Inside Voiceover—Cutting-edge Insights + Enlightening, Entertaining News for Voiceover Professionals

For our voice actor and actor colleagues, the best four minutes you'll spend today...clip after clip of excellent, on-point advice...it's interesting and inspiring to hear a succession of one Tony-nominated actor after another offering very similar advice...work hard, work often, believe in yourself, be yourself, don't give up and keep going as long as you love the work!

...or any creative or performing arts school where they teach you the art and the craft, but the business end...not so much...

In recognition of the fact that freelance creative types may not always be up-to-speed on some of the excellent apps out there available to them, here's a valuable new site created for creative professionals that points you to many of the best and most popular online apps, tools and resources that can help you improve your productivity and creativity.

It's split up into various categories, but many of the resources are the same across categories. For example, graphic artists and voice actors alike would probably find a list-management app like Evernote handy, and everyone needs an accounting system, hopefully.

We'd encourage you to explore the site. You may be surprised to find resources for things you may be looking for, but didn't know there were apps for, like finding just the perfect font or color palette for your new website.

Paul Olden has been the Yankees’ public-address announcer since they moved into the new stadium in 2009. In this new New York Times interview, he discusses his preparation for each game, including the challenges of pronouncing opposing players' name correctly (‘Say it slow. Don’t rush it: Shin ... Soo ... Choo,’) and following in the footsteps of legendary Yankees announcer, Bob Sheppard, who had the job for over 50 years and was in his mid-90's when he announced his last game.

For a sample of Mr. Olden's announcing style, check out this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3JuweGZ60Q

Were you aware that Audible/ACX awarded an "Audible Approved Producer" designation to those producers, narrators and engineers that they deem worthy of the title?  

If you're interested in finding out how it works and what you need to do in order to qualify, this post lays out the experience and qualities they look for when determining whether an applicant merits the "Audible Approved" badge on his/her profile page. Bet you never got one of those in Boy/Girl Scouts!

[Side note...bet you didn't know that the Girl Scouts were awarding a merit badge for Video Game design now. Check it out: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2013/04/girl-scouts-power-up-to-launch-video-game-designer-patch/.

Hey, Boy Scouts, you have some catching up to do...]

Okay, so you know how all the articles you read nowadays on how to market yorself as an actor advise you to self-produce your own projects? And how most voice actors say, "I get how on-camera and stage actors can self-produce an internet show or a play, but how the heck can I do that?" Here's how...

Yes, the animation is crude, BUT probably on par with some of the cartoons you watched as a kid. Some talented, creative people out there are figuring out innovative way to use these tools, create online cartoons, generate a lot of online buzz, and end up with offers to create more content. Why shouldn't you be among them? Yes, you have to have some serious talent and acting chops to pull this off to make it work, because bad animation + bad writing+ bad voice acting will yield you nothing. But we know plenty of talented, clever people who are just sitting around waiting for their agents to send them auditions. Most of these tools are inexpensive, some are free. If it costs you nothing to try, why don't you? 

Excellent advice from LA agent aka "Secret Agent Man" on what actors should and should not spend their money on.

What he says about keeping websites simple is dead on; don't blow money on unecessary stuff that won't help you book the job. Nor should you spend on fancy folders or elaborate packaging to get your submission noticed by agents. According to this one, it won't.

Good news for those of you who are, like us, huge fans of "The Incredibles" and Brad Bird...there may be a sequel yet! And it also sounds as though he may have left the door open to directing Star Wars Episodes VIII or IX. In the meantime we have "Tomorrowland" to look forward to...

Proof once again that you should never take colds or laryngitis lightly, especially if you depend on your voice for your living. If the the CEO of Google can't get it repaired easily, no one can.

The most encouraging news in this article is that the Page family has made a very generous donation to the Voice Health Institute for a research program on improving vocal cord nerve function, and as a result, thousands of people around the world who are experiencing similar vocal cord problems, stand to benefit. Kudos to Mr. Page for putting up the money to not only help himself, but others.

By the way, the Voice Health institute is considered one of the top, if not THE top research facility of its kind in the world. They're the ones who helped Adele with her recent vocal cord problems. 

Many of the usual suspects on the list...Mark Hamill...Nolan North...Jennifer Hale, but we're pleased to see so many female voice actors recognized, which is unusual. Our one major beef with this list..? It should be called "The 25 Greatest Voice Acting Performances In Big-Budget Video Games," because it focuses on big-budget games produced with LA talent with a few Canadian actors thrown into the mix. Left out are some very memorable charaters from smaller or independent games.   

Most interesting part of this video may be the study from AdAge they site from 2011 that finds that using celebrities in ads doesn't always pay off and that, in fact, may actually have a negative impact 20% of the time. 

Here's a link to the original AdAge article, "Celebrities in Advertising Almost Always a Big Waste of Money:" http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/celebrities-ads-lead-greater-sales/148174/

Excellent article that breaks down by the actual numbers how much working, stand-ups really earn and where their multiple streams of income come from. It's interesting to note that two of the comics on the list derive a sizeable portion of their income as voice actors on animated series. Those of you who who seriously aspire to work on an animated series at some point should take note. 

In fact, there is definitely a lesson in this article for anyone who aspires to make a living as an entertainer. In all cases, you'll see that a large part of these comics' success is due to self-marketing, -producing and -promotion. Is there anything that these artists do to promote their businesses that you can borrow and adapt?

We wish that the New York Times would feature more of these "behind the numbers" breakdowns on what various catgories of non-celebrity entertainment professionals earn, such as actors, voice actors, singer and dancers. By reporting actual real earnings to those who are seriously considering a career in one of these professions, they'd be providing a very valuable and sobering public service.  

Some good general observations on learning to do convincing dialects in this article. Interesting to note that Renee Zellweger's widely-praised dialect for Bridget Jones was learned in five weeks by focusing on pronunciations of  vowels and eight diphthongs. 

Really interesting too, is the story of how accused Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadžić managed to escaped capture for years by posing as another person by faking an accent.

How awesome is this...We don't know how many of our InsideVO followers speak the Navajo language fluently, but for any who do, this is a dream-come-true opportunity! Who among us hasn't imagined re-enacting the dialogue from Star Wars? 

Bet you're regretting not having paid attention in your high school Navajo language classes now... 

One of the first things you learn if you visit Pixar Studios, is that each characters' lines are recorded separately; after which Pixar's stellar team of award-winning sound editors and designers painstakingly builds the dialogue from the recordings. Line deliveries are perfected by cobbling together parts of sentences or words from various takes to create just the right turn of phrase.

The exception to the rule are the characters of "Mike" and "Sully," whose dialogue Billy Crystal and John Goodman have always recorded together beginning with "Monsters Inc." The reason they allow the two actors to work together according to director Dan Scanlon is that "there's a rhythm between those two guys that you just can't duplicate from separate (audio) tracks."