News Sound Bites - Revision3, Engineering, Earthquakes in LA, Audiobooks, and More...

Hey All,
Just some fun links for you to check out.

The LA Times has a great look at up and coming media giant Revision3. I'm a HUGE fan of the "network", even if I did just recently pick a fight with Tekzilla.

AUDIOTUTS has a great tutorial on processing vocals for musicians. Totally worth a read for you VO folks as well, especially if you ever have to engineer or produce your own content.

So I was REALLY close to the earthquake that hit CA yesterday, and it was quite a jolt. To hear a special report from Loony Tunes News (courtesy of Bob Bergen) CLICK HERE.

Wired's Listening post has a really funny (and frustrating) article about how Hell Is Other People's Music.

Sound on Sound is reporting on an update to Reaper, a great little audio suite that I would put up with programs like Audacity and Traverso.

Not Just Voiceover has a great vid up of a narration session with audiobook virtuoso Scott Brick. It's so much fun watching you guys work...

Part Three of Bob Souer's interview with Voice Over Xtra has just been posted, so head over and check it out. Here are parts one and two if you're a little behind.

Senator Ted Stevens Indicted! Maybe NOW the "Tubes" Can Stay Neutral?

Why So Serious?

I try not to get TO political here on this audio blog, but big surprise that Senator Ted Stevens, the former chairman of the Senate's Rules Committee, Appropriations Committee, Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Governmental Affairs, and Senate Ethics would be indicted (SEVEN COUNTS) in a Federal corruption probe.

Yes Mr. Hissy-Fit Mc'Bridge-to-NO-WHERE, the longest serving Republican in the Senate, is being taken down for failing to disclose gifts from private corporations valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I'll always remember him best for his staunch opposition to Net Neutrality, and for delivering us the popular meme about the internet not being a big truck but a series of tubes that movies can get stuck in.

I'm very happy about this. Aside from the obvious schadenfreude, this is a quiet yet big step for protecting communications technologies. I know his indictment alone doesn't radically change the landscape of the debate, but removing any opposition can only be a good thing in my opinion, especially a committee chairman.

America is already behind EVERY other industrialized nation on the planet [to be fair,Q1 2007 we did increase to 24th out of the top 25 countries in terms of broadband penetration barely edging out Australia, but still WAY behind countries like Hong Kong, South Korea, Iceland, and Monaco LINK, Ed.]. We need to maintain neutrality. We're already seeing ISP's toying with data caps, monitoring private traffic, and engaging in other fairly anti-consumer activities. Anyone who would have us commercially divide, or tier, the internet needs to be considered a grave threat to the future of America's telecommunications prowess (the future of our ability to communicate, our commerce, and our competition), and will be someone I will vote against in a heartbeat (McCain I'm looking in your general direction).

We invented the damn thing. We should be guiding it's future. We should be leading it.

More on Ted Steven's indictment.

Featured Cartoon: VGA Dreams Episode 4 - "The Session"

Ben's and his other Personalities are at it again, and he's finally getting some professional help.

Guest staring Lynnanne Zager as 'The Psychologist'!



We're all here for the greater purpose...

VGA Dreams Official Site
VGA Dreams on Funny or Die
VGA Dreams Fan Club (on Facebook)

Musings on Being a Freelance Recording Engineer - Turning Down Work Can Be a Real Bummer...

Living the Dream!
Right now I'm pretty lucky to be earning my living solely in voice over, especially considering that I rarely step up to the mic, LOL. I don't have a day job. I don't borrow money from my folks. I'm a freelance director and engineer, and I'm getting the rent paid doing it.
That said, being freelance in LA (and still fairly new to LA) means I'm pretty much covering EVERYTHING I can in relation to voice over. I direct auditions at a casting studio. I set up home recording equipment. I coach. I guest direct for work out groups and classes. I write, and I produce commercials and demos. The ULTIMATE dream is to eventually produce animation and video games full time, but right now, being this young in my career, it's all an exercise in generating momentum and refining my craft.

