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Voice Actor Video Tips
Voice actors tend to shy away from facing a camera. They shouldn’t. Now more than ever, the camera offers new marketing opportunities.
Just Before that…
Secretly, You’ve Wanted This
Be careful what you wish for? The relief you wanted is being handed to you on a platter. Take it.
Give Yourself Five Minutes
You can do this one thing today, and every day for the next month to bring your head back.
Pandemic Marketing
Courtesies. Sensitivities. Diplomacy. Nuances in this extraordinary time. Not just any old marketing ploy will do.
Ode to COVID
Are the consequences of this pandemic good or bad? No, they just are.
The Pitfalls of “What if…?”
“What if…?” was a bad idea before the pandemic. Now it’s perfectly faulted.
The COVID-19 Long Tail Paradox
In the span of what seems to be a few short days, we've all had to adjust like never ever before. "Social Distancing". That new buzzword phrase perfectly connotes our greatest paradox: we cannot do what we all really WANT to do...come together to help each other....
Voice Over Education
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World Voices #WoVochat
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VO Business & Compensation
5 Indications It’s Time to Fire Your Voice Over Talent
Is it time to fire your voice over talent? Things change; voice trends, business practices, relationships. Sometimes it makes sense to move on.
ipDTL Improvements
What? You think any remote connection service as advanced as ipDTL is gonna sit on their hands? Not a chance. See what you’ve been missing.
Routine: Ball ‘n’ Chain or Saving Grace?
Rooting Out Routines Shall we agree that a routine is desirable for a successful VO business? Whether it's daily, weekly, or monthly, the routine assures we're hitting all the marks in our business plan, yearly goals, and priorities for success. It's something we...
Voice Over Education
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Voice Over Hardware & Software tools
Make Your Own Cloud
Don't get me wrong...I love DropBox, and Box.net, and SugarSync, and ZeroPC, Cubby, SkyDrive and any of about 30 other great "cloud" solution for saving, backing-up, sharing, and accessing your data. I love the idea of "cloud" so much I've blogged about it several...
Preaching to the Choir
When this blog grows up, it wants to be just like VoiceOverXtra. Actually, nothing is quite like VoiceOverXtra, and that's what makes it great. Founder and administrator - John Florian - with his publishing background, has created probably the greatest single...
Geeky Christmas Buying Guide for VO’s
You can see the holiday shopping buzz building already. If ever a price was going to be knocked-down on hardware items it's between now and the end of the year. Below is a brief collection of some stuff I've noticed in just the last day. Tools like this can make...
Skate Past “8”?
Windows 8 is in release. Will the new offering from Redmond: a) convince current Windows users to upgrade? b) convince current MAC users to switch? c) be a better OS for my VO business? Windows 7 was perhaps Microsoft's most robust and stable OS ever. Those who never...
Reaper
Ya think after you've been around a while, you kinda know what's out there...the equipment, the coaches, the agents, the producers, the software, the hardware. Sometimes a mic or pre-amp comes across my radar that I missed before. but for the most part when people...
Sony Comes to Mac
Most voice actors are pretty loyal to their audio editing software. It's nearly impossible to pry the fingers of Pro-Tools advocates from their keyboards. Others like the various iterations of Adobe's Audition software (Cs6.0 is the latest version). There's also...
15+ Top Sites to Shop for VO Equipment
C'mon...admit it! The thought of adding a new...er... something ...to your audio chain holds a magic allure. It may, in fact, actually improve your sound, but even if it doesn't...the effect it has on your morale and attitude is worth the price, no? Well, not...
Ngram Viewer
Voice Actors bring a lot of skills to the table...much more than just raw talent, but at the core of things, we're adept with words, and words are formed by culture and history...trends and civilization. We HAVE to know the meaning of a word or phrase...the...
The Mighty Triumvirate
God Bless Apple, Google, and Microsoft. In the global scheme of things, these three tech giants keep us ahead of the also-rans and the copycats. Everyone who is a voice actor uses products from one, two, or all of these tech giants. Apple was recently ranked the most...
