VoiceOver Bits – Positive Thinking – Happy Fourth of July

Happy Fourth of July to all my friends and colleagues in the US. It’s not a holiday week-end over here in England, but still there are lots of festivals going on and the weather’s great.

Rodney Saulsberry’s got a new YouTube video out – Practice Fast Commercial Tags With Rodney Saulsberry – I’m looking forward to adding that to my repetoire of pre audition/gig warmups. Here’s the URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umXojMruUSg&feature=youtu.be

Penny Abshire of the Voice Acting Academy wrote a really powerful list of 7 Ways to Maintain a Positive (and grateful) Attitude. It’s brilliant. With Penny’s permission, I’m reprinting it here. You can find their URL on the right hand side of my page.

7 Ways to Maintain a Positive (and grateful) Attitude

1. Keep a “Happy File.” Keep a file or box full of special things – birthday cards, an encouraging note, an award you’ve won, a love letter, a special picture, etc. When you are feeling low, take a few moments to look through the file. As you do, allow yourself to feel the same emotion of pride, love or excitement you did when you received that letter, award or card.

2. Train yourself to “turn it around!” When a negative thought enters your mind, find that one extremely positive thought you keep in reserve (your touchstone), see it clearly, feel it, and then push out the negative thought! Positive and negative thoughts can’t co-exist in the mind and positive thoughts are much stronger!

3. Keep a Gratitude Journal. Take a moment each day to write down something you are grateful for in your life. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. (For instance, I am VERY grateful for the hot water I receive at a twist of a knob each morning when I take my shower.)

4. Develop the habit of daily prayer. Like any other parent, our Father in Heaven wants to hear from us. He wants to hear how we are feeling, He wants to hear about our trials, He wants to enjoy our successes and most of all, He wants to help us. So, when life gets dark and dreary, don’t forget to pray!

5. Remove negative self-talk from your vocabulary: “What a dumb thing to do!…..How could I be so stupid?……I’m an idiot!…..I am so fat!” You see, your subconscious doesn’t know the difference between fact and fiction. Keep telling it you’re incapable, stupid and fat and guess what you’ll be?

6. Develop the habit of consciously thinking about how you’d want tomorrow to be. Play it out in your mind before you fall asleep – see it like a movie. If you write a positive, happy “script” you’re more likely to have a good tomorrow! (For instance, “I wake refreshed and feeling confident. I enjoy a wonderful hot shower and then a delicious breakfast. I look forward to starting my day,” etc.)

7. Count Your Blessings! Whenever you start “feeling sorry for yourself,” get out that Gratitude Journal or your Happy File (or make the list in your head) and start concentrating on all the incredible blessings you have in your life – from the largest to the smallest. Pretty soon, you will be feeling so much gratitude that you will forget why you were feeling down.

New Arts and Jewellry Facebook Page

One of my colleagues suggested I start a separate FB page for my jewellry and crafty bits (my FBook account is for my voiceover business). So, taking his excellent and respected advice, I started a FBook arts and jewellry page a couple of days ago.

It’s a bit lonely over there with a few likes. If you don’t mind, can you visit my page and – if you feel so inspired – “like” it ? Thanks so much!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/BeadedDelightsByStef/201721309873775

Cheers all!

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Pimp my Voice Box

Decided that my voiceover booth (or as VO champ Rodney Saulsberry puts it — “The Money Box”) needed a little upgrading. I don’t know how I decided, the thought just came to me. My little miccie needed its very own home.

So, I ordered some accoustical foam from a brilliant vendor on ebay and set to work to make a Hogan-style Porta booth, but one that was bigger and sturdier since I’ll be working with  it everyday.

I made it with a sturdy surround and covered the outside and floor with thick curtain-quality fabric; the inside is lined with the wonderful accoustical foam.

What a difference in the sound. It enhances the quality, and certainly “pumps up the volume” a few notches. I was so surprised and pleased!

 

view 2 doing the business with the pop shield:

 

view 3 miccie’s very own new wee huttie — side view

 

Met up with my new friend Mike Rhys – a British voiceover artist who lives in Japan, his brother, cute little daughter and his colleague Nicky Faint. Nicky’s a VO now based here in England, but she lived and worked in Japan for 5 years. It was brilliant! And so good to talk with them about their VO lives in Japan.

Will be producing and voicing a serialised version of a mystery audiobook soon. I’ll keep you posted on the progress. You might even want to have a listen…might even get hooked on the plot and come back for more, to see what happens in subsequent and future episodes!  It’s going to be a long one. 

“Those who are fired with an enthusiastic idea and who allow it to take hold and dominate their thoughts find that new worlds open for them. As long as enthusiasm holds out, so will new opportunities.”

Cheers all…

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MOVIN ON THE 2009 VOICE OVER TRAIL!

Buster Bumblebee

Been a busy bee lately. I’ve come across some brilliant voice over tips while reading mags, as well as on the internet, and thought I’d pass them on.

Lesley Garrett the famous opera singer is a copious water drinker. For every cup of coffee she has, she drinks several glasses of water. And, with all of her years of singing experience, Ms. Garrett still works out regularly with her vocal coach.

