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Voice Over Talent Celebrate September as National VoiceOver Appreciation Month
Most people are familiar with the art of acting, having watched performers on stage in a play, on television or in the movies. Using the physicality of their bodies, their facial expressions and their voices, actors bring to life a multitude of characters from a script.
 National VoiceOver Month But the arts are home to another kind of actor who most often resides behind off camera or stage but may actually be experienced by the public much more frequently (often daily) than stage or screen actor. This artist is called a voice actor and his/her business is known as voice over. It is this industry that September’s National Voice Over Month celebrates and honors.
While voice actors can also act on the stage and screen and vice versa, many voice actors (also known as voice over talents or voice talents) remain off camera, using their only their significant vocal skills to bring a writer’s script to life – much in the same way radio actors did before the advent of television.
But the mediums that voice over talents work in today is much wider today than it was in the early part of the 20th Century when radio was the dominant media. Today, with the explosion of communication tools brought on by the success of the internet, just a small; sample of the places voice talents’ work can be heard around the world include computers, stadiums and arena, video games, telephone systems, airports, colleges and universities, the internet as well as television and radio.
The specialized work of voice over talents is featured in commercials, video and DVD narrations, e-learning programs, cartoons and other animation, message on hold, political announcements, radio and television station promotional announcements, documentaries…basically anywhere a story needs to be told with more than pictures
Dave Courvoisier, Advisory Board member of the non-profit Society of Accredited Voice Over Artists (SaVoa), says “…the depth and breadth of talent represented by various actors in practically every city in the U-S is astounding.” Courvoisier further states, “Voice Overs is a thriving and creative freelance enterprise being quietly practiced by people who take their craft seriously, and contribute greatly to the advertising and media marketplace .”
Advances in digital technology have transformed much of the Voice Over landscape in recent years…allowing the lion’s share of voice talent to practice their business from their homes or private studios, transmitting a finished audio file to their client instantaneously. That convenience, though, also individuates the voice actors from one another.
“Calling for a month-long appreciation of the Voice Over Artist will serve to draw the far-flung personalities of this unique industry into a sense of community and support,” says Courvoisier.
For further information please visit the National VoiceOver Appreciation Month website.
This Press Release prepared for Savoa by Dave Courvoisier and Peter O’Connell
In this podcast interview Diane Havens talks about how she started in theatre and education, and then with a change in family circumstances and the desire to return to performance while working from home developed her niche in voice over. She also shares some of the background to the highly acclaimed “Hear the Bill” project which she co-founded.
Download Podcast: Conversation with Diane Havens (right click “…save target as…”)
Transcript of conversation with Diane Havens
Andy: We’re now sitting in the garden of the Hyatt Regency, with beautiful sunshine. Just in the shadow of – almost literally – the shadow of the MGM building. The birds are singing, and it’s a beautiful afternoon… and sitting with me is Diane Havens. Hi Diane.
 Diane Havens Diane: Hello.
Andy: It’ a pleasure to meet you.
Diane: And it’s a pleasure to meet you after all this time.
Andy: Yeah… after all this time. We first were in contact the time of the “Hear the Bill” campaign, and you’re one of the…
Diane: Organisers.
Andy: Was it your idea?
Diane: Well, it was my idea. I don’t know if I really expected it to become a reality, but I did have the idea, and Kat – Kat Keesling – made it a reality because she set up the website, and together we just ran with the idea.
Andy: OK. We’ll come back to that in just a moment, but first of all I’d like to ask you a little about your background. How did you get interested in voice overs? When did you start?
Diane: Well, I’ve always been interested in acting, because I was a stage actor in my younger years.
Andy: Was that in school, or professionally?
Diane: I have a theatre degree, and I studied theatre and after I graduated I went into some stage work in New York City, because I’m from New York, originally. And I did that for a while. Then as life takes you on different paths I also enjoyed education. So I taught school for quite a while. But I also felt like I wanted to go back into something where… that was performance based. So I thought that now that I have a child, and would like to work from home and with the advent of home studios it became an easy reality for me to go into voice acting.
Andy: When abouts was that, roughly?
Diane: Well, I started out about four years ago.
Andy: So you had changes in family circumstances and that made you feel that one direction was closing and so you were trying to explore different areas…
Diane: And it’s a very creative thing. I’d like… I like change and I like creativity, and it’s a great field to be in if you want to be able to chart your own course.
Andy: Right. So what was your first experience of voice acting? Did you… Did somebody suggest it to you or how?
Diane: Well, actually, my husband was thinking of going in to it because he was – as people are – told, “Oh. You have a great voice. You should really do it”. He does a lot of trade shows, that’s his profession. So he has to do a lot of public presentations. So he said, “Yeah! That would be a great thing to do”, and I said “You know what? I think I’d like to do that”. So I kind of stole the idea from him.
Andy: OK. Did you take classes?
Diane: Yes. I did. I took a few classes in… I’d been getting my studio set up was what I needed the most help with, because I think I had…
Andy: Yes, you had a background in acting…
Diane: Yes, so the performance end wasn’t my major concern, but being able to set up a good home studio, and do the recording end of it was my major hurdle. And once I had that down, then I, you know, the marketing is after that. So you have a lot of things you have to master before you can really think about doing it seriously.
Andy: OK. So, a lot of things to master in terms of…?
Diane: The business end of it… knowing, networking, making the right connections, and really finding your niche, which I think now – for me – is audiobooks, which I do mostly, and long-form narration.
Andy: Really?
Diane: Although lately I’ve been getting in to doing video games, which…
Andy: Well, that’s very different…
Diane: Well, it really isn’t, because it’s character work, which I enjoy. So when I’m doing my audiobooks there’s a lot of character voices I use, so… it really isn’t as different as…
Andy: But isn’t the energy level somewhat different?
Diane: It depends on the character, yes, and it’s a lot, yes, you have to fiddle up more into a shorter amount of space, but I find it a lot of fun, and a good release.
Andy: That’s great. So would you say that – you’ve mentioned networking a couple of times – would you say that – certainly my experience – people are very important? Would you say that it’s the connections that you make…
Diane: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I live in New York City, Metropolitan area, and audiobooks that’s where it pretty much all happens. In the United States the audiobook world is centred in New York, originally. Of course they do do pretty much of it out here in LA, too, but I’ve made wonderful connections there. I’ve studied with Marc Cashman, who is fabulous, and through him I’ve made a lot of connections, too, because he’s very well connected and a wonderful audiobook narrator, himself.
Andy: Indeed.
Diane: So I think those personal… the more you can meet people personally, which is why an event like this is so valuable…
Andy: That’s VOICE 2010.
Diane: Yes, you can really meet the people that only before you were able to correspond with. So it’s a great thing.
Andy: OK, and of course it must be six months ago now that we first met online because of the “Hear the Bill” project.
Diane: Yes.
Andy: And that must have built some very interesting relationships because of the way things worked.
Diane: Yes, it did. Audiobook work, a lot of the time, prepares you for that very disciplined approach to recording difficult and lengthy material, like that. So for me it wasn’t too bad, except for all the technical language, legal language, which we had to overcome. But I started out recording volunteer for the reading for the blind and dyslexic, and that really inspired me to do a lot more work for the good – for the public good.
Andy: I’m a strong believer, in volunteer work I mean… in the past, outside of voice over, in the past volunteered in different projects in different capacities, that maybe because of my location I found it – apart from “Hear the Bill”, I found it difficult to find where the volunteer things are happening. And of course for somebody starting off in voice over, doing voluntary… giving your voluntary contributions is a very great way of getting experience… Do you have any thoughts on how somebody could research that either in the United States, or in general?
Diane: Well, now with the internet, you know what? You can. Identify a need and develop your own causes and what you can do for that cause. Like I know Pablo Hernandez did with the Haiti project, and I think what you do is… if you see how voice over can help out, in any way, you can take the reigns and just develop you own way to serve that need. like we did with “Hear the Bill“. So… it’s a lot of work, because you then become the person in charge and it lives and dies with you. So when we did take on “Hear the Bill”, and doing the Healthcare Reform Bills, in the United States, it’s… it was a commitment that we took very seriously.
 Hear the Bill Andy: And it was certainly a huge commitment.
Diane: Yes. And it became… we really didn’t know how huge until it became… it went on and on…
Andy: The Amendments came in!
Diane: … and on! So, as I mentioned this morning it ended up being 125 plus hours of audio.
Andy: And how many people contributed?
Diane: I think, all in all, we had about – including the people behind the scenes, who helped out with the quality control, and that sort of thing – about 150 people.
Andy: 150 people, that’s phenomenal, and not just from the United States, of course.
Diane: No, we had people from Australia, we had people from the UK, we had you, and Pablo… it was amazing, the outpouring of support. Canada, you know, everywhere.
Andy: I think that it’s a… I mean from my perspective… it was actually the first recording I’d done directly for the United States, and it was very exciting to be involved in a big project like that.
Diane: Yes.
Andy: And I don’t have any particular view on the Healthcare Bill, because really all I know about it is what ı read about it…
Dxx. Right!
Andy: And I don’t think I really understood that… about the Indian, the Native Indian….
Diane: The Native Americans…
Andy: The Native Americans, pardon. But… How did you go about organising that, because it wasn’t just a straight read, was it? It wasn’t, “Here is the script, and read it”. OK, yes, it was here is the script and read it, but the script had to be interpreted. So how did you organise… because you explained it very clearly on your website, for the volunteers.
Diane: Well, Kat Keesling was always very interested in politics and government, civic affairs. She took the opportunity to research the legal language and how it was properly read. So she compiled a guide. A reader’s guide. A style guide for…
Andy: It was very technical, but it was very well explained.
Diane: Amazing. Amazing job with that. And then we just had to follow up with people, and make sure they were following it. Roger Baker, one of our other volunteers, who really did a lot of work, because he quality checked, and made sure people were following the proper style guide. So there was a lot of hours put in, and it was hard juggling our professional work – our paid work – with our volunteer work. Long hours.
Andy: Now, of course I’m living in Turkey, so I didn’t get to see the News coverage that you got over here. Did anybody listen to it?
Diane: Oh yes! We had over a million and a half downloads on the site, so we know – and we received emails from people who were very appreciative of our efforts, and thank yous, and really nothing negative, which I might have expected.
 Diane Havens at VOICE 2010 Andy: Really?
Diane: You know, with a controversial – it was very controversial, here.
Andy: Nobody accused you of being political?
Diane: We weren’t…
Andy: People understood it was an apolitical…
Diane: We worked very hard to keep it that way.
Andy: Yes.
Diane: And although being such a hot issue it was very difficult for us, as organisers, to keep our opinions to ourselves, but we both agreed that that would be what we would do. And we were interviewed multiple times, and we got coverage in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, FOX News… big media outlets. So, we were very gratified because once you do something like that you want people to be using it.
Andy: Of course! Goes without saying.
Diane: So we were very happy with the hits we were getting to the site, it was well worth it.
Andy: That’s fantastic. So now you’re famous in New York, in a different way.
Diane: Yes, could be because you know there are no actors there at all!
Andy: No, no, indeed!
Diane: There’s a dearth of actors in New York.
Andy: OK. So audiobooks and games are you main activities at the moment. Do you see yourself continuing on the same road, or are you interested in…
Diane: Well, audiobook narration is a speciality field within voice over that requires a level of commitment, and a different kind of marketing than most of the rest of voice over. So, to concentrate really on that takes… takes up a lot of your time, because the demos you make are different, and you have to have custom made demos to the specifications of the individual publishers. So I am concentrating most of my efforts there, right now.
Andy: Are you producing yourself?
Diane: I’ve done both. In studio, outside studio work and my own production – which is very time consuming, because you are doing all the editing, and for every hour of finished audio there’s at least 90 minutes – minimum – of editing that goes along with that.
Andy: I’ve just read the one audiobook, which took five days, but I admire you for making it your genre.
Diane: Yes.
Andy: That’s fantastic. well, Diane, let’s… sorry we have to leave our listeners now, because we have a party to go to.
Diane: Yes!
Andy: We can hear the corks popping! No really! Thank you very much for your time.
Diane: Thank you.
Andy: It’s a pleasure to meet you.
Diane: It was a pleasure for me. Thank you.
Andy: Thank you.
About Diane Havens
Diane Havens is an actor, writer, teacher. And storyteller. That story may be as practical as a marketing video, or as colorful as a children’s classic. Audio books, audio tours, industrials, documentaries and podcasts. All eloquently told.
In addition to voice over work, she is very involved in education, having spent some years teaching, and have helped develop tools to assist teachers in bringing literature to life. Her recent collaboration with accomplished Canadian actor Robert Jadah on actingitout.com comes of this dedication, for which they won the 2009 Voicey Award for Best Voice Team. She also run live workshops and performances for schools, with programs ranging from Native American folk tales to Shakespeare.
Diane has also done work for RFB&D in Princeton, NJ, recording textbooks for the blind — and co-created HearTheBill.org, featuring a free downloadable audiobook of the health care reform bills while they were being debated, as a public service. (bio adapted from dianehavensvo.com)
Links:
Diane Havens
Hear The Bill
Hear The Bill Interview with Diane Havens
In this podcast interview, fresh from receiving the VOICE Community Award, John Florian talks about his journey into voiceover, and how this passion combined with his background in journalism led him to develop the industry news resource, VoiceOverXtra.
Download Podcast: Conversation with John Florian (right click “…save target as…”)
Transcript of conversation with John Florian
Andy: We’re just here at the end of VOICE 2010, and I’m delighted to have… to be sitting with John Florian now. Hi John.
 John Florian John: How are you, Andy. It’s great to be here. Thank you.
Andy: John is the owner of VoiceOverXtra.com – we were hoping to chat a couple of days ago, but because the conference was so busy we didn’t have time to sit down. Actually this has been a good thing, because you had some exciting news last night at the banquet.
John: It’s amazing, and I’m really thrilled because you… the technology that you are using now. I am floating on the ceiling and so you’ve had to suspend yourself next to me to be able to get the recording…
Andy: That’s right.
John: It’s amazing.
Andy: We’re six foot off the ground.