Referrals ROCK!
A lot of my current success comes directly from word of mouth. I've got some GREAT regular clients (knock on wood, I've yet to have any of those freelance horror story situations you can read about online), and they're fantastic about sending business my way. It's pretty exciting to look at how long I've been out here, look at how many incredible friends I've made, and what a crazy network of contacts I've started.

Producing Demos?
Recently I've been getting more requests to produce demos for people. These are almost always from the friends of clients. I take these jobs VERY seriously for several reasons.

• Cutting a demo from scratch will probably pay my rent for the month. 
• If I don't do a good job, I risk losing not one but TWO clients. 
• Most importantly, this is someone's career I've got in my hands. It NEEDS to be right.

Never Let 'em See You Fail
I try to live my life by that mantra. Mistakes are fine, if not necessary sometimes, and it's how we recover from those mistakes that defines who we are. That said, failure is not an option, so I'm very careful to screen clients before working on their demos.
I need to understand them. I need to understand what they do, and I need to understand what their goals are, what they hope to accomplish. If I can't get a good idea of that, then I don't work on their demo. If I don't think I'll get along with them personally, I don't work on their demo. If I don't think their ready to record a demo, then I don't work on their demo.
That last one can be a little tricky. Eager actors always seem ready to charge in where angels fear to tread. Having worked at one of LA's largest VO talent agencies, and now for one of LA's oldest voice casting agencies, cutting your demo to early can be a disasterous career move. The current casting agent I work with has a nearly photographic memory of not only demos he's liked, but also demos he hasn't. You might only get that first listen, and it'll be a LONG time before he forgets.
This week alone I've had to turn down two demos from really green actors. Each screening resulted in multi-hour phone calls, as I explained my position on the matter, and offered advice on classes, workshops, signatures, and how to work out on their own. I figure I'm protecting their career and mine by not putting out a less than satisfactory demo.
I also hope it's an investment...

Will the Investment Pay Off? 
Man I hope so.
I know that there's a VERY good chance that the people I send away are just going to move on to some other source for their demo. I'm just not comfortable taking someone's money if I don't think it'll be a good move for them.
It's the business decision I need to make, but it can really burn turning down work.

Fixing Off Center Audio - DC Offset: The Enemy of Dynamic Range

A WHILE back I asked for some help on this phenomenon of audio drifting off the center line. Click pic to see --->

I was getting auditions from actors that didn't sound distorted, but were clipping really easily if I tried to normalize them.

Well I just recently received a very helpful comment from Kyle Clements, who reminded me about DC Offset. He sent me a link to a Harmony Central article with tips to correct this distortion.

I just recently encountered this again with a singer I'm working with. I think her problem might be overloading her mic (or her mic might be damaged).

Such an odd problem, as it doesn't seem to distort the signal, but it radically reduces headroom, which can cause your audio to clip easier. The distortion also seems to increase with amplification, boost your levels 10dB, and the offset increases by 10dB. Clipage!

Thanks Kyle for the helpful link!

Music Retailer Thrives Serving Captive Audience

Just caught this on Digg, and thought it was kind of interesting.
Especially as we've been heralding the death of the cassette tape for a while now.
I guess you just need to go "low-tech" sometimes...

More than 2.3 million people were locked up in federal, state or local systems at midyear 2007, according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, and they want their Michael Jackson and Pink Floyd just like everyone else. Enter North Hollywood-based Pack Central, which runs a mail-order operation for about 50,000 prisoners.

read more | digg story

The Sound That Shouldn't Be. Violinist Defies Physics?

Mari Kimura is a New York composer and virtuoso violinist whose music includes haunting low notes on the violin called “subharmonics.” Problem is, these sounds aren’t supposed to be possible.

