Ah – the loneliness of the voiceover actor these days. Day after day – alone in our padded rooms with only the occasional directed session – we rarely get to converse with our clients – much less actually see them face-to-face. Skype does’t count. And, like anything, if you don’t use certain muscles, they atrophy. Time for some cardio for my conversation muscles!
The VO team is usually a small one to begin with – so even if you do have a phone patch or ISDN session – you are still only talking to a small earful of people. Most of the time, it is my fingers doing the talking to the client, and my voice is reserved for the booth.
Last week, I learned that face-to-face interaction with clients and crew takes a lot more energy than I remember. After an all day on-camera shoot (OK, mostly all day) with a crew filled with old friends, followed by a day with a phone patch session, an ISDN session, a self-directed session AND an in someone else’s studio session – I was EXHAUSTED!
The shoot part wasn’t particularly difficult, it was the people interaction part! Don’t misunderstand “difficult.” The director, production manager, DP, LD, audio and make up person were all friends from another era in my life when I was doing much more on-camera and producing work. There were a few new people to meet too, both on the crew and the rest of the actors. But of those that I knew, it was like a college reunion.
Some of these people I have known for 20 years, but just never see much anymore as my work moved into voiceover work and into mostly out of market work from my home studio.
So catching up with them in and around takes, while still making sure we were all doing our jobs and listening to the director expended lots of energy.
The spots we shot start airing January 31st, for Cox – the one I did was for Digital Telephone. Initially they are set to run only in the San Diego area, but we did some generic lines, so who knows where they might end up.
Leave A Comment