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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My voiceover world from A-Z

Cappucino in Padova, Italy!

I put on my thinking cap recently, wondering what is my personal A-Z guideline to life as a professional Voice Artist.

One idea led to another, till I found I’d run the gamut from A-Z, or as they sometimes say in the States…from Soup to Nuts (appetiser to dessert!). Here’s my list! These were originally done as Tweets, hence their brevity.

A
Attitude is positive. Can’t win all auditions, but can get the ones that are mine & right for me!

B
Budget–a top priority– a meeting of what client can pay/what we require!

C
Counsel! Help is only an internet contact away. Develop a group of friends and help each other out!

D
Diligence. Do my best, every gig!

E
Expenses – Keep an eye on what “pay to play”/mktg efforts are worth paying for & when to give it a miss

F
Friends – Get to know many peeps in many different fields of life. Develop contacts.

G
Give of yourself to others, give the client what they want.

H
Happy – think of happy VO victories when your feeling down, it’ll bring you more good things!

I
Imitate the different voices that we hear every day [not within their hearing tho]

J
Joy- put a lot of joy & energy into pursuing your VO career

K
Know the biz, listen to podcasts, study,read

L
Love the process – even when it’s frustrating

M
Money – let’s make lots of it!

N
Nuture yourself – cultivate some non-VO interests & friends, broaden yourself

O
Open myself to more prosperity by developing additional skills

P
Practice everyday reading something out loud, or recording, or auditioning

Q
Quality clients, – in a pinch go for quantity – just keep moving upwards

R
Rest – take time to chill and ‘smell the flowers’

S
Sympathy – have sympathy for that poor old client who really doesn’t know what he/she wants

T
Triumphant – you can do it!

U
Uggh! If the gig really isn’t you, don’t bother auditioning.

V
Vanity – A little is really good. Keeps you going , when the gigs are slow coming forth

W
Worthy – There are so many esteemed VO peeps who are willing to share with us- worth listening to & learning tips & shortcuts from them

X
X-files – maybe where all those pay to play auddies go where no one has been chosen after 4,5,6 months

Y
Year – Try to show a better result, somehow, at every year’s inventory

Z
Zip pah doo da! I know this makes no sense. But neither does VO sometimes. But it’s still fun!

That’s all for this post….

Cheers!


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Ego and Voiceover

Mountain temple in Japan

The other day I was working on a project. A colleague offered to help.

My first thought was ‘that’s ok’ I can handle this. Then — perhaps as a result of all the positive reading that I’ve done and podcasts that I’ve listened to — another thought came to mind, and the actual words that came out of my mouth were in the vein of…’this is what I’ve done — what do you think? How can I improve it?’.

In another instance a respected colleague said to me, ‘move this to the beginning of your demo, and dump this other demo, it doesn’t work for me’.

I thought about it and said, ok…I respect this person’s opinion & experience…I’m going to follow his advice.

I’ve spent much time in the past ‘protecting myself’ and forging ahead. I’ve discovered it’s liberating to work as part of a team and ask for help and feedback.

The voiceover world is no place for those of a delicate disposition of one kind or another. In the studio, it’s good and necessary, to be open to client feedback and different interpretations. We might think we did a stellar read — but if the client wants it done a totally different way — open up to being “schooled” and do the revised version with enthusiasm and love for the craft. You wanna get asked back, don’t you? Humility is a good thing sometimes. There’s strength in letting go and flowing.

Here’s a tip from Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter” [see link on the side of this page].

“At the end of each day, congratulate yourself for accomplishing whatever you believed was your most successful event of the day, even if it is something as small as getting an email from someone. The key is to never allow your day end with a negative thought.”

Cheers…

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!

Standing Tall

Seven key steps to a higher self image

 

For all of us voice over artists before we step up to that mic.

For anyone, who needs a good, shot of confidence…it’s within us (sometimes hard to find, but it’s there!) 

1.   BE aware, positive, and pause to take control.

2.   RELAX, and remove any self criticism.

3.  SMILE and exude confidence.

4.  VISUALISE the response you require.

5.  HEAR your words before you speak them.

6.  REVIEW your objectives and your self image.

7.  BE the person you imagine you need to be.

 

From one of my favourite books: The Greatest Personal Success Tips in the World by Brian Larcher

Cheers…

Hello world!

Hi! I’m an American Voice Artist living in Britain & loving it. I voice mainly, Animation, Audiobooks, Computer Games, Corporate work (voice mail, website welcomes, podcast, e-learning…), Narration and Radio Drama and Talking toys. Haven’t done all of those yet, but they’re on my availability/goals/challenges lists!

 

I’m a great believer in positive thinking, networking, friends, love and hard work. As they say, luck is when preparation and opportunity meet!

Big fan of Rodney Saulsberry and Pat Fraley. Those guys are super. I’ve learned so much about the art of voiceover from them.

I love visiting my fave voiceover forums and interacting with my cybermates. You’re never alone when you’ve got a good back up ‘cyber crew!” I work in English and Japanese (intermediate-level) –mostly English, though the last gig that I did was a little Japanese-language Corporate one. Dialect study with British RP is great fun & proving to be useful as well.

Love travelling — so maybe this blog will revolve around voice over, travel, positive thinking tidbits and life!

VOICEOVER DEMOS

Please visit my Voiceover Demos  page for sound bites!. I’m also a member of Linked In.

 

Cheers!