Vox Talk #10 – Rodney Saulsberry Book Review “You Can Bank on Your Voice”, Google Ads Pre-roll on YouTube, Alkalol Keeps Voice in Check?

David Ciccarelli

February 1, 2007

Share This Episode:

Book review of Rodney Saulsberry’s “You Can Bank on Your Voice”, Google pre-rolling video ads on YouTube, Stegosaurus fossil found in Portugal, Dragnet, Making Commercials Part II, and info about the pharmacy gem Alkalol that keeps your voice in check.

Download Podcast Episode 10 »

Tags

Rodney Saulsberry, You Can Bank on Your Voice, Book Review, VOX Daily, Google, YouTube, Ads, Chad Hurley, Stegosaurus, Portugal, Dragnet, Houston, Bob Green, Adam Fox, Lora Cain, Alkalol

Transcript of Vox Talk #10

Male: Episode 10
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Welcome to VOX Talk. If you’re new to this podcast, VOX Talk is your connection to the voiceover marketplace, industry news, business tips, technology, and your peers. We produce this show twice a week, so be sure to subscribe to receive updates as they come. Now, on with the show.
Male: The Loop, informing you of news and current voiceover events.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Do you like books? Do you like books about the voice industry even more? Voices.com kicked off their book club this week with a review of voice talent Rodney Saulsberry’s “You Can Bank on Your Voice”. Among other things, we learned that Rodney drinks green tea before recording sessions and will be present at the VOICE Conference in Las Vegas this coming March.
To read the review, visit the VOX Daily blog linked from the show notes at VOX Talk.
In other news, Forbes.com reported that YouTube founder Chad Hurley said his site would soon begin running video ads from Google and will share some of the earnings with the content’s creators. SDA Asia Magazine also noted that this move by Google will reflect a significant change for YouTube, as pre-rolling advertisements before video clips may not go over well with their users. 
To learn more, visit Forbes.com.
To wrap up, LiveScience.com reports that a 150 million year old Stegosaurus fossil has been discovered in Europe, Portugal to be exact, marking the first time the famous plated dinosaur has been found outside of North America. The find supports a widely accepted idea that the two continents were once connected by a series of temporary land bridges which surfaced when sea levels dipped, allowing dinosaurs to cross. For more information, go to LiveScience.com.
If you have any news to share, send it to me via email. You can reach me at [email protected].
Male: The Biz, helping you grow your voiceover business.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: This week in The Biz, Bob Green will share a story from the field for your entertainment.
Bob Green: Hello, this is Bob Green. Wow, a minute. Not much time but one story might serve to add a dimension to what a voice talent should do under certain circumstances.
A few years ago, an audition went out from an agency that did most of their work in LA. The talent pool here in Houston was surprised and delighted. The spot had a police officer, a Sergeant Thursday questioning a lady in a boarding house. You know, yes sir, no sir, yes ma’am, right ma’am. Pretty obvious what they needed but for the instructions which said, “Do not do in a Dragnet style.” A (pluther) of local talent gave it their all. Well, two weeks later, the spot appeared on the air and you guessed it – Dragnet.
See the producer got to make his LA trip after all. After demonstrating to the client that, “See, no one here can do it. I told you so.” It brings up the common wisdom regarding what a voice actor’s job is to understand what the copy says and to whom it’s directed and then within the time allowed, and the direction given bring something special to the interpretation.
But this case brings up another charge for the voice talent. If it’s written like a duck and it sounds like a duck and it looks like a duck and the directions say to read it like a goose, do two reads and make sure one sounds like a duck.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Thank you very much Bob.
If you have any questions or topics that you’d like to see covered in this segment, e-mail your suggestions to [email protected].
Male: Tech Talk, walking you through the technological landscape
Adam Fox: Okay, so let’s pick up where we left off. We have our script, we have our interpretation, we’ve done our dry read. Now, we need to complete the spot. We know from the script that we’re using, it’s going to be a 30-second spot. Its target audience is people who might want to change their service providers. Our character is having a friendly phone conversation. Our vocal direction is energized and kind of a mix of geeky and cool. Our suggested musical direction is light techno or acoustic guitar and our sounds will need are a modem connecting, a phone dialing and a ringing phone. Let’s for this exercise assume that you have all the pieces and you’re ready for final assembly. I’ll cover making music in a future podcast but if you’re looking for some great royalty-free clips, you can find them right here on Voices.com.
