Google dives into video game advertising, Om Malik’s thoughts on VoIP, Dee Bradley Baker: the Ultimate Voice Actor Dad, Voices.com Web Videos, Julie Williams on Marketing your Voice Over Business, Adam Fox on Methodology and Application, and Union VS Non-union in the VOX Box.
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Tags
Google, Video Game Advertising, Adscape, Om Malik, GigaOm, VoIP, Skype, iChat, Dee Bradley Baker, Julie Williams, Post Cards, Vista Print, Email Advertising, Adam Fox, Bob Oakman, AFTRA, SAG, Equity, ACTRA, Non-union
Transcript of Vox Talk #22
Matt Williams: Episode 22
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Hi, I’m Stephanie Ciccarelli, your host for VOX Talk. We rounds up the stories, the audio features and the tips that matter to you. VOX Talk is a community podcast for voice actors and we’re proud of it. One quick programming note: VOX Talk will now be released once a week, so be sure to keep subscribed and check in with us on Thursdays.
Matt Williams: The Loop, informing you of news and current voiceover events.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Google is getting into video game advertising with its purchase of Adscape Media for an undisclosed amount of money. If you recall, Google bought YouTube for a whopping 1.65 billion dollars. I trust that paints a picture for you. Adscape and the search engine giant have released a joint FAQ on Adscape’s website, but are keeping most of the details under wraps. In-game advertising like virtual billboards or video walls could become the next big thing as games become more graphically intense, encouraging more impulse purchases.
To learn more, go to tgdaily.com
Broadband and telecommunications industry pundit Om Malik posed a question on his blog this week asking if VoIP or voip, when you break it down that’s voiceover Internet protocol, was an excuse for bad voice quality. Om took the time to compare a few services including iChat and Skype, which yield significantly better results over the voice over Internet protocol option. That’s what Om says, but what do you think?
To comment or read the full article, go to gigaom.com
To conclude our news today, I’d like to direct your attention to an article that was written about Greeley native Dee Bradley Baker, voice actor of 150 voices for cartoons, movies and video games. Dee shares reasons why he’s in voice acting as well as the perks of being a professional voice actor with a home recording studio. If you’re a dad of young kids working from home, you’ll be sure to relate to Dee Bradley Baker.
Go to The Tribune’s website at greeleytrib.com to get to know another voice acting father in arms.
And just squeeze this in, just a quick addition. We’ve just released a couple of web videos on the Voices.com video podcast. If you haven’t seen them yet, go to videos.voices.com to watch and then share them with a friend on YouTube.
Matt Williams: The Biz, helping you grow your voiceover business.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Today in The Biz, Julie Williams talks about marketing yourself in voice overs, specifically with post card marketing and email marketing.
Julie Williams: Hello, I’m Julie Williams. One of the things I most frequently ask is how to market your self in voiceovers? Because let’s face it if they don’t know you are there, no matter how good you aren’t going to be working. Here are two ways, I have effectively marketed myself in voiceovers over the past 30 years and next week we’ll talk about a third way.
One as we talk about a little a couple of weeks ago and I wrote about in the free voiceover magazine called the V-Zine is Postcard Marketing. I use postcard marketing a lot because it inexpensive and if you get a good design on a postcard something to make them smile, they just might post it on their bulletin board or keep it at their desk in their cubicle. Something I create and print my own postcard because I enjoyed desktop publishing but increasingly I’m ordering post card online. My favorite site is probably VistaPrint.com but there are others too. If you go to the Vista Print site, I found and if you type in VistaPrint.com/VIP something they have specially offers that aren’t on the regular site like 100 free postcards, stuff like that.
Another way to stay top of mind, to keep in touch with your client s if via e-mail, now you could e-mail each one individually or you could e-mail a group which is really so impersonal or you could a short newsletter. When you’re sending this to clients, you definitely want them to be short but it is a good way to keep in touch. Not long ago I researched several newsletter sites and the one I like best was ConstantContact.com and here is why. They offer a 60 day free trial sending out unlimited newsletter in that time for up to 100 contacts. Once you go over that, if you go over a 100 contacts within the first 60 days, then you’re going to pay but the free is something like $50 a month for up to 500 contacts and I want to say 50,000 a month for up to 25,000 unlimited e-mails. You can choice from a number so templates. It’s easy to customize and you can add photos links and the best part is they maintain the list, so if a client choices opt out of your month or quarterly or occasion e-mail. It’s very easy for them to do or they can opt in on your website, if you want to see how that works go to www.voice-overs.com and look for the yellow text saying sign up, that’s how you opt in for the V-Zine.
Now, I’m no web master but I put that on my site by myself and it was very easy to do. The e-mails will be costume address to your client and you can really make them look attractive, I’d suggest you go to ConstantContact.com and sign up for their free trial and start with and e-mail list of friends and family and create an update on your life for them, add photos and links and get practice and then add a client list because you can have as many list as you want and be sure to put me on the list [email protected] because I like to keep on top of who’s doing what to published it in the month voiceover.com V-Zine magazine.
Next week we’ll talk about specialty advertising and branding, two more ways to grow your voiceover business.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Now, that folks is one of the best marketers in the biz! Keep subscribed to the VOX Talk podcast to hear more from Julie on this topic. Thank you Julie.
