Seeing Your Casting on TV - Levi's Edition

This was a fun project to work on. Raw and poetic. I spent the whole day recording various poets and performers. I really like how this commercial came out.

From a Producer: We’re Not Getting What We Need

Had an interesting and enlightening chat with a producer over the weekend. He wished to remain anonymous, but is established in television and feature film production.

Recently working on a commercial package for a zoo he ran into an interesting challenge while trying to cast the voice of an animal.
By “interesting” I mean “difficult”.

“Not having a lot of VO relationships, and a lean budget, we went with web-casting hoping to throw a wide net.”

They got a lot of responses.

“That became a major hurdle to completing the project and making our delivery deadline. Funnily enough, with all of the options, a few patterns emerged very quickly. About a third of the auditions were bad, distractingly bad. Poor audio quality and performances. Noticeable edits, some on every single line of the copy. Audio levels too low or too high, and there was a lot of background noise. Of those “really bad” performance auditions, there were several with talent that could barely be understood due to accents (the copy called for a “regular American” read) or a couple that were having actual difficulties reading the copy, adding and subtracting words, stuttering.”

The rest weren’t much more helpful.

“We ran into odd issues with the rest of the auditions which weren’t outright awful. One of two things would happen. Either the actor would try to mimic [Famous Actor] who last portrayed a [Type of Animal] in [Recent Movie], or the read was just sort of a generic read. We absolutely didn’t want a [Famous Actor] read (the copy didn’t specifically mention the actor, but the direction indicated a very different personality than what the actor is known for), so those were out too. Of the plain reads, a lot of them came from talent agents. You’d hit a stretch of auditions from an agency, and the five or six guys we’d get would all kind of feel the same. A similar rhythm, or vibe. One agency sent half their guys using the same “ad-lib”. Nothing really felt honest or unique about the process. A lot of the reads felt like just that, someone reading them off the page.”

It’s not all on the actors of course.

“The production did get away from us. Deadlines were looming. Budgets were tight. Honestly, with the fast turn around, fatigue set in really quickly. Trying to listen through dozens of auditions at a time was exhausting. We thought our script was hilarious working with the writer. Trying to listen to over two hundred interpretations of it, it became noise...”

Their solution was one we’ve seen before.

“The writer we were working with had us cracking up describing the character, so we used him for the spot. We knew he wasn’t the best actor, but we knew exactly what we’d be getting.”

Where do we go from here?

“We have more spots to do with more voices to cast. Our budget and turnaround wont get any better, and after this experience I doubt we’d get more money or more time to improve the situation.”

I of course offered my services...

If you're looking to step up your VO game, I'm offering a four week commercial intensive online!

Mailbag: Did I Mess Up a Relationship With A Casting Director?

Just got this question, and for all the criticizing of voice actors I do on Twitter, I felt it was really important to answer this one publicly.

hey man...have a question for you.

I've gone to [Respected Casting Director] several times over the last few years. Specifically, the last 4-5 weeks i've gone in 3 times. The 2nd time resulted in an avail. I went in today and just did horrrrribly: I wasn't loose. Didn't really add much to the dialgoue script (improv-wise) Both times we read I flubbed a (different) line and had to restart it. And I had to sing 1 line in it, and the first time I sang horribly ([CD] even said "sing better").

As a casting person, do you think the tendency is to think "oh, he had a bad day / bad audition" or "oh, he sucks" ?

Thanks RL

Please don't beat yourself up about this. You're human, and you're allowed to have a bad day. The game we play should NEVER be that kind of tight rope act. It's just not fair to yourself.

From my perspective, my relationship with an actor changes with each experience we share. Considering that, you'd have to bone it pretty hard for me to write you off.

After a series of positive experiences it would take more than one off day for me to bucket you. You'd have to have a series of bad reads in a row, and even then you'd probably need to start actively disrespecting the process for me to stop bringing you in.

To be fair, what it might do is take you off the list for singing auditions for a while, but honestly, singing auditions are few and far between, so I wouldn't be too upset at losing out on a number of "opportunities".

If this CD is worth her salt at all she'll get it.

Video Rant - "Urgent" Does Not Mean "Talk Super Fast"

Let's discuss "urgency"...
 

Stop Talking to One Person

No really. Stop it.

I know I spend a lot of time on this blog talking tech. Honestly it’s easier to discuss than the art of performance. At the end of the day mics, mixers, preamps, compressors, booths, software, and MP3 delivery can all come be boiled down to some kind of math. We’re comfortable with that. We understand it.

However, this lopsided discussion is leading us to train voice actors who are less actors and more editors. They sound great! After a little software...

Open a discussion online about mics, and you’ll get a ton of varied responses from people trying out all kinds of gear. Open a discussion about the performance they’re trying to capture, and you’ll mostly get:

“I try to talk to one person.”

I hate this trick.

