VOX Talk #28 – Liam Neeson Fallout 3, Nancy Wolfson and Anna Vocino, Rodney Saulsberry Tongue Twisters, David Boyll, Colin Campbell, Bettye Zoller, Doug Rein

Stephanie Ciccarelli

May 10, 2007

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Liam Neeson to Lead Voice Acting Cast for Fallout 3, Successful Teleseminar with Nancy Wolfson and Anna Vocino of Break Into Voice Over, Rodney Saulsberry Tongue Twisters on YouTube, David Boyll Chats About Interpreting Scripts with Flexibility in Studio Sessions, Colin Campbell Explains Equalization (EQ), a thank you from Bettye Zoller and Doug Rein’s Humorous Demo.

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Liam Neeson, Bethesda Softworks, Fallout 3, Nancy Wolfson, Anna Vocino, Break Into Voice Over, Bob Souer, Rodney Saulsberry, Tongue Twisters, YouTube, David Boyll, Colin Campbell, Bettye Zoller, Doug Rein.

Transcript of Vox Talk #28

Matt Williams: Episode 28
You’re listening to VOX Talk, the voiceover industries number one podcast brought to you by Voices.com. It’s about voice acting, growing your business and sharing your knowledge. VOX Talk is a show that you can be a part of, getting involved is both fund and rewarding. It’s time for this week’s episode of VOX Talk with your host Stephanie Ciccarelli.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Hey there, this is Stephanie. Welcome to VOX Talk. We’ve got David Boyll, Colin Campbell, Bettye Zoller and Doug Rein so let’s get going.
Matt Williams: The Loop, informing you of news and current voiceover events.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: In video game voice acting news, Irish-born actor Liam Neeson will lead the voice acting cast for Bethesda Softworks’ game, Fallout 3. Liam, known predominantly for his screen acting work, also has dozens of voice over roles under his belt, including the lion Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, audio book narrator of The Polar Express and a dozen or so documentary narration credits.
To learn more about Liam Neeson’s role in Fallout 3, visit the VOX Talk show notes for episode 28 at blogs.voices.com/voxtalk.
In other news, Nancy Wolfson and Anna Vocino treated an appreciative and talkative audience to a class on Acting for Advertising through their Break Into Voice Over educational series. We were proud to sponsor the teleseminar and are looking forward to future opportunities with the delightful duo. If you missed the teleseminar and hanging with the North Carolina contingent that attended, you can find out more via a link in our show notes to Bob Souer’s blog. Go to bobsouer.com/blog for more info.
In closing, Rodney Saulsberry sent me a link earlier this week to some fantastic tongue twisters he put together in a YouTube video that are sure to challenge and captivate even the most experienced voice talent.
You can watch the video at VOX Daily or go to YouTube.com and search for Rodney Saulsberry.
Matt Williams: The Biz, helping you grow your voiceover business.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Today in The Biz, David Boyll of davidboyll.com shares a real life experience for being flexible in a professional recording studio setting is not just an asset, it’s a skill.
David Boyll: Hi, this David Boyll from San Francisco, and today I’d like to talk about being flexible in a session and offering your client options. Recently I booked and industrial video narration gig for a major accounting firm, I arrive for the session early as this is my practice and was able to sit down with the writer and get her take on how she felt the copy should be read. She should be a rough cut and explain that this very artfully shot day in a life piece should be narrated by a “foreign film narrator “and she sited the film (Omaley) as a great example of the kind of style she was thinking of, great
So, I make my notes and read over the copy as the production team and client arrive and the engineer setup up the portable booth, so we get rolling and I read through at once and style what the writer had suggested. Her feedback was very positive and complementary but the rest of the team including the client were absolutely silent. So, the director clears his throat and says, “Yes, we like that but could you speed it up a little and please put some more energy into it.” Sure, I can do that, so I did.
And then again, they ask for more speed and energy until by take three the read (bore) absolutely no resemblance to the first take. In that one point I could feel there was little tension between the writer and director and so being the class clam I am, I noticed a line in the copy that read, “In a world of complexity”, so what do you think I did? Yes, Don LaFontaine. Well, there was an instant eruption of laughter and shoots from the client area and everyone except the writer who by at this time had gotten very quiet was shouting “Yes, yes do it like that.” So, I did and they were happy except of course the poor writer.
Now, it really makes no difference to me which take the client uses from a session or even whether I agree with their choices. The point is I was flexible enough to roll with the changes and in the end deliver what was ask for and that they like my work. So, the upshot, be nibble, be mobile. Be ready to change the idea that you had in your head when somebody throws something of the wall, also if there something in the copy that you see that sparks your interest or sparks an idea, throw is out there. If the mood seems right and your client or director seems open to suggestion, it couldn’t hurt. Maybe that would be that will be take they use. Thanks for listening. This is David Boyll.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Thank you David for showing us a different aspect of the biz when being directed inside the booth. We’re privileged just to listen to what you experienced and how you overcame a sticky situation. This is why they call it voice acting folks.
Matt Williams: Tech Talk, walking you through the technological landscape.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: This week, Colin Campbell teaches us a thing or two about EQ or Equalization. Get comfy, this one is definitely something we all need to hear.
Colin Campbell: Colin Campbell for Affordableannouncer.com, talking about Equalization or EQ as we call it. Any recoding be at voice or in music is made of frequency range or spectrum from the lowest lows to base baritones to the highest high and the semblance soprano and then flute at the high end, base drums at the low end or the sound of a telephone of tiny AM radio in the middle. This range is described in hertz and kilohertz.