Matt Williams: Tech Talk, walking you through the technological landscape.
Bob Oakman:You’re listening to another Defiant Digital Podcast for Voices.com. Here’s you host, Adam Fox.
Adam Fox: Howdy folks and thanks Bob, what a great introduction. You’ll be hearing more from Bob in the future definitely. Well, folks I had to take high (inaudible 00:6:26) there for about a week or so and I really did missed you on the segment for the show but when illness calls, there’s really not much we can do to help with that instrument. Yes, there are definitely things we can do to help try keep ourselves healthy and keep that voice and your instrument in great tune but something you just have to just come to it.
Well, today I thought we take a little bit of different direction, we’ve been talking so much technical stuff and of course this is a Tech Talk segment, so I want to stay to form. However, I want to discuss methodology and application. Those two things can make all the difference when it comes to applying and thinking about how you’re going to apply those effects and different technical tricks that we’re giving you here. First of let me say there’s no wrong way to do something, well let me rephrase that, there’s no wrong way to do something provided that the end result that you get is what the client needs and what you’re with.
What I mean by that is if you’re, say doing a drive voice recording, that’s what the client ask for, you give them a drive voice recording and as we’ve heard in previous podcast and also from other segment producers which is absolutely true. Your clients are going to want something different time and you’re going to have to kind the feel out what your client are going to want, every time you job for them and if you’ve been doing something for a client for a long time and they come to you because they like the way you do it and how you provide that, don’t change it. I’m certainly not advocating, trying to change up the way that you do your business with the client, you don’t want to mess with those stable relationship.
However, if you’re not locked in to a particular way of doing things with the client, that is to say if they don’t have a particular thing that they want on a particular set of preset or particular model sound that they’re looking for and conversely is the reason that they’re coming to you for, there’s really not a wrong way to do something when you present it to a client of course to reiterate my first statement that is, there is no way to do if they’re getting what they want and you’re being able to be happy with the result.
When you submit a drive voiceover spot to a client and they’re going to take spot and put it into the rest of the ambience sound and the background music and all that of the kind of stuff to make the whole spot a honk. Yes, it can definitely have an effect on how your voices going to sound when they get done with all of their processing. But part of that processing that they’re doing is there kind the sweetening your voice up a little bit.
They’re trying to take your voice and really literally blend it in. They put in with all the other tracks but they’re actually, let’s use a metaphor, like spreading butter on toast, you’re putting the butter on the toast but you’re spreading it in to kind evenly distributed all throughout the toast so that toast had butter all over the top of it or jam if you’re a jam person and what they’re doing with your voice is they’re taking that voice and they’re putting into their mix and trying to blend that in, they’re trying to spread that voice over the whole rest of the spot and make sure that it’s stands out and the message gets across but that’s evenly mix and that nothing is jagged edges there. It’s nice and smooth in the spot.
So, there’s a client to like me to put just a smidge and a reverb on my voice and when I give it to them that way, they like the way that it’s just kind the smooth out the edges and allows them to drop that end and just kind give just a little bit a life, I mean you wouldn’t even necessarily be able to tell the difference unless a being this two things, side by side with drive voice next to it and you would definite be able to tell the difference then if you are really listening closely but just a tiny smidge, it has s tendency to live in up your voice a little and if a client is asking for drive voiceover with no effects and they’re being very specific about that that’s what you give them because you know this situation a client service business and you want to give the client exactly what they want but I find from a production standpoint.
When I’m putting this spot together, what’s the first thing I do? I generally throw a little reverb on my voice, has a tendency to just kind the live in it up and it really set it apart from the other tracks that are going on in the mix.
So, just a little tip, I wanted to start taking this next couple of segment and start getting same feedback from all of you out there on methodology, let’s here you methodology. How do you put something together? Because what you do differ from someone else and are you getting the same result? That’s the great question.
You can always hit me at the website at adamfox.voices.com or at my website defiantdigital.com. Keep those question coming people, I really love them and I can’t wait to hear from you and we’ll get some of those question answered on the air. Let’s hear how you do and what you do. Till next time, bye for now.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: I’d like to welcome a healthy Adam Fox back to Tech Talk. What a wonderful surprise to have Bob Oakman in there too! If you liked Adam’s new intro, let him know. I’m really impressed guys, that was cool.
Matt Williams: VOX Box, answering your voiceover questions.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Today in the VOX Box, we’ll hit on the touchy subject of union VS non-union. We took an informal poll on the issue at VOX Daily, asking you to come forward with your pros and cons for the union or thoughts on being non-union. This blog post was pretty popular as you can imagine.
With far too many lively comments to include here, I’d like to invite you to read them yourself, and if you haven’t already weighed in, you can still do by Googling union vs. non-union.
So, that’s it for today’s show. We’d really love to hear from you. Let us know what you think of VOX Talk and what this podcast what it means to you and if you’ve been waiting to send something in, I want to encourage you to be an active part of this community podcast. You can e-mail your audio comments to [email protected], Remember VOX Talk is what you make of it so be sure that you are giving even just a little bit back of what this podcast gives to you. I’m your host Stephanie Ciccarelli. See you next Thursday.
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