European Radio Awards Open for Nominations, The Simpsons Sound Alikes Challenge at Voices.com, VOICE 2008 in Los Angeles, Jesse Springer’s interview with Joe Cipriano, Part 2 of 3, Adam Fox on Working While on the Road, and a Voice Acting Workshop Survey at VOX Daily.
Download Podcast Episode 41 »
Tags
Adam Fox, Jesse Springer Interviews Joe Cipriano, Simpsons, Euro Radio Awards
Transcript of Vox Talk #41
Matt Williams: Episode 41
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 there, I’m Stephanie and welcome to VOX Talk! Today we’ll hear the more from Jesse Springer with his Joe Cipriano interview, working on the road with Adam Fox, and also talk about a new voice acting workshop survey. First, the news!
Matt Williams: The Loop, informing you of news and current voiceover events.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: For the first time, radio professionals across Europe have the opportunity to participate in a pan European radio awards ceremony that recognizes the best achievements in the radio industry. There’s even a special category for Best European Voice Over Artist. Entries close on October 12, 2007. Lucky winners will celebrate in Barcelona this November, as part of the NAB European Radio Conference. To learn more, visit euradioawards.com
Continuing on, there’s a hot new contest you can enter that flex your character voice acting muscles. Voices.com is holding a Simpsons Sound Alike Challenge. Just send in an MP3 impression of the Simpsons character you can perform best by August 24th, 2007 for a chance to win some fabulous prizes. Send your MP3s to [email protected] to qualify and may the best Springfieldite win!
In closing, the Voiceover International Creative Experience, also known by the acronym VOICE, will be hosted in Los Angeles, California this year. Reserve May 18th through the 21st on your calendar now! To attend the conference to meet the industry as well as the team from Voices.com. Read reviews of VOICE 2007 and learn more about what you can expect from VOICE at the VOX Daily blog by clicking on “conferences” at blogs.voices.com/voxdaily.

Matt Williams: The Biz, helping you grow your voiceover business.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Today in The Biz, I’m pleased to share part two of three of Jesse Springer’s interview with Joe Cipriano.
Jesse Springer: Thanks again, Stephanie. Yep, I’m back with part two of this interview with Joe that we’re working on together here and it’s an honor to be with him and so lets’ get right back into things. Joe, you’re talking last week a bit about your kids and how you like to spend time with them. Do you know sort of what their opinions and thoughts are and what you do for a career because I’m sure it’s quite an interesting thing for them to talk about with their friends.
Joe Cipriano: Well as I said, my kids are older now. They’re 22 and 20 but back in the day when they were in grammar school and junior high school and high school, it was always fun when their friends would come over and I would be in the studio and maybe they would be in here while I was doing a Fox session. That’s always a kick and of course the schools, well you know, will ask you to maybe emcee something, some school event or do a little voiceover for something that they’re doing a video presentation. So that’s always fun because you’re involved with the schools, I enjoyed being involved with our kids’ schools and in fact at one point, I built a radio station for a high school, you know, our local when we used to live in Pacific Palisades here in California. And that was fun. It was great interacting with the kids and also helping up the school in, you know. You feel like you’re giving a little something back. So that’s fun. Yes and I bet a lot of people look up to you for that.
Jesse Springer: Okay. Working in promos where you have – you’ve got multiple short segments on TV everyday. You make a pretty good living for yourself, obviously but for the sake of many listener who are not making an exclusive living in voiceovers, at least not yet, could you talk briefly about your getting started days. Did you ever have a home studio? What kind of equipment did you use, et cetera.
Joe Cipriano: As far as when I started off, I was working in radio. So I did my radio job during the day, many times it was a night shift. So I would spend the off hours from radio pursuing my voiceover career and radio was a great day job to have whether it was in the day or at night because you were paid well to do it and it left a lot of time to pursue other dreams, other goals that you have.
So I didn’t have a studio in my home really until – I would say it was about 1984. My wife bought me a Neumann microphone which I’m talking into right now. I’d always talk about the Neumann U87 and she bought it for me for my birthday and she said, “Build a studio around it.” And I did. My dad and I actually framed out a room and built my first studio back in 1984 and you know, work started to come in just because I had the studio. I’m a big believer of “if you build it, they will come” and that actually did happen for me.
So, you know, it was just a matter of getting yourself out looking for an agent. Once you get an agent, being available, doing all of the auditions, getting booked. If you started to get booked, maybe you could move up and you could be with another agent who’s a little bit more prominent. I’m not a big agent hopper. I was with the Tisherman Agency. I started off with William Morris. I was with him for about 3 years. I was with Tisherman for about 7 and I’ve been with Sutton Barth & Vennari for 17 years now.
