VOX Talk #40 – Pierce Brosnan, Walking the Labyrinth, 60 Second Pitch, Jason McCoy, Adam Fox, Jesse Springer Interviews Joe Cipriano Part 1 of 3
Pierce Brosnan new voice of Thomas & Friends, “Walking the Labyrinth” at the 2007 London Fringe, 60 Second Pitch Winners Announced, Jason McCoy’s Winning Pitch in The Biz, Adam Fox on Syncing Audio to Video, and Jesse Springer’s interview with Joe Cipriano, Part 1 of 3.
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60 Second Pitch, Adam Fox, Jason McCoy, Jesse Springer Interviews Joe Cipriano Part 1 of 3, VOX Talk #40 – Pierce Brosnan, Walking the Labyrinth
Transcript of Vox Talk #40
Matt Williams: Episode 40
You’re listening to VOX Talk! The voiceover industry’s 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 that’s both fun and rewarding. It’s time for this week’s episode of VOX Talk with your host, Stephanie Ciccarelli.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Hi guys, I’m Stephanie and welcome to VOX Talk! Today we’ll hear the winning 60 Second Pitch, learn about syncing audio to video and also be entertained by an interview conducted by Jesse Springer with Joe Cipriano. First, the news!
Matt Williams: The Loop, informing you of news and current voiceover events.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: In voice over news, HIT Entertainment has recently announced that actor Pierce Brosnan signed on as the new voice of the Narrator in the award-winning children’s DVD and television series Thomas & Friends.
Pierce Brosnan has already started production in London and will make his debut in “Thomas & Friends: The Great Discovery” a direct to DVD special, set for release in the US and UK in Autumn 2008. Pierce will provide the voiceover for all English-language releases for the brand, including three upcoming Thomas & Friends television series and three DVD specials.
Famous Thomas & Friends alumni include the former Beatle Ringo Starr, Comedian George Carlin, Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin, Bronx native Michael Brandon and the Michael Angelis of the UK who have all voiced the role of the Narrator in the United Kingdom and in the US.
To read the full press release from HIT Entertainment, visit the VOX Talk show notes.
Continuing on, in local news, the 2007 London Fringe, a festival that features new and upcoming actors, is now in full swing in London, Ontario Canada. One show in particular, “Walking the Labyrinth” is a one man show written and performed by Peter Cavell, jam packed with voice overs and well worth attending. The show is described as follows:
Awakening in an unfamiliar place, the wanderer must find his way through the twisting Labyrinth, and face the beast that waits at the center. Walking the Labyrinth is a dark, psychological re-imagining of the story of Theseus, combining live and recorded speech, electronic vocal distortion, original music, and 2000-year old poetry.
To learn more about Walking the Labyrinth, visit PeterCavell.com. You can also catch an interview with Peter on VOX Daily at blogs.voices.com/voxdaily.
In closing, the 60 Second Pitch contest winners have been announced! First place was awarded to Jason McCoy, 2nd place to Vicki Amorose, and 3rd place was awarded to Troy Lund.

Matt Williams: The Biz, helping you grow your voiceover business.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Today in The Biz, we’ll be taking a look at Jason McCoy’s winning 60 Second Pitch. Be sure to listen for how Jason presents himself, is able to explain voiceover in layman terms, and his call for action.
Jason McCoy: Hi. My name is Jason McCoy, voice talent from McCoy productions. When somebody asks what it is that I do for a living, there’s always a slightly confused look on their face when I simply say, voiceover. To help them understand, I give examples of when voiceover comes into their daily lives. The main one being radio imaging.
You know, when you listen to the radio and you hear the name of the station between songs? Well, that’s me. That voice you hear and it’s more than just radio. How about when you call your credit card company and hear, “Thank you for calling. Your estimate of wait time is 4 minutes.” That’s also me.
Everything you can imagine. From TV commercials, audiobooks, training videos, websites, even airport announcements. Anywhere one person is giving information for the benefit of another. I provide the voice for companies to express themselves to the masses which in turn increase the sales. I’m affordable, friendly, and I offer incredibly quick turnaround times. So if you’re interested to find out how my voice can help your business, give me a call, 443-614-7081. Thanks for listening and have a great day!
Matt Williams: Tech Talk, walking you through the technological landscape.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: This week in Tech Talk, Adam Fox, inspired by a listener’s question, talks about how to sync up audio to video.
Bob Oakman: One name strikes the hearts of post-production talent everywhere with fear. In my intrepidation, I cannot say the name. But his initials are Adam Fox! There, I said it. I’ll deal with the consequences, you just enjoy the show. Here’s Adam Fox with this week’s Voices.com podcast!
Adam Fox: Hey folks! And welcome to another edition of the cast. Today’s going to be a quick one. I just wanted to take some time to answer a piece of podmail that came in and this is – the listener was asking me in relation to our last podcast regarding music production. How one actually takes the voice and the music and matches it all up to the video post or what you might be seeing as the final product, if you’re not actually the one who’s doing all of that video post-production?