7 Best RSS
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think RSS beats just about any other digital gateway for digesting daily content quickly. I check my RSS (really simple syndication) feeds everyday with my Google reader. Over years, I've acquired a list of around 175 sites that round...
Voice Over Events
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Listen to my Commercial demoVoice Over Niches
Tables Turned
Watch this video
Secretly, You’ve Wanted This
Be careful what you wish for? The relief you wanted is being handed to you on a platter. Take it.
Give Yourself Five Minutes
You can do this one thing today, and every day for the next month to bring your head back.
Voice Over Hardware & Software tools
Revisiting the Tablet in Your Studio
Yesterday, Stephanie Cicarelli of VOICES.com asked a question on her FaceBook group "THE VOICE ACTING HUB" about reading copy in the studio. "Do you read voice-over scripts on screens or do you prefer printing them?" she asked. Honestly I was floored to find that...
Whittam Launches VO Studio Tech
Everybody's first choice in audio technical help is stepping it up. George Whittam is re-branding his top-flight audio services as VO STUDIO TECH. This is a smart move by George, and certainly shows a growth in his expertise, his clientele, and his ability to build...
Finding Your SmartPhone Voice
You think pre-amps, DAWs, and mics form a competitive market?! Ha! Nothing comes close to the smartphone industry! Perennial favorite Nokia is on the ropes, and resorting to a Microsoft OS. Former King-of-the-Hill RIM (Research in Motion) i.e. Blackberry is all but...
The Digital Audio Frontier
...and that's really the best way to think about it...as a frontier. Full of opportunity, but harsh and unforgiving territory that can punish and leave you empty. I'm enthusiastic about the start-ups that blaze new paths in the frontier. Early on, I was a big...
A BETTER Booth? Can it Be?
You wouldn't believe the shameless way I've prostrated myself to request prizes from people and organizations all over the VO map for VOAToday. Luckily, I didn't have to beg too hard, 'cause at every turn, I've gotten nothing but cooperation and generous donations for...
Speech-to-Text
No...not Text-to-Speech. Speech-to-Text. In the newsroom, the most hated, vilified, time-wasting, and tedious duty is manually logging interviews done in the field. We have desks with playback machines, a computer, and a video monitor that displays a time-code. ..but...
Monday VO Missives
This week, I'm moving the youngest of my three daughters into her new dorm room as a Freshman at the University of Goodbye Retirement. Blog posts may seem haphazard, off-topic, or downright pathetic, but on the other hand, it could be fun. Regardless, I couldn't help...
3Desk, Enable Talk Project, and VideoBlocks
Wednesday -- out of nowhere -- I got a rash of LinkedIn connection referrals to a new freelance P2P site called "3Desk" Like Elance, and Odesk, and Thumbtack, and about a gazillion other sites, 3Desk (it appears) is a marketplace for local freelancers, and...
V123 PPS
Say what you want about so-called Pay-to-Play (P2P) services like Voice123.com and Voices.com, but they (and others like them) are usually at the heart of trends in this business...things like pay-scales, the job marketplace, internet prospects, and more. In that...
Diminishing Returns
When the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was in Las Vegas in January, I made a B-Line for the Blue Microphones booth so I could drool. I wrote about that visit in this January blog: CES for VO's...then again in March: CourVO on Blue Blog. I also met with the Blue mic...
Living on Air Redux
When an event goes right, you may hear about it more than once. Such is the case with Joe Cipriano's visit to Vegas earlier this month. Bear with me. You'll remember, it was a dual-purpose weekend. Not only was VO Coach and Producer Marice Tobias in town for an...
Make the 80/20 Rule Work for You
Also known as the 80/20 rule...the Pareto Principal, is "... named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in...
Before You Buy an Audio Interface… Use the “Wizard”
Remember last Wednesday, I asked you to bookmark a website from a friend of mine back in the "Bootheel" of Missouri? (See "Recording Review"). For all of you who did that, you're already in the know. For those who didn't, here's today's wisdom from Brandon Drury,...