John: Last night at the banquet I was given the VOICE 2010 Community Service Award, and I’m just thrilled about that.
Andy: OK. Well before we come back to talk about the voice over community, can I ask about you? What is you background?
John: Publishing, and I’ve been a voice actor for about ten years and before that, about two decades, I was in business magazine publishing – and some consumer magazines too – and basically I would create magazines. Write them. Edit them. And I had a partner who was in the business angle – business end – and that went on for almost two decades. And then when that partnership ended I was on my own freelancing, and I got into voice acting, and I missed the packaging aspect, the putting things together and serving a niche community with a publication.
Andy: OK. So what’s the jump between publishing as print format and voice acting? How did that happen?
John: Oh. Voice… It’s just that I had a radio show years and years and years ago. You know, people say “You should get into voice”, “your voice”, and that kind of thing, and so I took a course in it and did a first demo and then did other demos and marketed. So I went through the routine and got in that. The publishing and voice acting didn’t have anything to do together until I put them together.
Andy: OK. So why were you interested in using your voice?
John: It’s fun! It’s fun. In high school I was in plays and announcing things, and then college. I was actually, after college, I wanted to become the next – this dates me, of course – but the next Walter Cronkite – broadcast news. And I got in the service, and the military. And then I had a radio show in the evening and they said you want broadcast journalism you got to get into journalism. So I went to the newspaper and became a city reporter, corporate reporter going to the police every day. Stuff like that. And it just evolved, and I got into magazines… consumer magazines, guidebooks, and business magazines. I loved it. I’ve loved my career. And I love now what I put together with the publishing. It’s the type of thing I’ve got to get up at 6am, because I love it. And I’ve got to pull myself away in the evening, for a couple of hours – of course before I go to bed, go back and check… see what’s there. I just… It’s the passion.
 Andy and John at VOICE 2010 Andy: One of the really interesting things about meeting folks here – both here at VOICE 2010 and online – is just finding out the sheer diversity of backgrounds of people. But there’s one common element, which is the passion you just mentioned. You keep hearing, “I’m having fun doing this, and I’m being paid for it!” But the key…
John: Just like you. You’ve got the passion.
Andy: The key element is the desire to perform, which is wonderful. So… you’re a voice artist, yourself, and with the publishing background that let you on to create VoiceOverXtra. Is that right?
John: Right.
Andy: What actually… what service does VoiceOverXtra.com – your website – what service does that perform?
John: Well, when I was searching around for something to do, publishing wise – before I even came up with, say, using voice acting as the topic for it, firstly think of the medium. Do I do a newsletter? Do I do a print publication? And this was back in 2002, I’m thinking this. And the print, I’d been through that. I created in the 1980s a newsletter for magazine editors, and this was a print, and I’d… I think I bought… no, I did buy the first personal computer. I had the… it was an Osborne computer, and I wrote it on that. Printed it out with offset printing, and printed the newsletter, but mailing and addressing, and everything, it cost so much. I mean, I made a little bit of money, but I think I needed something cheaper. And the internet was coming along in the year 2002, so I said it has to be online. It has to be web based. And so it evolved. With a business coach, he brainstormed with me and said, “Well, you’ve got to do what you love”. And I said, “Alright. It’s going to be voice acting”. And then I was afraid to do it. I said, “I don’t know if it will succeed. So I went into another business for about three, four years… And then I went to another business coach and got all fired up. I went to a week long conference where you’re doing all kinds of things… You are climbing mountains, and you’re on trapezes, and you’re walking through coals – hot coals – all this stuff. Oh! It was amazing. You come out of there, and you’re going “Yes! I can do anything!”.
So, I quit the job, and started developing VoiceOverXtra… and around that time too was VOICE 2007. So I came and told Jim and Penny about it, and Don la Fontaine, and everybody said “Yeah! Do it! Do it!”. About four months later I told my web developer, “OK. It’s time to do it. Push the button. Start it. get it live”. All this time putting it together with articles and directories, and every thing like that, and I said, “OK” – on the phone with the web developer – “Press the button”. And it goes live! And I sit back! And I’m waiting for the income, and the subscribers, and I find out you’ve got to work a little bit more…
Andy: So it doesn’t happen like that.
John: It doesn’t It doesn’t happen like that, but it’s been an awful lot of fun. And doing this gets me into so many situations, and learning. Meeting so many people, like you contacted me… By the way, I’ve got to tell you. I admire you. Your persistence. Your passion for what you’re doing, and fast you’ve become known in this industry.
Andy: Well, Thank you.
John: Yeah. It’s tremendous. It’s an inspiration to a lot of people.
Andy: Well, that’s something I didn’t expect. Thank you.
John: You’re very welcome.
Andy: But I think that I’m nothing special. I’m just somebody who believes in what I am doing, and if you sit on your backside and do nothing, nothing happens. So, everybody can make a niche for themselves….
John: If they find what they are passionate about.
Andy: Yes.
John: Or overcome the obstacles to that. Overcome… they may be passionate about something, and then there’s this wall… there’s a shyness. Like for me, four years I said “I’m not going to make it. I can’t make it with this type of thing… Yes, I can! Because I believe in it”.
 VoiceOverXtra.com Andy: So if I were to… Let’s image I don’t know anything about VoiceOverXtra.com
John: OK.
Andy: Why would I go to your website?
John: Well, for one thing, everything is free there. It’s a virtual library of…
Andy: That’s a good reason!
John: … how to information, which divided – very conveniently divided up – into “home studio”, “voice acting”, “business information”, “coming events” for industry. The home page delineates all this stuff, and for each of those sections I have about ten of the most recent articles, and then links into the virtual library of hundreds and hundreds of other articles. And I also have blue tabs on the left hand side of the web page leading to an industry directory, calendar of events, classified ads, articles index… all kinds of things. When I created this, it was like my mentality, my mindset was an on-line trade magazine. This is what a trade magazine does. Of course, now, media is just so blurred and all kind of things, I can’t think that way any more. In fact when I was putting it together my web developer kept saying, “John, you can’t think in the linear, print way any more. And it took me a while to get it. You know, the links and the clicks, and all that kind of stuff. But it’s free. It’s just tremendous information source, and I call it the online… “the voice-over industry’s online resource for news, education and resources”.
Andy: Well, it’s a phenomenal resource and many people are linking to you because you are generous as well in linking back to other people, and you’ve developed a tremendous credibility. Credibility overflows into the fact that yesterday you had the recognition from the voice over community with the Community Award, so that must have – seeing your face, yesterday – that was a big surprise for you.
 John Florian receives VOICE Community Award John: Oh, my goodness. It was… I am glad there were chairs along the way, when I went up to the stage, because I had to grab on to them. And then I felt so… you know, now you second guess, or you think back, this was what I should have done. I’m up on that stage, and all I could say, “Wow. Wow. Wow.” I got up there, what else did I say? I’m writing an article…
Andy: You said, “Wow”.
John: Thank you. I’ve got to write an article this afternoon for VoiceOverXtra saying if I had given a little speech, this is what I would have said. But it’s nice to have that ability to do that.
Andy: Actually, that wasn’t… not a very good experience for a voice artist. You really were speechless, last night.
John: Oh, gosh.
Andy: But let’s hope that soon wears off, and you find your voice again. But Zurek was the first Community Award winner for the great stuff that he did with VoiceoverUniverse.com and really VoiceOverXtra is in the same field, but from a different angle…
John: Well, I’m not social media, so…
Andy: You’re not social media, but in terms of connectivity and paying back, because Zurek is paying back, you’re paying back by sharing the tremendous resources that you have. And that really marks our industry apart from all others, I think, because there is this great willingness to connect, and it’s wonderful to have the chance to meet you.
John: Thank you so much, Andy. Good to meet you, too.
Andy: Thanks very much, John. Until we meet online later this week.
John: You betcha.
Andy: Thank you.
John: Did you hear that hand shake? OK.
About John Florian
John Florian is the founder and webmaster of VoiceOverXtra (www.VoiceOverXtra.com), the voice-over industry’s daily online news, education and resource center. He is also a voice actor specializing in voice-over narrations, including medical podcasts.
As a former business magazine writer and editor, John combined two career passions with creation of the VoiceOverXtra web site in 2007.
He spends most of his time digging up and posting voice-over industry how-to content, news and resources for VoiceOverXtra – including an industry directory, calendar of events, and many links. Many thousands subscribe to VoiceOverXtra’s free career newsletters, and the web site itself receives many hundreds of daily visitors.
The advice on VoiceOverXtra helps newcomers get started and continue on a successful career. Many seasoned pros also check in, saying they learn something new with every visit.
VoiceOverXtra also presents online voice-over training webinars and live workshops, led by many of the industry’s top coaches.
John began his voice-over career in 1999, and early on, used marketing techniques from his years in the magazine industry to quickly establish personal relationships with voice seekers and ongoing work.
Links:
VoiceOverXtra
John Florian receives the VOICE 2010 Community Award
In this interview from VOICE 2010, John Garry talks about understanding your capabilities – finding your guy – and gives some great advice. It was a privilege to have this conversation with John after a busy session at the conference, a great inspiration. Belief. People. Action. Thanks, John.
Download Podcast: Conversation with John Garry (right click “…save target as…”)
Transcript of conversation with John Garry
Andy: OK. Well, we’re here at VOICE 2010 in Los Angeles, and this evening we’ve just had a session talking about diversity in voice over, and with me now is John Garry, who’s a promo voice artist in Los Angeles. That’s right, isn’t it?
 John Garry John: More like worldwide. I’m available to the world.
Andy: But you’re based in Los Angeles.
John: Yeah. I live in a city just outside of Los Angeles, called Calabasas, which is kind of a nice little community. Yeah… This is the place where we make movies.
Andy: OK. Is this where you are originally from?
John: No. I’m an east coast guy. I was born in Brooklyn, and raised in Connecticut, and so I spent most of my life there before I came here.
Andy: So that’s where you grew up, and I understand when you were about ten years old you got interested in the idea of voice acting.
John: When I was ten years old, you know, I stood in front of the television set and said, “I’m going to come out of that box, one of these days… when I get to be a big kid”. And then, obviously, when I would go to a movie theatre, when the lights would go down, the great Jackson Beck would come up – trailers weren’t really trailers, then, they were more like vignettes. They were much more long form. They were almost five minutes, or something like that, but… Back then, it was something about that happening. When the lights would go down I wasn’t just jumping around the seat, I was actually watching what was going on.
Andy: And were you mimicking them, or…?
John: Oh yeah! Without question. Sure! I knew then that was what I was going to be.
Andy: So, I guess at that time you were in school, and so on. After school, did you somehow manage to get into entertainment? Or were there other steps?
John: No. I just did the normal… I did rock and roll bands, stuff like that when you are a kid. Stuff like that. No… I had sort of a cosmic experience when I was a young kid, about twelve and a half, where I won a contest on a radio station. The disc jockey at the radio station happened to know my family and knew my dad – stuff like that. One day, actually, he hired me. And many years later, when he moved to Los Angeles, when I came to Los Angeles, he befriended me again, and took me around and tried to get me work, or get me hired at radio stations. Didn’t have any success doing that. He didn’t have any success doing that. And tragically he lost his life on a highway, out here. And just after that some things began to change. I guess he did a little pitch for me on the other side, and helped out. He’s always up there looking out for me.
Andy: It’s a people industry, isn’t it?
John: It… We talked about it tonight. This is not a giving industry. You got to come in, and you’ve got to be a thief. You got to take it. You got to want it. You got to want it. It’s just like anything that has to do with Hollywood, you’ve got to be mercenary.
Andy: So your first steps were through radio…
John: Yeah. Fifteen years of radio. Not always successful radio. Not always well liked radio…
Andy: What sort of audience were you playing to?
John: You know, some of it was dance music, some of it was Top 40, some of it was… there was a lot of different channels that I got into. But always was thrown out!
Andy: And so how did that bridge into voice acting?
John: Well, you know, the very first time I ever went into a radio station… it was a gentleman that was walking out… Back then they had commercials on tape – you will have had a little five inch spool of tape, and he had like a short stack of these. His name was John Miller, and he was leaving New London Connecticut, he was going to New York, because he was going to have a career doing commercials. And he had a pretty good career. But as he was walking out the door, he dropped one. I picked it up and I was handing it to him, and he goes, “This is where you want to be”. He was saying that my voice would be… this is what you would want your voice to be on, one of these commercials. And he was right. He was very prophetic in that. He was right. It was where I wanted to be, and as I got more and more into radio, I found that I was more inclined to the commercial side of it, the promotional side of it, rather than the on-air side of it. I had more of a gravitas toward that. It helped – it did. It perpetuated my career in radio. It kept me going. It gave me more exposure to trying things. You know: copying; stealing. As I said tonight, if you’re not stealing, you’re not getting it. There’s no real genesis to this, other than, I mean, you come in believing that you know it all, and then you find out you’ve got to… you’re going to have to steal some of it.
Andy: So your heart is the engine that drives you down the road, and you’re really saying you need to know what road you’re going down?
John: Yeah. Without question. You’ve got to… You can’t, to me, to the guys that I learned this from, there can’t be any sort of misconception in your mind of the avenue you are on. You’ve got to make it very small, get it in your brain, and stay on it.
Andy: OK
John: No matter what the bumps and the humps, and the sink holes or potholes, or whatever, you’ve just got to keep… you’ve got to barrel through it and get through it.
Andy: How do you know… for example, somebody might have – like myself – a lot of experience with narrative copy, OK I don’t have a voice for promo – the wrong tone, and so on – I just don’t have the voice for it, and so I wouldn’t even consider trying to do it, but how did you know that was the road that you were going to go down?
