millenial voice

I’ve never been one obsessed with meeting celebrities, although I will confess that years ago I was having dinner with my husband at Niko’s on Broadway on the upper West Side and A. Martinez was sitting at the table next to us. I first knew of him from Santa Barbara when I was young and he had played Roy on General Hospital while I was growing up. I’m a pretty chatty girl and I literally could not speak to Harlan the entire meal. Cruz/Roy was next to us for heavens sake!

When I went into voiceover, there were many successful folks that had made good names for themselves that I really admired and I hoped that my career would reach the pinnacle that theirs had. That list could go on and on and would be more of a book than a blog post, from Anne Ganguzza and Kim Handyside, Lisa Biggs and Tracey Lindley, Sophia Cruz, and Cristina Milizia to Marc Scott, J. Michael Collins, and Jody Gottlieb. My list like this could be quite long and it really does go on, these are just a few that come to mind right away. They are regular folks like me who with talent and a lot of hard work have built solid careers. I also love that there are so many women supporting their families and making it work.

Then for some reason in my mind there are some others that I just get super excited to meet. Perhaps in my mind they are booking work that I would love to book, or perhaps it’s because they have been at voiceover consistently for a while. Perhaps it’s their gumption. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it is somewhere in between admiration and the A. Martinez/Oprah reaction in terms of how excited I get just to be in their presence.

One of the first “big names” I got to meet was Dave Fennoy. The BAFTA nominated legend known for his many video games including “The Walking Dead,” happened to be one of the presenters at a marketing conference I attended called Voicover revolution in Chicago last year. Not only did I get to meet Mr. Fennoy, I sat with him at lunch! We talked about printing scripts versus using ipads to read and we talked about travel rigs. We also talked about his SAG centered career. I loved every minute.

Another exciting moment was when I met Randy Thomas this fall in LA. Randy is heard regularly on promos and radio imaging across the country but is probably most known as the announcer for the Oscars and the Grammys. I came to meet her by way of a colleague J. Michael Collins. J. Michael had produced my new radio imaging demo and said that I should give Randy a call if I really wanted to pursue imaging. He sent an email of introduction and next thing I knew I was talking to Randy! She suggested that I come to LA for VO Mastery which was truly an excellent experience. I met this amazing genuine, authentic, kind, and extremely talented women in person and loved her conference.

While at VO Mastery I met Elize Jane Schneider of “South Park” fame!!! I had wanted to meet Eliza since I started my training as Eliza trained my first character coach Fred Frees and did his demo. Eliza is nothing short of brilliant. She is a dialect specialist and seems to have a photographic memory and the best ear of anyone I have every met. She can compare someone in rural Alabama to someone in Australia as she has traveled the world talking to common folks and neurologists alike all in the name of amazing voiceovers. As if that isn’t enough, she also sings. So on a Saturday morning in October, I sat next to her at breakfast and drank coffee. It’s a miracle I didn’t spill it on myself I was so excited.

I also got to meet Bob Bergen this year. The current voice of Porky Pig and a sitting member on the Television Academy’s Board of Governors was presenting the lifetime achievement award to Lily Tomlin at the SOVAS (Society of Voice Arts and Sciences Awards) at Lincoln Center this year. I knew that he would be there and I was so excited just to be in the same room as Bob. Shock of shocks I would myself face to face with him and we actually had time to chat at length. We had a substantial conversation about rates, giving up work to wait for the right gigs, and going for union bookings. It was far from small talk and I was so thankful to have the thoughts of someone with so much industry experience. Wow. It blew me away. All that and a photo…

My list of industry folks who I have met that I look up to is also quite long, from Debi Derriberry to Joe Cipriano- the existence of these folks is an inspiration to me every single day. They set the bar high and they make our industry community great. When I was a little girl and my mom told me I could be anything I wanted if I just tried really hard, I am pretty sure a career in voiceover never once crossed her mind. Now, I can’t imagine doing anything else for the rest of my life!

What little girl doesn’t want to grow up and be a Disney princess? Well, maybe that is the wrong question to ask in 2018. Maybe some little girls want to grow up and be the handyman or the shopkeeper or the grumpy old lady next door. Well as a character voiceover actress I get to be all of them! From mermaid to candy princess to British little boys to kitty cats, I have voiced them all. So what does it take to get to do this kind of work and how does a voiceover gal like me prepare?

When I first started out, I was blessed to find amazing coaches! I took classes with the incomparable Cristina Milizia. I am actually almost a voice match for her so studying with her was extremely helpful. I also had more months than I can count of private lessons with the legend Fred Frees, who grew up in our industry. Fred insisted that I not make my demo until I had a roster of characters that I could hold 8 hours a day 5 days a week like you have to do when you book a job. I also learned that you aren’t doing voices, but are building complex characters and that made all the difference. Before I knew it I had a lot of people floating around in my head!

Fred also insisted that I take improv classes. This was way out of my comfort zone which is exactly why he said I needed it. He said I needed the improv to really be able to do the scripts justice. At the same time he really upped the ante with the copy that we worked with and every session was a real workout. I learned to go from character to character and I practiced for hours every day, building the roster of make-believe and building my skill set too.

By the time I did my demos, I was ready. I have been blessed to book a good amount of character work- from games to toy prototypes to E-learning, I LOVE it all! I can also switch from character to character with ease in one job and that is all because of my training. Is there any other field where you can say you have a lot of different voices floating around in your head?? I really don’t think so!

For a link to a character demo – click here!

So you are about to cast a delightful and pleasant voiceover actress who you have worked with before. Or maybe you have never worked with them before but you are finally ready to start your project and now you need the recording TODAY, or tomorrow, but either way it is now a rush job. You email the talent and they are out of the studio for four days. What do you do? Well, if the talent is really a pro, they likely have a travel rig and that travel rig is likely to be almost as good as their studio set up. In some cases you will not notice a difference AT ALL between the booth and the travel rig, it just depends on what they have at home and what they have on the road.

My travel rig is quite good and as I do a lot of work for Pandora, I have worked with their engineers to perfect its sound and I am quite comfortable with it. There are, however, some key differences between my commercial grade booth and the rig I take on the road. On the road I use an apogee which is a USB mic. At home I have a Neumann that goes through my high-end RME interface. On the road I use a sound treated Kaotica eye-ball for sound proofing surrounded by a pillow fort. At home I have an entire custom built booth. Can I give a quality sound on the road? Yes. Is it the same as the Neumann in my booth? No, but nothing will every be as good as the Neumann. So why not travel with the Neumann? Well, for one, it’s kind of like why a lot of women have travel jewelry. It’s way too expensive. Next, it’s heavy and requires a huge set up. It just isn’t practical.

What other considerations are there when using a talent on a travel rig? What if the voiceover actor has recorded the job at their home studio, they are now on the road, and you need a pickup. It’s up to you to decide if the recording is a close enough match. I’ve had clients decide to wait and I’ve had clients happily use the recoding on my rig without issue. It depends on the usage and how much processing is going with the piece.

Don’t be afraid of travel rigs. Just ask the voiceover actor what their recording chain is and what kind of work they have successfully done on it. If the voiceover actor has made the investment in this, they want to make you happy so that you will work with them again so you are more likely to be safe than sorry.

Mine includes the items below. If you have questions about my abilities to record when I’m traveling, I’d love to talk to you about it.