And that’s a great question. So I’ll just give you the quick simple answer and that is that you’re mostly going to be coordinating with the post-production house and finding out what kinds of requirements they need and they will most often give you those requirements very clearly spelled out because they want to make sure that all the hard work that everybody is doing, a lot of these projects will get put together in a variety of different locations and they just – they already have a set, an established set of protocols that they use when they use outside contractors. And that’s a really good thing because it makes the work easy for you plus you get to learn something in the process.
If you’ve never done something like that before and someone just simply gives you all the information that you need to know, well guess what? Now, you know that information and you’ll be able to use that next time with another production house and you know, the event that you do something else like that in the future with a different company. And if you do something like that with a different company in the future, you also have that knowledge to be able to say, “Hey, do you want me to provide it in this format? Do you want these things considered?” and so on and so forth and that really gives you a leg up to be able to be well versed in the topic that you’re being able to speak about with the new company. And a lot of times, people will just give me time constraints. They’ll say, “Hey, I need 30 seconds for this or I need 60 seconds for this or I’m going to need 47 seconds of music and this is what’s going to sound like and this is kind of what we want. This is the feel we’re going for.”
And as a producer, that gives me a good idea. “Okay. Well, here’s my finite time constraints.” So once I have my finite time constraint, I can go ahead and write an appropriate piece of music for that time constraint and they’re already giving me the information on what kind of feel they want. Sometimes they’ll provide me with some visuals and a quick time movie or something like that so that I can actually watch them and get myself synced up to them, you know.
And then of course there’s time code. There’s a number of different time codes that you can generate within your software that will allow you to lock up to a finish piece of film or video, TV commercials or what have you and they will allow you to receive a visual from the company that you’re working for and lock your music to that. That’s the most simple – I don’t want to get into the overcomplicated stuff right now but, that will allow you to be able to sync your music up directly to exactly what you’re looking at and that’s the finish piece.
Unfortunately, a lot of them don’t have the finish pieces and they’re looking for the music to help inspire them as to what the final cuts going to look like. So, most of the time what I get is people saying, “Hey, can you kick me out 30 seconds or 60 seconds of this type of music. Hey, I have this 47-second piece that I’d really like to do here and at 15 seconds I needed to do this.” And so they’ll give me some pretty good mathematical ideas of where I need things to be and you know, that provide them with some visuals to give me a rough idea of what I’m doing.
But generally, they will give you all the specifics that you will need to lock something up and make it work right. And if you’re lucky enough to get a finish piece of video and you can generate time code and make sure that the music locks up exactly with the video that’s provided to you, that’s a really cool experience, I tell you, to be able to see that other side of producing that music and seeing what the visual that it’s going to look like exactly. It gives you a really good feel and it makes you feel like you’re watching TV. It’s kind of that whole double mirror thing, looking into a mirror that’s looking into a mirror behind you. You’re watching it being put together and you’re putting it together but at the same, you’re also seeing it as a finished piece of video. That’s a cool, cool thing, I tell you. I never get bored of that.
So there you go, down dirty and quick today but I know that the Voices.com staff will be going off on a wonderful trip and doing some great networking and such so I wanted to make sure that they have this piece and in time for the podcast and you can certainly with any questions, go ahead and write me. Write here at the Voices.com website at adamfox.voices.com. You can always hit me on the website at defiantdigital.com. Thanks for the great podmail today folks and go ahead and keep them coming and we’ll make sure that we can include these pieces in our segments. I think it’s a great help to everyone and we’re learning something new everyday. So until next time, bye for now.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Thank you, Adam. As always, you can send Adam your feedback and podmail at [email protected].
Matt Williams: VoxBox, sharing your audio feedback.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: In the VOX Box today, I’m excited to share the first of three interview segments from Jesse Springer, interviewing one of the top promo talents in North America, Joe Cipriano! Joe doesn’t need much of an introduction in these parts, so I’ll let Jesse take it from here. Hi Jesse, thanks for joining us.
Jesse Springer: Thank you, Stephanie. Yes, I’m Jesse Springer and I’m excited to bring a little 3-week segment to VOX Talk. I’m here with Joe Cipriano and over the next 3 weeks, I’ll be asking him some questions ranging from his daily routine to his technical set up so, be sure to tune in to VOX Talk next week to hear more. Joe, thanks so much for being here.
Joe Cipriano: Well, it’s a pleasure. Thanks very much there, Jesse.
Jesse Springer: Absolutely! Getting things started, you are – you’re somewhat of an icon to much of the voiceover industry. Not many people are fortunate enough to have success in the on-air promo side of things but you do. You have a lot of success and you work quite regularly for Fox, NBC. So what does a typical day look like for you?
Joe Cipriano: Well, I usually get into the studio at about 8:30 in the morning and that’s pretty easy because it’s in my house, and that’s something that I’m very lucky to have. I get in around at 8:30. I’ll start working on things looking at what e-mail came in overnight and what sections have been sent to me. I do a lot of image work for radio stations and TV stations around the country, so I’ll sort that out. I usually have a 9 a.m. session ISDN with Food Network, 3 mornings a week, 9 a.m. my time, noon their time. So we’ll do that ISDN and then once that’s done I’ll get into the sessions that have come in. I’ll do all my sessions from my studio at home in the morning until maybe about 11:30 or so. Then I’d prefer to go out to sessions. I really enjoy going to studios. For me it works. I’m not the kind of person who enjoys being locked up in a studio all day. I need to get out and see some people. I think it’s important to see the people have face time with the people you work with, with the people that you work for.