John: You know, it took… before I got signed by a real big agency, a small time agent who was a great agent, wonderful guy. He was an agent for one of my boyhood heroes, Orson Wells, Mel Blanc, guys like Garry Owens… most of the radio jocks that were here became television guys… but when I was coming out of that, and I got signed, I had a workshop. And in that workshop, one of the gentlemen who is one of the exhibitors here, Dave Sebastian Williams, from EverythingVO, he used to run these workshops in his house. In his house! Part of the process of paying for the workshop was you would pay him money, he would give you the workshop twelve weeks, and he would give you a cup with you name on it – so you could get coffee during the workshop. You’d have your own cup. But right after I told the story about how I was working for the Los Angeles Lakers, as the voice of the Lakers, and a gentleman from ICM heard me and then they – after the workshop, which was 95 – called looking for me. Sat down in his living room – his dining room, actually – and he had always told us these wonderful stories about guys that had been discovered, and things like that – whatever – but he always said one thing, he said, “You got to find out what your guy is”. Who is your guy? Who is the guy that you’re about? You’re a commercial guy. Are you a promo/trailer guy? Are you an animation guy? You got to find out who your guy is. If you don’t know who your guy is, then when the moment happens, you’re going to get lost. You’re going to wonder around. You’re going to be meandering when you really need to be focusing.
Andy: Is there… For somebody who is finding a problem in finding their guy, how should… what sort of process should they…?
John: You got to have somebody like Dave help you find him.
Andy: So it’s not something you can do on your own?
John: Well, sometimes you can, and you know those are lightening bolts for those guys. But sometimes you’re going to have to have somebody help you make that decision. If you are lucky enough to get an agent that believes in you, which is what you really, really need. You need believers. They’re going to make that choice for you. They’re going to say, “Look. The animation thing… it’s not going to happen”. I’m not an animation guy. I wish to God… I had some animation stuff. I don’t get a lot of it. They still try me out for it, and I thank them. I always thank them, “Please, thank you. I wish I didn’t suck at this so bad, though”. But it’s true! I mean – hey! You’ve got to know where you’ll get your hits at. I’m not really big on commercials. I’d love to be bigger on commercials. Just not my guy.
Andy: Diversity isn’t everything…
John: It’s a great thing. Do I do narration? I’ve really worked really hard on my narration, and I’ve worked hard on it because, you know, Discovery Channel and all those guys are always auditioning me. I think I’m more of a place holder for them. I think they like some things about me, and there are a lot of things they don’t like about me. So they use my voice as a place holder, then they get another guy to come in and say, “Sound like that… pace wise… but do you”. I get that. I have to work harder at narration. I enjoy it, but again: it’s not my guy. My guy works in very small bites. Right. That’s what I work my best at. Promo. Trailer. That’s where I’m at.
Andy: Do the job, take a rest… Do the job, take a rest…
John: That’s it! And you know I… You got to know that. I mean: you’ve got to know that. I knew a guy that did the same thing. We had the same agent. He did animation, trailers, promos, and he was always unhappy. He was always unhappy. It was very conflicting for him. And then one day I saw him and he was the happiest guy ever, and I was like, “What happened?”, and he goes, “I started reading books”. He became the pre-eminent book narrator of the business. He became… Frank Muller… he became the greatest book guy. He found his guy. I mean, you know… you can wonder around the woods until you find the path, and when you find it, dude! You better get on it – like I said – and stay on it. And he did, man, he became that guy. You know.
Andy: Turbo-charged.
John: Exactly. Exactly. He had some tragic, critical accidents, and stuff like that – almost killed him, things like that – but still kept reading. He came back. He came out of a coma, and all that stuff, it’s one of those great stories. When you ask me about finding the guy, you never know. You just… you say you’re not a promo guy, but until you really start reading it, and reading it…
 Andy and John at VOICE 2010 Andy: It’s true. I’ve never tried.
John: Exactly. So you just don’t know.
Andy: I’ve built on my preconceptions…
John: Exactly. Your notion is “It ain’t there”. You just don’t know. You go back to mother England, you may do something for the BBC, and they’ll go, “That’s our guy! Where you been?” There it is.
Andy: Who knows?
John: Exactly, man. You just don’t know. You got to find it, though. And you got to get on it when you find it. I tell you, man, the dude… we never, we weren’t great friends, but I did have a great respect for the man. You know DLF was… is the reason why the rest of us have a career. If it wasn’t for la Fontaine and the modern trailer…
Andy: He made it sexy…
John: … wouldn’t be the modern day trailer. I mean, please, you know. So, all things being what they are, it’s unfortunate that he’s no longer with us. Then you’ve got to honour the fact that because of him the business, it grew. The dude was the fertilizer, and out of his fertilizer this whole thing just blew up. People want the trailers these days, I mean, my kids love the trailers. Which is kind of funny, because for the longest time I don’t think they really associated Daddy except for being the voice that came out of the television set, or they see on the screen in the movie theatre, and now they’re like, “My Dad does trailers, man!”. We can definitely learn a lot from what Don gave us to work with. From now until… who knows where this is going to go. You know? Will it be holographic 3D… I don’t know… 3D trailer – 3D trailers are coming, I guess we’ll get there sooner or later.
Andy: Just a final question, actually your last comment triggered it. It’s a question I asked Penny in a recent podcast I did with her. I have a four year old son, called William, and I try and do what I can to encourage him to be creative and find… and to be interested in different things. So, do you do… do you have any dreams for your son? Do you have any – of course you do – but do you have… do you encourage him to be interested in what you are doing? In the creative sense…
John: Well, here’s the weird thing. You’ve got to understand. See that kid over there? That’s my son. I was very, very young when he was born. We didn’t have much of a relationship, but the odd thing is you grow, and one day somebody walks up on you, and they’ve got your voice. He’s got my voice. It’s uncanny. He’s got my voice. Now, is it going to get him anywhere? I don’t know. And to be honest with you I’ve never – what I told all you guys tonight was exactly what I told him. He’ll tell you. I told him, “Having that voice guarantees you nothing”. And having it is probably the worst possible thing that could happen to you because I’ve got it! So, you’re not going to get me to give you anything. You’re going to have to take this from me… and I’m going to be dead when you do it. So…
Andy: That’s called patricide.
John: I’m sorry. Look, I’ve been in love with this my whole life.
Andy: I can see that.
John: I love the movies. I just do. I love the movies. I love television. I love making this thing happen. There’s nothing else. So do I want him to do that? Do I want him to sacrifice his relationships, his – potentially – fatherhood or whatever. No, I’d rather him be a better person, dad, than I am. But… this was for me. This was for me. Is that for him? I can’t say. You and William? You guys are going to have to work that out. I mean, I hope William has a long and wonderfully eventful and character-filled life. I hope he can do whatever he wants to do.
Andy: I don’t have an end goal for him. My dream is just that he has the desire to be creative in some way. In some way.
John: I think he is very well. I think he is very blessed, and well on the road to it, because he’s got you for a dad. I mean you’re out here.
Andy: Thank you.
John: …trying to bring… and bring that back. You are bringing that back to his world. You are out here experiencing this so that one day he’ll have the chance to go, “My Dad, he’s a risk taker… He flew all the way to Los Angeles, and he’s learning about… all over the world, he’s in Turkey. He’s doing all this stuff. He’s creating radio, television, podcasting… he’s interviewing people, learning about things. I’m getting the benefit of it”. Who knows, he may take the reigns away from you. He may take it from you…
Andy: What ever he does…
John: Exactly.
Andy: If he’s happy, that’s all that matters.
John: The thing of it is he has the opportunity, and in a planet of over six and a half billion people, very few of us have this opportunity. You’ve got to remember, this is a small group. The last thing I tried to share with them about the audition process. You know, when you get up to the upper echelons, it’s a very small pool. Shallow water. They know exactly what they want, and that’s what they do. And that’s why during the summer you only usually hear Ash, or you hear Scott Rummell, because that’s what the Hollywood guys want, they say, “I want Ash. I want Scott Rummell. I’ve got a blockbuster. I want my money”. Bumph. That’s it. But do they read me? Oh yeah. I mean, I read every movie that comes out. I’ll get a read on it. One thing… these kids that talking about how you dealing with your agents, my trailer agent, they get lists for me. They get lists of films. I’ll send them a list… and I know exactly what I want…
Andy: So you solicit the auditions?
John: No, I send it to them. They solicit the auditions. That’s what they do.
Andy: No, but you tell them which ones to…
John: Exactly, I’ve got the greatest group… and they get, do their own thing, and do what they want to do, but by and large, I say… OK. I’ll look for fifteen or twenty, or maybe a half dozen of them. Doesn’t make a difference. I’ll tell them, I’ll say, “This is what I want to read on… These I want to read on! I want eyes on this stuff”. And they go get it.
Andy: So, you started with the dream at ten. You found the guy.
John: Yeah.
Andy: Followed the road, and now you’re in the position where you are able to influence where that road is going. That’s fantastic.
John: Yeah. I have a great team. I have an amazing team. I have three different agencies. They are all wonderful. And that’s a lot of people. So, when you get people that believe in you like that, anything can happen. And it does.
Andy: Belief. People. Action.
John: Exactly, man.
Andy: Well, I can see it’s made you a very happy guy, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.
John: You too, man.
Andy: Thanks very much.
John: God bless everybody. God bless. Thank you.
Andy: Thank you.
About John Garry
John Garry is one of the most successful movie trailer and promo voices working today. Though you may not recognize his name, you likely know his voice and his work. Aside from being the network voice of ABC and exceptionally talented, he is insightful and sees working in voice over in a completely different light that takes courage and stamina to accomplish.
Links
John Garry’s website
Article: Network VO… this is not a “Game.”
Article: VOICE 2010 Diversity Panel Coverage
Audio notes…
This interview was recorded in the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency during VOICE 2010. For this reason there is an amount of background noise which I trust does not detract from this interesting conversation. It is the animated chatter of those who just participated in a lively discussion about “Diversity”. Thanks for listening – enjoy! Andy
In this podcast interview recorded at VOICE 2010, Bobbin Beam talks about the lure of the microphone, creativity, personal development, and why you should dream big (this tip gives me goosebumps). An entrepreneur at age 8, Bobbin’s career has gone from strength to strength, and it was a pleasure to have this chance to talk with her during a break in the conference.
Download Podcast: Conversation with Bobbin Beam (right click “…save target as…”)
Transcript of conversation with Bobbin Beam
Andy: OK. Well continuing our series of podcasts from the VOICE 2010 conference, I am sitting here with Bobbin Beam, who is one of the co-hosts of the conference. Welcome, Bobbin.
 Bobbin Beam Bobbin: Thank you.
Andy: It’s great to meet you.
Bobbin: Thank you for asking me. This is very fun.
Andy: It’s lovely to be here, and to be actually meeting so many different voice talents, of so many different backgrounds, and different levels, and wonderful to finally meet somebody who I first met online a year or so ago. But Bobbin, I wonder if we could go right back – before we talk about what you’re doing now – if we could go right back to before you were at university, I believe your university degree was connected with theatre and mass communications…
Bobbin: Correct.
Andy: Why did you decide… is that where you first, sort of, started your creative path? Or… how did you get into that? Why did you do that?
Bobbin: Oh! My creative path started very early when I used to put a little puppet shows and stuff for my parents, and then I started up a little theatre group where I lived, and I used to write, produce direct all these plays with me and my friends and then we’d, you know, make up little tickets and sell them to the parents for ten cents.
Andy: What sort of age was that?
Bobbin: Eight, nine, ten, eleven… I knew I was in love with theatre and performance when I was very young. Got into theatre, you know… I was cast as one of the snow children in the musical Carousel for my sister’s high school play, and then after that I was hooked, you know. So, I’ve always been a ham. So, yeah, that’s how that all started.
Andy: So it kind of started with imaginative play and grew from there, and became a little more formalised through your school years.
 Bobbin Beam on air (circa 1975) Bobbin: Through training, and then in high school I was in all the plays and, you know, by the time I was a senior, or something, I was playing the leads and all that stuff. So, theatre was my avocation. But then I fell into radio while I was also in high school, because there was this really cool radio station. It was called a “progressive rock radio” station where they used to play album tracks. See, up to that point everything was Top Forty, pop radio, or news radio – one of the two, you know. There was nothing in between… and this was also on FM, so it was very cool.
Andy: In stereo!
Bobbin: Yeah, and in stereo, and a really beautiful, clear signal, and people use to put on the headphones or just crank it up. That’s what I did. So I got my taste of radio at that time, so it was like “OK”. And then I was, like really bummed because I had to leave the radio station to go to college, and I didn’t want to do that.
Andy: Were you working professionally then, or was that…?
Bobbin: Oh yeah. I was like… When I was a senior in high school, that was when I got my first radio job.
Andy: That was a DJ job?
 Bobbin Beam at WLPX (circa 1979) Bobbin: Yeah, on air, and that’s why I was saying in that panel this year marks forty years since I… So you guys do the math, and you can tell how old this broad is
Andy: Well, Bobbin, it’s your words, it’s difficult to believe seeing you…
Bobbin: No. Forever young. Hey, you know what it’s like.
Andy: Yes.
Bobbin: You are as young as you feel. I feel like the teenager that never grew up sometimes.
Andy: That’s the way to be.
Bobbin: You’ve got to have a sense of wonder about everything, have interests in everything, and never let the moss grow under your feet.
Andy: So, the radio and school theatre experience was what drew you into looking for an education in that, I guess.
Bobbin: Yes. Yes, because I wanted to be a stage performer, but then it evolved because all of a sudden I fell in love with radio and broadcast media and then, you know, the lure of the microphone. And it turned out that I was able to do that very well and make money at the same time. I just couldn’t believe it. It was like amazing to me…
Andy: Being paid to play…
Bobbin: Being paid to play, and I got very focused and dedicated to the profession of broadcasting. So I really got into it, and eventually got promoted, went to another station, got a full time gig, became the music director… later became a program director. So I had management in the background there… and also an education. So, I was like trying to put all of that together. So it was like broadcast became the career of choice, and served me very well. And then somebody asked in the panel… “What was that epiphany moment when you knew that… What was it that made you become a full time voice over person?”
Well, I got fired one day, and after that I realized, “Wow. You know. There must be some life after radio”, even though I didn’t feel that way at the time. A friend of mine called me up and said, “Hey! What are you doing?”. I said, “”I’m collecting unemployment”. And he had this advertising agency, and said, “Why don’t you come on over, and we can talk”.