If the science is anything similar to wind instruments, I used to hum through the back of my throat while playing the bass clarinet, and it would creating these warbling mid tones.

Click below to hear Mari's work.
read more | digg story

Audio Guy Picked for the "Sound Lab" at Universal Studios! LOL!

Yup,

I'm the guy that got picked from the audience to do the voices in the Universal Studios Sound Lab demonstration. How appropriate right?

Sister-Audio-Guy was in town, so we spent the day at the theme park. After getting soaked on Jurassic Park we decided to dry off at The Special Effects stage show.

I get such a kick out of those movie magic demos, that when they asked for volunteers I just couldn't help it.

Without even thinking, my hand shot up like a doofus.



I think I did a pretty good job. Especially as the whole point is to have fun with the audience, and there is still that "theater" side of me that needs to be fed from time to time.



That totally fearless, needs to make a fool of himself from time to time, theater side of me...



I'm in the blue shirt obviously...

VOICE ACTORS! Struggling with Longer Copy? EXHALE FIRST!

Had the pleasure of directing auditions on a wall-to-wall :60 second radio spot a couple days ago. Standard spec: sincere, non-announcery, authority but friendly.

The spot was a tad over written, not horribly so, but came in comfy around :70 seconds.
No prepping or warning on my part helped any of the actors auditioning.
"Take your time."
"It's a touch over written."
"I DON'T CARE if it's under 60."
"Leave yourself room for air."

Most of the actors looked at me like I was trying to explain how water was wet. OF COURSE they'd breathe, DUH...

Like clockwork, around 35-40 seconds, trainwreck.
The two or three actors that did make it through without error sounded so rushed I couldn't have sent the audition off anyway.

Now these are voice over pros, but even they seem to run into a fairly common problem. I just now clued in that the problem isn't "running out of air" it's having TOO MUCH USED AIR.
Throughout longer copy, you start taking really shallow breaths to replenish. After about 30 seconds of this you're pretty much full, but since you've been speaking at a consistent rate, with no room to exhale, you're pretty much full of CO2. The body starts to send distress signals, you surge to try and finish the copy, in surging you start stumbling, this adds more stress, and the end of the audition is tanked.

I started making my actors do breathing prep, a trick I learned in musical theater to calm stage nerves (singing on stage terrified me).
"I'm going to push record. I want you to inhale for five seconds and exhale for ten seconds before you start speaking."
Now, don't even get me started on the number of actors that said "yeah cool ok" then went right into the copy IGNORING what I had just asked them to do, but forcing them to do this trick resulted in something just a little fantastic.

I got calm, engaged, personal reads. Almost everybody was able to come in under 70 seconds. Almost no stumbles were made.

People who read legal copy often tell me that the fastest legal is usually the most relaxed legal, and I totally buy it.
Those same techniques are working like gang-busters on my commercial recording sessions.

What do you do to prep longer copy?

I'm a "Do Follow" Blogger! Your Comments are Now Google Visible!

Yup,
I'm a "Do Follow" guy now.

Back in the day to prevent spamming, Google initiated tags to prevent links in comments to be crawled. This didn't stop spammers, but it did neuter commenters providing additional value to blogs by linking relevant content.

It took a little html learning, but I've fixed that here.

Link away!

For more info check out dofollowblogs.com.

"Do Follow" Blog Directory

Picking a fight with Tekzilla - Home Recording Gear Edition

This isn't like serious grudge match or anything, just wanted to throw out some thoughts, and get some feed back.

Before I jump in, I'm a HUGE fan of Patrick Norton's and Tekzilla. I'm still boycotting Monster Cables pretty much from his say so.


Now, TIME FOR UMBRAGE!


On episode 40 of Tekzilla, a viewer wrote in asking about setting up a decent dorm room recording/podcasting setup. His budget was about $1100.

