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gary@garymasonvo.com

Voice Over

10,000 hours…

Encouragement, General, Getting Started, Training, Voice Over

Welcome Back!

Thanks for reading, and if you are a new subscriber; Welcome and thanks for joining us!

In keeping with the themes of getting a Late Start and having Persistence, particularly as it applies to a recently begun voice over or acting career, but really as it pertains to just about ANY new endeavor, this week we’re going to talk about what it take to become a master at your craft (whatever it is).  Thanks to Justin Knott for reminding me about this!

We’ve talked about this before…kinda

Now to be sure, I have hinted at this idea in several posts, but I’ve not delved deeply into it at all.  It can be frustrating and intimidating to start something new, whether it is a hobby, a passion, or a business.  Or maybe a hobby or passion TURNED business.  In case you didn’t realize this, when you are just getting started in something, you are typically not very good at it…and certainly not a master.

Not just you, everyone.

I could do that…

I know, hard to believe, isn’t it?  Think of someone you know who is REALLY talented at something. Do you wish you were as good, as experienced, as accomplished at it as they are?  I know I do, and I think that’s pretty normal.  How many people wish they could be a rock star, or a famous actor, a professional sports figure or even an accomplished magician? My guess is, almost everyone at some time in their life looked at someone and thought “Man, they really have it easy.  I wish I were a ______________. (Fill in the blank yourself here.  Use extra paper if you have more than one like me).

We all start somewhere

Here’s the thing: None of the people you aspire to be like started out as a master at what they do.  Every single one of them started out just like you: A novice.

Sure, many, if not most, of them had some innate talent. They could at least DO what they were striving for, even if not very well.  But you know what? YOU have some innate talent too.  I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know if what you are good at is what you want to perfect, but you HAVE some innate talent for something.

An overnight success…later

In previous posts, I’ve said that it takes 20 years to become an overnight success, and while I STILL have no idea who said that first so I can properly attribute it, that doesn’t make it any less true.

What I am trying to say to all of you new voice over artists and aspiring actors is this: Don’t lose hope because you don’t start off booking every gig you audition for, or even most of them ( Any of them?).  Surely it can be discouraging, but if you remember that each and every person whose name you recognize immediately at one point was a “nobody” trying to become the person they are now.

How did they get there?

The answer to that question is easy, although accomplishing it isn’t. Time and hard work.

A LOT of time. A lot of time working hard.

It is said that it takes 10,000 hours to master a craft.  Go back and read that again, and make sure to note the comma.  TEN THOUSAND hours.  For those of you not great at maths, let me break that down for you.

10,000 hours, if you could work at it 24 hours a day, would take you 416 and 2/3 days to reach.  You read that right, if you did NOTHING else but practice and perfect your craft, it would take about 14 months to master it.

No one can work 24 hours a day at something!

Not for more than one day anyway.  So let’s assume you had nothing else to do, but needed to sleep 8 hours a day, how long would it take THEN? Well, assuming you could work on your craft 16 hours a day it would take you 625 days to master it. That’s 1 3/4 years.  Doing nothing but sleeping and practicing.  I suppose it could be done, but you’d be divorced (or never married) and your kids would wonder who you were when you emerged from whatever cave you were working in.

But practically…

Practically speaking, you probably have a lot more demands on your life than working to perfect your craft.  You have family and friends.  You probably need to eat, shower, relax, go to the store…and a myriad of other “life” things that need to be done and that take away from your being able to master a craft.  So, let’s be reasonable and assume that you could work at your craft like a job and devote 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to it.  How long would THAT take to master something?  Hold onto your hats.  If you could devote what amounts to a full-time job to mastering your craft, 40 hours a week, it would take you 4 and 3/4 YEARS to become a master.

But…I don’t have THAT much time!

Right, and frankly neither does anyone else!  Odds are that you ae still working at a “day job” so that you can have a roof over your head and food on the table, you probably have family obligations like taking out the trash, doing the dishes and driving the kids to their soccer games as well.  If you are like MOST people who start out on the road to fame and fortune (HA HA HA) as a voice over artist or actor, you have on average 2-3 hours per day to devote to training and practice.

Realistically…

Realistically, unless you are independently wealthy, single, childless, socially awkward with few to no friends and absolutely dedicated to mastering something, you have at most 2-3 hours (or less) a day.  Let’s assume you are fantastically dedicated and devote 3 hours a day, 7 days a week to this endeavor.  How long till you master it? Did you figure it out yet?  It’s a little over 9 years.  NINE YEARS!  That’s right, pretty much a decade JUST to master the craft.  Then of course you ‘ll need to be discovered by actually DOING it and showing off your mastery.  Apparently, give the “20 years to become an overnight success”, it’ll take another decade to let everyone know you are a master!

The truth?

The truth is, even that 3 hours a day average is probably too much.  There will be vacations, and Holidays, and family visits where you will be expected to be “present” and not working on your craft.  There will be times when you are discouraged and exhausted and feel like you just don’t have anything left to give.  This is normal, this is life, so don’t beat yourself up if you “put it down” for a while to recharge and renew.

Why did I write all of that?

All of that to say – keep going.  Don’t be discouraged if you are not yet where you want to be (well, unless you’ve ALREADY been doing this for 20 years and getting nowhere, which is unlikely, in which case you should pick something else).  Keep at it until ONE day YOU are the master, YOU are the one people look at and wish they had what you have, Keep training, keep practicing, keep improving.

Along the way…

Here’s what you’ll find.  Along the way as you continue to improve and get closer and closer to mastery, you WILL start booking more gigs.  You DON’T have to be a master to be successful and remember there are degrees of success.  It’s overwhelming to think about reaching that 10,000-hour mark without setting goals for intermediate milestones along the way.  Make sure to set goals for yourself…both ultimate goals AND intermediate goals so you can know you are making progress toward reaching mastery.  I can’t tell you what those goals should be because they’ll be different for each person. Just find a way to measure progress toward your ultimate goal of mastery and then track it. Each milestone reached will give you encouragement to head for the next one.