So then we started talking, and then… I knew a lot about creative… I knew a lot about how to sell reach and frequency, and analyze Arbitron broadcast ratings statistics, and show them to potential people who wanted to buy airtime. And this guy and I started an ad agency. And he had a studio… He had this amazing studio where he used to record bands in there. But he needed more stuff outside of just the bands, because that was very sporadic work, and he had this nice facility. So we started going out, and I had a lot of contacts through the radio thing, and one thing led to another. And then all of a sudden we were producing, and then I started voicing… And then he and I had this agency. We were kicking butt. And then we parted ways, and I started my own agency, and was rocking and rolling there. And then I was creative. I was doing TV, radio, broadcast… even some non broadcast stuff – producing it and everything. And then after a while – and I did some of the talent work, but then I hired talent as well – it got to a point though where I really wanted to do more of the talent stuff, because that was more fun and more creative than getting on the phone, or having to sell and make buys, you know, to the radio and TV stations, or collect money from clients… and having to wear that black hat. That was that was something that I found very distasteful so I really had that creative burn in me and just made that leap to do voice over full time. Moved across the country. Came out to the West Coast where there would be more of this kind of work – because I had been working in Milwaukee and Chicago as a voice talent, but I also had some family out here… so we moved out here. Pulled up the stakes. Didn’t have… I mean we had some real estate so, but we sold the real estate. Pulled up the tent, moved it across the country. Didn’t really have a job. Just had the faith in ourselves that we knew that we’re going to make something of what we were doing, and what we had inside. So, my husband and I moved out here and he’s doing something else, I’m doing something else, like this… and we never looked back.
Andy: That seems like, to me… you mention two key elements there. One is the love of being creative, and the other is creating your own opportunities. Would you say that’s true?
Bobbin: Yeah. Yes, the love of the creativity and playing. You know: give me a microphone! It’s like fun! It’s play time!
Andy: Would you say that voice over is a career that – of course for everybody it’s very different, everybody’s experience is different. My experience is entirely different from 90% of the people here, probably 99%, even everybody else here… Would you say that voice over is… to develop a voice over career something you have to search for your opportunities, or opportunities come to you, or… You mention taking the risk of moving across the country, so that’s…
Bobbin: Right. I think that me starting my own business with the ad agency, and all that, really fuelled my entrepreneurial spirit and that propelled me, because I realized… I didn’t think that I could do anything other than be a radio station employee up to that point. So it was learning how to be an entrepreneur that actually prompted me to say, “Hey. Maybe I can just be a voice talent and make a living out of it”. So that’s, I think that… not everybody’s cut out to be an entrepreneur. That’s why some of these people that are here are not going to make it.
Andy: So there’s a prerequisite?
Bobbin: I think you’ve got to be a good business person. You know… I mean, yeah, you can be creative and all of that, but you’ve got to have some business… I mean there’s a lot of balls that you got a juggle all day long when you’re… because you’re not just going in the studio and being cool. You’re a business person!
Andy: So it’s the difference between playing at a job, sorry, playing with creativity, and working at creativity.
Bobbin: Yes.
Andy: There needs to be a certain work ethic.
Bobbin: Work ethic, a business sense and acumen. You’ve got to be able to act like, you know… You’ve got to be able to conduct yourself in a manner that is equal to the standards of the people that you are working for. And in a business sense you need to be able to, you know, send them their invoices. You don’t ask them, “Well, shall I send you an invoice?”. No. You just send them an invoice. Where do I send the remittance to? You know you’ve got to have a marketing component in your mix, and you’ve got to be getting trained. You’ve got to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on, you know, to keep your deliveries fresh. You’ve got to keep your chops oiled… So there’s a lot that you’ve gotta keep going on all the time. Not everybody’s cut out to do that.
Andy: And it’s quite interesting talking with some other folk who make their work look so easy, but in actual fact every day there’s a lot of personal development going into that, so actually they’re working very hard on the character, or the type of read that they’re doing. So there’s a lot of effort going in behind, but because that practice has been done…
Bobbin: Personal development is key. Every day. Every day I read, I look, I learn, I listen. I keep my mouth shut, and I absorb. That’s part of my personal development. I do a lot of research. I read a lot of books. I do a lot of personal… I read a lot of personal development. I take acting classes. I come to functions like this. I like to listen to others. I love to get those little nuggets from people. I mean, I don’t know everything.
 Bobbin and Andy at VOICE 2010 Andy: So even with forty years experience, you’re still learning.
Bobbin: Every day! Every day!
Andy: That’s fantastic. We’ve been describing this with different people as a journey down a road, and people coming on to the road in different places, and spotting different sign posts as they go down the road. But, if you are in a vehicle you need to put fuel into it, and that’s the same for everybody: that you need to be topping up the fuel that drives the engine of your personal development.
Bobbin: And sometimes you’ve got to pull off the road, and take a rest. So vacation, making sure you take a vacation, and making sure you take a break… or if your voice starts to feel hoarse, like I’ve been talking a lot this whole week. If I started, you know, feel like I’m pushing myself, I just…
Andy: Knock it back a bit.
Bobbin: I do. Or I take just ten minutes and I just lay down and I meditate, or something, just to… Or I’ll drink some tea just to kind of relax.
Andy: You’ve got a fantastic range of experience, of course, over the years, and you are doing many different types of voice over work, but do you have a favourite type of work?
Bobbin: I love all of the things that I do. Some things I actually… no, I don’t… there are some things I don’t like, but I’ll… I hate things on really super tight deadlines. I’d like to… but you’re asking about specific genre, that I like one more than the other… I think, well I like you know I like making money so I like doing the things that make me money which are mostly commercials and narration.
Andy: What is the majority of your work, now?
Bobbin: I would say it the majority is probably about forty percent of my business is commercials – radio and television commercials – that’s definitely this year. But that can change. It changes from year to year, depending upon what kind of gigs you book. This year happens to be commercials. I’ve booked some national spots, so that what’s going on… this year. I don’t know how I’m going to pull that out next year, but maybe – you never know! I’d say next in line would be, maybe to about twenty percent, would be narration. The other stuff from there, you know, radio station and TV imaging. E-learning is actually… got a big e-learning thing going on right now… So, yes, and then telephony, you know, message on hold. I do some of that, that’s a lower part of my business, but I still do that. That kind of work doesn’t pay very much, but you know, you get some regulars… And over the course of time you look and see what that customer spends with you, over the course of two, three years, and that eclipses many others.
Andy: Yeah. This is an interesting thing, isn’t it? Not every job has a big budget, but a lot of small jobs add up. One job leads to the next job.
Bobbin: Work begets work. That’s my mantra. Yep. That’s very true.
Andy: So everything’s a stepping stone. In a sense the small things are… you don’t know where the small things are going to lead you to – they might lead to something else.
Bobbin: And you are only as good as your last gig. So that means you’ve got to get better every day at what you do.
Andy: And also every gig is a demo for the next gig… or potentially, it’s a demo, isn’t it? If somebody hears it, it can go on. Bobbin. You’ve had a very interesting career with… over the years… starting off with your childhood play, leading through to playing for pay, and loving every minute of it – I can see from you this is obviously your heart is pulling you forwards. So what sort of dreams would you have for the future for yourself, and would you have any suggestions for somebody who is finding themselves creative like you were, when you were a teenager, how they should move forward?
Bobbin: I’m a big believer in following your passion in your dreams. So don’t short-change yourself. Be careful. Be wise. Be excellent. What I aspire to do is to always book more work. I’d like to – instead of doing three nationals this year – maybe I can get five next year. So I’m going to work really hard, and focus on that as a goal. I write down my goals. Everybody should write their goals down, every year, and then evaluate them on a continuous basis. I have my goals pasted up on my… in my work station. Everyday I look, and I make sure that I’m looking at that… And you know, don’t compare yourself to others. You run after the dream, not the competition. That’s what I say. Pursue your dream. Don’t worry about your competition, because only you can do you. Everybody else is taken.
Andy: Is it possible to have too big a dream?
Bobbin: I don’t think so, because if you dream big, you know… shoot for the moon, and even if you miss you’ll still land amongst the stars.
Andy: Well, that’s fantastic… and well, I feel as though I’ve landed amongst the stars here in Los Angeles. It’s been a real pleasure to meet you, Bobbin.
Bobbin: Thank you for asking me here to do this with you.
Andy: Thanks very much for your time. Thank you.
Bobbin: It’s been my pleasure.
Axx. Thank you.
About Bobbin Beam
Chances are you’ve heard Bobbin Beam’s voice somewhere. Her work has been heard around the world in commercials, narrations, audio books, documentaries, and TV promos. ABC, Disney Channel, and Fortune 500 companies have featured Bobbin’s voice, which is described as warm, friendly, professional, wise, and sincere. (ABC, Disney, Pro Flowers, 3M, LG, Cisco, DHL, BP, Expedia.com, Toshiba, Tribune Companies, Microsoft)
Bobbin’s Beam’s professional career began in Milwaukee in 1970, when she became one of Wisconsin’s first female radio broadcasters. She attended University of Dallas and Carroll University majoring in Theater and Mass Communications. Bobbin’s broadcast career spanned twenty years among seven radio stations two television stations, and three major markets, including management positions. From 1980-84, she ran her own successful ad agency, On the Beam Productions, further enhancing her production skills and creative voiceover work. It was upon her move to Southern California in 1984, when her career evolved into full-time voice acting, which remains her passion, her craft, and her art.
Bobbin Beam comes fully-loaded with international voice over experience, a broadcast-quality recording studio, equipped with everything “state of the art”. Her ISDN studio also offers Source Connect and phone patch.
Links:
Bobbin Beam (Personal website)
Bobbin Beam’s Blog
VOICE2010 (Voice2010.com)
Photo of Bobbin Beam “on air” from “93QFM: The Halcyon Daze“
In this podcast interview, Dave Courvoisier talks about his passions for broadcasting and voice overs, his love of the voice over community, the importance of setting standards… and much more! Recorded during VOICE 2010, this was a conversation I’d long been looking forward to having face to face.
Download Podcast: Conversation with Dave Courvoisier (right click “…save target as…”)
Transcript of conversation with Dave Courvoisier
Andy: Dave Courvoisier, or Courvo, is known by many as the award winning TV journalist and anchor of the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas, Klas-TV. We first met online eighteen months after I read an article he contributed to the VoiceOverXtra site, and he’s generously supported my ambitions on his widely read blog, Voice Acting in Vegas. It’s appropriate, therefore, that in addition to being the co-host of VOICE 2010, he also co-presented the topic “Leveraging New Media to Benefit Your Voice Over Business”. And now we’re in Los Angeles, and it’s great to meet you, Dave.
 Dave Courvoisier Dave: It’s a pleasure to meet you, I had no idea it had been eighteen months… you kept track of that.
Andy: I remember the first article I read about you, and you were talking about the work that you were doing and how you were looking to develop yourself… And I looked at you as a TV anchorman… I was new in making contacts with voice overs internationally, although I’d been doing voice overs for four years by that time, and it was good for me to see that people at different stages in their work were looking forward to how they could develop themselves, and so that was encouraging to me. I dropped you an email to say that I’d enjoyed reading that article, and that’s how we got in touch.
Dave: Right.
Andy: You immediately replied, and that was the beginning of our relationship.
Dave: Well, I enjoy the relationships that are available online, so easily, and you know I think the fact that I’m a TV news anchorman means a lot more in the United States than anywhere else. They give us an elevated status – a bloated, inflated status – here that isn’t commensurate with really, I think, what we deserve… I’ve been doing the journalism online, and the journalism on TV, for so long that I was starting to look for something else to interest me and I found the adjacent area of voice over. It has many similarities to broadcasting and yet it’s another profession entirely and I’ve been just developing it wholeheartedly ever since I got into it. It’s the only way I know how to be, is to be passionate about what I do, and so I jumped into it with both feet – like you have – and started making relationships as well. And right off the bat there were many people who also found me and were generous and beneficial to me, and I always try to pay that back, because people were good to me. I’ve tried to be good to other people
Andy: Yeah. That’s a very incredible aspect of the relationships that the voice overs have in this industry…
Dave: Isn’t it?
Andy: …and it’s just phenomenal. Can I just take a throw back to maybe just give a little bit of background of where you come from. You started with a radio career, I think…
Dave: Started in radio, here in the States we call it Country and Western radio, so it’s a very specific type of music… and I was green, right of broadcasting school, and I always…
Andy: What was your goal at that time? What was your dream?
Dave: I think just to be in radio. I didn’t have any big aspirations to be in TV. I just wanted to be in broadcasting, and like most people in radio they’re in love with their voice and they like to hear themselves talk…
Andy: So that’s the “why”
Dave: …and it was heady stuff then, because I was wandering and struggling with my career, and my life. It just felt like the right direction anyway. But it wasn’t long before I was able to parlay that into a job in front of the camera, on TV, and kept my nose to the grindstone, as they say, and kept rising, rising above each previous job, and moving on to better markets, and found myself in Las Vegas eventually.
Andy: So, having worked on various networks stations.
Dave: Right. The affiliations don’t mean a lot, they’re all pretty much on par with each other, but I’ve worked for ABC, NBC, and CBS.
Andy: And during that time you had some quite interesting journalistic experiences which got you some credit inside the industry.
Dave: Oh yes. I’ve covered some special stories, but most journalists do eventually. I mean I’ve covered some national political conventions, car crashes, airplane crashes, the Pope’s visit. You know… the spectrum of stuff.
Andy: But I think you are especially well known for your human interest.
Dave: Well, I do a weekly feature that profiles disadvantaged children seeking adoption, and it’s become kind of my signature. A weekly feature called “Wednesday’s Child“, and it’s also becoming very fulfilling because now that I’ve done it for almost thirty years, I’m starting to see those children now as adults come back and say to me, “You really affected me. You changed my life in a certain way”, and wow!… That’s very fulfilling. Rewarding.
Andy: So, in fact, I guess most people see… this is maybe thinking a little bit about you as a journalist, as opposed to… as a voice over talent, but in your “day job” – actually it’s not a day job…
Dave: It’s a night job…
Andy: But what is colloquially known as “the day job”, your motivation there is that you can make a difference.