Here's the episode (segment starts at the 9 minute mark):

To recap, their advice was to buy the following:
-Skype (free)
-Shure SM58 ($100)
-Pop Screen or Sock ($5 - $30)
-M-Audio Fast Track (Veronica's fave? at $130)
-Audacity (free)
-Headphones (Patrick usually recommends sub $50)
-Audio Hijack Pro (to record skype, about $35)
Total = $345 (at the high end)

My problem isn't with their advice. The SM58 is classic, and I love Audacity, can't say I like the Fast Track, but on the whole it's all pretty good...


For some one with a $400 budget, not an $1100 budget.


Some moderate stepping up to, say a Fast Track Pro and an M-Audio Nova, or even an AKG Perception 220 would be a huge improvement in sound, for not a lot more cash. It would also allow him to route audio (like a Skype interview) without needing an additional piece of software to record interviews. Total, an increase of maybe $100, or still roughly half of what his total budget is.

So what would you do?
You're starting from scratch, and you have $1100.
What do YOU buy?

Noise Reduction shoot out - Sound Forge, iZotope, Audacity, Audition, Waves, and doin it by hand!

So, this is going to be a longer post...

We're going to compare 6 different methods of noise reduction.

I get a lot of questions about cleaning up audio after recording, hums, clicks, pops, line noise, neighbors, fridge, etc. A lot of people are still trying to gate or EQ this stuff out, and those methods don't work particularly well for voice over, especially dry auditions.

Gating will turn off the audio signal when you're not speaking, which gives you perfect silence, but when you start speaking again the noise is back too. This can be VERY unnatural depending on the noise.EQ can work, but usually to the detriment of the entire piece of audio, as you are carving out chunks of the frequency spectrum. Those chunks start carving into your voice as well. Sort of like destroying the town to save the town...

Ideally you'd just want to record clean in the first place, but sometimes you just can't help but knock something out and hope you can clean it up after the fact.Noise Reduction plugins to the rescue!To test, I set up my Solaris to records in "Figure 8" mode (so the front and back of the mic are recording equally), set one side up for me, and put the other side of the mic right up against my bathroom door with the fan running.

This is a worse case scenario for voice over, as fans tend to generate noise that slices right through the middle of the human voice's spectrum. That means that as you remove fan noise, you're likely carving out a chunk of the voice as well. A less extreme version of this would be a fridge kicking on or the AC running.

All of these plugins (and doing it by hand) work on the same general principal, point out what undesirable noise looks like, and try to get rid of only that noise. [Check out the Audacity Tutorial for Noise Reduction in practice - Ed.]

I attacked the samples pretty aggressively with each method. For the test, the main idea was to all but eliminate the background noise, even if it damaged the voice. Real world, you would probably want to leave a little more noise to prevent damaging the recording.


So first up, here's the unaltered file:



Sony Sound Forge NR plugin:



iZotope RX De-Noiser:



Audacity NR plugin:



Adobe Audition NR Plugin:



Doin it by hand with Phase Inverse:



Waves Restoration X-Noise:



Again, this is most certainly a worst case scenario when it comes to noise reduction, and hopefully you don't encounter this much noise on a regular basis. I find the results interesting listening back. There are two methods up here which are essentially free, and the most expensive plugin comes in a pack which runs about $1000.



So what do YOU think? Are there other plugins that I'm missing?

Voice Over News Sound Bites - Mics, Bob Souer, Stephen Fry, SAG & AMPTP, and more...

Couple quick stories I think you'll dig...

David Houston has written a great FIVE PAGE story on getting into voice over. It's posted up at Helium. Go read it!

I've been very excited by RODE releasing the NTG-3, a $700 shotgun mic to compete against the MKH416, and Ty Ford has a CRAZY in depth comparison between the two. Does RODE have what it takes to unseat the Senny? Found via VOMicTest.

VoiceOverXtra interviews Bob "The Man" Souer (nickname mine). If you've read anything about VO blog-wise, you've probably read Bob. He's got a great out look on this business, and is quite possibly one of the most gracious writters I've ever met. Check it out for some nice insight!