How do you eat an elephant?

Most of you have probably heard this 1000 (not 10,000) times, but how does one eat an elephant?  Desmond Tutu, a South Africa cleric and theologian says, “there is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.”  Whatever you are trying to master is like eating an elephant.  It can’t be done all at once, and it is going to take time.  What are you waiting for!?  Get started right away, it’s going to take a while!

 

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know.  If you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

If you haven’t already, please feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss anything!

Persistence

Encouragement, General, Getting Started, P2P Sites, Voice Over

Welcome back! 

Thanks for reading!  If you are a new subscriber, thanks for joining us!

It’s pretty easy to get discouraged sometimes, right!?  This week I’d like to talk a little about persistence.

This is a tough business.

I mean, it’s easy enough to get involved, pretty much anyone can get a microphone and some editing software and go for it (OK, maybe not very WELL, but going for it anyway).  And it is BECAUSE it’s pretty easy to get involved, it is also very competitive.  Don’t get me wrong, it is not cutthroat win at all costs competitive…it’s just there are so MANY people all competing for the same work.  Honestly, I am sure there are some, but NONE of the people I know are unhappy when you book a gig.  Maybe it would be better to say “It’s crowded” instead of competitive.

A hungry school of fish.

Have you ever been to a lake where they sell loaves of bread to feed the fish with?  You know how the fish crowd around a single piece of bread, climbing all over one another to get at it?  Yeah, that’s what I think of when I say competitive.  It’s like a hungry school of (non-shark) fish all trying to get to that one piece of bread.

Online casting.

If you spend any amount of time on any of the online casting sites, you’ll know what I mean.  Just this morning I saw a job that was posted yesterday, which was open for the next 8 hours, who wanted to receive 50 auditions.  When I saw it early this morning, it had over 150 responses.  THREE TIMES what the client asked for.  In all honesty, if you don’t get your audition in within the first 25-30 submissions, odds of you getting the gig are miniscule even if just because they will never even GET to your audio.  On top of that, if they DO get to yours, by the time they do audio exhaustion will have set in, and your fine nuanced performance may as well be a jackass braying into the microphone.    Go ahead, try listening to 150 audio clips of the SAME TEXT and see how you feel after 30 of them.  Not good.

They’re not ALL bad.

I’ve talked about online casting sites (P2P) in an earlier post, so I won’t belabor it here, but suffice to say that using a P2P site is not an inherently bad idea; you just need to use it to draw clients away from the P2P and to you as a return client.  Your goal with the P2P sites should be to make satisfied clients who reach out to you when they need your services.

I’ve also previously mentioned that a voice over artist, especially when just getting started, should expect to book ON AVERAGE about 2 out of every hundred auditions.  On average…this means that sometimes you book 5 out of 100 and sometimes you book 1 out of 300.  It’s just the way averages work, sorry.

But it can be so discouraging!

Yep, it CAN. Trust me, I KNOW. But here is the rub: You book exactly ZERO of the jobs you don’t go for. It is important to KEEP TRYING!

Here’s the thing: Every audition you do teaches you something and makes you better at this craft.  It’s true, auditioning should never be the tool you use to practice, but the act of auditioning DOES give you practice and teaches you valuable things. Just make sure you are reasonably proficient at recording and editing your audio before you start auditioning and never stop getting training and coaching.  While auditioning does give you experience, and valuable lessons, it is definitely NOT a substitute for training.  Besides, remember earlier when I discussed casting directors getting WAY more auditions than they asked for?  What they DON’T need is to have to listen to someone’s (or many someone’s’s (I made that up just now) practice auditions).

If you just want to practice…

Then a good way to do that is record several takes using the script for the audition, edit it, master it and then LISTEN back to it.  If you wait a day between recording and listening, you are bound to hear the flaws in the audio.  Better yet, find a partner that has some experience and ask THEM to listen and give feedback.  Feedback from someone who knows what they are talking about is invaluable, and something you never get from an audition.  Well, never…except when they book you, I suppose that’s a form of feedback.

Another reason not to use auditions as practice.

Many of the clients posting jobs on casting sites do it over and over again. See, the casting sites got the memo about return customers.  If you are submitting substandard auditions in order to “practice”, before long when these return clients see your name, they skip right past your audio…after all they have 149 more to listen to.  Using auditions to practice is like shooting yourself in the foot to enter a marathon.

Anyway, back to persistence…

I suppose this goes for just about anything in life, but just because you “fail” (don’t get the job) doesn’t mean you don’t have what it takes to do this work.  For me this applies not only to voice over, but screen acting as well…maybe for you too. I know when I was a kid my mom always used to tell me: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”.  I modified that in my teen and early 20’s years to say: “If at first you don’t succeed, try once more then give up.  No sense embarrassing yourself”.  Clearly, as I have started this third career at sixty years old, that advice didn’t work out so well for me.  I highly recommend you follow that FIRST piece of advice from my mom and not listen to young, flippant, ignorant me.

The Dip.

I read a good book recently called The Dip.  Full disclosure, the book ALSO talks about quitting things as well as persevering.  You have to choose which things you pursue, but once you decide, you have to work through the dip.  That period of time after initial success that gets discouraging.  You see, it happens with nearly everything.  You jump in, have some minor success, get excited, then everything slows down and you get discouraged.  That discouraged part?  That’s the dip.  If you work hard through the dip, you come out the other side successful.  I’m paraphrasing, you really should read this book.

Did you know?