Dave: Very much so. I mean I almost see it as a mission now, because there’s so much about that the rest of the day job, the journalism job on TV, that is very routine, and can be done without a lot of mental application. And so this is a challenge – you know, to me – is making a child’s life come to life on the screen and to bring an appeal to viewers to do something about it. I mean, that’s the best use of TV I can think of, is to coerce someone by pulling their heartstrings to actually do something to help change the world.
Andy: Yeah. And that’s a gift.
Dave: It’s great. It’s wonderful.
Andy: As you said, at the beginning of our conversation, just now, this is… the paying back is something which is obviously part of you…
Dave: Mentoring is an important part. You know, I’m fifty-seven, I’m moving into that…
Andy: Looks thirty…
Dave: I’m looking at… It’s that later period of life, or lose the last third of life for me, and you do reach a point were you realize you have the resources and the ability to actually effect, positively, the careers of others and not only that, but it feels good to do so. And it doesn’t… It’s easy to do, and so I I get the biggest kick out of it. It’s very fulfilling and it makes other people happy, and that makes me happy.
Andy: OK Let’s think a little about voice over for a few minutes. You are an on-camera personality, and things are going very nicely for you in that work, but part of you said, “I want to do voice over”. How did that happen?
Dave: Well OK, I’ve been in TV for thirty years and when you do anything long enough it does become rote, and it also loses its challenge. When it loses its challenge, you become a bit complacent, and when you become complacent you get lazy, and then your on air suffers. You start to look bad because it shows. You have to be genuine on air. People see it, and if you’re lazy and if you’ve lost the energy it starts to show on air and that threatens the job, and the bosses say, “What’s wrong with Dave”. So I started to look for another challenge. I mean the challenge for me was to find a challenge. And I found it in voice over, and I found the community I was looking for in voice over. Whereas broadcasters are very competitive and it’s kind of cut throat business, voice overs – it turns out – is very supportive, and encouraging. So not only did I find the job and a passion, and the people that I wanted, but it was adjacent to broadcasting. Enough so, that the gains I make in voice over apply to my broadcasting job. So I’ve become a better anchor and more energized in my job, and it’s all good. It’s a win, win, win.
Andy: You are using new media…
Dave: Right.
Andy: You are using the web cam, and I guess some of that… the ideas for that have come from things that you’ve seen people doing in the voice community.
Dave: Well having to run my own voice over business led me into marketing schemes that are applicable to broadcasting – if they’re accepting of it. It’s an older media. It’s a traditional media, so it’s more slow to adapt to new technologies. Whereas me, Dave, the entrepreneur voice actor, has to be agile. So I’ve found these new media techniques and actually brought them into the Newsroom and helped to apply them to the news process. My boss has been very thankful for that, and I think that’s why they have not been very hard on me for dabbling on the side. It’s because I brought benefits to the Newsroom. So they’ve been accepting.
Andy: Have you found any conflict between the two areas? You said that your bosses are supportive, but your voice must be well known by many people. Does that bring a conflict if you’re doing…
Dave: There is a contractual conflict. I mean they own my image and my voice, by contract, for the TV market. And that’s unfortunate for my fortunes in VO, because I’m best known in that market, and so… but I can’t apply that reputation to job opportunities in voice over because that’s a conflict. So, any broadcast or advertising possibilities are a “no, no”. However, I do have working in my contract allows me to pursue other voice acting niches… that’s a lot… that’s a lot that are non-broadcast, non-advertising. E-learning, as you know, and audiobooks, and webcasts. Those are all applicable, and that’s huge still… huge part that I can seek out. And then there’s broadcast in other markets so I mean I could actually do a commercial in Miami, say, or an on-camera in Chicago, and it wouldn’t really affect Las Vegas. So, I tread carefully there, because if I do a political commercial you know, say, in Denver it may get back to Las Vegas, it being a small world these days. So I really watch that carefully and I respect their wishes, because they are very good to me.
Andy: We’ve mentioned community, but one of the aspects of community is that we’re supportive of each other in order to look at standards, so that we can all become better voice over artists, and there’s an organisation – SaVoa – which is very interested in finding those professional standards. And you’re on the Board of Advisors.
Dave: I wasn’t a founding member, but I quickly latched onto this movement because I really believe it’s important and I…. typically how I relate that is to people who are teachers, or engineers, or accountants, or even cosmetologists… hairdressers are certified to ply their trade. But not voice overs – and by way, not journalists either, which I think is a real downside. I think there should be a certification process, or at least a standard of excellence that people aspire to, and so that’s what SaVoa’s about. It’s to set that standard and to raise the industry level of legitimacy. And it’s not a tough standard. I mean most people with a decent audio chain and a microphone, and a quiet studio, can achieve it, and find membership there. I just think in general it kind of knocks everybody up the side of the head, and says, “Hey, you know, do you want to be part of a of a better standard”, and ” Do you want to be considered a professional?”, and “Here’s how you can do it and be part of our movement”. It’s not a union, and agents shouldn’t be scared by it. It’s just a guild. It’s literally…
Andy: Independent. Totally independent.
Dave: Yes, absolutely.
Andy: So if somebody wants to become… if somebody want to be able to show that they’ve reached that accredited standard, and be recognised by people who are hiring voice talents as somebody who is going to be able to deliver that standard, what does somebody need to do to become a member of SaVoa?
 SaVoa: Please click on image to view video Dave: Well there is a nominal fee for a two year membership. They do have to submit to what’s called a peer review of their audio chain and their voice, and that consists of copy that we send them as well as copy… an audio sample that they can provide through their demo – their standard demo. And then that’s reviewed, and it’s not a terribly tough criteria, but we’re looking for… things that might flag an application to fail would be, you know, computer sounds in the background, dogs barking, fans blowing…
Andy: Washing machines, air conditioning…
Dave: Yes… that aren’t significantly masked, and then a good delivery that doesn’t include plosives or overdones S’s, and good enunciation. I mean… it’s all delineated in a document that you can get when you apply, and what we expect.
Andy: And that’s on the SaVoa website.
Dave: Yes. Savoa.org
Andy: OK. So, where do you see the future for you?
Dave: Well, I hope to be so successful in voice over that I can look at my broadcasting job one day and say I don’t need you anymore. That’s hard for me because it is a nice paying job, and I have three daughters that are in college, or heading to college, and it’s expensive. We’re used to a certain level or style of living, and I want to make sure that that’s pretty steady before I make that leap, and it may be a little more cautious that should be, because some people are forced into that leap in and do fine. And I think all the mechanisms are in place for me to do that if it happened. If I got fired tomorrow, I think I’m ready to go full time into voice over and make a go of it, and probably succeed. But being a cautious person who has a family, I’m proceeding in the best way I know how, which is to fire full ahead on voice over until it just becomes so great that I can jump without fear.
 Dave and Andy at VOICE 2010 Andy: Well, that’s phenomenal. Dave, it’s just been great to finally meet you face to face this week and to be in the same time zone as you.
Dave: Well, it’s just been great, not only to see that – to do the face to face, but hasn’t it been a kick to see everybody? And to just to knock heads, and just to tap a shoulder with some of the best people in the business… on a whim… and say, “Can I talk to you?”… “Sure! Yeah!”. And everybody’s so giving and supportive that way. I love that about this community. And this event makes it just imminently possible, to just immediately interface with some of the best in the business. Wow. What a wonderful experience.
Andy: And as you and Terry Daniel were talking about, the other day, with the “Leveraging with Social Media”, we’re here right now in Los Angeles…
Dave: Because of that.
Andy: … but I’ve realised that when everybody’s leaving here and going home, it’s not like I’m not going to see them again, because I know I’m going to see you guys later this week. OK. It’s going to be in pixel form, but it’s a great community.
Dave: Well, the one thing about online communication is it really does facilitate relationships and it’s immediate, and it’s so wonderful. But it does lack that one texture, which is the face to face. So at some point almost everybody who becomes friendly online wants to meet in person, and that’s the consummation of that relationship and sustains it for many years.
Andy: Yeah. That’s great. Well, until next time, Dave. Thank you very much.
Dave: You bet!
About Dave Courvoisier
Dave Courvoisier is an Emmy Award-winning broadcast TV journalist, and anchors three newscasts daily at the CBS-affiliated station in Las Vegas: KLAS-TV.
In recent years, Dave has augmented his success in TV by following his passion into voice acting. His blog, Voice-Acting in Vegas, is widely read in the industry, and his articles frequently appear on the VoiceOverXtra web site.
He was both co-host of the VOICE 2010 conference, and co-presented the session “Leveraging New Media to Benefit Your Voice Over Benefit Your Voice Over Business”
Links:
Dave Courvoisier (Voice over website – demos)
Dave Courvoisier’s blog (Voice Acting in Vegas)
On Cam Tips
Social Media VO – “Building Your Voice Over Business Through Social Networking”
Voice Over Xtra
SaVoa – The Society of Accredited Voice Over Artists
VOICE2010 (Voice2010.com)
In this interview from VOICE 2010, Bob Bergen talks about his passion for voice acting, why voice artists need to continually develop their skills, and the excitement he still feels when auditioning for a job… oh, and lots more! In a word, “cool”!
Download Podcast: Conversation with Bob Bergen (right click “…save target as…”)
Transcript of conversation with Bob Bergen
Andy: Ok. So… Continuing my conversations from VOICE 2010, I am now sitting in the garden with Bob Bergen. It’s a lovely evening…
 Bob Bergen Bob: You, me, and cigars.
Andy: You, me, and cigars.
Bob: That’s right.
Andy: That’s right. It’s… it has a certain…
Bob: Actually, I like it.
Andy: It has a certain ambience.
Bob: I’ve been smoking cigars since I was 14.
Andy: Really?
Bob: But I looked stupid when I was 14, so I was a closet cigar smoker. Now I don’t care. But I don’t have one. Do you have one?
Andy: No, I don’t. I’m sorry.
Bob: Oh right. So it’s just us.
Andy: I can’t help you with that one.
Bob: It’s OK.
Andy: I should welcome you Bob.
Bob: Well, thank you very much. Thank you.
Andy: It’s great to be with you this evening, and I’d like to learn a little bit of your background, and this is very special for me, because I have a four year old son…
Bob: Oh! My demographic! Cool!
Andy: So… absolutely. So most of … most of the television programming I get to watch is… are animations, and including of course, Looney Tunes animations. So it’s real special for me to be here and, you know, I am thinking of my son whilst I am talking to you, and…
Bob: What’s your son’s name?
Andy: William.
Bob: Hi William! How you doing buddy?
Andy: Fantastic.
Bob: Be nice to Dad!
Andy: Yeah. Listen to that, son. Learn from this man.
Bob: There you go.
Andy: So, Bob, apart from smoking cigars when you were 14, I think that’s about the time your interest in voice overs began, or did it start before then, even?
Bob: My interest started before that. My interested started when I was almost William’s age. I was five when I told my parents I wanted to be Porky Pig. That was my goal as a five year old kid, and I think, you know, when a kid says to a parent, “I want to be a baseball player”, that’s common. But Porky Pig’s odd.
Andy: OK. Why specifically Porky Pig?
Bob: Well, and that’s a question I get all the time.
Andy: It’s a good question…
Bob: That is a fantastic question, Andy. Because I liked the character… I, in some strange five year old way – I don’t know why – related to the character. But I also just cracked the code of his stutter. There’s a formula to the way he stutters, and when I was five my parents bought me a tape recorder when I was a kid, to record cartoons. And I would record these Porky Pig cartoons, and I learned, I figured out the pattern of his stutter. And I would do it, as a five year old, I didn’t sound great because my voice hadn’t changed yet, but there is something about this character that I found endearing. As a five year old, six year old, seven year old, I was just an obnoxious kid in school doing silly voices and getting the teachers angry with me. At fourteen, my dad moved the family to Los Angeles, not for me to be Porky Pig – he’s a nice guy, but not that nice – he moved us to Los Angeles to…. well, he took a job. I took it as an opportunity to learn how to be Porky Pig.
So, I picked up the Yellow Pages, the phone book, and called anything that said animation or cartoon.
Andy: When did you start doing that?
Bob: Oh man! Literally right after we moved right into our house. Well, what happened was – I figured if I am going to be Porky Pig, I should call Mel Blanc and say, “Listen, I know you are old, and it’s time somebody offered you a chance to retire. So I would be happy to do that for you. And I really thought that was something… I thought I was being generous. And I couldn’t find Mel Blanc’s name in my phone book, and I didn’t understand the concept of unlisted number, because I was from the Mid West, and everybody’s in the phone book.
Andy: Sure! Of course.
Bob: So my dad told me that you know LA is huge, and there’s a different phone book around every corner so he went all over town, and he gathered the Beverly Hills, Century City, Pasadena… I had a stack of phone books… and I was calling every Blanc in the book. Every Mel, or M Blanc I could find… and I couldn’t find him. I remembered that his wife’s name was Estelle, so I thought well maybe it’s under his wife’s name. So I started looking for Estelle, or E Blanc, and I found E Blanc in the Pacific Palisades phone book. I called him at his home and I taped the conversation…
Andy: I know…
Bob: Yeah… It’s on my web site – kids don’t do this at home it’s illegal to record somebody without telling them – but I did that anyway, and it’s been thirty plus years, so I think I’m OK.
Andy: …and you don’t have the whole telephone conversation any more.
Bob: Well, I don’t because the tape broke. I had the tape for two weeks and I listened to it every day, played it for all my friends. I was like, “Oh my Gosh. That was me with Mel Blanc”, and it was a cassette tape, and it broke, and it got stuck in the wheels of the cassette, and I threw it away. I thought, you know, what’s the point? And my mum retrieved it, and she thought maybe someday people can fix these things. And literally – just like maybe seven years ago – my mum was cleaning out her dresser draw, and she found this tape, and she called me up, and she said, “Do you remember what this is?”. And I tool it to a friend at KABC radio, and he spliced it back together, and he digitally enhanced it… So that’s the… that’s the tape that I have on my web site. But you know a good chunk is missing from that conversation.
Andy: But it’s still… I listened to it the other day, and I’ll put a link at the end of the blog… It’s still an amazing conversation.