There. I said it. This is probably the most bullshit piece of advice we give new voice actors. It’s a lazy, overly simplistic, one size fits all nugget, and it’s a coin flip whether or not it’ll work in an actual casting or booked session.

On it’s face it sounds like good advice, but the main problem I have with it is we rarely equip voice actors to understand the “why” of it.

Why do we want you to speak to one person?

I’ll tell you, it’s because we want you to create an emotional response or relationship with the person listening to the performance. That’s why, but you’ll rarely hear anyone articulate that. To sell soap, you have to get someone to care (primary reason I hate the direction “throw it away” and NEVER use it). From a performance perspective, it’s a feel-good, method-y way to get newbie performers to think about their performance. Great.

It is not in and of itself a performance foundation. It is a trick. We’re trying to distract voice actors away from the words on the commercial copy page, and trick them into delivering an emotionally connected read. In my opinion this approach (free of experience and a background in other methods of performance) will fail more often than it succeeds.

First off, I often find that the actor’s audience selection is usually wrong.

During a recent one on one coaching, I was working with an actress on a piece of health care copy, about getting preemptive screenings. Each read was more antagonistic than the last, and all were at odds with the copy’s direction of “caring”, “concern”, and “empathy”. When I asked what was motivating her reads, she said she was talking to her sister. On playing back her takes, she was shocked to hear how nagging-ly she had delivered the copy, when in her mind (and heart) she genuinely cared about the audience she had selected. I think it was also a telling psychological peek into the nature of their relationship...

The idea that we each honestly have a unique person in our lives that we can pick as an audience for every piece of copy we read is unrealistic at best, and self-destructive at worst. The idea that we have to walk into every audition carrying THAT level of personal emotional baggage is exhausting.

The other problem suffered is the copy.

We don’t speak to each other “commercially”. If you’ve ever had to audition a wall-to-wall 60 second radio spot, we just don’t relate to each other that way as humans (and I’m ALREADY writing the follow up to this piece on “monologuing”).

Face it, you’ve never been motivated to share a brand’s message in an energetic and entertaining way (without sounding announcer-y) while using language like “introducing” or “presenting”, so why do we still hide behind the conceit that an audience of one is going to help?

I get it. It’s a way to shut up a question on performance, without the person feeling like their concerns were disregarded, and leaves the actor feeling like they’ve received some kind of sage advice.

But the truth of the matter, the peek behind the curtain, most of the successful commercial voice actors I work with don’t do this. They simply don’t consciously pick one person they know in real life to talk to during a commercial read. It. Just. Doesn’t. Happen.

So what advice do I have for informing a commercial read?

You’re probably not going to like it.

It takes time. Seriously. Use the trick as a starting point if you must, then over a period of time abandon it. Inform your own technique with experience, but run away from the audience trick as soon as you’re capable.

I’m a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell, and I genuinely do believe in his 10,000 hours to mastery hypothesis posed in his book Outliers.

The master voice actors I’ve worked with, those seasoned by time, effort, and experience, have all adopted a far more intuitive approach to their individual reads. Often it seems they’re developing an idea of their delivery before they’ve finished reading the copy, before they’ve even bothered to read the producer’s direction, and before they’re rationally analysing the copy.

They’ve been exposed to so much copy that the script analysis and performance sections of their brains can function almost autonomously. It’s a “feeling” based approach to VO we rarely discuss with up and coming VA’s.

They’ve also taken the time to calibrate their instruments. Again, an intuitive sense of:

“When I feel like THIS, people listening will feel like THAT.” 

They are never guessing as to the emotional impact they’re creating. They aren’t having to reference their reads after the fact to see if they’ve achieved the proper tone. They feel it when it works, and they know when they’ve missed it.

Rather than perfecting a trick, we should want to get to this emotional short hand. We want to cut out the middle man, and that can only be achieved with time and practice. Give it 10,000 hours of intense study (give or take a year or so).

For all the people I’ve taught, coached, and worked with, especially those only a couple of years into their voice over journey, this is almost always the leading issue I find with people who feel like they’ve plateaued.

Techniques, methods, and tricks are just the beginning. They are training wheels. Use them to find your balance, but eventually you must forge your own path.

Nolan North - "Is Voice Acting in Games Different Than Other Projects"

Caught this over at The Resnick Interactive Group blog, and I'm happy they shared it. Nolan delivers a fantastic answer to this question, and having worked with him on commercial castings, I can tell you, he knows what he's talking about.

From The Twitters: Advice for Partner Reads?

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I like to vent my frustrations there.

When someone does something utterly douchey during a casting or session, I have no problems calling them on it, but when someone just doesn’t know that they’ve done something wrong, it’s my duty to correct the behavior in as conflict-free a fashion as possible, so as not to disturb the rest of the session. Sometimes I’m able to swallow that annoyance, sometimes not, but I find myself doing A LOT of teaching...