Think about all the cool gadgets we have for our convenience these days.  We carry more computing power in our pocket now than was available on the NASA rocket that sent men to the moon and back.  Have you ever thought about what it took to get these things into your hands? Things we take for granted today didn’t exist, and in some cases weren’t even being considered 150 years ago.  Here are some examples of when persistence paid off.

Airplanes!

Today, we think nothing of buying a ticket, heading to the airport and jumping on a huge airplane to head, well, just about anywhere we want to.  But the airplane is a relatively new invention in the overall scope of things. The Wright brothers are well known for their invention of powered, manned flying machines, but their first successful flight lasted only 20 seconds and traveled a meager 120 feet. Did you know that the successful flight in 1903 came after working on this idea for more than 7 years?  They started by modifying kites into unmanned gliders to learn about aerodynamics, and from 1896 to 1899 when they started working on a manned version, they encountered failure after failure.  Imagine what the world might look like today if they had given up after the first few? Best case, someone else would have figured it out, but no one would now know the names of Wilbur and Orville Wright.  Persistence pays.

Light bulbs.

Everyone knows the name Thomas A. Edison, because without him, we would still be reading by candlelight.  I’ve read accounts that Edison failed more than ONE THOUSAND TIMES before successfully developing a light bulb that worked.  Edison is famously quoted as saying: “I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb.”  What if he had stopped at 1000?  It was the 1001st try that has us lighting up our house like a Christmas Tree (AND lighting the Christmas Tree!).  Persistence pays.

Telephone.

Ever heard of a guy named Alexander Graham Bell?  Yeah, me too.  Think he just set out one day in 1876 and after a week or so, there was the phone?  Guess again.  Bell first envisioned the telephone in 1874, and two years and 31 failed attempts later he finally muttered those fateful words “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you”.  And HE was already researching speech and sound waves, so he was YEARS ahead of the game when he started.  Had he given up on the 30th attempt, we might still be sending telegrams.  Persistence pays.

It takes years…

I’ve said it before, and I still don’t know who to attribute it to, but it takes years (and a lot of hard work) to become an overnight success.  You don’t hear much about all the failed attempts leading up to success, you only hear about the success.  While voice actors are hardly household names, think about actors who are household names.  Do you think Robert De Niro started OFF as an academy award winning actor?  Nope.  You can google him if you’d like details, but De Niro’s first role was in 1963, and he didn’t really get “noticed” till 1973 in Mean Streets.  It took him 10 years to become an overnight success!

And you, too!

It will take time for you to become successful as a voice over artist or if you choose screen or stage actor.  There will be flops and failures along the way, as there is for everyone.  If you get discouraged and give up, what happens if you give up JUST before the perfect role for you; just before you get noticed?  Persistence paid for the airplane, light bulb, telephone and De Niro’s acting career.  It’ll pay off for you too!

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know.  If you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

If you haven’t already, please feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss anything!

 

Preparing the script

General, Training, Uncategorized, Voice Over

Welcome back! 

Thanks for reading!  If you are a new subscriber, thanks for joining us!

This week let’s talk a little bit about script preparation.

OK, I get that voice over is not exactly “The Ten Commandments” or “Gladiator”, but even a quick 15 second spot requires a script, and that script is going to require some kind of preparation before you deliver your lines.  So, how exactly do you prepare a script, didn’t the writers already do that? Get ready for your close up with Mr. Demille!

Actors

Unlike a quick 15 second script for voice over artists, for on-screen and theater actors, script preparation is a long form exercise. One of the first things an actor does when preparing a role is to figure out who their character is.  As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, Samuel L Jackson says in his Master Class, your character is a 3-dimensional human being who had a full life before he shows up in the scene.  Just like real humans, everything this character does is flavored by everything that’s happened to him in the past.  When he enters the scene, he is coming from somewhere, and when he exits the scene he is going somewhere.  The actor’s job is to make the audience believe that.

How do they do that?

I’m glad you asked!  One of the best way to figure out who your character is would be to read source material.  If a play, TV Show or movie is based on a book, the fastest way to learn who your character is would be to read the book.  An author has the luxury of however many pages he needs to give the reader all the intricate details that develop characters in his or her book.  Reading the source material let’s you know a LOT more detail than the script ever would, and helps you understand why the character is acting a particular way or saying the things he says.  It ALSO helps you know HOW the character might act in a given situation and how he would say the things he is saying.

What about the other characters in the scene?

If there are other characters in the scene, it is important to know how your character feels about them.  Does he like them?  Love them?  Despise them?  Do they frustrate him?  All of these things (and more!) coupled with the character’s history will inform how a actor portrays a character.

What if there is no source material?

Well, obviously if there is no source material, you can’t go to that to figure it out.  The only real option is to make it up!  That’s right, MAKE IT UP!  Sit down and write a page or two detailing the characters history, physical attributes (does he limp?  Stutter or stammer?).  This is possibly the most fun part of character development because you have full artistic control (well, at least till the director gets ahold of it) over the character. You are fleshing out the details of your character so you can bring him to life!

Choices!

As an actor, you have to make choices.  The choices you make about your character drive who that person is, and how he acts.  As previously mentioned you can draw information from source material if it’s available, or make it up, but either way you are going to have to choose certain experiences and details that you’ll highlight in your performance.  Every actor, whether theater, screen or voice over, needs to make choices about their character and stick with it!

How in the world does this relate to voice over?

The short answer is, that voice over artists ARE actors and need to develop their character just like theater and screen actors.  Your scripts are shorter, and you have far less time to record and submit an audition, but the process is very similar.

Preparing a VO Script…

With very few exceptions, a script you are going to record is a real person, speaking to one or more other real people.  You may be a manager speaking to an employee, a husband speaking to your wife or a salesman speaking to customers.  No matter what, you are portraying someone, speaking to someone else.