Bob: He was nice. He was generous. He was nice. I found that everybody I dealt with who were successful whether they were actors or producers or agents, everybody was so generous with their time… and supportive. Casey Kasem, he for years he had a radio show called “America’s Top Forty”, but he was also… he did a show called Scooby Doo. He played Shaggy. And I had a friend of the family who knew Casey, and asked Casey to send me an autographed picture for my high school graduation, which he did, and I sent him a thank you note. And he called me up – and this was when I was 18 – and he said “You know, do you have a demo? Do you have an agent?”. I said, “No”. And he said, “Look. Make me a home made demo. If I like it I’ll give it to my agent. I made the demo, did about 85 different voices. Sent it to Casey. He gave it to his agent, and his agent signed me, and I went… I took a bottle of wine to the studio where he was recording America’s Top Forty to thank him, and I said, “Thank you so much. Why are you doing this?”. And he said, “Because you’re going to promise me that you’ll pay it forward, that you’ll do it to other people. This is the only way that the next generation can thrive, is that we have to help each other”. And that stuck with me. And that’s the only reason I started teaching is because… I took his advice, but I also do enjoy that part of this business.
You know we’re here at the voice convention, where you’ve got people who… they are just itching to do anything and to see that enthusiasm – which I never lost… my home studio’s where I spend most of my day, and when my email “click”, audition, I’m the same giddy, “Oh my God! What do I have?” that I had when I was eighteen – which I hope people never lose because if you do, you get jaded and what’s the point. Why go into something that’s so difficult if you’re not going to have the same enthusiasm and passion – am I talking too much?
Andy: No! It’s quite interesting that… Do you think it was precociousness, or naivity?
Bob: My phone call?
Andy: Your phone call, yeah.
Bob: Both.
Andy: Both?
Bob: I think, you know, the two most common questions I get are, “Why Porky Pig?”… and, “How did you ever have the nerve to call him?”… and honestly? I didn’t think it was odd to call him. I mean…
Andy: So, naivety…
Bob: Sure! I mean, hey, if you want to be a banker, call the bank. If you want to be a baseball… I mean, when I was… when I moved to LA… the Dodgers, Steve Garvey was on the Dodgers. Hey! I figured if I could find Steve Garvey’s phone number, and I want to play baseball. I want to play first base, I’m going to call Steve Garvey. And say, “Hey! I just moved here. What do I do?”.
 Bob & Andy at VOICE 2010 Andy: It’s a very special community. Isn’t it?
Bob: Voice over?
Andy: Yeah.
Bob: It’s awesome. It’s funny because… I find that the voice over industry as a whole are the most generous… you know, if you’re an on-camera actor, very rarely do you get a phone call from a colleague saying, “Hey! I was just at Paramount reading for the lead for this movie. You’re perfect for it”. But in our business, oh my gosh, at least once a week either I’ll make a phone call, or I’ll receive a phone call from a peer. “Hey! Did your agent get you in to Kalmenson & Kalmenson for that KFC spot? You’re perfect for it”. It’s a very tight group of people. It’s a very small group of people. I’m fortunate. I count my blessings every day.
I was at session at Warner Brothers yesterday with Rob Paulsen and Jess Harnell, and we were just waiting to go in to record, and talking about how blown away lucky we feel… and blessed we feel to do what we do. We were talking… Rob and Jess were talking about when they did the Animaniacs, they would go to autograph shows. You know, they go to the Warner Stores, and they’d sign, and how… it shocked them that people knew who they were, appreciated what they did, and the people were so blown away that they were so available to them. I mean, you know, we’re voice people. Nobody knows what we look like. I can go to a restaurant and eat, and be a successful actor, and nobody bugs me. But to have that appreciation is really nice… and we were just, like, bragging about how fortunate we are to do what we love. We’ve… all three of us have been doing this have been doing this… I’m mean I’m in – for money, you know – almost thirty years. Yeah! Oh God!
Andy: You started very young!
Bob: I did… But Rob and Jess, about as long, or a little bit less… but the bottom line is we’re all just really lucky. We’re very, very lucky to do what we love.
Andy: That’s the key… the love for the performance.
Bob: Well, so many people, you know – and even people who make a good living – they’re 65 one day and they’re like, “That sucks”.
Andy: What have I done with my life?
Bob: I’ve got a great house. Now I’m tired…
Andy: Or they retired to do what they really want to do.
Bob: And maybe they’re past their prime, or maybe they don’t have the… maybe they’re not physically able to… for what ever reason. You know… Artists, whether it’s acting or sculpting, dance, recording… special breed. You know it’s a special person who says, “No. I know the odds. I don’t care. It feeds my soul to do this”.
Andy: James, when I was talking to him before, said “the overnight success comes after 20 years”…
Bob: You betcha!
Andy: … and you were talking with people who are newly interested in voice overs earlier this evening, and explaining just how much work you’ve had to put in alongside developing your voice over career.
Bob: And still do. I mean the networking, the philosophy of taking your career to the next level continues. It’s a constant. If you feel like you’ve ever made it. I’m here. I’m there. Well, you’re not! Because if that’s all there is, it’s just downhill from there. So you always have to look at yourself – no matter how successful you are as, “What’s the next thing I can do? How do I take it to the next level?”. Because if you don’t, your peers – the people I’m teaching – they’re going to pass me by.
Andy: That’s a really interesting… a really interesting comment, because when you look at somebody who has a level of success like your own, you kind of think, well, jobs are just going to fall into your lap…
Bob: Wouldn’t that be nice?
Andy: And life would just continue, and you can continue doing this forever. But you’re not saying that. You’re saying you’ve got to continue developing.
Bob: Listen. I’m doing a series right now called “The Looney Tunes Show” – which is a very appropriate name for the Looney Tunes – I had to audition for it. It was the fourth time I’ve had to audition for Porky Pig in 20 years.
Andy: Really?
Bob: Yeah.
Andy: So, you’re not just porky Pig until you’re sick of it?
Bob: Oh! listen. I mean Mel Blanc was the voice of everything. When he passed away, they were stuck with a catalogue of characters. Now, there are a lot of us, myself not included – I can not do every character Mel Blanc did – but a lot of people can come close, but they don’t want that at Warner Brothers. In fact, nobody who does a classic character has a contract. We’re day players.
Andy: Really?
Bob: Yeah. Yeah. They own the characters. We’re actors for hire.
Andy: OK. I understand that.
Bob: So… there’s no job security. I mean, I will tell you that over the years I’ve done, I would say, 95% plus of the Porky Pig gigs. But there’s a non-union stuff I can’t do. There have been times when they haven’t come up to my asking price – which sometimes it isn’t a lot, but you do… it’s a business. You have to set a certain level. If you go backwards then it’s hard to go forwards again… And there have been circumstances where I didn’t do the character for certain things. For this particular project… new producers wanted to see who else was out there. And Andy, I went to the audition. I auditioned. I got a call back, and I went to the call back with the same butterflies that an actor has at any call back. I hope they like me. I hope I do… What’s my motivation? I’m thinking, “I’ve played this character for 20 years. I’m going to go in there, and I’m going to have fun. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, but I’m not going to let nerves get in the way of this job”.
Andy: And that’s pretty much a sound approach for any auditioning…
Bob: I think so… yeah, I think so. A lot of times you’ll go for an audition, and you’ll think, “Oh my God! This was not my day”. And then you get home, and you agents calls, “You’ve got the job!”. And you’re like, “But I sucked”… well, you know what? Not to them. Or, you’ll go to an audition, and you’ll think, “Well, I aced that. I’m great!”, and you call your agent. “Not even a call back? Nothing?!”. Well, you can’t… there’s no formula. There’s no rule. You just have to kind of enjoy the journey. And if it works in your favour, terrific. If it doesn’t… and there’s a lot of reasons why we don’t book a job. Quite often it’s they went celebrity. They decided to use somebody they used last week. They used their mother-in-law. But, if you are good, the casting director will remember you for the next job.
Andy: Yeah. They may even change the requirement for the part. There was an example…
Bob: That happens on time.
Andy: … the other day when they were casting I think for a bar maid, and ended up hiring a cowboy.
Bob: There you go.
Andy: So, anything can happen.
Bob: We did a panel with Bill Holmes, earlier, and Bill told a great story of how, you know, you just go in there and be yourself. You know, just go in there and be the best you, you can be. Don’t try to be what they want. Just be yourself… and if you’re really good, and if you’ve got something about you that’s organic, and unbelievable, and natural, you might talk them into changing the specs of the project because you’re so right for that moment.
Andy: OK. Now there’s just one last thing I’d like to ask you, Bob. One of things I admire about you is you’ve got a fantastic web site…
Bob: Thank you.
Andy: …that documents your biography, your autobiography and has got some great resources on there for people who are interested in a character career, seeing how you’ve done things. Your résumé is there, of course, you’ve put – it’s a huge résumé – but a lot of that, a lot of the stuff… is… maybe isn’t stuff… things that we would recognise immediately, because, for example, one of my favourite films that I watch with William is “Cars”. And you were in “Cars”.
 Pixar: Cars Bob: I was in “Cars”.
Andy: But where were you in “Cars”?
Bob: I was a pit-stop car.
Andy: OK. So, if you are a background character like that, what sort of thing might that involve?
Bob: Well, I am fortunate. I… It took me a lot of years to get in with Disney, and I’m not Tom Hanks. I’m not Tim Allen. I’m not going to play the lead. They hire celebrities for that. But they have tons of parts for the non-celebrity… We call ourselves “utility players”… who can do multiple parts for the film. So for years – and there’s one particular casting person who was doing all the Disney films, and you know, if they don’t know you don’t want you – and a casting director has to prove themselves every time they hire actors for a film. If the producer, the director, doesn’t like the actor they get another casting director. So the casting director…
Andy: So their neck’s on the line, as well.
Bob: Exactly. Always. And they are going to always hire the people they know are reliable. So, oh my goodness, for like nine years I was trying to get into Disney. And one day an actor was sick, and my agent recommended me. I did an audition. It was for “The Hunchback of Notre dame”, and I went there and it was a whole group of actors that I knew, but I’d never worked with on a Disney feature, and we’re doing everything from babies crying, to goats, to incidental things. And I proved myself. And from that day forward I then did “Tarzan”, and “Hercules”, and “Treasure Planet” and then Pixar came in, and “Toy Story 2″, and “Cars”, and “Bugs life”, and “Monsters Inc.” and “Finding Nemo”. So because of that one wonderful opportunity in that one film, I’ve created a relationship. So, “Cars”… we get to Disney and I think it was John Lasseter was the director of “Cars”. John will give us a page of the script and there’s specific dialogue for some characters. For some scenes he just gives us an idea, and says “Let’s see what you guys do, and play”.
Andy: Animations are all… the audio is done first, isn’t it? And then…
Bob: Unless it’s dubbed in a foreign language the animation is always done to the voice, and the soundtrack. Yeah. Now, at the end of the process they do ADR. Where you’ll watch the film… if they want to change something or sweeten something then you do see the picture, but early on it’s just you and the mic. I don’t even remember what the lines were in “Cars”… But you know, there was the pit stop scene, and John would be like, “You and you. Come up to the mic. Let’s see what you’ve got”. That sort of thing. So it’s a combination of established relationships, to get that opportunity to keep working for them. But Pixar, they take our picture with every job, they’ve got a big old book… They know exactly what we’ve done in the last film. They take notes. They’re very particular about who they call in. They know what we’ve done. When you do an animated feature they film you. They’ve got cameras all over the sound stage. And that film is given to the animators as inspiration. So… and I always forget because I’m – look at me right now. I’m not shaved. I wear baseball caps usually. I mean! I’m a voice guy. I don’t have to look good. And I go to Disney, I pull in to the lot, and I’ll, “Oh! They’re going to have cameras! And I look like a bum! Oh well… OK”.
Andy: At least you don’t have your pyjamas… You don’t have your pyjamas on, do you?
Bob: No, but I gotta tell you it’s voice over, so you dress comfortable – so maybe sweats and a T shirt. Whatever doesn’t make noise, you don’t want clothes that make noise. But you know, I’m unfortunate, but I… for nine years I couldn’t get arrested at Disney. I auditioned for stuff, but the stuff I auditioned for always went to celebrities. So, I got lucky.
Andy: We’ve been talking about how you developed your career, but so many lessons in here… You were talking about how your parents helped you, how you approach every job as a stepping stone, as a learning experience, and how the relationships, especially, are leading on to help you develop your career. And that’s just fantastic… really exciting.
Bob: Yeah, and it starts that way, and it continues that way.
Andy: And that’s the other thing… that the journey… to drive a car down the road you have to keep putting petrol in it.
Bob: Absolutely. The journey does not end. And you’ve got to love that journey. Every bump in the road you’ve got a really love it. You’ve got to learn from it. You can’t dwell on it. But you really have to love… You look down the distance and see the rest of that road, and that has to give you some kind of like excitement. You know the thought of the unknown – you know, we are gypsies – I don’t know where my next job… I do know where my next job is today, but beyond that I don’t know where my next job’s going to be. I have a mortgage. I’ve got bills. I chose this career. But to me, that’s part of the fun of what we do, that you know, I can be a fly one day. I could be a stuttering pig the next. I could be selling toilet paper the next. That’s fun. I’m not going the same job nine to five, wearing a suit and tie, shaving, crunching numbers. That’s not me. That might be a passion for somebody, but it’s not me. I’m doing what I love.
Andy: That’s fantastic.
Bob: Thank you.
Andy: Thank you so much, Bob.
Bob: Thank you. It was fun.
Andy: It’s been a pleasure to get to know you a bit better.
Bob: This was fun.
Andy: Can I be naughty, and ask you to wind us off with a, “That’s all folks!”?
Bob: Wow. That’s after a glass of wine, too… I did learn that Porky’s… I lose the stutter when I drink.
Andy: Oh, really?
Bob: I didn’t drink that much. I’m OK. So…
Porky Pig: Well, Andy… this was fun. It’s getting late, so I’m going say, that’s all folks!
Andy: Thank you, Bob.
Bob: Thanks, Andy.