[Tangent: I lay the blame for most of this at the feet of our current fascination with locking voice actors in their closets to act, record, direct, and edit all on their own, devoid of any outside influence or support, but that’s for another rant...]
During one of my more recent tantrums on Twitter, the subject of partner reads came up. Partner reads are a hot button issue for me. We get to do them so rarely in this “record from home” obsessed culture, that they SHOULD be my favorite projects to cast. Unfortunately they  often end up becoming the most frustrating days to work.

Upon receiving this tweet from a follower:

@Kholdshift

@SomeAudioGuy What issues are they [partner reading actors] having that I could potentially avoid in future auditions?

@SomeAudioGuy It would be much appreciated for all of us left behind, waiting for the end of the universe in October

I figured it was time to throw my two cents in.

Why do a partner read?
With how fast commercial casting is, it can be imperative to hear whether or not your actors can actually act. With skill sets WILDLY fluctuating, and with many actors becoming better editors than performers (see my above tangent), there’s no guarantee that putting a voice actor in a booth means they’ll be able to relate to another human being in an honest way.
While working at a talent agency, even though it was a lot of additional work to go through setting up times and partners, we held to reading actors together, in specific groups, designed to play to the strengths of each performer. We really believed that it increased the likelihood that one of our groups would book the spot. I hold to that line of reasoning now working for a casting company.
When a group clicks, it really can raise the level of the audition beyond that of the individual performances.

How to approach the partner read?
It’s an acting gig. Just as you would approach a Theater/Improv/Film/TV gig, it’s all about developing some chemistry with another individual. You can’t get away with just delivering your lines, your involvement in the process needs to show how you can create a relationship with the other body in the room. Listening is key.
All those classes,workout groups, workshops you attend, I’m here to tell you today, that your time OUTSIDE the booth listening to other actors is MORE valuable than your time INSIDE the booth reading. From an educational standpoint, your ability to think critically, interpret direction, and analyze copy on the fly is greatly improved by observing what works and what doesn’t work for other actors. If you’re not paying attention outside the booth, you’re wasting the class, your time, and money.
Likewise, if you’re serious about VO, alongside VOICE acting classes, you should be augmenting your education with any other performance based classes you can get your hands on, theater, improv, even singing. I was not surprised to find that several of my really successful VO pals routinely refresh their skills by taking new classes and workshops.

Analyze that Script!
Script analysis is a vital tool that is often overlooked. If you enter a casting booth figuring that the director will tell you everything you need to know, then you are already statistically on the losing side of the booking game. It means you are waiting to get lucky. However, walk into the booth with an idea of what you hope to accomplish, and you’re MUCH more likely to deliver a competitive take. Even if your idea is WRONG, it still gives your director more of a starting point to properly guide you. Walking in like a blank slate means the director is just going to cram his or her voice down YOUR throat. How successful can you be if you’re constantly performing someone else’s voice?

Things to ask yourself:
*Who is the audience for your character?
*Who is the spot trying to reach (often a different audience than who your character is trying to reach)?
*What is your character trying to accomplish?
*What is the tone of the spot?
*What is the pacing/timing of the spot?

And here’s a gimme, if the spot is being played for comedic effect, it’s usually because one character is doing something out of the ordinary. Now read carefully because this next point is GOLD:

Does the “silly” character do silly things all the time, or is this a first time occurrence?

You should be able to craft substantially different reads with your partner based on that one question alone.

If you can’t answer at least a few of the questions above, I’m sorry to say it’s not as likely that you’ll book the job, and you’ll be pulling your partner down as well.

Of course these all wont completely apply. For example, I recently cast a project where an Announcer was narrating while another character delivered pieces of a monologue, but even in a situation like that, where conversational elements might not apply, you can still glean a lot from the copy to make decisions based on the character’s relationship, proximity, and what they are each trying to accomplish.

Technical concerns for partner reads?
DON’T SWALLOW YOUR MIC! I’ve already posted a WHOLE nuther rant regarding the proximity effect, but it bears repeating. You CAN NOT sound like you’re in the same room as another human being if you are hogging the mic. It’s gotten so bad that I routinely mic groups of three or more with overhead mics, and actors will STILL try to hog a microphone while the mics are HANGING FROM THE CEILING.
Don’t do that.
Seriously. 

Cease.

Desist.

Direction concerns for partner reads?
Now this is more of a personal preference situation. 

It will largely depend on how your director communicates what they need from their performers.

For me, I tend to err on the side of "natural". 

I figure there’s little point in wanting to hear voices in tandem just to do a “clean take”, where there’s no overlap of the dialog between people in the scene. We just don’t speak to each other as humans like that.
I want that “life” that permeates conversation. The overlaps, the interjections, agreement, disagreement, it’s all vital in my opinion, so vital that I often refuse to “direct” it. Giving specific notes on how to craft conversational elements is often the fastest way to kill the "natural-ness" of a given interaction.
Listen for buzz words, “conversational”, “interruption”, “overlap”, etc. 