Choices (CONT)…

For voice over, it is important to make choices about your character the same way a theater or screen actor would.  This is actually obvious if you are doing voice over for animated cartoons, or even video games.  Also pretty obvious if you are narrating an audio book.  Maybe not as obvious for that 30 or 60 second radio or TV spot.

The truth is, even on a short advertisement it is important for a voice artist to know at east three things about his character (and you ARE playing a character whether you realize it or not):

  1. Who is he?
  2. Where is he?
  3. Who is he speaking to?

These are the three main things you must know about EVERY character you play.  You can get more nuanced than this to be sure, but at a minimum you must know these things.

Who is he?

How do you figure out who this character is?  The text in the script may give you a clue, and if not, possibly the direction notes.  Sometimes you may be a sales representative for a company, or perhaps the manager at one of their stores.  You MAY be one of their customers, or even perhaps a keynote speaker at a conference.  Maybe you are an instructor teaching an employee how a company runs, or even walking a homeowner through a simple home repair.  In any case, it is imperative that you either know instinctively or make something up to inform your read.

Where is he?

Where the character is at, physically, is going to color how he says the things he is saying in the script.  Is he in the boardroom with the CEO and members of the board?  Maybe he is in his boss’s office?  In a store. Or standing on a stage?  If you consider this, you’ll realize that you carry yourself and speak differently when you are home than when you are at work.  Differently still if you are standing in your boss’s office.  Where you are is going to color your read.

Who is he speaking to?

Just liek a stage or screen actor needs to know how he feels about the people he is speaking to so that he speaks to them in a way that fulfills his character, so too does a VO actor need to determine who he is speaking to in order to inform and color his reading of the text.  If he is speaking to a colleague for example, he is likely to use different inflections and language than if he was speaking to his boss, or a customer.  Who the character is speaking to will also inform and color how he says the words in the script.

Other considerations…

Where is the character from?  Is he from Boston?  Texas? Chicago?  NYC?  Each of these locations are going to bring a different accent and slang as well as emphasis on certain words.  Pahhk you-ah caah in the yaahd.  What is the goal of the script?  What is your character trying to accomplish?  You get the idea, try to make the character a 3-dimensional person.

And then what?

Once you figure out these three things (at a minimum) it is time to decide how that character would say the things he is saying in the script.  Let’s say you have determined that your character is the manager of a store, he is in his office in the store and speaking to a customer who is upset about something. He has no regional accent or dialect and his goal is to calm the customer down and make sure they are satisfied.

Now, imagine yourself sitting in the manager’s office in a local store.  Picture a disgruntled customer standing in the door frame, and he is telling you all about what one of your employees did to upset them.   Keep in mind that your goal is to settle them down and make them a satisfied customer.  Now from sitting at the manager’s desk listening to the customer complain, how would you respond?  Not what would you say, the writers have given you that, but HOW would you say it?  Then say it like that.

MARK UP THE SCRIPT!

Once you know who you are portraying and how you are portraying him, it’s time to mark up the script.  Start by reading through it once or twice, then quietly read it out loud to yourself.  Doing this will give you ideas of pacing and where dramatic pauses are required.  Remember to read it out loud as though you are saying it (like it is just occurring to you in your head like in a real conversation), not as though you are reading it – which means you do NOT need to honor all of the writers punctuation.  We do not read and speak the same  way.  After you’ve done this, and have a good idea of how you want to do it, read through it one more time and physically mark the script to cue yourself where to pause and which words to emphasize.  Make up your own shorthand for this, only YOU need to understand it.  If you need more than one read, just do this step as many times as the number of reads you have.

But they want three different reads!

Yep, this happens all the time.  How do you deal with that?  Simple really…change something about the character.  Maybe you add that this customer is a regular complainer, you’d respond somewhat differently even if your goal is to satisfy them, right?  Maybe you decide your character just found out he won the lottery and is so happy he’d do anything just to get through the rest of the day and get out of there to collect his winnings.  You don’t need to completely change the character, just one or two attributes.  What if the customer ran you down in the parking lot as you were getting ready to leave for the day?  Or maybe you just got off the phone with your spouse and your child is getting sent home from school, so you are in a hurry.  The possibilities are endless, just make sure you are also being true to the copy.

The key..

Because you are a voice actor, and not a screen or stage actor (well, maybe you are both, but we are talking about voice over here), you don’t have the luxury of showing the audience through facial expression or body language how you are feeling and what you are thinking.  You have only your voice to do the work.

But here’s the thing…body language and facial expressions DO affect the way we speak.  Even though your audience can’t see you, if you’ll just affect the attitude and expression you are trying to portray, the audience will “hear” that in your voice.  Smile when it is called for, frown, squint, scrunch up your face and gesture with your hands (just try not to make any stray noises when you do it).  ALL of these things will come through in your audio.

At the end of the day…

At the end of the day what is important is that you know your character and then become him for the read!  Good luck!  Break a lip!

 

 

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know.  If you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

If you haven’t already, please feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss anything!

 

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Encouragement, General, Politics, Voice Over

Welcome back! This week we talk about: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly…

First, sorry I am posting late this week…it’s been a doozy – long story.  Anyway…

Well, here we are – March 2021 – one year in COVID lock-down. Actually, I remember clearly it was March 17, 2020 when the folks at my “day job” sent us home to work telling us to expect 8-10 weeks of remote working due to the pandemic.  Here we are just over a full year later and even though I retired from that job in December, the people I worked with are STILL working full time remotely.

So, as I look back over the last year and consider what the world looks like today, I have to ponder what has transpired through what maybe for some a different lens.  When I was a kid, I remember a saying: In every dark cloud, there is a silver lining.  I believe that is true, and I believe you can find good in just about any situation; whether that is learning a tough lesson, finding new hope or identifying something new, there is always something positive to come of it.