About Bob Bergen
Bob Bergen has been honored to be one of a handful of actors who share voicing the classic Looney Tunes for Warner Brothers, including Porky Pig, Tweety, Sylvester, Jr., Speedy Gonzales, Marvin The Martian, and Henry Hawk. From movies such as SPACE JAM and LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION, to television’s TINY TOON ADVENTURES and LOONATICS, to The Six Flags theme parks, toys, commercials, games, recordings, and more. He’s an Annie Award nominee for playing Porky/Eager Young Space Cadet in the twice Emmy nominated series DUCK DODGERS. Bob is also one of the most in demand animation voice-over instructors in the US and Canada.
Links
Bob Bergen’s website
Cool Clips from Bob Bergen, including the telephone conversation with Mel Blanc
Audio notes…
This interview was recorded in the garden of the Hyatt Regency during VOICE 2010. For this reason there is an amount of background noise which I trust does not detract from this interesting conversation. My apologies for any deficiencies in sound quality – this is entirely my fault, and lessons have been learned! Thanks for listening – enjoy! Andy
In this first interview from VOICE 2010, Stephanie Ciccarelli talks about how she was influenced by her background in music and love for helping people succeed in their careers, and how this developed into Voices.com, which she co-founded with her husband.
Download Podcast: Conversation with Stephanie Ciccarelli (right click “…save target as…”)
Transcript of conversation with Stephanie Ciccarelli
Andy: One of the incredible things about the voice over industry is that it is truly an international community and with many changes have happened over the years and now many talents are finding work through on-line communities and pay-to-play sites, and one of the biggest of these is Voices.com. and with me today is Stephanie Ciccarelli. Welcome Stephanie.
 Stephanie Ciccarelli Stephanie: Well, thank you Andy, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Andy: OK. Stephanie… Just very, very briefly, what is your role in Voices.com? What’s your job title, and what’s your role, and then I’d like to talk a little bit about you.
Stephanie: OK. Well, I’m a co-founder of the company. My husband, David, is the other co-founder, which is convenient in a number of ways, but what I do specifically within our company is I am the Chief Marketing Officer. So, anything to do with what people see of Voices.com in terms of perception, and how we present ourselves with our words, any articles that might go up, the press releases, podcasts that go… that’s all in my area there. So I tend to be more involved with community, and I really enjoy developing and fostering relationships with our customers.
Andy: OK. Well, we’ll come back to Voices.com in just a moment, but I’d like to learn a little bit about you. Now you have a background, I believe, in music… so what is that background?
Stephanie: Well, I sang… I guess if you want to go all to the very bare minimum of what it really is. I have been singing all my life and I was in choirs and theatre groups as a child and, you know, that just kind of all went along with me as I got older, and I have degree in music – Bachelor of Musical Arts – and my instrument was voice, as you can imagine. And essentially being a voice major I have a vested interest in my instrument and how it’s being used, and also in education. That was one of the things I really loved. I loved teaching children to sing, and I sang in my church choirs, and cantored all different kinds of things. I was really involved in that… and sang at weddings.
I think one of the best parts of the performance was just being in the presence of people and making them happy with what you could do. And I think I am able to make that translate through my articles – in a way – in helping other people, because I don’t do that kind of thing any more, myself, I might sing at a friend’s wedding, as a gift, you know.
Andy: So you were singing mainly in a choir, or solo?
Stephanie: Solo. I did a lot of solo work, and I loved being in choirs, because that’s a really beautiful music.
Andy: Absolutely… One of …. my early experiences was I was involved for a very long time with a church choir, and that was a real blessing to get the discipline of … performing with others … and … learning about how to use the voice. Do you think that’s important for … for … many voice actors, or…?
Stephanie: Oh, yeah. I think it’s one thing to use your voice when you speak, but it’s a whole other thing to know how to use it as an instrument . And if you come from a musical background, like if you are singing – which is probably the best thing to come from if you are going to be a musician, and go into voice over – you already know what your instrument does, how you are meant to look after it. You know the range of it, hopefully, because you’ve been using it a lot. You know how to take care of it, warm it up, and you also know how to take care of yourself to prevent illnesses and that kind of thing. And I think, also, coming from a choral background you understand that your voice is just part of a bigger production, right? So if you are in a choir, and you are singing amongst other people, maybe there is an accompaniment, maybe there’s a conductor, it translates directly to the world of voice over. Because if you are in a voice cast, for like, say animation or video game, or any other – maybe you are doing a live announcement, like a reading, you know, like a public reading of a work – with other people, you need to know how to work with those people on a team. And I think that’s really great. Especially if you know how to take direction. Direction is huge. So I definitely think that coming from a choral background, and being able to be directed, and to understand someone else’s vision, and to bring it to fruition, it’s a really great asset for any voice over artist.
Andy: OK. One of the things we were hearing in one of the VOICE 2010 sessions yesterday was how changing the … pace of a read, and thinking of it in musical terms – and even, for example, talking about a list of words: changing… thinking of the notation of the musical notation almost of the … of how you are phrasing it was a great … aid to direction, and understanding directions. So I can understand that… that’s great. So… But as you say, singing is different from … the type of work that most of the voice artists working with Voices.com are doing. Mostly it’s spoken performance…
Stephanie: Yes. Spoken word.
Andy: So how did you … become interested in this aspect of voice?
Stephanie: That’s a good question. I think it probably wasn’t something that I grew up wanting to be… or to be involved with. I knew I always wanted to do something for my voice. That was always apparent. I had to make a decision at one point, when I was younger, and my mother said, ” Stephanie, you are doing too much. You are going to sing, or you are going to act. What are you going to do?”. And I chose singing, because that’s where my heart is. So anyway how that goes into voice over – in some round about way – is that as a young university student I needed to make a demo, like everybody does, because every singer, every musician needs to have something – just like every voice artist does – to pass along, to show a prospective client what you can do. Anyway, along the way my mother had found this article, newspaper, and you know it featured this handsome young man who had this recording studio, and you know it was downtown in London where I was from, and she just left it in my room.
Andy: That’s London, Ontario…
Stephanie: Yes.
Andy: Not my London.
Stephanie: Yes not your London
Andy: Which is London UK…
Stephanie: Yes, I know… it’s the Queen’s other London – that’s what we like to say… and that’s what she calls it, I hope. Anyway… So there was a newspaper article in the London Free Press, in Canada, and my mother left it on my bed, for me to find – presumably – and so one day I come home from school and I see this article. And I read it and you know, it’s this young man who has a recording studio, and I thought, “Oh! I need to make a demo, and my Mum’s just put this here. Isn’t this nice!… I’m just going to email him. I’m too nervous to call his phone number… I’m just too nervous”. Anyway, I emailed Dave – and that’s David Ciccarelli, for those of you who are listening, and may not know – and so anyway, I wanted to see what his studio was like. And that led to having a tour and him making me a few cups of tea, which was very nice. No-one had ever made me tea before outside of my own home…
Andy: And we know this is very important for you…
Stephanie: Yes.
Andy: We often share international cups of tea together…
Stephanie: We do! Yes… and so he made me this very nice herbal tea, and so we got talking and we had so much in common, and we ended up working together, because there was something that was just saying we were drawn to each other.
Andy: There was a chemistry.
Stephanie: Exactly. We had the same kind of beliefs and ethics, and everything was just lined up. And we thought, “You know what? I want to work with him, because he has the same vision as I do, and he wants to go where I want to go”. And so we did work together – mind you, this is singing, so I did some singing there. But eventually down the road we started to date, and then we got married, and you know, we were getting more and more known for what we could do audio production wise. Because he is an audio engineer. Right? That’s his background, and I was a voice major. And so we would get phone calls, and people would say, “Oh, can you record our phone system? Can you do this? Can you do that?”. And that’s nothing that we ever set out to do. Like, people just started asking. And so – OK… So I did some phone systems, voice mails, some IVR stuff. I did a couple of commercials – you know, just local stuff. Nothing too wild. But it was just… it was interesting. And so we said, “OK. Well, we can do this”. And so on our website, which was interactivevoices.com at the time, my name was on the home page, and we thought we should balance this out a bit, and add a few more people. And so we just looked for random voice talent. There was one called Lisa Oakie, and she’s Canadian, and she was in one of the magazines we saw at the Business Depot… There was a little story about Lisa Oakie and how she does all this voice over. “Voice over? What’s this?”. Anyway… we invited her, “Do you want to be on our website?”, “OK”. So we put a link up there, and it just went to her own website, you know, so the traffic was going away from us… but we are like, “Oh, isn’t this nice? We have another voice talent page…”. The next one, I think was DC Douglas, and then a few more people started… “Hey, Can I be on your home page?”, because we were ranking really high in the search engine for key words that were obviously voice over related.
Andy: And this was about what time?
Stephanie: 2003
Andy: 2003
Stephanie: Yeah. 2003. Late 2003. We were just like, “Wow… All these people want to be on our website because they know there’s work, and they can see that, you know, people’s websites are being linked to directly from our website. You know, obviously something good is going on for these people. They were probably all talking to each other as well. So anyway, we figured, “You know what? We don’t really want to do the voice overs ourselves”, because that was nothing we set out to do. It was just something that, “Yeah, we can do that for you, right…”, because David was more into designing sound logos and music composition, and so when it came time to… we had a young family at that point, and you know how hard it is to find time that’s quiet around a baby… or any child of any age for that matter… and so it just became very stressful. It was just like, “I don’t want to record”, it became this chore, this task, and it wasn’t creative any more. It was just like I have to do this, and it became like… a really stressful point for us in our lives. “We’ve got to stop this… What can we do? We’ve got people coming here saying they want to be on our website, and we don’t want to do the work any more. How can we make this work?”.
Then one day it dawned on us. “We could just build a service for these people, because we don’t want to do this work…”
Andy: You enjoyed the connectivity… connecting people… and you were good at it…
Stephanie: Yeah. We loved it. When I was in university I was on the music… Faculty of Music Students Council, and I was the Gigs Commissioner, of all things. That was what I ended up being, and my responsibility was to – you know whenever a call would come in, someone from maybe another faculty, or the President needs something, or someone is getting married locally, you know: “Do you know of any string quartets that we could have, that could come?”. And so my responsibility, as being the Gigs Commissioner, was to say, “Yeah. I’ve got a whole list of people on here”. All students would sign up and say, “I want to do work”, or whatever. And so I would refer three at a time to these people, and hopefully they would find someone they could work with within those people, and you know, book their wedding musicians, or book their whoever they needed. So that was kind of my background in that, and of course it was – I don’t know – I guess it was kind of agenty in a way, but I was getting no cut from it. It was a Students Council role and I really just enjoyed connecting those people, and making sure that they got work of some kind, because you know, students are starving artists, too. Right? You need work and I don’t think I ever took any of those for myself, you know, the singing gigs. I just, I didn’t… I saw it then… I saw it even then as a conflict of interest, for me. What I loved was making sure other people could succeed, because of… in some way to help them.
Andy: It’s part of the creative process, in a sense, isn’t it? Because although you’re not on the end product you’re… you’ve made it happen.
Stephanie: Yes…
 Vox Daily Andy: And there’s a certain buzz in that, as well… So this is… this is what has moved you forwards now into Voices.com, and you’ve got a… For me, Voices.com was an epiphany, because until then I hadn’t had any… I really hadn’t had any input from outside about how to develop my voice over career, and I’d been doing professional voice overs for four years until that point, and this is 18 months ago. And… and so the first training I got was from Vox Daily, and Voice Over Experts, which is the podcast series you do. So this is obviously… another of your babies… and something you love very much. So what role do you see that playing? I mean… it’s been very important for me. Is this why you do it?
Stephanie: Oh Yes. I just love it. Well, we first started blogging in I think it was 2005 – tail end of it, right before New Years, around Christmas time, we started. It was like a… you know, everyone was blogging now, it was the new thing. David’s always on top of the next digital whatever, and very much into the technological scene, and being on the cutting edge, always anticipating stuff, so, “You need to start blogging. You need to do this”. So I did, and it started out very basic… and I tried, and the biggest thing for us was “Do it every day. Do it every day… Because if you don’t, then how do you build a readership? How do you get a following? How do you even get anywhere?” … to be frank, if you’re not consistent. Right? So I did that for a while, and for a long time there weren’t any comments. Probably went months without comments. And then we got the bright idea, we would email our customer base and say, “Hey! Look at these articles in the newsletter… and updates… and you can learn about this, and that and whatever!”. And then all of a sudden the comments started coming. Like if you don’t tell people you have a blog, you’re not going to get any comments, as you know, unless they just find you organically in a search engine. So that was really important for me, and I’ve… because I don’t perform any more – like as you know I don’t do that, and I’m not really into that, and I don’t do voice over work. I know you had asked me this earlier, “Do you do any?”, and I said, “No”. I might do company podcasts or be on the teleseminar, but that’s the extent…
Andy: But there’s a training role.
 Voice Over Experts Stephanie: Yeah… in more of an educational, nurturing way. I wouldn’t call myself a “trainer”, for instance. If someone said, “Can I study with you”, I’d say, “No… not in that way. I can help you. I can give you some suggestions, and I can direct them to maybe someone who I think they’d be a good fit for, or as you say, listen to Voice Over Experts, find someone who you think has a style that resonates with you, and if you like that teacher, by all means go on and contact them, because they can teach you by Skype. You don’t have to be in the same city. Right? Or you could buy any of the products or maybe save up to go to a workshop, or come to a conference like this… and meet them all in person. But it’s extremely important that we give people the tools to become educated, because without the education, you can’t go anywhere either.
Andy: Yes, and you provide it as a free service which is wonderful, and yesterday when you were talking you said the education and training was “My favourite part”, and that’s very obvious in the range of articles that you are posting on Vox Daily, and the way that you’ve attracted a wide range of people to speak on Voice Over Experts. And of course, even your slogan, which… wonderful slogan…
Stephanie: Oh! I know! Isn’t it just?
Andy: “We say it for you”. It’s a team work thing.. And… oh… I wrote that, didn’t I?