You know, I think once you move up to a certain level and you’re confident that your agent is doing a good job for you, well you just kind of settle in and you keep going. So it’s just a matter of getting started, devoting the time to it. I always devoted at least one hour a day and I never missed a day for voiceover and I think if you do that, I think if you make a concerted effort, you sit yourself down and you say, “Okay. Today, right now for this hour, I’m working only on my voiceover career.” You’ll move it forward. You really will.
Jesse Springer: That’s some great advice to close on for this special interview, week two with Joe Cipriano. Joe, thanks again for joining us and we’ll be back next week for the final segment. I know I’ve got some great questions, so be sure that you’re staying tuned and staying subscribed. We’ll be back in a week.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Stay subscribed to hear the third installment next week! Thanks Jesse for your continued hard work. You can let Jesse know what you think of his interview by visiting his website, jcspringer.com.
Matt Williams: Tech Talk, walking you through the technological landscape.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: This week in Tech Talk, Adam Fox chats about getting the job done on the road.
Bob Oakman: You’re listening to another Defiant Digital podcast for Voices.com. Here’s your host, Adam Fox.
Adam Fox: Hey folks! And welcome to another edition of the podcast. Hope you’ve all been enjoying your summers. Boy, I can’t even believe that it’s August already. So let’s just jump right into the cast before we lose anymore of the summer sun, huh?
Okay. Today we’re going to talk about a topic that – well, it’s pretty relevant right now. We’re going to talk about how you can take your business with you when you go on vacation. So here’s the scenario. You want to get away and you’ve just been hammered and out and all in your studio and running aroung town and networking with people all year and you got a couple of weeks or a week or if you’re luck enough to take a couple of weeks to go and get out of town and go on vacation.
But what do you do if you’ve really got clients that are nagging you all the time and I hate to use the phrase nagging here but you know, sometimes when you’ve got a busy production schedule and people need things now, now, now, it’s hard for us not to see that as an invasion of some personal time. I mean, let’s be honest here, that’s what we’re all doing. We need to take that personal time but we’re also trying to keep those relationships with our clients good, you know. They’re the ones that are paying the bills and helping you to be able to take a vacation in the first place.
So how do you keep those relationships good? Well, the answer is pretty simple. If you’ve got a good business rolling and you’ve been fortunate enough to be able to start setting yourself up a mobile recording rig, that’s the kind of thing you’re going to want to take with you on vacation. I like to call those bucks in a box. So what’s in your bucks in a box package, okay? Well, let’s take a look. Well, you’re going to probably end up having a laptop because you can’t drag a big tower PC and a monitor around with you so you’ve got your laptop and of course, there are so many improvements on USB microphones these days that you can find quite often like the blue brand USB microphones are really good USB microphones you’ll be able take with you for portability and of course, all your software that you’re going to have already preloaded on your notebook.
A lot of software licenses will allow you to and without buying a 5-user pack or some such other licensing arrangement will allow you to also install the software and fully register it on your notebook computer as well. You’re going to have all of the necessary evils just with a notebook and a microphone, right?
Well, depending on what kind of software you’ll use, yes absolutely. If you got a good compression algorithm in the software that you’re currently using and you have a good mic chain built up in there, you absolutely bet you can take a lot of that with you. And these USB microphones are plugged straight in. You’ll get a good flat signal which is what you’re going to want.
If you have a good mic chain and you’re, you know, very comfortable with it and it would give you a good flat signal and a lot of times I’ve known voiceover talents to actually just voice underneath the towel to give them that sound blockage if their hotel room isn’t the ideal circumstance for being able to do that, you know, traffic up and down the hallway is you know, maybe they’re in a noisier area of town. But there a number of different things that you can actually bring with you. You can always roll up a roll of mattress insulation, believe it or not. And if you’re, you know, certainly can’t carry that on a plane but if you’re in a car, you can certainly roll up then the mattress insulation and take that with you and you can put that over the microphone and create yourself a nice little cocoon away from your studio.
Yes, it’s inexpensive and you know, it certainly not taking like a full Audix sound booth with you. However, that is certainly good in a crunch and you’re getting away and you’re trying to find ways to do things, you know, hey! So here we go. Now, you got your microphone and you got your mic chain and you’re voicing in your hotel room but you know, you just can’t dial that micro chain in just quite properly. So let’s take it to the next level. Say you have a microphone at home in your studio that you’re really familiar with and you really like a lot and you just can’t get the sound that you want out of that little USB microphone. So you want to take your microphone with you. Well, what else do you going to need? Well, here’s the deal. You can buy small compact mixers that will fit very nicely in a bag and also have phantom power on them so they’ll power those condenser mics for you and you can actually grab yourself a nice little – your same microphone boom on that you’d probably use in a studio.