I've just recently found the gloriousness which is "A Bit of Fry and Laurie", so I was mega-stoked to here that Stephen Fry has just signed on to do Fable 2. Woot!

Lastly, Hollywood Reporter has released the transcripts of the SAG/AMPTP negotiations. Interesting stuff...

AFTRA votes YES, what does this mean for Voice Over?

Yup.

By a margin of about 62%, AFTRA members have ratified a new 3 year prime time TV contract.
It'll be interesting to see how SAG responds to this, and what impact it will have on their current negotiations with the AMPTP.

For more info on the particulars of this contract head over to VoiceOverXtra, or you can read my interview with AFTRA Vice President Holter Graham.

Here we go...

Five Questions for AFTRA National VP Holter Graham about the AFTRA - AMPTP Negotiations

I had a chance to send some emails back and forth with Holter Graham about the current AFTRA - AMPTP contract. Some really interesting stuff, from someone who was in the room on the negotiations.

Before I get into the actual questions, I'd just like to thank Holter for taking the time in providing some very thoughtful answers to the questions I've asked. I've personally been hard on AFTRA in the past (even though radio has been VERY good to me), and regardless of where you might sit on the current situation, I think a call for perspective and reasonableness (in discourse) is something we should all agree on. So, my faithful readers, I would LOVE to hear your thoughts!

1. What was the mood of the negotiations? Any fall out from the WGA strike?

The mood in the negotiations was predominantly businesslike, with some very hairy moments caused by both interior and exterior factors. For example, when the issue of Clip Consent exploded in all of our faces, there were multiple moments where AFTRA and the AMPTP were very far apart, and multiple moments when either side could have walked away. But AFTRA stuck strong, and the AMPTP backed down and we retained Consent and built a system by which we can make money and protect ourselves moving forward.

At the same time there was always a looming sense that AFTRA was in the room to actually get a deal done that would keep people working, whereas SAG had already started their bluster and scapegoating, so the AMPTP knew that they probably only had one chance to discuss the issues at hand with mature adults, so that added a sense of urgency on both sides.

The WGA strike did not effect us directly, but indirectly the huge financial losses in both sides (labor and management) and the items that the WGA had already taken off the table before they even struck--DVD Residual increases, for example, were abandoned early--served to shape the framework from which we negotiated.

2. What should we be looking forward to in this new contract?

The short list for the new contract is: Money and Protection. There are raises across the board--the entire package is represented as about a 4% increase in total AMPTP spending, which is about a quarter more than unions usually get from one negotiation to the next ( the average overall bump is 3%). There are raises in minimums--more than 10% over the three years--major-role provisions, schedule and money break amounts, as well as a structure for New Media payments and residuals that did not exist until now.

Until now we have been working free-form in New Media, but AFTRA got jurisdiction, which was not guaranteed until now. And while the AMPTP can make certain low-budget experimental New Media programs without guaranteed jurisdiction, AFTRA created such a wide and all-encompassing category of "covered performer" that it will be very difficult for the AMPTP to make much of anything without full union coverage.

3. What's AFTRA's vision for emmergent technologies/new media/video games?

I addressed some of the massive gains we got in New Media in the question above. Video Games/Interactive are a separate contract, one that we at AFTRA are already preparing to negotiate in the fall--I will more than likely be on that committee as I have a a pretty good list of interactive VO and Motion-Capture work. Obviously trying for back-end payments like other areas of our work is paramount, but we have to realize that changing to any form of residual or back-end will be an enormous shift in how we get paid, one that will almost certainly costs the game companies a lot more money. And the unions do not actually have a huge percentage of the work in interactive yet, so our strategy will be to utilize as much leverage as we can while not overplaying our hand and getting locked out of a very lucrative, growing market. For instance, 8 of the top 10 video game grossers last year were made with union talent, but union talent worked on less than 30% of the total games made. So what that means is: we clearly bring a lot of value to a game, but we are not infiltrated into every corner of the industry yet. It is a tenuous position, but AFTRA, at least, understands what is at stake and what our members deserve, and we will fight for that as hard as we can. I know I will.

