amazing and productive things can be done in your spare time. At this point, after gardening classes with Jill, Andy and I have a compost bin in our patio/yard space and somewhat less vague plans than a few months ago on how and what and when to plant in this tiny space to be able to enjoy homegrown vegetables in the desert.

It’s easy to lead a more well-rounded life when things are going well with your relationships, your job, your finances and all the other big determining factors of life. When one or more of those areas are suffering, that’s when it’s a struggle to find the energy to do more than just exist in your own life. That’s when I think it’s most important to push and fill your time with something enjoyable and give yourself something to look forward to, to help through those down times. I know I’m lucky to be in the radio industry and to never have been laid off, to have a freelance career that continues to grow even in a down economy, and to live in Phoenix and be on the positive side of a mortgage in a city ridden with foreclosures. I have a great husband, wonderful friends, a career and job I enjoy, pets I love and hobbies I can delve into and share with friends. I expect myself to live that Renaissance woman life in times like this.

I hope to share some of these interests on this blog. Moreso, I hope to get back in touch with a lot of the things I enjoy and use this blog to help me remember to do that. I have half a closet, several drawers and boxes full of hobbies I’ve set aside and seldom visited. I don’t know that I’ll be cross-stitching or quilting or doing any still-life drawings this week, but I hope to bring more of my hobbies out of storage and enjoy them in the time I certainly can make in my day. Being a voice over talent is an enjoyable part of my day, but there’s more to life than how you make your living.

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted on here. I know I’d set the personal goal of posting to my blog every week, but sometimes life happens offline, too.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past month talking shop, being critiqued by and critiquing and picking the brains of 3 very talented women. We met in LA at Pat Fraley’s Audiobook workshop. We all have the goal of doing regular work in the audiobook industry. The four of us have entered Scott Brick’s contest to highlight a new audiobook narrator and throw some work her way, and it would be wonderful if any or all of us make it to the top 25, or better. We know the top 25 will be announced online and I’d love to see some familiar names on that list when it comes out.

Through this process, I feel like I’ve been able to apply a lot of skills that I have and things I’ve been taught and after some practice to find my groove it’s become a comfortable thing for me. In college, I earned bachelor’s degrees in both English lit/writing/editing and in Psychology. Working in radio has not directly required the use of either of these, however they’ve been useful and helpful, especially in copywriting and also in adjusting to and understanding how to work with so many different personality types. Working on audiobook material feels like a homecoming of sorts. I can use the skill my parents have always said was unique and well-developed and underutilized in my regular work: my character voices.

Through narrative pieces, I can pull from the characteristics of many people I’ve met, standalone characters I’ve built, dialects I’ve heard, accents and ways of speaking from my travels and living in 3 vastly different parts of the country. I can also use my literary skills honed from reading classics and assigned pieces in college to make sure I’m really understanding the author’s intent and any allusions there may be to other stories or archetypes. The way of looking at people that I’ve learned through psych studies is more empathetic than I think I’d be without it. It’s helped me see a lady who cuts me off in traffic as someone who might be in a hurry to help a friend in trouble, instead of just thinking she’s some idiot who can’t drive and needs to have her license revoked* (*blog friendly version of my non-empathetic thoughts.) That comes in handy when “good” characters do “bad” things, or an “unlikeable” character is the protagonist.

Audiobooks seem to be the one place where my years in radio and voicework as well as my education all actually come together. It’s been a really good exercise to put a lot of effort and get a lot of feedback in this part of the voiceover world. I’m in the process of editing down a piece that I’ve read (one of my favorite short stories) that I eventually plan to offer on my site as a free download. There’s always so much to do, so many goals to tick off the list, and then you look and somehow it’s July already. I hope to get more blog posts in, but if I am absent for longer than a week then I may have more interesting things to write about when I return.

Seth Green’s audition for Family Guy

If you dig around on Hulu and watch the related videos below, you can easily spend an hour with the voice actors from the show. The Mila Kunis video about her audition is especially interesting from a VO perspective. If you can bring something different that the writer/agency/client/station hadn’t thought of to the read, that might be exactly the thing that gets you booked. In her case, it sounds like she brought a lot of herself to the audition (and back for a 2nd, and back again for another…)

Mila Kunis on her Audition

A little over a week ago, I overhauled my home studio. It was time to make some changes to get a solid, dependable sound out of my equipment, and to make best use out of the space I have. That space is our walk-in master closet. Thankfully, I’m not a shoe-a-holic or hoarder, and there’s actually enough space in there to setup my soundproofing panels, a chair (for audiobook projects), a small folding table and of course, my mic stand. After some tweaking, I’m incredibly happy with the sound coming out of there. I moved from Adobe Audition on a Delta44 audio card with a breakout box in a PC to Pro-Tools 8 on my macbook pro via my new Mbox 2 mini.

After saying all that, I’m not a gearhead. The big difference comes down to quality of the soundcard, and the Mbox 2 mini has far superior sound to the card I put in a PC. Gear out of the way, despite being in a closet I was still getting a bit of reverb and a not-quite deadened sound to the room. A tension rod with one of Andy’s old portrait backdrops hung with clip hooks did the trick, and it also is easily moved out of the way when we need the closet to just be a closet.

I’ve updated my “36 in 365″ goals list post for my studio, I’d say it’s optimized for sound and the layout works nicely. I’ll post pictures soon.