Training and striving for improvement is an ongoing activity for professional voices.

From Susan Berkley I learned these tips about how to improve delivery timing. Ms. Berkley recommends practicing with a stopwatch to improve our skills of reading exactly to time and shave or add seconds on command. We can tape commercials, time them, transcribe the copy and see if we can match the announcer’s timing. Susan says we can also visualise the space between the words getting increasingly smaller to encourage a faster read.

One really hot book for training and improving our voices is the classic — Voice and the Actor, by Cicely Berry. It’s full of information and exercises covering Vocal Development; Relaxation and Breathing; Muscularity and Word; the Whole Voice; Speaking Poetry; Listening and Using the Voice.

Rodney Saulsberry’s recently come out with a new vocal workout — tongue twister regime.

Here’s the URL for the new version, Part II:

Part II

And, in case you missed it, here’s the URL for the earlier, Part I:

Part I

Here’s a little marketing tip — lately lots of voice actors have been putting clips of their demos, their work — or themselves in the studio — on YouTube. It’s easy to do and works a treat! My advice to you? Get in there! Let’s use all practical and available channels to market ourself and our skills, to the end of being of service to more clients!

Cheers!

Actor’s Expo ’08, voice over for e-learning and accomplishing goals!

Claire Dodin, Rajiv Hasan, and me-Stefania

Went to the Actor’s Expo ’08 yesterday and I was very happy to hook up with two of my Voiceover Universe cyber-pals – Claire Dodin and Rajiv Hasan. It was brilliant to walk around and explore the different exhibits, while spending the afternoon exchanging tips, hints and views on the voiceover biz.

Received a very interesting article in my email the other day from the Edge Studio about increased voiceover possibilities in e-learning arena. Yayyyyy! That’s good news… Here’s the article:

WHAT IS ELEARNING?
Electronic learning (or eLearning or eLearning) is a type of education where the medium of instruction is computer technology – very often employing voice over.

WHY ELEARNING IS BIG… AND WHY IT WILL GET BIGGER
Based on research from the Gartner Group, the University of Pennsylvania, and other prestigious think tanks, we can identify ten vital trends that will influence the growth of eLearning over the next ten years.

1. Application Service Providers are offering quick start options. Governments, businesses, and learning institutions that don’t want to reinvent the wheel can lease or purchase eLearning systems. Even organizations on low budgets can implement open source eLearning platforms in a matter of hours.

2. As more organizations deploy departmental or business-wide intranets to increase communication and productivity, savvy managers use the same tools to release eLearning programs. Not only does this emphasis on learning encourage workers to participate in more training, the modular nature of eLearning content allows employees to learn at their desks in smaller chunks.

3. With job descriptions and daily tasks evolving, many employers rely on constant, on-the-job training to remain competitive. ELearning programs help businesses push new skills and critical improvements to staff members quickly and efficiently, without the lag time of classroom or retreat-based training.

4. By developing classrooms without walls, eLearning programs can reduce the costs of participation without negatively affecting the compensation for presenters.

5. ELearning levels professional playing field around the world. Workers in niche industries once had to travel to specialized learning centers to discover the best practices in their field. Today, eLearning connects those in rural communities to urban experts, and vice versa. We are only starting to see the effects that quality education is having on business and industry in developing countries. Likewise, small businesses can access the same caliber of high-level information and insight that was once only available to Fortune 500 businesses with large human resources budgets.

6. Gamers bring interactive skills to eLearning. Human beings love to learn through experience. Many eLearning providers have discovered that they can use video game technology to develop fun, engaging, effective simulations. Fun eLearning programs help boost staff morale while reducing the time it takes for team members to integrate new skills and ideas.

7. Governments deploy eLearning at all levels. In addition to the obvious business uses for eLearning, governments around the world have discovered that eLearning programs can dramatically improve the quality of life for citizens while reducing the financial burden on taxpayers. Local schools in underserved rural areas or dangerous urban neighborhoods can rely on eLearning to offset the lack of skilled teachers in their districts. State university systems can keep talented students from crossing borders by importing highly specialized programs from other schools. Governments in developing countries have invested heavily in eLearning programs to build eager, talented, work forces.

8. Strong eLearning programs allow team members at collaborating businesses to understand shared objectives. Workers can quickly learn about the inner workings of technologies and techniques.

9. Today’s wireless technology allows educators and development specialists to reach even further into rural areas, farms, deserts, and rainforests. With radio, satellite, and Wi-Fi signals beaming two-way information from distant locales, people can participate in an almost endless array of learning opportunities.

What are your experiences and views on the e-learning marketplace?

 

One of my friends recently completed her curriculum to become an osteopath. She accomplished her goal with a lot of hard work, encouragement and dedication to her goal. Yayyy Sue! Here’s a lovely piccie of Sue (on the left) and her sister.

Here’s a favourite quote of mine from the wonderful voice actor Rodney Saulsberry’s book, Step Up to the Mic – A Positive Approach to Succeeding in Voice-Overs.

“When you believe you have the power to create monetary success, physical health, joy and persisting peace, you will experience a sense of victory that powers you through the everyday obstacles in the voice-over industry.”

 

Cheers….