4. Where do we go from here? What's the next step for this guild?

AFTRA has no problem at all with the 'where do we go from here?' question: through all of this foolish backstabbing and misinformation and inter-union strife of the past years, AFTRA as kept its eye on the ball. When AFTRA suspended Phase One to negotiate with the AMPTP solo, it was because we knew that negotiating alone would be our best bet to get a string deal for or performers, one that would set the template for a storing contract for all union performers in this country. It has been painted a lot of ways, most of them false, but in fact AFTRA has been guided 24/7 by the tenets of what is best for the members.

The proof of that is this strong contract, as well as the fact that my other union never even really tried negotiating with the AMPTP: AFTRA could see that the SAG LA group in power was again going to spend time and money on posturing and not working and so we went out and got a great deal that hopefully will be ratified.

In terms of the future, I would recommend that your readers take a good long look at how things have been going lately in our industry and in the Screen Actor's Guild, my parent union. Every bump in the road, every internecine battle, every confusing campaign of disinformation that pits member against member, has come from ONE source: a small, scared, but effective group of LA actors who call themselves Membership First--which is hard for me to even type without getting mad. They are significantly more worried about holding onto their power base in the Guild than they are about caring for those of us in the union.

They use a lot of rhetoric and say things like "we will stand firm for you!" And they do stand firm, but they are standing firm on ridiculous and outlandish views of the industry and our place in it. They get a lot of votes because they promise the whole world. And then they invariably fail--have been failing for years--and usually blame someone else. Look to the White House for another example of this kind of politics. They are the reason merger failed, they are the reason we struck commercials in 2000 without a real plan for victory, and they have been quoted as saying that the commercials strike failed because it did NOT LAST LONG ENOUGH. Thats who's running our Guild.

There are elections in the fall. I hope your readers will try and educate themselves and then vote for candidates for the SAG LA board who are pragmatic, effective, and dedicated to bettering and protecting the livelihoods of members here in the real world. I will provide you with a list of those I am impressed by when that election grows near, so stay tuned.

5. What are some of your personal concerns/feelings on the current SAG "Vote No" campaign?

I think the above answer painted a pretty clear image of how I feel about the SAG Vote No campaign. I Voted YES three weeks ago, because that is the only choice for all our members--a strong contract on one hand, or a union tampering with a different union to cover the fact that it is inept on the other. It is sad, i hate it, and merger would have fixed everything, but that's the way it is. Vote YES, vote Membership First out, and then we can all spend a lot more time making sure we are good at our jobs so that we can pay our bills. And I want to thank your readers for taking the time to listen to me, and for having the intelligence to want as much information as they can get on the issues that effect their lives.

Holter Graham, Baltimore native, current AFTRA NY president and National Vice President. First seen on screen in 1985's Maximum Overdrive [WOOT! - Ed.], has been a SAG member for near 20 years, and AFTRA member for 13. Working in all fields of the industry, he's currently the voice of HBO for Genre (HBO-produced) content, as well as ads, audiobooks, narrations, and dozens of other gigs at any given moment. No 'day job' since graduating from Skidmore in 1994 a full time working actor!

Google and Creator of ‘Family Guy’ Strike a Deal for Online Distribution of Original Content

New York Times is reporting on Seth Macfarlane's new show 'Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy' which is now set to be distributed solely through Google online.

From NYT:

The innovative part involves the distribution plan. Google will syndicate the program using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of Web sites that are predetermined to be gathering spots for the Family Guy target audience, typically young men. Instead of placing a static ad on a Web page, Google will place a “Cavalcade” video clip.

read more | digg story