If the producers DO need a clean take I’ll specifically ask for one, or record one as a safety for a take two.
You have to listen to a director. 

I’m often shocked at how two actors will talk over me the entire time they’re in the booth, then expect me to help them out after three or four takes have failed to vibe. I have neither the time nor inclination to hold an actor’s hand, or validate an actor’s choices,  when he or she is being dismissive of my role in the casting process.
I am not a talent agency booth director, whose role is to make the agency’s actors (THEIR clients) sound as good as possible. My job is to provide MY clients with the best options for their projects.
Even if an actor has an amazing read, if they are difficult to work with, dismissive, rude, late, it’s often in MY best interest to closely consider whether or not MY clients should also be subjected to that behavior should the actor book the job.

If you make us look good to OUR clients, we'll bring you in more often. Simple as that.

Ask questions! But not too many questions...
No such thing as a stupid question. I do believe that, especially if the actor has  tried to ask themselves some of the questions I listed above. I’d rather you ask than waste our time. However there is a fine line between clearing up a couple points before recording, and TALKING A PIECE OF COPY TO DEATH before recording. It’s different for every individual, but there comes a point, where a realization will dawn, that the actor is already stale, dissecting a piece of copy, asking me further and  further nuanced questions about specifics in the copy, that they’ve already talked themselves out of booking the gig.
I can’t find a good rule for this one. It just sort of happens, but it often feels like a defense mechanism, usually  from someone that spends more of their time focused on delivering a piece of copy rather than performing it...

It’s all the same.
These are all the same concerns and notes people have heard time and time again. Partner reads aren’t really any different than any other acting challenge, but maybe that is what is so unique about them. They are acting challenges, NOT editing challenges. 

We live in an age where we are actively encouraging voice actors to NOT be actors. Instead requiring them to focus on self directing, recording technique, equipment maintenance, editing, post, and delivery. Somewhere in there, a performance needs to happen. Placing the actor in my booth, I often find actors who just don’t know what their role is anymore, actors who can’t relinquish control over things like mic placement, constantly futzing with their copy, stands, or headphones. It’s frustrating, for both me AND the performer. We’re constantly stepping on each other’s toes.

At the end of the day (and this terribly long rant), if I can only impress upon you that there are different processes in place between web casting, agency auditioning, and showing up to read at a standalone casting facility, that might just be good enough.
Just respecting the fact that everyone does business in their own unique fashion, and being flexible or amenable to the different goals each are trying to accomplish, will make you more successful in this business.

Now you crazy kids, get the CRAP OFF MY LAWN! Kids... walking around with their pants on the ground... Twittering their facebooks... Just awful...

A Rant on Bad Habits - Reading Comprehension

Ok.
I haven't gotten cranky on this blog for a little while, but I did a casting job today that got me all riled up, so you get cranky-pants Juan now.

I've noticed another bad habit developing in the world of voice over auditioning. See, what I do is kind of old school. The company I work with still does in-house auditions where the talent drive to us to be recorded and directed. The biggest advantage to this approach is we give our clients a really hands on and carefully considered and selected group of talent to cast their projects from. For talent, it reduces the amount of competition you might face. A web casting can generate hundreds (if not thousands) of submissions, we typically narrow our field down to about 30 depending on what the client asks for. It's a win-win for clients and talent.

We work really hard at trying to keep open lines of communication with agents and managers. It's vital to our business that we know the local scene, and are very familiar with what talent can do. When new talent are breaking in, we need to know about them.

Now actors, this is where I'm getting a little concerned. Over the last several years, I've noticed a decline in reading comprehension and the ability to "pick up" from the newer talent I've auditioned. I've been encountering more and more talent walking into my booth with some pretty bad reading habits, talent leaving out or inserting words, talent walking in cold trying to "wing it", and talent picking up and retaking every other line of their copy.

When people like me give advice to new talent, often one of the main pointers we'll give is "Read out loud EVERY day". It's funny how often I meet resistance to this idea. I'm not trying to give you homework, or make your life more difficult, I've genuinely found that the better you can read, the better you are at auditioning. One of the reasons this advice might be challenged is invariabley a new talent will ask an established talent if they read out loud every day, to which the established talent will probably say "no".


"See! THEY book jobs and don't read out loud everyday!"

Except for the fact that they do. The established working/booking talent is always in shape, tackling auditions and jobs EVERY day. If you're only exercising your VO muscles once or twice a week, then the established talent will eat you for lunch nine times out of ten.

A practical example of reading comprehension you ask? Certainly!
While working for a TV client producing nature narration, the producer originally worked with a seasoned voice talent. This gentleman was a machine. His pick up/retake ratio was literally in the ballpark of one pick up every 30 minutes with maybe two re-directs from the client PER HOUR LONG EPISODE of TV. A natural, engaging story teller, and he was an absolute DREAM to work with. We finished an entire season of TV a day early due to his efficiency, taking a five day job down to four, a TWENTY percent reduction in studio costs.

