Connie Terwilliger – Page 23 – Connie Terwilliger

About Connie Terwilliger

Full-time voice talent working out of professional studio for clients around the world providing high quality VO for narration, eLearning, commercials, animation, telephony and more.

Marketing Maxim from Maxine

My dear friend and fellow voiceover talent Maxine Dunn had an article published on VoiceOverXtra discussing something near and dear to my heart – Cold Calling.

“Smiling and Dialing.” The act of picking up the phone and actually speaking to someone. People make a huge deal about the idea and the reality of “cold calls.” In reality – it ain’t that bad – and it can yield fabulous results.

http://www.voiceoverxtra.com/article.htm?id=5kegz3y2

The Competition?

One of the Social Media Networks on my radar is the Working Voice Actor group on LinkedIn. The group host is Ed Victor, a voice talent now in Florida. He tries to “whack the hornets nest” each week with a topic. This week he posted a question about competition or camaradarie. Are we competing against each other for the job? Or are we simply “trying out” to see if we’re the right fit?

The voiceover community seems to be heavy on being congenial with the competition – probably because we are all different. We offer advice to newbies who may end up auditioning for the same work. We actually like to travel – sometimes long distances – to have a chance to see each other face-to-face.

More and more – as the ways of doing business evolve away from in-person auditions to […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:39+00:00July 9th, 2010|Categories: Auditioning, Business, Marketing|

Mixing Business with Pleasure

So, this trip to Europe that I just took – two weeks traveling around Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland – was part pleasure and part business. I was visiting my brother in Munich, but was headed to Italy to meet with a client. My mic and pre-amp were not on my packing list, because I knew I was going to be traveling quite a bit, and didn’t think I would have time for jobs or auditions.

As it turns out (see earlier post), my brother’s practice room was actually a sound booth, so I could have worked while I was in Munich – and a good audition did appear in the In Box. But there was a lot so see and do there before I headed off to Italy to meet my business associate.

I did check for jobs and auditions each day – had a loaner BlackBerry with global service – and was able to postpone most of […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:39+00:00July 2nd, 2010|Categories: Business, Marketing, Recording|Tags: Connie Terwilliger, Jerry Kay, MediaPiu Studio, Paolo Tonetto|

I could work here…

Oh my – what a wonderful city Munich is – even if it is raining. And one of the first things I saw after climbing 4 flights of stairs to my brother and sister-in-law’s apartment in the Haidhousen area of Munich, was a wooden “whisper” room.

My brother is a horn player – a world-class horn player. He is presently principal horn for the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and for 30 some years was principal horn for the Munich Philharmonic. After finding this new apartment right in the middle of a park near the Iser River, he had to convince the landlord that his 3 times a day practicing wouldn’t be obstrusive. Somehow he was able to get the potential landlord to visit someone who had a “whisper” room in their apartment so that he could hear that there was really no sound emerging.

So there it was – a 13,000 Euro wooden room […]

Connie Terwilliger2010-06-17T11:38:49+00:00June 17th, 2010|Categories: Technology|Tags: Munich, sound proof booth|

“Narrating audiobooks is one of the fastest growing niche areas of voiceover!”

This is a quote from Hilary Huber’s Audiobook panel materials for her Friday, June 4th Breakout session. On hand were Scott Brick and Pat Fraley to discuss what skills you need to actually work in this area.

The biggest hurdle for many people with aspirations of recording audiobooks is the simple fact that you have to read aloud for a LONG time. Most people THINK they can do this, but when faced with 500 pages of book – with multiple characters of different genders, ages, ethnicities, etc. – the reality is that it takes much more than thinking about it.

If you have gotten to the point where you can comfortably read for several hours a day for several days, without an excessive number of stops and starts or abundant mouth noise, then perhaps you are ready to market your services.

The current trend […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:39+00:00June 11th, 2010|Categories: Auditioning, Marketing|Tags: audiobooks, Auditioning, demo, Hilary Huber, Pat Fraley, Scott Brick|

Censored!

I would like to share the g-rated moments that I gleaned from Nancy Wolfson’s VOICE 2010 session on Friday, June 4. Her session was definitely pushing my comfort zone at first, but, hey, if Bob Souer can do it, then by gosh, I can try it too!

First of all some basic f*!#g tips.

