Vocal Fry

When I took intensive voice classes in graduate school, we were warned to never, ever, utilize vocal fry – it was bad for your voice.  Whenever one of my classmates performed a monologue and slipped into “fry-zone,” the professor would stop them or make a note.  The reason?  You have no power that far down in your registry…you’re avoiding the deep emotional resonances that live in your “natural” range.

So…as always, the challenge for the voice actor is to adapt to the circumstance at hand!  Be able to imitate this when necessary, but not to fall into it habitually

Yes – a pretty hardcore crash and burn, and this desktop was only 2 years old, a very fast quad core PC.  The fine folks at MyCrazyMachine bought a new, better, motherboard and new firewire card, installed them for me, and upgraded the operating system from Windows Vista to Windows 7.  All in all I was up and running again in about a day and a half, without losing a single file.  Here’s the preemptive steps I took to do this!

Backup

SyncBack is a great, free little program that automates backups.  I have it installed on my home laptop and studio desktop.  Every night it backs up all local files to an external hard drive, which in the studio means all audio files, project files, etc…and at home all my personal stuff.

DropBox

Shouldn’t have to explain too much what this is   I have it on both computers, and store all invoices, marketing materials, voice over resources, etc…anything I would have to possibly access from anywhere.  SyncBack also backs this up, so all my important files are actually backed up in 5 places if you count the “cloud.”

Remaining Problems

For some reason the fans on my desktop with the new motherboard are running extremely fast and loud – much louder than before.  More like a jet engine.  On steroids.  I can hear it inside my booth and it’s picking up on the mic.  I’m researching some quieter PC fans and will probably have the tech folks out to install them.

A Few Things Learned

There were two key components of my system I didn’t have backed up – settings files for two programs I use: Filezilla for FTP access/transfer, and AutoHotKey for system scripting and macros. The Filezilla settings stored all my FTP usernames and passwords for various clients and accounts.  I’m able to solve this for the future by backing up the XML settings file in the Program Files Folder.  Similarly, the AutoHotKey file that contains all my custom scripts resides in the program folder, and I now have a SyncBack profile backing this up.  Live and learn!

VO Oscar Petition

Voice actors deserve just as much recognition for their acting as on-screen actors.  Sign it today!  I don’t know if an online petition like this does any good – but surely it can’t hurt

1. Where Be the Clips? This is the internet age, with just about every nostalgic node and related ephemera located a Google search away.  Someone needs to find a sample or YouTube link to each of these voices.  That someone could be me…just not right now

2. The meaning of “voice over performance.” As noted in the comments by an astute reader, the #1 voice, Andy Serkis as Gollum, lives in the hazy new area of motion-captured CGI.  Was it really Andy acting on screen?  Or was Gollum just as animated as Bugs Bunny?  Where is the line between voice acting and “traditional” acting with a CGI costume?  More on this to follow…

3. Role vs. Career. One mistake I think this list makes is mixing the voice of one character (in a single movie or a franchise) along with a voice actor’s entire career. That’s like comparing oranges and apples!  How can you compare one performance to the entire oeuvre of Mel Blanc or Frank Oz?  I believe that should be a separate list…

The Meaning of “Voice Performance”

As CGI, motion-capture, and facial mapping grows ever better and more accurate, we will only find more and more gray areas.  A voice actor providing the voice to a traditionally animated character is “voice acting,” I don’t think anyone would argue with that.  But what about the type of motion capture utilized by WETA for Gollum, or by James Cameron for the characters in Avatar?  How close does the CGI costume have to be to reality to defined as “acting”?  Perhaps we just need a new genre or definition…

Another commenter brings up the interesting example of Octopus Face in Pirates of the Caribbean.  His voice was probably recorded in a studio, and the tentacles are CGI.  Since only part of his body is digital, and the voice is pre-recorded, is this acting or voice acting?

Let the discussion begin…

I ran across a great site featuring a map of the U.S. that delineates dialects and regionalisms spoken:

American English Dialects

Lots of people shared other resources in the thread, so check it out!

The Freelancer’s Dilemma, as its often called (ok, I just made that up), affects a lot of people, including a lot of VO talent that I’ve talked to.  I also call it the Lethargy of Liberty, because you have so much freedom to choose your path you end up choosing nothing at all, and getting stuck in the same career rut.

Most marketing for voice talent seems to fall into two general buckets: offline and online.  Within each category, there are myriads of avenues:

Offline

- old-school traditional cold calling

- postcards

- in-person drop ins (creepy?)

Online

- email marketing

- PPC (pay per click with Google or others)

- pay to play sites

- your website

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and part of my reasons in listing these is to spur my brain to think of more.

The Goal: to devote 3 hours to marketing a week.  Whether that’s cold-calling, gathering new companies/people to call, I think having a set goal will help spur me on.  In the past I would go overboard on the marketing for a solid week, then do none for a month.  Spreading it out like this should bring more consistent results!

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

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?