You can purchase the second one if it’s hard to get at the boom arm in your studio behind all the cables and such. And you can take that boom arm and it’ll clasp right to the edge of a table. You set up your microphone, you then at that point have your microphone chain already set up because the software is there and if you need to take a small mic compressor with you, you can certainly do the same thing because at this point, you’re going to need some sort of a recording interface, right? And the answer to that question of course is, yes you will.
So you get yourself a little Mbox and you throw that in the box and you know, the bag might sound like it’s getting full but it’s really not. When you think about it, you have your microphone, you have your notebook, you have boom arm that will easily fit in a trunk if you need to fit a roll of mattress padding in there that will also fit and now you’ve got your Mbox. I mean, those things are so small and they’re also USB in firewire compatible so if you’ve got a firewire port on your notebook computer, you’re not going to be taking up any extra space there. So really, a mixer added on top of it, a small little compact mixer that does fan a power, they’re really still very, very portable and you’re still being able to get away on vacation.
So if you take a little preparation time, you can take that stuff with you and you know, think of it as a wonderful opportunity. You got to change your pace, you get a little change of environment, you still get your time that you want to and you know, certainly I’m not suggesting that everyone take this with them. You know, your time is your own and that’s why you work hard during the year and have that control over when you take your vacations in what you do. I’m simply providing some suggestions for if you’re like me where you know, I’ve got clients that really need things yesterday and they really want you to continue to remain accessible and you know, you’ve built some good client relationships and they’ve come to trust you and they’re certainly not you know, I hope you’re not taking anything personally by them panicking and needing something and I’m sure you’re not. I mean, we’re all in this business together and we’ve been doing if for a while.
So it’s just I’m merely providing some suggestions for you to be able to maintain that sound quality, being able to put together something in your, you know, your bag of bucks and your bucks in the bag, however you want to phrase it and merely giving you some suggestions to be able to provide options to your clients and still be able to take that time off and not feel like when you come back, “Oh my gosh! I’ve lost a whole bunch of clients. I took off for 2 weeks and you know, this client got an attention.” They went with somebody else because you know, the ad person wasn’t going to wait and you know, it gives you a good opportunity to just provide those options for your clients and not providing any extra stress for yourself. It’s really simple if you think about it and you just kind of put the thing together on what’s comfortable for you and what works for you and you take with you and off you go.
So, do some of you out there have bucks in a bag? Why don’t you let me know if you do. You can contact me of course right here on the Voices.com website at adamfox.voices.com or you can hit me on the Defiant Digital website at defiantdigital.com. Go ahead and send in some of your suggestions and things that you may take with you. I’d live to hear them and I’ll certainly share them on the show and I thank you guys for let me tug at your ear again for a few minutes here and I hope you’re just enjoying a wonderful summer. As always, I know I say that a lot but you know, hey! I truly mean it. Summertime’s a great time for getting out there enjoying the weather and still being able to get out there and be productive in your business as well. Because you know, Christmas is right around the corner, people and we’re all going to be slammed, I’m sure.
So have a wonderful, wonderful week and I hope to get lots of e-mails and things that I could share here on the podcast and we’ll talk to you next time. So until then, bye for now.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Thank you, Adam. As always, you can send Adam your feedback and podmail at [email protected] or drop by his website, defiantdigital.com.
Matt Williams: VoxBox, sharing your audio feedback.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: As was mentioned earlier, there is a new voice acting workshop survey out at VOX Daily for you to participate in. Let us know your opinions on what you prefer, what you’re looking for, and also how important food and socialization is at these events! It only takes two minutes and your answers will assist our network of voiceover coaches and experts in planning their workshops as well as help us to better promote voice acting workshops at Voices.com.
The survey is linked from the VOX Talk show notes for episode 41 at podcasts.voices.com/voxtalk.
That brings us to the end of this episode. If you haven’t yet subscribed to VOX Talk, go to podcasts.voices.com/voxtalk or track us down in the Apple iTunes Podcast Directory to subscribe by searching for VOX Talk. See you next week!
Links from today’s show:
European Radio Awards
The Simpsons Sound Alike Challenge at Voices.com
Coverage of VOICE 2007 at VOX Daily
Take the 2 minute Voice Acting Workshop Survey
Jesse Springer
Joe Cipriano
Adam Fox
Leave a comment