Without further ado, let’s take a look back over the last year and see if we can find: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Do you hear it?  Wah-ee-ah-ee-ah…wah, wah, wah…).

Let’s start at the end and work our way back so we end on a positive note, shall we?

The Ugly

I could write this section using just two words: Politics and People.  But I won’t.  Let me expound.

Politics seem to ALWAYS be the ugly in this country for some reason.  And in 2020, the politics of COVID were sometimes overshadowed by what was a very contentious Presidential Election.  We won’t talk much about the election, it is “passed and opening” as we say in the navy.  No longer a threat is another way to say it.  But I do want to touch a bit on the politics of COVID and politics in general.

How do national elections really impact you?

Here’s the thing; especially at the national level, and even to a large part on the state level, the politics of the day have very little impact on our daily lives. Local politics is where I pay the most attention, because THAT is where there is an effect. It irks me when politicians politicize events to make themselves look better, usually at the expense of some other person or group.  It is particularly irksome during a global pandemic when people just need to know the truth of what is going on to protect themselves, family and neighbors.

There are LIVES at stake!

The politics of COVID have been particularly ugly, likely thanks to the contentious election.  People are getting sick, people are dying…this is not the time to take advantage of the situation to get people to give you money and get you into office.  Now is the time for levelheaded, fact-based reporting so people can do what they need to do.  The politics of COVID have been particularly ugly if just for the fact that the dichotomy of positions puts people at risk.

And the government in general?  

Having been employed for many years (40 plus) by the Federal Government, one thing I know is that the government, the bureaucrats, need to look to the public as though they are knowledgeable and taking the appropriate actions – even when neither of those is true.  Early on in the pandemic, government officials stated as fact thigs that were really no more than theories. Come on people…it’s fully OK to say, “This is what we know for sure, this is what we think, and this is what we have no clue about”.  Our government never does that.  We have much better information today than we did a year ago, and that early misinformation, in large part I believe, leads to the next “Ugly” thing: People.

I love individuals, but dislike people.

Have you heard the term “herd mentality”?  Yeah, me too.  And herd mentality SUCKS…especially since there are multiple herds all with different mentalities.  It’s bothersome that there has not been clear, concise, truthful information about this pandemic (among other things.  Some people still believe the earth is flat).  I’ve seen people on my social media feeds who have been long-time friends arguing about transmission rates, death statistics and everything else about this disease.  If it weren’t so serious, it would be comical.

For some, the death rate is 100%

Here’s the thing.  The death rate for at-risk people who contracted this disease and passed away is 100%.  Their families are dealing with it 100% of the time.  It is horrifying to diminish the loss of those people by pointing out that overall the death rate is some smaller number.  As I just googled the death rate in the US, it is true that out of the total population of roughly 331 Million people the death rate is just less than .2%.  However, that statistic (remember, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics) compares everyone, even those who did not contract COVID, against the number of deaths (539, 659 as of the time of this writing).  It’s a bit higher if you only look at the number of deaths compared to the people who HAVE contracted the disease (29, 664, 869).  THAT number is TEN TIMES that national average at just under 2%.  And the infection rate is just under 10%.

It seems small, but put another way…

While these numbers appear low, remember that they represent real lives and real families.  10% of the US population (and I am just focusing on the US here, the numbers are different world wide) is THIRTY MILLION PEOPLE.  And the 2% of those people who died is just under 540, 000 people.  The operative word here is” PEOPLE.  Real people with families and friends they left behind.

For a given person…

Yeah, your chance of not getting COVID is greater than your chance of getting it (and I wonder what those odds would be WITHOUT mandated precautions? We’ll never know, so anything anyone says is conjecture).  And your chance of dying if you do get it is pretty small as well, for those people who died from COVID, those small numbers mean absolutely nothing.  Have some compassion people!  There are more than half a million people suffering unimaginably and you are arguing about statistics.  Stop, please. I hate the mask, and not being able to throw a whopper of a party, but I hate people dying even more.  Wear the mask and distance yourself from others, if not specifically for YOU , for the people you come in contact with.

So, yeah, politics and people are the ugly part of the last year.

The Bad

Many bad things happened this year.  What follows are just the things I can think of off the top of my head, and I am sure there are many more.

Social Distancing

The first thing that comes to mind is the social distancing aspect of this pandemic.  Sure, no parties, no family gatherings…those are bad but not THAT bad.  What is really bad is people going through rough times all alone.  I think of the people I know who lost a loved one last year (not due to COVID) and who could not see them in the hospital in their final days.  And then to add insult to injury their funerals and memorial services could not be attended.  I know several people who are affected by this, you may as well, and many are putting off a memorial till the pandemic is over.  It’s sad when a person’s life cannot be honored and celebrated as it should.  It’s horrendous that some people have to go through hospital stays or being home bound without the physical support and encouragement of family and friends.

Bad for business…

Next, I consider how many small mom and pop businesses have had to close up shop as a result of the pandemic.  So many, particularly public facing, businesses have closed, dashing the hopes and dreams of the proprietors.  It is horrible to consider the people who worked and saved and worked some more to open their own business, only to have it ripped away by a virus you can’t even see.  I sincerely hope at least some of the people in this situation can re-open and flourish once the pandemic is behind us.

Vacations…

This one is somewhat related to the last bad thing, and that is vacations.  While things are now starting to open back up, with appropriate safeguards, places to go where you can unwind and take a break from the daily grind are still few and far between.  I personally have had two vacations cancelled in 2020, and now our rescheduled cruise is rescheduled once again for 2022.  I know…first world problems.

The Good…

And so, here we are at the silver lining.  What good came of this pandemic? Keep reading.