The average human can hear from about 20 hertz to about 15 or 18 kilohertz or thousand hertz. If you’ve ever had a home in your equipment that was undesirable that is usually cause by some problem with your power supply and that home is at 60 hertz. So, if you think of home from a guitar amp or a microphone preamp and you know exactly what that sound is, that is at 60 hertz because electrical alternating current in your house travels, resonates, vibrates at 60 hertz. If you’ve ever heard a television channel with the technical problem there’s been a tone on it usually that tone is at 1000 hertz. A typical telephone where there is no high crisp tritely clarity is because it usually tops out about 3K or 3 kilohertz or 3000 hertz.
Once you get a feel for this spectrum then you can play with it, you can alter it to make your voice sound better for instance. A lot of times a male voice might want to extenuate as I do somewhere around 3K or 4K and what that does is make your voice more intelligible or punch through especially when you audition might be played on low quality computer speakers where you’ve got no upper or lower end to play with, so you punch through what’s available.
One way that might help you understand it is to go to microphone website maybe for the microphone that you use and look for a frequency response curve and what that will show you is what your microphone does in the frequency spectrum between 20 hertz and 20,000 hertz. It might have an inherent peak somewhere in the spectrum, usually there’s a few ripples up there around five, eight, 10,000 hertz and this is what you called self-noise in the microphone and even know they referred to it is noise. It’s not really noise per se as we think of it. It’s how the microphone affects what it’s being presented with. Sometime this so called self-noise in the microphone is what make it’s desirable to someone, it’s why there voice sounds good on that mic because it’s accentuating some part of this frequency spectrum that as particularly favorable or flattering to their voice.
Now, if you have a microphone that you’re dealing with that maybe isn’t so favorable, you can correct for this things with an equalizer. An equalizer allows you to affect this frequency response spectrum from low to mid through high in different ways, either you boots or cut part of the spectrum and when you do that, usually you have the choice of how wide a swath of that gain or cut you’re going to affect and exactly where that gain or cut is, generally that’s referred to as parametric equalizer. A parametric equalizer allows you to define three different parameters for whatever part of the frequency spectrum you’re working with and that is where in the spectrum it is, how wide of a swath you’re affecting and how much boots or cut you’re going to put in that part of the spectrum.
Well, it’s a very technical subject I gave it a shot in 3 some odd minutes. So, there you go. See you next time, Colin Campbell from Affordableannouncer.com. Thanks.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Colin, thanks for explaining this highly interesting and crucial topic. Again folks, this is information you will not find anywhere else. Let Colin know how much you appreciate his work at affordableannouncer.com.
Matt Williams: VOX Box, cheering your audio feedback.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Last week, Bettye and I co-wrote an article on VOX Daily blog about audio engineering, voice acting, and how the two aren’t necessarily the same thing. Here’s Bettye.
Bettye Zoller: Hi, Stephanie. It was so great being with you in Las Vegas at the VOICE 2007 Conference. Were I thought recently and that was the first time we had met getting to know one other and I wanted to just thank you for the blog you’ve put up here. I’ve been thinking about this topic for something as I said what I wrote you and it is so, so important that those who seek voiceover talent on Voices.com understand that there are getting a voiceover talent in some cases not an audio engineer, not a person experienced in a recording studio. It is very important to distinguish between a voiceover talent and an experienced audio engineer capable of engineering your project for you. Sometimes a talent is both like me and there are of many others, sometimes that’s not the case, so choice wisely. We want satisfied clients and we want satisfied voice talents and thank you Voices.com and Stephanie for helping.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Thanks Bettye, Also I thought it would be fun to bring this episode to a close with another humorous demo submitted by Doug Rein about dentures. Let’s take a listen:
Doug Rein: Attention denture wearers. Had this ever happen to you? Well, there’s onetime I was eating corn on the cab, they pop out wreck a shade off the refrigerator and took a bite out of cat. Hey, Mildred who about you and I take a ride down to the – I was doing my standup act in the (inaudible 00:11:17) when all the sudden, my denture shot out of my mouth. It was totally scary man. The guy was talking and his teeth just flew across the room and got stock in the wall. It was the most disturb thing I’d seen in my life whether then the time I saw the Teletubees. Yes, I had to use a knife and fork to perform my work. I really can’t afford to have more teeth fall out on the stage during the concert too. Again, yes we use to call Benny the shark, now we just call him Benny the gums. (inaudible 00:11:48) all respect for me after they found out this born to me natural choppers.
Yes, I was playing my trombone to invent to hit a high note, instead I hear the tuba player, right in the (inaudible 00:11:59) nettle. Is undependable denture adhesion ruining your life? Try denture guard the industrial strength denture cement because the denture guard, even baby food would make my teeth all out but now they hold so well, I can know (race) to barbwire. Unpredictable denture destroyed my love life but now the chicks dig me. Thanks denture guard. After I got me dentures, I couldn’t eat any haggis but thanks to denture guard, I can eat sheep-goat until I burst. Denture guard available wherever hardware and blasting supply are sold.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: That’s a very unique way to showcase character voices and accents. If you liked Doug’s demo, send him a note at his website, dougrein.voices.com.
Thank you for listening. Next week, we’ll hear from Betty in Boca and Adam Fox, so stay subscribed. If you haven’t yet subscribed to VOX Talk, you can do so through the iTunes Podcast Directory or subscribe to the RSS feed by email on the VOX Talk blog at blogs.voices.com/voxtalk. I’m your host, Stephanie Ciccarelli. Take care and see you next Thursday.

Links from today’s show:

Break Into Voice Over
Bob Souer’s Blog
David Boyll
Colin Campbell
Bettye Zoller
Doug Rein