For the second season of this show, one of the producers wanted to go with a younger sound on the narration. We held a casting, they picked a voice they liked and we jumped into the project. The new talent required MANY more retakes and re-directs. There wasn't anything necessarily wrong with the sessions, but there was a constantly feeling of "flow interrupted", and it's never a good feeling knowing you'll have more editing to do at the end of a session. Plus, not only was the new talent not able to get the job done as quickly, but needed an additional day to get some elements cleaned up.

The producers are gearing up for season three. Which talent do you think will be narrating it?

So voice actors, I'm REALLY not trying to be a jerk, or give you homework, or make you work harder than you think you should be, but if you want to be competitive in this (REALLY competitive) PLEASE read out loud every day. PLEASE practice your reading. I PROMISE it will make you a better auditioner, and a better auditioner is usually a better booker...

Hear Some Audio Guy on an ACTUAL Commercial!

Just who IS that sexy sexy voice at the end of those cheesy Alibaba.com commercials?

Yup, VO director snakes job from talent.

I'm officially the voice of Alibaba (a company that hooks up designers and manufacturers for international business).

It's actually kind of gratifying doing some work every now in then in front of the mic as opposed to ALWAYS being behind the mixer. Hopefully it means I still know what the crap I'm talking about when I'm directing people LOL!


Here's one of the spots I did:


You can catch the rest at http://success.alibaba.com/ , and you'll probably see them over the next couple months on cable!

VO Actors! Don't Forget to READ Your Copy!

ALL OF YOUR COPY!

Worked on two projects this week where quite a few people missed some very key points on some pretty decent auditions.

The first was a basic one. Producers sent us in a 30 second spot that was WAY over written. We've seen that before, no big surprise, but the agency did provide time codes at the top. I would say only one out of three people auditioning had noticed. Two thirds of the people coming in to read had prepped a 60 second style read, and were completely unprepared for a faster take.

The person who booked the job came out of the one third that noticed the time code.

The other was a bit more obscure.
We got a great TV spot for a luxury car. Very simply written, sophisticated with a little bit of a wink. They not only had time notes, but little storyboards and descriptions of what was happening in the spot. The twist to the commercial was the music, an old 1990's cheesy hip hop jam, to allow the spot to not take itself too seriously.

First I was shocked at how many people had completely disregarded the notes and storyboards (I would say almost a third), and had decided to just deliver their best Sloyan or Lyman impressions.

Only ONE person caught the music cue and knew what it was.

Guess who booked the job.

In this age of Blackberries and iPhones, not looking up a piece of info (in this case a music cue) LITERALLY meant the difference between booking a job and not.

Just some warm fuzzies to leave you with for the weekend!

Just Another Really Good Day

Just felt like bragging a little.

Silly butler-ly role, and getting to read some FANTASTIC actors for it:
Jim Piddock, Jim Ward, JB Blanc, Ian Ambercombie, David Shaugnessy, Robin Atkin Downes, George Lazenby, David McCallum, and Michael York!

I was SILLY stoked about those last three. I've even worked with Michael before!


Kinda broke my heart a little when one of the other casting directors I work with said "Who are they?".

Sigh...

Simply a Classic Day of Voice Casting...

Today was a good day.

I don't write about my actual jobs very often. I guess I still try to maintain a little anonymity with my real life versus my web presence. That said, I realized that I often only write about work when something is pissing me off, and that's not really fair.

Today was a VERY good day.

I spent all day directing auditions at a casting studio.
The spot was a silly radio bit, wall to wall 60, a touch over written, nothing super special, but pretty decent.
The actors we called into today however were classic, truly Hollywood veteran classic. Alan Oppenheimer, Andre Stojka, Billy Vera, George Coe, Jack Betts, James Karen, Jim Cummings, John Mayer, Richard McGonagle, Peter Jason, Richard Herd, Robert Pine, Ron Masak, Steve Eastin, Troy Evans, William H Bassett.

Today was a LOT of fun.

I had a blast just sitting in the lobby in between auditions. If you would've walked in off the street, you never would've guessed that they were all gunning for the same part. Chatting, laughing, catching up, putting each other down, vaudevillian one upping, it was like I was sitting in on a voice over country club luncheon. None of the standard Hollywood schmoozing, they were all genuinely glad to see each other, and they could not have cared less that they were each other's competition.

It was an eye opening wealth of improv, Second City, and general comedic performance, training, and experience, and I got to hang toe to toe. Apt, as they REALLY kept me on my toes.

I learned a lot today.

Today was a REALLY good day...

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?

A Post on Partner Reads, Proximity, and Pet Peeves...

OK voice actors. I've got a bone to pick.
This is going to be a longer post (rant), but please read through, gimme your thoughts, maybe we'll all learn something.