The Vaccine…

It goes without saying that the vaccine, which appears to be pretty effective, has been released (OK, not released in 2020, but developed in 2020 to allow release early in 2021).  And that’s a good thing.  But what is REALLY great is that the government pretty much got out of the way and let the scientists develop and release it quickly.  Regardless of how you feel personally about vaccines in general, and what negative side effects they may have, I don’t think anyone can argue there is much empirical evidence that they facilitate herd immunity and reduce or remove altogether the odds of contracting a disease.  Think of Polio, measles, mumps and more.  My hope is that as they roll out the vaccine, conditions will improve to start getting things opened back up again.

Remote work…

One enormous thing we learned, and which I consider a good thing, is that corporations learned that much of the work they do can be done by their employees remotely, away from a traditional office.  I know my former employer, the Federal Government, is considering sweeping changes to their telework policy to allow employees to work remotely a significant amount of time.  In some cases, even allowing employees to move to a different location VERY remote from the office and work remotely full time.

Perhaps this will mean we need less dedicated office space (and therefore lower corporate costs) which could lead to lower prices for some goods and services (let’s hope) and maybe it means there will be a lot more empty office space (which means cheaper leases) for those who just get started after the pandemic.  Only time will tell, but I consider this good.

Home based business…

Home based businesses have flourished in 2020.  If you have a service or product that can be done from home and either delivered online or through the mail, chances are you have seen an increase in business this year.  For me, I’ve had the opportunity to open a voice over business that is done completely online and from the comfort of my home.  And while I see this as a “good” for me and others, there is also a lot more competition in the last year.  Anyone thinking of getting into voice over had the perfect chance to get started in 2020.  Maybe this one is two sides of the same coin.

Voice Over…

The voice over industry had moved online long before the pandemic, but with COVID precautions in place at studios around the country, the online voice over industry has flourished.  Where once large jobs were being recorded in professional studios by a small percentage of working artists, the big name, the industry has really opened up to allow lesser known artists to start competing for this work.  While this area of voice over is much more competitive, I believe it has given some very talented, unknown people a chance to compete (and sometimes win!) with the big boys.

What about you?

If you have been negatively affected by COVID then I am sorry you are struggling right now and my hope is that things will brighten up for you soon.  If you have experienced a positive affect then I am happy for you and hope that you recognize (and capitalize on) the opportunity to thrive in the face of so much bad.

In either case, I hope this post finds you well, and with luck, in line for the vaccine!

Now may be the time for you to start your own home-based business.  If voice over seems to interest you, why not either check out my earlier blog posts or head over to Amazon and pick up my new book “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Getting Started in Voice Over But Didn’t Know Who to Ask”.  Or, if you are being frugal, just subscribe to this blog and I’ll send you a link to a free copy!

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know.  If you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

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Ah, the doldrums…

Encouragement, General, Training, Voice Over

Welcome back! 

So, have you ever heard anyone say they are in “The Doldrums”?    It seems that January and February are the doldrums for both Voice over AND acting, at least my agent tells me that these first two months of the year are traditionally, agonizingly slow.  And then there’s COVID…but let’s not talk about what’s happening “in these unprecedented times” (Aren’t you tired of THAT one now?)  And to be honest, that has definitely been true for me.

Not saying I haven’t been working…I certainly have.  I’ve managed to land a role in a feature length independent film, I’ve finalized and published a book and produced two audiobooks to boot.  I’m also working on a production for a ZOOM play. But man, I’ll tell you, for me anyway, the opportunities sure have been sparse!

SHAMELESS PLUG

If you’re interested in my book, you can get it here.

If you’d RATHER have that book for free (A $4.99 value!), go here and subscribe to my blog.

If you’re interested in listening to either of the Audio Books, you can find them here:

Alpha Squad: The Sixth Martyr

CBD: The In Depth Guide To Medicinal Cannabis Transform Your Health Without The High

OK Marketing over…for now anyway.

So, what ARE the doldrums exactly?

If you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve probably heard people talking about “The Doldrums”.  At least I did.  I never really knew what that meant, except that it was bad.  Later, after joining the Navy and traveling by sea for a while, I learned that old sailors (those wooden ships and iron men types) referred to the doldrums as periods when there were no winds to move the ships through the water, so progress slowed to a crawl.

Both of those ideas are true to a degree, but I wanted to know for SURE what it meant, so I looked it up and here’s what I found:

noun (used with a plural verb)

a state of inactivity or stagnation, as in business or art: August is a time of doldrums for many enterprises.

the doldrums,

            1. a belt of calms and light baffling winds north of the equator between the northern and southern trade winds in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
            2. the weather prevailing in this area.

a dull, listless, depressed mood; low spirits.

What surprised me most about this definition is that the term “doldrums” actually refers to prevailing weather in a particular part of the world.  Which is interesting, but not what I’m talking about when I mention doldrums in this context.  What I am discussing here today is that “a state of inactivity or stagnation, as in business or art”.  I suppose, if it lasted long enough, it could also describe “a dull, listless, depressed mood; low spirits”, but we are not there yet!

Not everyone is in the doldrums…

Maybe it’s a localized phenomenon, or maybe it’s just me (Please God, not just me…that would crush my fragile ego) (Can you see my virtual eye roll?) because several of my fellow narrators are definitely NOT experiencing a slowdown in the last couple months.  My friend Joshua Alexander is reporting some pretty stellar, record breaking, sales in the last couple months.  Envy much?  (Yep).

Now a shameless plug for Josh!

Listen, if you are in Voice Over, Josh is a fantastic resource to learn all about self-promotion and direct marketing.  He is always willing to help a fellow VOA, and he administers a great FaceBook group to boot!  If you are IN the doldrums, head over and sign up for Josh’s blog and receive not zero, not one, but TWO free e-books that will help you learn how to effectively market yourself!  On top of that his blog is always informative, relative and humorous to boot.  You’ll enjoy it, I know I do!