 Voices.com - We say it for you Stephanie: You did. No one here can see the wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Yes! That’s very true, and you know that was perfect. That was absolutely perfect, because you know you do say it for those people. And, you know, whenever people say, “Well, what do you do? What do you do at Voices.com?”… You know, obviously we connect people, but we make the world a better place, and we make it sound better too. So… it’s just a wonderful way to express what it is that we do, because – especially using the word “we”, because that’s representative of everyone who’s on that website, right… It isn’t just one person, or the people who are constantly booking, or whatever, it’s everybody who is working with those clients. “We say it for you”.
Andy: Yeah.
Stephanie: That’s good.
Andy: Well That’s fantastic, Stephanie. Well, we’ve been chatting on Facebook, and by email for a long time, and it’s just wonderful to have met you this week.
Stephanie: Thank you. You, too.
Andy: A great pleasure. Thank you very much.
Stephanie: Well, Thank you, Andy.
About Stephanie Ciccarelli
Stephanie is one of the most connected people in voice overs, a sought after industry expert and respected blogger. In 2003, she co-founded Voices.com, the voice over marketplace, and has been actively engaged in the voice acting community ever since. She graduated with a Bachelor of Musical Arts ‘06 from the Don Wright Faculty of Music at the University of Western Ontario and is also the author of many eBooks, including the Definitive Guide to Voice Over Success, editor of the VOX Daily Voice Actors Blog and also shares her insights and unique perspectives via podcast.
Stephanie is also the author of The Definitive Guide To Voice-Over Success and ThePodcastingEbook: Your Complete Guide To Podcasting.
Based in London, Canada, http://www.Voices.com provides an online marketplace, facilitating transactions between business clients and voice over professionals, employing a comprehensive suite of web-based services. Clients that have worked at Interactive Voices include NBC, ESPN, PBS, The History Channel, Reader’s Digest, Olay, L’Oreal, Comcast, Nortel Networks, Bell Canada, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, ING, Western Union, Ford, GM, Jaguar, Firestone Tires, American Airlines, the US Army, the US Government and many more.
Links
Contact Stephanie Ciccarelli
Voices.com
Vox Daily – “A daily dose of voice acting news, articles, tutorials, interviews, intelligentconversation and business ideas.”
Voice Over Experts – “The educational podcast featuring renowned voice over coaches from the US, UK, Canada and abroad.”
Andy Boyns at Voices.com
In this podcast interview, Bob Souer describes how his voice over career started and developed. He provides some useful suggestions on how to approach copy, as well as a couple of tips on how to get the most from VOICE2010 which starts in a few short days.
Download Podcast: Conversation with Bob Souer (right click “…save target as…”)
Transcript of conversation with Bob Souer
Andy: Planning a journey, finding the right route, taking a step along the way can always be tricky if the person you ask for directions replies, “Ah yes, I can tell you how to get there, but you don’t start from here”. Maybe that’s just an apocryphal story, but today I’m talking with Bob Souer, professional story teller, whose blog was the first voice over website I stumbled upon, and which thankfully was a great place to start… and one which constantly leads to useful destinations. Welcome Bob, thanks for joining me.
Bob: Thank you, Andy. A delight to be with you.
Andy: You’re obviously a people person and have done some interesting things in your career apart from voice over, could you give us a little background?
 Bob Souer Bob: Sure. My background is actually in music. I studied vocal performance – specifically opera performance – in college, and had intended to be either an opera singer or actor. But when I was in my final year of school I had an opportunity to audition for one of the coaches at the Metropolitan Opera. As I was preparing for that audition I began to investigate what exactly would happen if he liked me. I mean if he didn’t like me, obviously, I would either have to keep studying or change direction in my life. But what if he liked me? Well, what I found out was that even if he liked me I wasn’t going to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, I was most likely going to have to move to Europe for 20 years or so, and build a reputation, learn the repertoire, and if I became successful enough, then I could move back to the States and make a living doing opera.
Well, I had gotten married the year before and the idea of moving my wife and I to Europe, where we know no-one, and didn’t speak most of the languages, and living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for 20 years didn’t particularly appeal. So I told my vocal coach, who had set up the audition, to cancel it, and I never looked back.
But that was an important decision, because I had spent all these years training, learning how to use my voice, and to sing, and I thought I was throwing it all away. Well, God had other ideas. A couple of years later I was offered a job working for a radio station. Kind of out of the blue. I was working in real estate at the time, a guy came walking through the door with his family – his wife and his two small kids – and as he was talking with me, he asked me if I had ever worked in radio. And I said, “No. How do you get in to radio?”. He said, “Well, my name’s Frank Dawson, and I’m the Programme Director of WKKD, over here in Aurora…” – this was in the suburbs of Chicago – “… and I’m looking for a part-time announcer. Why don’t you come and audition?”. So I initially thought he was kidding, but he asked me several times. Finally I said “OK”, I went over to the radio station. I read the copy, and the weather forecast, and the news headlines, that he asked me to read for him twice through, on a reel of tape, and I thought that was that.
Several days later he called me. It was a Friday afternoon. This was 1979. He called me and he said, “Well, Bob, we had seven people audition for this job, and five of them had radio experience”. I felt, for sure, the next thing he was going to say would be, “Sorry, I had to hire one of them”. But in fact he said, “But you were the best, and I want to hire you”.
I said, “You’re kidding?”
He said, “No. Can you come in on Monday to start training?”
I said, “Sure”. Two hours later, the Vice President of Sales for the company I was working for came in, flopped down in the chair across from my desk, and said, “Well, Bob, we’re in a recession. The President of the company has just been fired. I’ve been demoted to your position, and we have to let you go”.
So that’s how God told me I was to get out of real estate, and in to radio. I started doing commercials for the radio station, and then began to do some freelance work, working for a local video production company. And, in fact, ended up doing a lot of voice overs for that video production company. I continued to work in radio for quite a few years, but the voice over business kept growing and growing.
Andy: That’s incredible, and I love the story about your first voice over job, and how it helped you at a critical moment, but at the time wasn’t this just a one off?
Bob: Yes. That first job that I got was supposed to be just a one-time job. It was for the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, in Batavia, Illinois – a high energy physics research laboratory – and it was supposed to be just one voice over job. They were actually looking for somebody to do on camera what I was doing off camera, as a voice over. Ultimately, they were happy enough with my work that they kept using me, and then the video production company also kept hiring me for other clients. And yeah, I did a lot of work, but it all started off kind of as a complete fluke. A guy called the radio station where I was working one afternoon while I was having a pity party because the General Manager had taken everybody else and the staff out to lunch, but I had to stay and work because I was on the air. It was really a flukish thing, but it turned out to be a golden opportunity and I am very, very grateful.
Incidentally, I still do voice over work for the Fermi lab, for the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. So that’s 27 years now that I have been doing voice overs for them.
Andy: 27 years… So how did you start to do voice over more regularly, and what was it that made you want to do it full-time?
Bob: Well, that video production company, Video Impressions, in Aurora, Illinois, hired me over, and over, and over again for a period of about four years. Over the course of those four years I ended up working for some companies who eventually took their production in-house, and then they began to hire me, as well. So my business just expanded. I guess basically by word of mouth. In 1989 I moved to Virginia, to go to work for a network, and got an opportunity to do some freelance work for other divisions of that network – the television department, and so forth. And as a result of that, met some people that gave me opportunities to audition for – and eventually book work – for some other production houses that were there in the area in Virginia where I lived.
Then in 1994 I moved to Pittsburgh, and again got opportunities to do some freelance work. In each of those cases it was mostly word of mouth, and then in 1996 I signed with an agent, The Talent Group, in Pittsburgh, and they began to get me quite a bit of work. So I had opportunities across the years to go full time, but I was always concerned that the work wouldn’t sustain itself. I am not terribly good at marketing myself. I was always concerned that it wouldn’t continue to grow. So I always had a day job: I always worked for a radio station, or for a network, or for a group of stations, or eventually I ended up working for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association as their Senior Producer for Radio.
But my voice over work continued to grow, and in the last several years grew to the point where I was working full time doing voice over work while working full time for the Billy Graham Association. It eventually got to the point where I was so busy I couldn’t keep doing both jobs, so I tendered my resignation and left the Billy Graham Association, effective the 1st May, 2009 – and I’ve been full time as a voice over talent since then, exclusively.
Andy: An important milestone, so we could say you’ve just had an important professional anniversary…
Bob: Yes, the 1st May was my departure form my life in the corporate world, and in radio, and all of that sort of thing. And also the 2nd May was my fifth blogiversary – I have been blogging about voice overs since 2005. I started on the 2nd May. So both of those were important professional anniversaries.
Andy: You describe yourself as a professional storyteller. Is this just a branding message, or how did you come up with this epithet?
Bob: The reason I call myself a professional storyteller is because my style of narration is sort of a storyteller mode. Not necessarily storyteller in the way you would think of somebody who tells children’s stories, but just somebody who narrates, or tells stories. I love telling stories, whether it’s like this in a podcast, where I am just chatting with you, or telling stories to my kids, or when I am talking with my friends or meeting someone new. I love hearing stories, and I love telling stories. So when I was working on my branding the idea of a storyteller was something that seemed to fit very well with my style, and with the way I approach things. Working with Stacey Stahl, in Creative Entertainment Management, on my redesign of my website and blog, and so forth, last year, the idea of “professional storyteller” just seemed to resonate with who I am and the kind of thing that I do. So, it’s not just a branding message, it hopefully is representative of who I really am.
Andy: James Alburger talks about the “character in the copy”, but if I understand correctly, for you the copy is a story – how does this help?
Bob: At VOICE 2007, in March 2007, I vividly remember Don LaFontaine saying, “You have to love the words”. And I do love words, and I love telling stories. So the character in the copy, and the copy as a story, I think, are really consonant ideas. The message that you are trying to tell, whether it’s seemingly boring e-learning narration about paving highways in California, or a really interesting and evocative television commercial – or what ever it is – there is always a story there. There is always somebody you are talking to. So finding that story, or finding a way to deliver that copy in a way that makes sense, that makes the story come alive is, to me, the essence of being a voice over talent.
Andy: What can a voice actor do to identify the story?
Bob: I think the story is there on the page, and it is simply a matter of reading it like you mean it. At least to me, that’s how I approach finding the story in the copy.
Andy: But what if is the copy is for a dry narration about a factory, an industrial theme, or maybe a telephone menu system – what resources can the voice artist pull upon there?
Bob: The most important thing about delivering copy as a story, I think, is to recognise that you are talking to human beings. You know, we don’t record voice overs for them to be listened to by machinery. We record voice overs so that people can hear them. If you keep in mind the person that you are talking to, who is hearing what you have to say, no matter how dry, or seemingly uninteresting the copy is – it is interesting to the person who is hearing you.
 VoiceoverUniverse Andy: As I mentioned earlier, your blog played a pivotal role in my vo career as it introduced me to the professional vo forum, VoiceoverUniverse.com. You regularly promote others’ work on your blog, and far from detracting from your work, this is a very positive contribution. How do you see the role of the internet and social media in building a voice over business?
Bob: Well, the internet connects you to all kinds of people. It provides you with ways to research potential clients. It provides you with ways to stay in touch with old clients, as well as building relationships with new clients. I see all of that as extremely important. I think it is also easy to get caught up in the latest fad, or whatever. Just getting a Twitter account, and getting on Facebook, isn’t automatically going to generate you a whole bunch of new business. I think mostly it’s about building relationships.
Somebody commented to me once that they thought I was a terrific networker, and I said, “Well, I don’t know about that, I’m just trying to make friends”. And that’s true. The people that I work for, my clients, are people that I regard with great gratitude – not only because they pay me, but because it’s a joy working for every one of them.
Andy: The VOICE 2010 conference is almost upon us, and in addition to being a panellist you’re a veteran of previous events. As a first timer, what should I do to prepare myself?
Bob: I think the most important thing for you to do at VOICE 2010 is to concentrate on the people that you get to meet. Whether they are famous people, or just people who are working in the trenches. Concentrate on making connections with people. Don’t try to meet everybody. Just enjoy the people that you do get to meet. And maybe spend more time listening, than talking – by the way, that’s not a suggestion that you mostly talk, and don’t listen, I just mean I think that’s a generally good piece of advice for anybody.
Andy: Thank you. And finally, from your blog, and Facebook, it appears that you love to travel – are you able to record on the road – how do you manage this?
Bob: Actually, I don’t love to travel! I just end up doing it quite a bit, particularly when I was working for the Billy Graham Association I had to travel to all of the crusades, and other meetings, and events that the association put on. So I ended up travelling quite a lot, and since I’ve left the association, I have still had a fair number of times when I’ve had to travel.
How do I deal with recording on the road? Well, I take my Sennheiser 416 microphone with me when I travel. I build myself a little nest out of pillows, in one section of the room, and I do the recordings in that little nest. I also try to schedule recordings so that I can do them while I’m at my home studio as much as I can, but obviously if I am travelling and something has to be done, I get it done, and I do it as professionally as possible.
Andy: What’s the strangest location you’ve recorded from?
Bob: Once I had to do a recording in my car. I was travelling. Something had to be done. I was able to use my phone to upload the audio, and I set up things in the car so that I had a laptop sitting next to me to record with, and read the copy off of my phone. Now, that’s probably the strangest thing I’ve had to do.
Andy: Well Bob, thank you for joining me today, it’s been a pleasure to learn a little more about you.
Bob: Thank you, Andy. I’ve enjoyed it enormously.
Links:
Bob Souer
The Voiceover Boblog
VOICE2010 (Voice2010.com)
Andy at VOICE2010… (Andy’s sponsorship page)
This is totally unrelated to voice over but, coming days after two major thefts of art from a museum and collectors in France, for me is more inspiring than any missing work by Picasso. William (now almost 4 years, two months) has done me proud with this creation which is why I’m sharing it with you.
 The artist at work I’ll let the picture speak for itself…
 William and Daddy (aka Baba) For those interested in process, apparently he first drew himself (the smaller character) and then added me – what an honour 
Thank you, William.
 The artist Hope you enjoy this as much as I did – needless to say I won’t divulge the location of it’s final hanging incase those art theives realise they stuck the wrong mark!
andy
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