I regularly run into actors who don't know what they're doing in front of the microphone. Actually, to be fair, they often know what it is they're doing, but they rarely know why they do it. A prime example of this is the proximity effect.

Loosely put, the Proximity Effect states that the closer you get to a directional microphone the more pronounced low frequency sound will become. This is a good thing for a VO person to know. Need to enrich the voice a little, well, move a little closer. Neat! Now we can all sound like James Earl Jones! Woot!

Yeah, but no...

I find this little "trick" is almost always misused, over used, or done incorrectly. I'll be in the middle of a casting session, mics set up for the talent, pop screen appropriately placed for a good sound, and what's the first thing the talent will invariably do? Smash the screen right up on the grill of the microphone. The idea being that if they are lipping my mic, they'll sound big and rich and full.

While true to a point, the human voice really isn't deep enough to warrant being that close to a mic. After a certain distance, you're not making your voice any rich-er or full-er. You know what you are doing though? You're rendering the pop screen almost completely ineffective, opening your recording up for all kinds of plosives, and possibly damaging the diaphragm of the microphone.

See, pop screens work by diffusing, redirecting, and reflecting puffs of air. By moving the screen right on top of the mic, air passing through the screen doesn't have a chance to be redirected, and will end up hitting the mic's diaphragm. Hello 'P' pop!

We've been down this road before too. In the late 60's, Neumann was getting a lot of microphones sent back for failure. Click on the picture for the service bulletin they put out regarding the increased failure rate. When working at distances of millimeters, those little puffs of air can create substantial pressure and concussive force on the microphone. Add in a greater likelihood of moisture (from breath and spit), and the possibility of contaminants (like the build up from a smokers lung), and it's incredible these mics last as long as they do. Give it a read (pic courtesy of micshop.com).

This brings up another quick point. If I'm running a busy casting session, how often do you think I'm able to clean that screen? How many people do you think will be recording off of it? I was already a germ-a-phobe before doing so much booth work, now... [shrug]

Also I'm not sure the "proximity read" is really helping people accomplish what they want, like booking more jobs. What's often the first thing we see on audition copy? "We're looking for a real person", "non-announcery", "no DJ voices". By reading so close to the mic, you're creating the technical version of the sound producers say they don't want, namely a big fat voice that feels like someone is talking at you, right between you're eyes. There's nothing natural about this sound. There's no sense of space, of this character you're creating being a real person in a room talking to the audience.

This has become more and more of a problem with the partner reads I need to audition. Lately it's become a race to see who can swallow their mic the fastest. After calling the group in, there's an instant flurry of activity as the actors position themselves on their mics, so there's no possible way they could ever really relate to each other and, you know, act. The result is often a very sterile "I'll wait for the other guy to stop speaking so I can say my line" audition. That doesn't book. People who sound natural and can riff book. The proximity read in a partner setting makes you sound unnatural at best, and at worst selfish, especially if you have a partner that isn't joining you in lipping the mic.

Just to make that pairing competitive, I now have to create conflict by asking the actors not to do what they're doing. I've yet to find a one size fits all solution to asking an actor to act instead of swallow my mic. I tend to get attitude, or a response that might seem to indicate that they think I don't know what I'm doing. Why wouldn't they want their voices to sound big and fat?

Sigh ... Right lesson, wrong time...

At the end of the day, the proximity effect is just that, something you do for effect, not all the time.

When you proximity read, make sure you're doing it right:
*Mashing the screen on the mic increases the likelihood of plosive (and damage). At the closest there should still be about a "thumb's" distance between screen and grill. You better have a good reason to be in that close!
*When you're that close, a little off axis work (turning the mic at an angle) will still sound great, and help tame those puffs of air. No reason to face in flat on the mic.
*Low volume reads only! Trailer style reads are actually some of the quietest reads there are.
*Absolute no-no for partner work!

Still need more convincing than a booth director working in the trenches every day?
Well how about the biggest proximity readers there are!
This is a clip I recorded off the Today show a YEAR ago featuring Don LaFontaine, Joe Cipriano, Mark Elliot, and George Delhoyo.

I've added annotations to the video, so you should see boxes pop up highlighting the actors on mic (keep your mouse cursor on the video to see the annotations). George comes closest, but NONE of them lip the mic.



Sorry to lay it on so thick, but I've been fighting this one a lot lately.
Leave me comments guys and gals. Whaddaya think?

Portal 2 Voice CASTING! Character Spoilers! AWESOME!

Damn you Kotaku!

This is a hella tasty scoop...

A reader there sent in info from Breakdown Express (an on line casting/breakdown service for actors) on auditions coming up for Portal 2!

Click on this image below for more details:

Hmmm...

Becomes the primary antagonist, eh?

Does this mean there's no GLaDOS? Does she become an ally?

The mind REELS!

Thanks for letting me rip this off Kotaku! Though you really didn't have any say in the matter!

Recording Booth on the Cheap!