Got all your tools in hand? Okay, let’s get to producing.
Now all the same techniques apply no matter what software you’re using. The two most prominent of course are ProTools in the Sony Professional Series. I’ll start with my music pad. I produced this one in Sony Asset Pro. I love tools that allow you to work quickly and efficiently, set your time constraints and work at a quick, creative flow. I mean, we are shooting for productivity here for keeping this in a business context, right?
Now, I spend a lot of down time producing music pads. I have a lot of 30 and 60 second spots that I put together and I organize them by genre, techno or classical and then I mark them in such a way that if I’m under the gun, I can just go to it, get it and put it in the spot.
So now we have our music. Now, what you want to do is drop your music in and insert a volume envelope. You’re going to add two points on the volume envelope. One at the very beginning of the track and one about a half second to a second in that will give you a nice natural sounding fade. You’re going to set your second volume point to negative 9 dB. Now, don’t worry. You can always adjust this later. This just gives us a good starting point to allow the music not to overpower the dry voiceover. You’ll adjust it later when you do your final mix.
Now, you’ve got your music in place. Let’s go ahead and drop in your voice tracks. Now, there are as a many methods to do this as there are voice actors so for demonstration purposes, let’s just assume that you’ve already edited all your overdubs, you’ve added your own personal flair and style and now you have one completed voice track.
I know that all of us know our way around the studio. I’m merely trying to help us think about how we can be of more value to the client. There are lots of agencies that have producers in house to do this stuff but I find an equal number that love it that I can take the project from start to finish and they can get it all to me in a one-stop shop kind of situation, especially when they already have a level of trust associated with me. And let’s remember, there are also a lot of agencies that still send out to different facilities for voiceover and post-production.
If you approach them with the tools, and they already have that trust in you, then that’s more work for you and that’s a really good thing. Wow, am I out of time again already? Next segment, we’ll finish this thing off. All of you out there, remember you can send your questions or comments to me at AdamFox.Voices.com or at my production website at DefiantDigital.com. Take care everybody. Stay warm, stay healthy. Until next time.
Male: VOX Box, answering your voiceover questions.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Today, I have some audio commentary to share from voice talent Lora Cain, about getting your voice back in form.
Lora Cain: Really clearing your throat by Lora Cain. Hi, I put this information on a blog but people might not have had a chance to take a look at it. One of the worst possible things that you can do to damage your voice believe it or not is clearing your throat and we do it all the time. Nobody thinks twice about it but it’s literally like taking a hammer to you vocal cords. It’s a terrible, terrible, thing to do but hey, we get that pasty film congestion on our vocal cords. What are you supposed to do?
Got the solution for you. It’s called Alkalol, stuff is very cheap, $3 to $4 a bottle that lasts forever. You can get it at any drugstore but you have to ask for it. For some odd reason, they keep it behind the counter. I guess it doesn’t sell that well so they can’t take up shelf space with it. It is amazing. It is a mucous solvent. Sounds disgusting. It will be the biggest life saver of your vocal career. I guarantee you. Best of luck, Alkolol or look it up on the web. You’ll find it there too. Bye.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: I’m really glad you spelled that one out, Lora. No doubt your colleagues are hitting the pharmacy as we speak.

Thus endeth the episode. As always you can send in your feedback via email, audio clip and for the first time ever, drum roll please, you can call in to leave a message to air on the podcast to my private voicemail box. Just dial 1-888-359-3472 ext. 117. Looking forward to hearing from you. Bye for now.

Links from today’s show:

Google Pre-Rolls Ads on YouTube
YouTube user reactions
Stegosaurus fossil found in Portugal
Bob Green
Adam Fox
Lora Cain