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Transcript of Vox Talk #51

Stephanie Ciccarelli: Episode 51

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Male: You're listening To VOX Talk, the voice over industry's number one podcast brought to you by Voices.com. It's about voice acting, growing your business, and sharing your knowledge. VOX Talk is a show that you can be a part of. Getting involved is both fun and rewarding. It's time for this week's episode of VOX Talk with your host, Stephanie Ciccarelli.

Stephanie Ciccarelli: Hi there! Welcome to the show. If you're a first time listener, I'm glad you found us. Now, let's move on to the news.

Male: The Loop, informing you of news and current voice over events.

Dan Gorham: Our top story features Don LaFontaine, the legendary movie trailer voice and industry giant. After a recent stay at Cedars Sinai, Don has quite the story to share about both his procedure and health issues he believes are present because of it.

To learn more, go to VOX Daily as linked from the show notes and be sure to add your support and well wishes, 27 people have already left a comment for Don. The more comments there are, the better he'll feel, so head over now!

Moving right along. Have you started on your New Year's Resolutions yet? A few minutes of sitting down to distill your goals for the coming year in your voice over business could mean hundreds of dollars in prizes for you! Marc Cashman Commercials and Julie Williams of voice-overs.com are celebrating the new year and their new telecoaching services by holding a contest with great prizes to be won, including an hour of telecoaching from both instructors as well as some goodies from Voices.com.

Want to learn more? Enter the contest at the voice-overs.com forum and include your voice over resolutions for 2008 to qualify. That link again is voice-overs.com/forum.

To wrap up, voice talent Bob Souer has completed a job that was literally of biblical proportions, weighing in at 774,000 words. You guessed it, Bob narrated the Bible! Read a feature interview with Bob Souer as he shares news about his journey narrating through the all-time #1 best-seller and the greatest story ever told from the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation. Also, stay tuned for the podcast and listen your way through the Bible over the course of the next year.

To read the interview, go to VOX Daily at blogs.voices.com/voxdaily.

Male: The Biz, helping you grow your voice over business.

Stephanie Ciccarelli: Earlier this week, voice talent, Caryn Clark, uploaded a video to YouTube. Now, it wasn't just any video. This happened to be a video with her voice narrating an environmentally friendly political television spot. And now since it's on YouTube, it doesn't hurt to air it here, does it?

Caryn Clark: Changing bulbs is one thing, taking shorter showers is another. Weatherstripping is one thing. Turning down the heat is another. If we all did just one thing every day to save energy, that one thing would lead to another and we wouldn't just be saving one things, a world of one things would be saving another.

Find your one thing and add another at onethingct.com.

Stephanie Ciccarelli: I'd like to ask you, since we just had Caryn on, have you found your voice on YouTube or narrated something specifically for a video to be published on YouTube? Be sure to send in your feedback at VOX Daily or e-mail me at stephanie@voices.com.

Male: Tech Talk, walking you through the technological landscape.

Stephanie Ciccarelli: As always, I'm pleased to present our crew member, Adam Fox!

Male: You're listening to another DefiantDigital podcast for Voices.com. Here's your host, Adam Fox.

Adam Fox: Hey, folks and welcome to another edition of the cast. Today, I want to talk about a topic that well, all of us are utilizing this every day. It's part of our normal business and we certainly want to protect ourselves in the environment here that with this digital age, it's easy to send the file and sometimes it's hard to get the client on the other end to align their schedules to make sure that they have taken care of the invoices that we've generated for them.

So, today I'm going to talk about watermarking. Watermarking is a certainly common practice and all of us are utilizing it every day and I just want to - again, this will be a great discussion for the people that are just getting into this and hopefully help them avoid some confusion and hopefully avoid any kind of misunderstanding that the clients might have by how you lay in your watermarks into your demo tracks.

It's always a good idea to watermark especially if it's a new client and you're unsure of how their billing system works and really, what kind of cycle they use to do their billing. Everybody does it a little differently.

So, it's always good to have a system in place that will protect you and will still allow you to be able to give demo to the client that they can listen to and have it be balanced where the watermark isn't going to be so obvious to them. It will be obvious, I should say but won't be distracting from the actual demo that they're receiving so they can make their judgements based on your voice.

So, I've got a couple of samples. This is just something that - it was a demo I did a couple of weeks ago and just wanted to shoot this your way and see if we can kind of discern the differences between demos.

The first one I'm going to play for you is the demo itself without the watermark.

[Demo Playing]

I was born and raised in Egypt. Kairo is my home. I love it here. My name is (Hussam Abbul Magda). I'm a video journalist and my work takes me all over the world.

Adam Fox: Now, the second one I'm going to play is a demo with a watermark that I think all of us can figure out is obviously too loud and is definitely something that is distracting from the overall demo.