OK, back to the doldrums

While the methods Josh preaches work wonderfully (and implementing them has been fruitful), what I need is to be more consistent. All of my failings in consistently marketing myself aside, it’s not to say I haven’t been busy.

What follows are some things to help you keep busy during slow periods and avoid the doldrums.  At least, these are some ways I’ve found to keep busy, and keep moving my business forward, during the “doldrums”.  After all, the last thing we need is a bunch of VOA’s who are dull, listless and depressed!

Training, Training, Training!

Can you ever be so good at your craft that you don’t need to continue training?  If you are struggling to find the answer to that question, I’ll just give it to you here to make it easy for you to keep reading.  No.  The answer is NO.  You are never so proficient that you won’t benefit from more training.  Using my above example, I happen to know that Josh continues to train with a coach he introduced me to (THANKS JOSH!) Scott Burns.  Josh introduced me several months ago.  He still thinks Scott is HIS coach…HA HA HA – He’s MINE!

Sorry, I got a little carried away…where were we…Oh yeah, training.

Book some sessions with your coach

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll have already found yourself a coach for your VO work, now, while things are slow, may be a good time to book some sessions.  Maybe you need to refresh your demos or produce a new demo in a new genre.  This is a PERFECT time to work on that until work picks up.  If you don’t already HAVE a coach, now is a great time to FIND one.  Reach out to Scott if you like (just remember he is MY coach, Josh!) although I have no real idea if he has availability for any more students.  Or spend a few mijutes reading my post on training here.

Start Blogging

You don’t have to be an expert or a polished author to write a blog.  This post is living proof of THAT.  Everyone has something to say, and that includes you.  Take a few minutes to sit down and brainstorm a dozen or so blog topics.  Do some research if you have to, and then think about what you’d like to say about them. You may feel like you are not a writer, like you’ll never figure out how to write something every week – just like I did – but if you spend a little time (30 minutes?) just thinking about what you’d like to write about, you are SURE to come up with some great ideas.

You MAY think no one is really interested in what you have to say, and at the start, that may be right, but eventually you will attract some followers who DO care about what you have to say.  Like I tell my kds, you NEVER KNOW how something you say may impact someone.

A story about impacting people

Let me give you an example from my own life of how things you say may impact people around you.  I recently reconnected with an old friend from my days being stationed in Naples, Italy (yeah, lucky me, I know), Phil.  (HI PHIL!) Anyway, as we were catching up over email Phil told me a story about something I had said that has stuck with him.  Now, I want to tell you I have no real recollection of the actual conversation he was recounting, nor do I remember saying what he remembers me saying – it was a throw away comment to me – but to Phil it had meaning, and it has stuck with him for more than 20 years.

Rather than write it all out, I’ll just paste what he wrote to me here below:

“Back in Naples, Italy, I had that small business fixing VCR players for my friend in the PX, who rented them out. I would troubleshoot the machines, order the parts, and wait weeks for the parts to arrive before I could fix the machines.

I really couldn’t keep up with the work, due to extensive travel. I gladly relinquished the jobs to you.

When I returned from my next trip, I asked, “Hey, Gary, how are the repairs going? Do you need any help?”

You responded, “No, Phil. I took all the parts I needed from the worst of the lot and fixed four VCRs for the PX. They agreed that the trashed machines weren’t worth fixing, so they are going to order new ones.”

“And they’re happy trashing the old machines?”

“Oh, yeah. They’re only interested in the rental income. The VCRs are worthless sitting on the shelf, waiting for parts.”

That was when I realized that you understood the value of time much better than me.”

All I was doing was explaining how I was handling the business he had bequeathed me, nowhere in my mind was ANYTHING about time management or the value of time.  I’m sure Phil fully understands the value of time, and in this instance, apparently, I got lucky and made a good decision, the point is that you never know how something you say may impact someone.  So SAY IT.  Write that blog!

Perfect your setup…

Another good use of your time during a slow period is reaching out to an engineer and tweaking your audio setup to make it better.  Especially if you are a new narrator or have limited audio engineering experience (like me) it is possible your audio setup or editing/mastering chain could use some optimization.  Best case, it makes you audition submissions sound better (when you get them) and worst case you find out that everything is tuned properly for you.  More likely, somewhere between the best case and worst case, you’ll streamline your processing and make recording/editing/mastering quicker.  In this business it is WAY better to be first in than last.

Add a complimentary skill to your portfolio…

There are a number of ways you can add to your VO business, or even start a secondary part of your business.  If you are accomplished, experienced and have been IN the business for some time, become a VO coach.  If coaching is just too much for you, become a mentor to someone with less experience than you.  Maybe you are an AWESOME sound engineer, pick up a sideline to work for less skilled narrators editing and mastering their audio.  Maybe you always wanted to be a Hollywood star and you can start looking at stage or screen acting as a sideline.  Acting proficiency can ONLY help your VO abilities and could land you a couple paying gigs to boot.

But don’t just do what I suggest…

There are a LOT of ways to not only stay busy, but stay busy building your business, when times are slow.  Think about some of those “Quadrant 4” (for all you Steven Covey fans out there) items you’ve been putting off that could probably use some attention.  If you spend just a few minutes a day thinking about all the peripheral things that need to get done, I’m sure you can come up with a pretty long list.  Then, when the work starts to pick up you have fewer things to worry about, and can dig in and give the performance of your life!

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know.  If you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

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Guest Blog – Phil Gabriel: Six Things I Wish I Had Known Before Producing My First Audiobook

Author Perspective, General, Voice Over

Introducing; Phil Gabriel

As Phil mentions below, we have been friends since the mid-90’s when we were both living and working in Naples, Italy (I know, pretty lucky, right!?).  And, as often happens when working in or for the military, once our time in Naples was over we went our separate ways to our next assignments and even though we did correspond periodically at first, we lost touch; to be expected when people live on different sides of the world. Then, as fate would have it, and unbeknownst to one another, we BOTH gravitated toward a second career in publishing, Phil as an author and myself as a narrator for audio books (among other things).   Imagine my surprise when Phil reached out to me to see if I was interested in narrating his latest work after seeing one of my earlier blog posts!