Active hush – I may need someone to post a response explaning what this actually means, but I think it relates to the next bullet…
Avoid Volume and Cheerfulness – instead to add energy use vocal tension
Watch the smile (the Joanie Gerber “psychotic” smile may be old-school?)
Keep the copy higher than your eyes
Keep your body loose – ready to pounce

The x-rated portion of the session was all about using your natural instincts and doing three takes.

The Admit take – this is the gut take – no extra words
Then “throw down the “f” word” before the key words in the copy. […]

Connie Terwilliger2010-06-09T17:15:15+00:00June 9th, 2010|Categories: Auditioning, Techniques|Tags: acting, Auditioning, Nancy Wolfson, training|

More from VOICE 2010 – Maxing out the Internet

This was one of my favorite sessions at VOICE 2010, because my good friend Peter O’Connell was on the panel – well, OK, it was filled with great information from the rest of the presenters too.

John Florian kicked it off with some of the top level statistics from the first ever survey of voice talent conducted to find out how voice actors use the internet to enhance their business. Look for detailed results in upcoming columns on VoiceOverXtra.

Peter encouraged us to focus on who we want to find us – and figure out what we want to say to them – and it ISN’T how great we are! We need to identify what sets us apart and tell them what is in it for them. We should all do a SWOT on our careers: Identify our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Doug Turkel came […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:39+00:00June 9th, 2010|Categories: Business|Tags: David Kaplan, Doug Turkel, Internet marketing, Marketing, Peter O'Connell, Trish Basayani, voiceoverxtra|

CAN * DO * WILL (Never I Can’t, I Don’t, I Won’t)

One of the best things about VOICE 2010 was finally connecting face-to-face with people who I have know for years in the virtual world. One of those was Tim Underwood from TheWebvoice.com.

I have been listed on Tim’s roster of talent for years now and was thrilled to see that he would be speaking at VOICE 2010. His topic was “How to be a Go-To Talent.”

His packet of handouts was very funny and included space to take notes and do some doodling (in case we got bored – which we didn’t of course).

A few of the top things I took away from his session – besides a lovely photo taken after the session with Tim and two other of his “go-to” talent – Charlie Glaize and Amy Taylor):

Always have a Can, Do, Will attitude. Skip the excuses!
Be ready to say Yes! And […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:39+00:00June 8th, 2010|Categories: Business|Tags: Amy Taylor, Business, Charlie Glaize, Technology, The Web Voice, Tim Underwood|

Comedy in Voiceover – a reflection from VOICE 2010

A priest, a minister and a rabbi walked into a bar…

Comedy – it’s all in the timing – well, timing and a few other things. Pat Fraley was the opening act – presentation – of VOICE 2010 and set the standard. He outlined “Eight Common Elements to Comedy” and then set out to challenge a few folks from the audience to be funny.

But first he called on a volunteer – specifically a male – tall – uh, say 6’7″ – oh and Jewish – and suprised the group with Brad Garrett who had positioned himself in the back of the room.

And from there the laughs grew. Pat and Brad are both naturally funny, but insist comedy can be taught – if you understand what it is all about and your role. Are you the straight man? Then don’t “wink!”

Here is the list of those 8 common elements of comedy from Pat’s presentation.

Pain
Pride
Deception
Misunderstanding
Contrast
Exaggeration
Parody
Inappropriate

So, what’s the […]

Connie Terwilliger2010-06-08T08:46:02+00:00June 8th, 2010|Categories: Musings|

Back Home – What Just Happened?

There was so much going on the past few days at VOICE 2010, that I didn’t get a chance to blog and will need a day or two to digest what I got out of the sessions I attended and go through the business cards to try to remember who was there.

I did get a chance to update my Facebook page with photos and updates. If you are not on Facebook, this link may not work.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=244274&id=678849697

I would say the highlight of the socializing part of the event – of which there were many – was hearing Rob Paulsen sing the Nations of the World song in his Yakko voice acappela.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONyKu9cMG7k

That and seeing June Foray, now 92, up on stage and hearing her slip into Rocket J Squirrel without a beat.

Highlights of the seminars will require a bit more thinking – there were many little bits of information in […]

Connie Terwilliger2018-02-06T06:48:39+00:00June 6th, 2010|Categories: Musings, Teaching|

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