So my friend Erik was having some problems recording auditions from home.

He lived in a very modern apartment with nice hardwood floors, off a fairly busy street, and the only space he could dedicate to a microphone was a tiny little closet.



The quality of his auditions was ... lacking ...



Off the advice from a friend, he started trying to put up foam (as you can see in this picture), but actual acoustic foam can be kind of expensive, and that really wasn't his problem. His auditions suffered from a boomy echo, and foam wouldn't help that very much.

Here's an example:





The problem with closets is they become low frequency echo chambers. Low frequency sound loves to bounce around, and hard flat surfaces set at 90 degrees just help that sound bounce around. The ridges in most foam treatments aren't really big or deep enough to properly diffuse, and the foam itself is rarely thick enough to properly absorb that kind of bass energy.



What Erik needed was to subtly change the shape of his room, and try to reduce the hard reflections he was getting. I told him to try hanging two packing blankets in half circles behind him and his mic, and made him throw down an old carpet scrap on the floor. I then also had him pass his audio through a low-cut filter.

It's ugly, but the setup cost less than $30 (also less than what he spent on foam).



Here's what his audio sounds like now:





Not a bad jump if I say so myself (which I do).



And if you want to hear Erik in action, here's a link to a Funny or Die vid he did during the writers strike. Very funny!

someaudioguy some audio guy help how to recording home recording voice over voice acting recording booth sound proof auditioning actors

AudioGuy Mail Bag - Some Audition Questions...

This question comes in from Janet, who has a few technical questions about her auditions:

I love all your Some Audio Guy postings and you've been a big help.
I've done on-camera and voice over work for many years as a radio and TV
anchor/reporter but now am after strictly voice-over work.

Here are my questions -

In my home studio, I can't hear my voice in the headphones while I'm recording
with Audacity or Adobe Soundbooth CS3 - playback is no problem.
(it was set up by a broadcast engineer friend but I never
noticed that I couldn't hear in the headphones when he was
here, or maybe I've done something wrong since.)

Also - if my intention is to supply "dry reads" from my home studio, how much
cleaning up should I do on the auditions? if I take out breaths and normalize
the volume (as you show on your video) is that a false impression of what I
intend to deliver? Isn't that more an "I can deliver edited and finished voice tracks" as voice123 says or do I misunderstand the term "dry read?"

Whew, that's a lots of questions all wrapped into one. I appreciate any help you can give me.

Thanks - Janet

Hey Janet,
About hearing yourself while recording, that can be a little tricky, It's largely going to come down to what sound card you're using to record. Most modern external soundcards should be fast enough to let you monitor. Depending on what recording software you're using, there should be a recording setting to allow hardware monitoring. Now this is where latency comes into play. Your card has to sample the audio you create (vibrations in the air), translate it into a digital signal (1' and 0's), and pass it over a USB or FW cable to your computer, WHILE re-routing it to your headphones. If you dont have a reasonably quick soundcard/computer setup, then you'll hear yourself as an echo with a split second delay.

As for this notion of "dry reads", well I just try to go for simple. Some of the casting studios use dynamic mics plugged directly into a mixer into the mic port on a computer (no soundcard at all). They do this so their recordings aren't good enough to use for an actual spot, but are good enough to hear what the actors are doing. This doesn't seem to negatively affect their business (though I can't say I love the quality of the recordings).
I say, as long as you're being honest about your talents, then do what you're comfortable doing. If you get to the end of an audition, and you have to do a ton of editing to make it sound good, then maybe it's not for you.

I tend to leave breath noise in auditions, except for deep breaths before and after copy (like my big sigh in the video). One they are perfect points to edit around, and two there's an odd psychological trick to long copy. If an audience member hears continuous monologue, but no breathing, it can cause a little distress (like when you see an action movie, and the hero dives underwater for 10 minutes, the audience will try to hold their breath along with said hero).

I think normalizing is fine, as long as it's done subtly (you want your sound balanced nothing too spikey loud or too quiet), though I would avoid heavy compression (audio not MP3 compression). You really don't want a solid WALL of sound. You never know what kind of speakers you'll be played on, so you could sound really muddy or distorted. It's like music mixing, you want to sound the same on crappy car speakers as you do on a $15K home theater. It's not glamorous, but it's a better way to represent yourself.

Thanks for the question (I'll probably steal it for the blog ;-), and thanks for reading!
-SomeAudioGuy
someaudioguy some audio guy mailbag question help how to recording music voice over voice acting auditioning acting actors animation commercial

Beginner Audacity Tutorial, WITH VIDEO!

Yes, an exclamation point in the title!

So, I've put together a little video with some basic tips to improving the sound of home recordings using Audacity.

And here it is:


Basically, we just want to clean up the sound of an audition. As an example, here's a sample of the audio used before cleaning:



And after:



Also, since the streaming vid is a little hard to see whats going on (even when you expand to full screen), I do have a high quality version hosted on divshare, but it's big (180MB) and DivShare is moving DOGSLOW right now.