Although I was not the right narrator (and knowing it is not a project you can do well is one of the skills a narrator needs to develop), I really loved the book; once Phil gets noticed he is going to be that “big name author” he mentions.   After exchanging several emails, and catching up on 25 years of not talking, I asked Phil if he’d mind writing a guest blog post from the author side of the narration fence.  He did, and the result is below.  Enjoy!

Welcome Phil!

Hi, I’m Phil Gabriel, a friend of Gary’s from way back. We both ended up in the publishing business (after several detours through war zones and government service); Gary on the audio production side and me on the writing side.

Finding the right narrator takes TIME

I recently reconnected with Gary while searching for a voice actor for my next audiobook project (insert shameless plug here—Mages in Manhattan). We exchanged multiple emails about the audiobook business, both finding out that the other had unique insights into the business. Gary asked me to write a guest post for his blog, and here we are.

Producing an Audio Book is like a second (or in my case, third) full time job!

What experience do I bring? I have written over a dozen novels under various pen names as I try to make a second career out of this writing gig. I have completed two audiobook projects, with a third in progress. This new project would be my fourth audiobook.

I have made almost every mistake you could imagine while producing those audiobooks. I have used both Findaway Voices and ACX as production platforms. I have used different voice actors for consecutive books; I have lost audio files; I have missed multiple deadlines. Despite these missteps, I got two audiobook projects completed, with a third coming out soon.

Here are some things I wish I had known before my first production.

  1. Writing the book was the easy part. Audiobooks take a long time to produce. I spent more time on production than it took to write my latest book. I had to listen to every minute of completed audio, with a notebook in hand, to catch any mistakes. This took hours and hours of time.Let me tell you a secret. Most writers hate hearing their work. I love my books and re-read them for pleasure. But hearing them is another matter. The multiple “he said” and “she said” tags that the eye skips in reading become insanely obvious and distracting when read. Reviewing my first audiobook was torture. I desperately wanted to re-write entire sections to eliminate extra voice tags and clumsy phrases. But that wouldn’t be fair to the narrator. She was reading the book as I wrote it. I gritted my teeth at the clumsy writing and approved her work.On the positive side, I revamped my writing style after hearing my first book. Now I seek to cut down on extra tags.
  2. Unless you’re a big-name author, no one will want to work on a Royalty Share.  Currently, I am a very low-level author, with monthly sales averaging less than $500.00. Why is that important? Because almost no voice actor would consider me for a royalty share deal. It would take years to make any money at my current sales. I wasted time posting my first project as a Royalty Share deal. Once I shifted to a straight PFH (Per Finished Hour) project, I received some great auditions.
  3. Short projects will not receive any auditions. I tried to post some of my short stories as audiobook projects. Surely, that would be a win-win; I would get a short story narrated I could use as a freebie for my newsletter subscribers, and a narrator would get a payday. Gary let me know that the economics of that scheme won’t work for a narrator. A narrator would have to take the risk of applying for the project, work up the audio sample, which in the case of a short story would be a large percentage of the project, and then wait for approval or rejection. Almost anybody would avoid that type of project in favor of ten- or twelve-hour books where the payoff is much higher.
  4. The perfect voice may not be the right narrator. Writers are strange. We spend an inordinate amount of time listening to the voices in our heads tell us stories. Each of these voices is unique, and when we find a narrator that sounds like our imaginary friend, we jump on that voice. In my case, I found the perfect voice for my protagonist. The narrator sounded just like I imagined my character. I hired this narrator for the first book. She brought my protagonist to life.However, when she read my male character’s dialog (the love interest of my protagonist), he sounded like an insufferable twit.
  5. The best audition sample for a book is not the first chapter. With Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature, an author only has a few moments to capture the reader’s attention. So, I spend a lot of time ensuring my books start with a bang to hook the readers. I cram a lot of action into the first few pages.A lot of action, but not much dialog. If I had submitted a different sample, one that included multiple characters, I would have had a much better idea of how the final product would sound.
  6. The sample should include any foreign characters and accents needed. This was a big error on my part. Sure, it’s easy to describe someone as having a heavy Glasgow accent, or to fire up Google Translate to throw in some Japanese phrases but finding someone who can handle that range of accents is a tough task.My latest project would be a nightmare; an American magician, his apprentice (the ghost of a Japanese schoolgirl), his Japanese girlfriend, a German werewolf, and the ghost of Elvis. That’s a lot to ask of any narrator.

Still, I hold hope that the narrator I need, the man with a four-octave range, pure Japanese and German accents, and a killer Elvis impression, is out there.

Thank you Phil!

I really enjoyed Phil’s insight into an author having his book produced into an audio book; it’s a perspective I wasn’t aware of and frankly never gave much thought to.  I’ve always known (or believed) that the author (or rights holder if it is not the author) for a book went through a process of “selection” versus “rejection” when listening to auditions, but it never really occurred to me that they were listening for the person they ALREADY HEARD in their head when writing/reading their books.  Knowing it for certain now certainly helps with the feelings of rejection when you get the “Concerning your audition for…” rejection emails from ACX.  Thanks Phil, I apprevciae your insight an taking the time out of your busy schedule to write this post for my blog!

If you’d like to read or listen to any of Phil’s work, you can find him on Amazon here:  Phil Gabriel on Amazon.

Thanks for reading, see you next week when I geek out on selecting and putting together a travel rig!

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment below to let me know.  If you DIDN’T enjoy it, well, I’d like to hear from you too!

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