For those who are unaware, Barbara has been called “the Meryl Streep of the audio book world,” and this year alone is nominated for five Audies.  She’s truly a master of the industry with more than 20 years under her audio book belt.

Barbara Rosenblat

She started off her introduction with a quote about actors in general: “you start off in the biz because you’re a show off…I’m still one.”  Her class contained many good nuggets and quotes that I’ll try to pass along here in some vaguely organized fashion.

Barbara started by giving us a short history of her performing experience and what led her to (and keeps her in) audio books.  As I’ve heard elsewhere and experienced myself, she reiterated the passion needed to pursue audio books – they’re simply too difficult and poorly paid otherwise.  I’ve been told ever since I started acting: “if you CAN do absolutely anything else, do it, only pursue acting if you are driven, if you don’t have a choice.”  The same can be said of the audio book niche in the voice over world: “Only pursue this niche if you HAVE to.”

Barbara’s first book was a Harlequin romance entitled Yet Will I Love Her, which, she claims, is “still bad.”  If you’re terribly interested, you can still buy it on audio cassette on Amazon here.

Here are some points and quotes I pulled out of her section on technique:
(note, these are her opinion or her specific way of working)

• You must engage the listener’s ear within the first five minutes, or they will not stick with you through an entire book.
• ALWAYS use headphones, you must hear yourself and what the listener is hearing.
• Any character voice that calls attention to itself is not suggestion, but exaggeration.
• Create “the perpetual immediacy of the spoken word.”  Or in theatre-acting terms: “the illusion of the first time.”  Even though you’re prepared, and your “third eye” is reading ahead and knows what is coming, the listener hears it as if for the first time.

Near the end of the session, Barbara closed with a wonderful quote from Ben Brantley’s review of Martin McDonagh’s new play on Broadway, A Behanding in Spokane.  The quote describes Christopher Walken’s use of language, in a way Barbara thinks audio book narrators could be inspired by:

“Pauses pop up when you least expect them, entirely shifting the weight of the words around them. Inflections rise upward when normally they would curve down. A single clause can slalom from ennui to anger. These idiosyncrasies of delivery surprise you into close attention and, ultimately, into feeling you can trace the thoughts of the man speaking.”

Overall the experience with Barbara was wonderful, and I’m glad I got to meet her.  As we were talking, she said to me: “our paths will cross again, you know,” so here’s hoping she’s right!

Actor Rides Audiobook Wave to New Career

Leonard Nimoy Reprises Legendary Role of ‘Spock’ in Star Trek Online

Looks like the ‘ole Spock will be adding his voice to the new Massive Multiplayer Geekfest Online Role Playing Game (MMGORPG) based on the Star Trek universe.  With the success of the recent “reboot” movie, this might actually have a chance!

This gets me thinking about what a great gig this would be for your average trench-digging voice over actor.  Unlike a one-off video game, an online gaming world would require constant updates, right?  If your character is part of the main storyline, they would be constantly releasing upgrades or “advancing the story,” all of which might require more voicing from the lucky VO.  Sounds good to me!  It’s kind of like getting a TV series instead of a one-off TV movie.

Now, if everyone could just agree on fair rates for video game VO, we’d be all set

Orson Welles interview

Recently I completed a book of essays on the intersection of faith and science, and let me tell you, it was a challenge.  Each author gave a short history of their particular field, and seemed to delight in using large, arcane words.  From ancient Latin and Persian to modern scientific processes and techno-babble, this book had it all.

As it turns out…one of my best sources was of the flesh-and-blood type.  My Italian friend Stefano helped with the Italian names, my French-speaking friend Abby helped in her area of expertise, and my big fat Greek Pastor Bill helped with the ancient and modern Greek (ok, he’s neither big, nor fat…but he is Greek, and a pastor).  …and no, I won’t give out their phone numbers

In place of that, however, here’s a few more internet resources I’ve been availing myself of:

Tufts University Latin Site – for all your Latin needs

Japanese – for your next character from the land of the rising sun

Asian names – a general searchable database for Asian names

French Audio Dictionary – ’nuff said

Bible words – Methuse-wha?

Brow Beat: Zach Braff

Do you want this man selling you products?

The author references this Cottonelle commercial as the epitome of badness:

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Source: Gizmodo

This just in: a new drool-worthy piece of tech that I want yesterday.  In short, it’s a two-sided tablet type computer that has multi-touch capability.  The down-side, it’s from Microsoft….but maybe they have some new employees on the usability side.

Here’s where it might come in for voice talent: some voice over artists like to read their copy off of a monitor, whether to save paper or for easy scrolling.  This can be tricky, however, since it will involve running cables into your booth; a monitor cable, and probably a mouse/keyboard cable as well.  With this device, I would imagine loading up a PDF or Word doc and flipping through the pages would be a dream…very quite page turns, and you’re saving the environment.  Plus it looks like there would be very easy highlighting/note-taking functionality with the stylus.

The downside is that this would be purely a “reader.”  With a cabled in monitor you could also edit in-studio, like this example.

Check out the nifty video example in the full article over at Gizmodo:

Microsoft’s secret tablet

iPods get new tasty DRM-free audiobooks!

I’m seeing a lot of chatter about this lately: Overdrive is dropping the DRM on some of their audiobook titles, which will make them compatible with the iPod and iPhone platforms.  If I’m understanding this correctly, it means that users will be able to download DRM free audiobooks to their ipod.  I guess the desktop client version of Overdrive is what you need to do this….

There’s an article here.

Some good blog coverage with comments by a libraian here.

And here’s a blog specifically on audiobooks on iPods

While this is great for end-users, I wonder if the publishers are worried about pirating.  Strike that – I know they’re worried about pirating.  One of the audiobooks that I’ve narrated pops up as a torrent when you Google my name…so I know people are doing it.  And this particular title has a smaller audience, I can’t imagine how quickly a Dan Brown book would be up on the Pirate Bay.  We’ll see how this shakes out, I’m interested in keeping an eye on it.

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