So I do that during the day. I’ll go out from about noon until 4 o’clock, perhaps I’d go to NBC or Fox, whatever pops up on the schedule maybe something for syndication. I’ll do my work for the game shows I’m involved with Deal or No Deal or 1 vs. 100. We usually have a couple of sessions a week for that and then I’ll try to get back by 4:30 or 5, that way I don’t have to worry about traffic and that hassle. That’s the one problem going out to sessions is the fact that you have to build in the time to get to the sessions so, that’s why a lot of voiceover people rely on ISDN. They can pack more sessions into the day and that works for a lot of people. But I’ll get home about 4:30 or so and I’ll wrap up any other sessions that have come in for imaging and things like that. I’ll do those, record them into my studio here at home and FTP them up to my website for download later.
Then usually I’ll have an ISDN or two for networks in the evening maybe around 6 or 6:30 and hopefully by 7 or 7:30, my wife and I can go out to dinner and we’ll meet our son who works at Trailer Park here in Los Angeles which is one of the big trailer houses where they produce all of the coming attractions and trailers. My daughter has graduated college. She is looking for work in public relations here in Los Angeles, so the four of us usually meet up for a little dinner.
Jesse Springer: All right. That sounds pretty good to me. And I guess, another question cut on that same note. I did an interview with Ben Patrick Johnson recently and he talked about how the industry is changing so much considering everyone used to travel in person to every studio and now though, with ISDN, you obviously – you interact now less with some of those other voiceover talent. You probably see less of Ben and Don and those sorts of people, is that something that you prefer? How have you enjoyed or benefited from it or not.
Joe Cipriano: Well Ben’s a perfect example of what I was talking about earlier. He’s a very busy guy. He’s working in promo, he’s working in syndication, he works in trailers and his agent can book him back to back to back to back and not have to worry about travel time. So, he uses ISDN to his benefit and it works for him very, very well. Same goes for Don, George DelHoyo, all the guys that, you know, we would see each other several times a week. I’d see Don three times a day, you know. I might bump into him at WoodHolly doing a session there then seeing him at CBS 2 hours later and see him at Fox at 6 p.m. George DelHoyo and I used to have lunch maybe about once or twice a week and dinner three times a week because we’d end up having sessions at the same time at Fox around 6:30 or 7. So we would meet up at a restaurant close by and have dinner and then we’d go back to Fox and finish up our day.
So I use ISDN and you know, I was one of the first to use ISDN. I have these boxes here in my studio, these two Telco boxes. Go back to the very beginning, they’ve been updated and upgraded and software and firmware and all of that but I bought the first two boxes that came off the line back in 1994.
Jesse Springer: Oh, wow!
Joe Cipriano: Talked Fox into buying one of their own. They were very hesitant to do it at that time but they saw the benefit after we got it going and they realized, “Oh.” You know, when promos are changed and reedited, a lot of times you couldn’t get done or any of the guys that were doing voiceovers for the network to come in at 8 o’clock or 9 o’clock. And I said to them, you know, something pops up at 9, you can call me at home and we can do a live session.
So, you know, that’s really how that all started and I used it to my benefit in that I’m not out all day long. It’s a great tool and now with other things such as source connect which has come on. It’s a plug-in for pro tools. I just came back from 3 weeks in Italy and England and I did about a session a day on my laptop computer from the hotel room using the internet and a bridge. You know, Fox or any of the other studios that were booking me would connect on ISDN to a bridge and then I would hook up to the bridge with source connect and boom! We were doing sessions. So, you know, it’s different for every performer. It makes sense for a lot of the men and women who are working non-stop to do all of their sessions from home and you know, everybody uses it differently. That’s the way I like to use ISDN.
Jesse Springer: That’s great! I’m sure that worked perfectly for you too being out of the country like that. We are out of time, Joe for this week on VOX Talk. Thanks so much for joining us, Joe and thanks Stephanie for having us on this week.
Once again, be sure to subscribe to VOX Talk if you haven’t already so you can catch more of my interview with Joe in the coming weeks. Joe, we’ll talk to you soon and we’ll be back next week.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Are you looking forward to the next interview segment with Joe? So am I. If you haven’t subscribed already as Jesse mentioned, go to podcasts.voices.com/voxtalk or track us down in the Apple iTunes Podcast Directory by searching for VOX Talk or my name, Stephanie Ciccarelli. Bye for now!
Links from today’s show:
Pierce Brosnan New Voice of Thomas & Friends
Walking the Labyrinth
60 Second Pitch Winner – 1st place – Jason McCoy
60 Second Pitch Winner – 2nd place – Vicki Amorose
60 Second Pitch Winner – 3rd place – Troy Lund
Joe Cipriano
Stephanie Ciccarelli
Jason McCoy
Adam Fox
Jesse Springer
Joe Cipriano
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