[Demo Playing]

I was born and raised in Egypt. Kairo is my home. I love it here. My name is (Hussam Abbul Magda). I'm a video journalist and my work takes me all over the world.

Adam Fox: So, when we hear that, what do we think? Ouch! Yes, if I was and advertiser that was listening to something like that and I heard that, that would probably end up going into round files, much as I hate to say it. You can have a great voice but it's all about presentation so if you were to send something like this as a demo to a client, you would probably end up into round file, I hate to say.

So, this third one is really kind of how I set out most of my demos that are watermarked and it's just a small 50-millisecond leap, it's a 1 kilohertz down and it's mixed in way, way down in the mix. It's not so subtle that I can't hear it or that the client can't hear that it's being watermarked but it's definitely not something that is so over the top, it's going to distract from the demo itself.

[Demo Playing]

I was born and raised in Egypt. Kairo is my home. I love it here. My name is (Hussam Abbul Magda). I'm a video journalist and my work takes me all over the world.

Adam Fox: So, that's kind of how I end up putting my demos out and I haven't had any complaints yet. I'm sure I'll probably will after this piece kits out of people telling me that it was either too loud or too short or too long or whatever you know. Hey, everybody does their things differently. And that's the important thing. Do what feels comfortable for you.

These are just kind of some guidelines to help you, you know, hopefully greatly increase your chances of success and decrease your chances of having somebody hear watermark that you put in a demo and say, "Ouch!" you know because that's definitely the ouch factors, something we want to avoid when we're submitting stuff through an advertising agency or new client.

So, kind of a quick one today but I also wanted to cover the Listener Show, which is coming up. We only have one topic left. We have one topic left and we need one person to fill it so pick up your pens and pencils you know, your electronic pens and pencils that is, and write me here at AdamFox.Voices.com or at the DefiantDigital website at DefiantDigital.com and throw your name in the ring and we'll get that final topic covered.

It's going to be a great show. I'm getting some submissions in now. People are starting to put their things in. I'll just give you a couple of teasers, we got Kara Edwards, we got Jesse Springer, we got David and Stephanie Ciccarelli, and also Bob Oakman. So, we were definitely looking at a big episode here and I just can't wait to put this thing together.

So, get in contact with me and we'll get that last topic filled and we'll start putting that show together and we'll all revel and enjoy in the memories, right? All right. Well, hope you're staying warm out there folks. Stay warm, stay dry, love your families, and until next time. Bye for now.

Stephanie Ciccarelli: Thank you, Adam. If you want to hear more of Adam and who doesn't, check out his blog cast at DefiantDigital.com.

Male: VOX Box, sharing your audio feedback.

Stephanie Ciccarelli: All right. Here we are in the VOX Box. Now, today I have something a little bit strange, kind of funny. In fact, I think you'll like it.

At court in Naples, Italy called Mickey Mouse, Tweety Bird, Donald Duck, and his girlfriend Daisy in a summons. They're part of a trial of a Chinese man accused of counterfeiting products of Disney and Warner Bros. Listen in as Bob Bergen playing both role of the interrogator and of Tweety Bird reports live in this mock trial in Naples, Italy.

Bob Bergen: Please raise your right wing. Do you solemly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?

I do.

Please state your last name for the court records.

Bird.

And your first name?

Tweety.

Mr. Bird ...

But sometimes (I was referred to as) Tweety Pie. So, technically I have two last names, Bird or a Pie.

Yes, for the purposes of court, we shall refer to the witness as Mr. Bird, if that's all right with you.

Oh yes, that's fine.

Mr. Bird, please state your occupation.

Cartoon canary.

And Mr. Bird, how long have you been a cartoon canary?

Well, I'd say easily over 60 years.

Mr. Bird, do you have any knowledge of counterfeit activity regarding your character or likeness in Italy or other European markets?

Oh gracious, no! To my knowledge, I've never been counterfeited or illegally reproduced in Italy or Europe. That would be a contract violation in which I would be (inaudible 00:11:24) residuals according to my representation.

Are you aware of any counterfeit activity regarding your likeness or character in the China market?

I have absolutely no knowledge of any illegal counterfeit activities in the Orient. (Peedo) counterfeiters.

The court will strike that last comment please.

Sorry.

Stephanie Ciccarelli: To read this story in full, you can go to the news website, voiceovertimes.com.

And that's our show for this week. I'm Stephanie Ciccarelli. Thanks for listening. If you haven't yet subscribed, you can go to iTunes. Look for us there. If there is anything you'd like to go back and find, just go to the VOX Talk show notes at podcasts.voices.com/voxtalk.

Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.

Links from today's show:

Don LaFontaine Health Update
Voice Over New Year's Resolutions Contest
Bob Souer Narrated the Entire Bible!
Stephanie Ciccarelli
Adam Fox