Aug 27
Yet more digital ink spilled on the whole celebrities-are-taking-over-the-industry issue. I agree, it’s annoying, and it’s interesting that a non VO-specific publication picked up on this: Examiner.com Check out the article and let me know what you think:
This hasn’t really been an issue for me, but then again, I’m not in LA competing directly against some of these celebrities. Chicago has our own local celebrities and voiceover rockstars that command a lion’s share of the VO market.
As I mentioned in my previous post, sometimes I have a hard time finding the correct pronunciations of words in narration scripts or audio books. Especially if it is a foreign word or proper name it can be hard to track down. Here’s a few more resources that were suggested to me:
Merk Manuel: lots of medical terms
Voice of America Pronounciation Guide
Lots of good sources for names! In addition, I had a project recently with a lot of foreign words, specifically Arabic, and this site: HowJSay, seemed to include a lot of them.
Aug 6
Here’s an interesting list on an annoying trend: Celebrity Voice Overs.
Via the Ethiopian Review.
Jul 29
We’ve all been there, you’re reading along in your voice-over copy, whether that’s for an audio book, e-learning narration, or commercial, and you come to that word that despite your overwhelming large knowledge of vocabulary, you have no idea how to pronounce. Seriously, it’s okay, you can admit it, it happens to best of us.
Glabrous
Sedulous
Shibboleth
Now how do you pronounce these guys? Usually I use a combination of two sources: Dictionary.com and the OED. Between the two of these you can usually find out how to pronounce just about any word. The OED is great for archaic words, or if you just like to geek out over the linguistic history of words. As far as I know you can only check it online for free through something like a library. My account with the Chicago Public Library gives me access. (you can buy the full version, a micro-text version, or coming soon, the OED Thesaurus!)
Now that’s all fine and dandy…but what if the word you’re having trouble pronouncing is a proper name? If it’s the name of a person, or especially a foreign person, you might have a hard time knowing how to pronounce it. I ran across this recently while recording a non-fiction audio book. The author quotes numerous outside sources, many of them foreign writers or personages. As an example, one of my first challenges was:
Dag Hammarskjöld
Phew – there’s a mouthful! First off I just did a Google search and was able to easily find out who he was: Swedish diplomat and author, and former Secretary-General of the United Nations. News to me.
Photo: UN/DPI
His Wikipedia page conveniently has an audio file of how his name is pronounced – wonderful! However, there were many other names I ran across that Wikipedia did not help with. Enter a new site, or at least new to me: Forvo.com This site tags itself as “All the words in the world. Pronounced.” A hefty mission, to say the least. I looked up Dag’s page, and there is another pronunciation from a native speaker, similar to Wikipedia’s. They also give you a handy little map that shows the nation of origin. I don’t feel too bad for not knowing of Forvo already since it’s only been online since January of 2008.
You can become a member and contribute to the cause! Forvo now has a reserved spot in my bookmarks and will be a tool in my box for future projects. If you have any tips and tricks for finding pronounciations of words, or helpful websites, leave them in the comments section!
I’ve seen statistics and articles that claim the audiobook industry is thriving, or growing every year, and in part it may be due to companies like RandomHouse. They’re partnering with the state of Florida to promote audio book listening while driving (the only place to listen, if you ask me).
Random House has a very attractive site up with special offers such as free shipping and a contest to win a fantasy road trip. It’s well done, and I hope they roll it out to other states. Part of the difficulty of working in this industry is the small niche size, so more listeners will convince more publishers to produce more books.
Peter over at VoxMarketising has a great post up that just came to my attention. He’s gathering images of voice talent’s business cards for inspiration and admiration. His original post was almost a month ago so I’m not sure if he’s still updating, but I sent him my audio book business card just in case. There’s lots of “general” voice talent cards, but I’m not seeing a whole lot of segmentation.
audio book business card
So is having multiple cards for various specialties a good thing, or is it just diluting your brand?
One of my favorites is a local Chicago peep, Tony Craine. Great brand and consistency in his card and website, it’s very memorable!
Here’s an interesting podcast from NPR’s show Talk of the Nation. It’s called “Perfecting Sound Forever” and deals with the history of sound recording and evolution of our dealings with the medium.
‘Perfecting Sound Forever’: A History Of Audio
This is great basic stuff for someone like me who comes to the business from an acting background as opposed to a broadcasting or more technical space. There are always terms and concepts thrown around by sound engineers that go so far over my head that I just smile and nod my head encouragingly.
Jun 25
From Mental Floss:
Here’s a great listing of classic voice overs from movies. Movies like Good Fellas and American Psycho, amont others. As this blogger notes, I too have heard voice-over in movies referred to as a cop-out, or a film-makers shortcut of telling us instead of showing us. I see where that comment comes from, but in the end game I disagree, as we in the voice over industry knows a voice alone can tell a profound story, and just because a voice is speaking doesn’t mean it’s “merely” telling you something. It could be hiding, subversive; a character unto itself. My question would be: “is the voice over written well?” Does it advance the story? Or is it truly an excuse for poor story telling?
Here’s one of their examples from StreetWise, a 1984 documentary: (skip to 1:02)
Check out their full list with more examples:
Jun 21
I didn’t even know there were any recordings of James Joyce in existence, but here’s a sample of him reading his classic Finnegan’s Wake via Boing Boing. It’s a great example of an Irish accent, though an unsubstantiated commenter notes that Joyce is altering his accent to protray a rural washer woman character.
It’d be interesting to read this along with the text and note the vowel and phoneme changes.
A friend showed me this video yesterday. While it’s intended to highlight the relationship between graphic designers or web developers and their clients, I think it captures some aspects of the voice talent/client relationship as well.
It comes down to perception…the client wants to fit the VO square peg in their circular business or payment model, and it doesn’t always work that way!