AUDACITY TUTORIAL HIGH-ISH QUALITY

If anyone has any advice on better file hosting (for CHEAP), please let me know!

SomeAudioGuy Microphone Shoot Out!

I do quite a bit of business teaching people how to record themselves. Working in voiceover, this is becoming more and more necessary. Not that VO artists need to be full on recording engineers, but having a basic understanding of how to make their voices sound presentable is becoming more important.
At work we recently worked on a promo job where the budget was so low, that to pay for union talent they had to be able to record themselves, and send the audio back as quickly as possible. They didn't care about whisper rooms or ISDN, just a decent clean recording and a good performance. The job would've covered 30+ national promos.

Not a bad incentive to invest in some recording equipment!

My favorite setup to recommend is an external soundcard and condenser microphone. For newbies I tend to start low, say a USB MobilePre and MXL 770 (I can't say I'm a big fan of USB mics, as they don't give you anywhere to go, say you want to upgrade the mic or soundcard, you're starting from scratch all over again, not to mention adding a mixer, preamps, or monitors). Good flexibility, good sound, and all starting at under $300 (including stands and cables).

So, why not use a more expensive mic?

I get this question quite a bit. Every VO actor seems to have dreams of recording at home on a U87 or some vintage ribbon mic, and expensive mics are great, but an expensive mic wont make something sound "good-er". You get an expensive mic because it has a particular character that you are wanting to use. Personally I prefer the sound of an AKG 414 to the U87 FOR MOST PEOPLE. This is of course totally subjective as no one's really going to sound "bad" on either of these, but the Neumann will run you two to three times as much. Will you sound two to three times better?

AKG C 414 B-XL II Condenser Microphone

It's all about bang for buck. For a newbie at recording, who wont understand about monitors, mixing, preamps (where mics really start to shine), and sound proofing/isolation it makes little sense to spend more than a couple hundred bucks to start experimenting. This kit can get really expensive really fast.

So all that being said, I've setup a little experiment. I've taken 3 of my favorite mics (and one beater) set them up under the same conditions, and two at a time, recorded the same piece of text (the first paragraph of 'Under Milk Wood' by Dylan Thomas, one of my favorite plays). All mics were connected directly to my Firewire 4-10, with gain set at half for each. Mic diaphragms were set approximately 10 inches from my face. After recording I punched each track through Sound Forge 9 and boosted the volume about 300% (exactly the same for each), then mixed each down to an mp3 @ 320kbps.

The mics we'll be hearing are:

*The M-Audio Aries @ $120 - Hand held condenser mic I got for free with my soundcard.



*The M-Audio Solaris @ $300 - This was the first multi-pattern condenser I've ever purchased, and it's served me very well for years.



*The Neumann KM184 @ $700 - I inherited this mic, before I was serious about recording, from an internet news "broadcast" station I worked at briefly in college. None of us knew about phantom power, so this mic "never worked". Years later I figured it out, and this has been a great utility and over head mic.



* The Sennheiser MKH 416 @ $1400 - This is THE L.A. mic. Originally used for outdoor broadcast, it also found a home in studios thanks in part to it's laser like focus.



With introductions out of the way, let's take a listen! While listening try to keep your headphones or speakers set to the same level. Each clip is about 40 seconds long.

M-Audio Aries:


M-Audio Solaris:



Neumann KM184:



Sennheiser MKH 416:


Wow! The Aries sounds not great at all! To be fair it is meant to replace dynamic mics like the sm57 (which I originally planned on using but sounded even worse), and even though it's phantom powered, the Aries really is meant to be passed through a preamp just like the Dynamic mics it competes against.

The Senny 416 sounds great. This thing is meant to be attached to video equipment or thrown on a boom, run off batteries, and get ONE person's voice even in noisy environments. Little wonder it handily beats the living crap out of the budget "studio" mics, and at twice the price of the Neumann, it had better.

But here's where a little know-how comes in. What if we normalized the volume of the Neumann and the Solaris to match the volume of the 416? Would the Senny still sound that much better?
Let's see!

Solaris NORMALIZED:



Neumann NORMALIZED:



OK! That's much better. The Solaris comes in a little brighter. The Neumann made my voice a little muddy, but now we're much closer in terms of "quality".

Now can we really say the Senny is twice as good as the Neumann? FOUR times better than the Solaris? Or if you're just starting out do you just boost the volume after the fact with a budget mic?

Thin voice? Movie trailer voice? No one mic is going to be the best. Matching a mic to a voice is as personal as the right pair of shoes/jeans/etc. Dumping a ton of cash on a "good" mic is kind of useless unless you've got the time, money, know-how, and effort to put into the surrounding kit as well.

Let me know what you think! Comments always appreciated!
Hopefully I'll be able to do more of these as time goes on.