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.
FacebookXLinkedIn

Source-Connect Ports are in Order

Forgot to update the Source-Connect saga. Followed the detailed instructions on the Source-Connect website about how to configure the ports and “voila” so simple even a cave man could do it.

Now I am going through the Source-Connect data base to say hello to folks who might be interested in knowing that it is up and running.

Most of the people who have it are either talent or audio studios – neither of which are the best for pin-point marketing, but certainly the contacts are great networking – which ultimately pays off.

2010-03-03T17:07:20+00:00March 3rd, 2010|Categories: Marketing, Technology|Tags: , , |
Read More

Fast! Good! Cheap?

You know this adage – Fast, Good, Cheap – Pick any Two? Technological advances are putting this saying to the test – with people wanting (and many times getting) all three. The principal of the “Long Tail” – originally used to describe a retailing concept of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities – is another factor in the evolution of this axiom. Apply the long tail to voiceovers and it means creating lots and lots of product that will be seen or heard by fewer and fewer people. Think about the growing number of niche television, radio, YouTube channels. Fewer eyeball and ears? Maybe. Maybe not – considering the population of the world.

So how is this affecting Fast, Good, Cheap?

Fast

When it comes to the voiceover business, particularly at the first stage – voiceover auditions – Fast reigns supreme. With online casting (either through agents […]

2018-02-06T06:48:43+00:00March 2nd, 2010|Categories: Auditioning, Marketing, Musings, Negotiating|
Read More

Paul Strikwerda Bursts the Audition Bubble

Paul is one of my favorite bloggers. He can stir up the pot a bit at times, which is fun. But usually, he has something brilliant to say about the business.

I’ve been ruminating on auditions lately. About the fact that I haven’t auditioned so much as I have since we moved into a remote casting era. But what I didn’t say (and that Paul says so well in his latest blog post), is that I am extremely picky about what I audition for. I checked my “stats” for the past 6 months at Voice123. I have deleted more than 1050 audition opportunities – and sent in auditions for about 75. Number of actual jobs? Very few from V123. Same basic ratio at Voices.com, but with far fewer audition opportunities.

http://nethervoice.com/nethervoice/2010/02/24/bursting-the-audition-bubble/

Something I talk to my introductory students about is learning to practice so that you actually improve – and not build […]

2018-02-06T06:48:43+00:00February 24th, 2010|Categories: Marketing|Tags: , , , |
Read More

Time Flies: Balancing Personal and Job Time

What happened to February!? OK, it is a short month, but really, I look up at the calendar and shake my head in disbelief that it is nearly the end of the month already. There are things on my To Do list hanging around from last December that I swore I would complete by the end of January! (Well, the mosaic garden table was supposed to be finished by the end of LAST January – that project is waaay behind.)

Balancing personal and business life is getting to be quite a challenge. On the one hand I am lucky to have a job that lets me jump up and put out fires. On the other hand, I sometimes wish that I had a job that kept me confined for 8 hours so that I didn’t have to jump up and put out fires.

I’d like to chalk up the passing of deadlines […]

2018-02-06T06:48:43+00:00February 18th, 2010|Categories: Musings|Tags: , , |
Read More

iLok Unlocked and Source Connect Installed

The iLok folks tried to reach the official “owner” (well, perhaps we should call that the unofficial owner) of the iLok I bought at Guitar Center last week. After waiting a couple of days I decided to just return that one and get a new one.

Victory! The installation went smoothly and quickly. Source Connect is up and running. I will do some tests with other SC users as soon as I can work it in, but I had audio going both directions with the Source Connect folks.

The only part left to do is figure out the “port” configuration. It seems to be working, but my router needs to be officially configured to help stabilize the connection – at least that is what I was told. So, IF I get a chance this week, I will try to follow the breadcrumbs […]

2018-02-06T06:48:43+00:00February 7th, 2010|Categories: Technology|Tags: , |
Read More

A Stuffed PO Box!

Don’t you just love the feeling of opening the PO Box and finding it full of #10 envelopes! Checks! This time of year, however, the envelopes are usually a tad larger and need to be saved for the tax man.

1099s are flooding into my PO Box the past few weeks. Be sure to check them carefully and SAVE them! I had the IRS come back to me on my 2007 taxes saying that I owed them some ungodly amount close to 10 grand.

They thought that one of my 1009s was for 58 thousand dollars. Huh? Wow, that would have been a great client! After my heart stopped pounding, I realized that it was probably a typo and contacted my client who was able to quickly send me a replacement 1009 to show the IRS that the total was 58 hundred dollars, not 58K.

I’m not a fan of this side of the business, but […]

2018-02-06T06:48:51+00:00February 3rd, 2010|Categories: Business|Tags: , |
Read More

Someone Else’s Dongle?

So the iLok folks tell me that someone else owns my dongle. How that could happen is a complete mystery. The iLok was in a sealed package.

They have sent that person a note asking to transfer ownership to me, but if I don’t hear something in a day or two, I will take it back to Guitar Center and get a new one (at least what I HOPE is a new one).

All of this puts the actual downloading of Source Connect on the back burner.

2018-02-06T06:48:51+00:00February 1st, 2010|Categories: Technology|Tags: , , |
Read More

A dongle gone wrong

I decided to beat the price hike and install Source Connect today. This meant a trip to Guitar Center out in La Mesa to buy an iLok dongle to start the process. That in itself was a trip. I usually buy all my audio gear and supplies at Pro Sound and Music, just down the hill from where I live. It is a well lived-in store run by an insanely intelligent guy named Mike Krewitsky. Shane helps me find what I need. It is laid back and quiet.

Guitar Center is not. But they knew what I wanted and pointed me toward the Pro Audio part of the store. After the clerk pulled an iLok off the wall, I asked about a replacement cable for my dbx mini-pre and was immediately told that the mini-plug to the mic input was so 2009 and tried to upsell me […]

2018-02-06T06:48:51+00:00January 31st, 2010|Categories: Musings, Technology|Tags: , , |
Read More

Read the Manual

My inclination – when faced with a new piece of software (or pretty much anything) – is to install it and start using it. Read the manual? Not me. There are menus and a help button! (In the case of my cell phone, there is 611.)

Manuals usually have pages and pages of information that I already know and to find the bit of information I don’t know would require formulating a question that the Table of Contents understands.

However, in the case of Word 2 Wav, the manual is simple and short. Had I read the manual, I would have been able to save myself even MORE time this past year. Thank goodness Herve reads the forums.

W2W is a wonderful piece of software that I use at the beginning of my recording process for long form narration and IVR files. Although it is not a finishing program […]

2018-02-06T06:48:51+00:00January 30th, 2010|Categories: Business, Recording, Technology|Tags: , , , , , |
Read More

Virtual Talent Agency or P2P (Pay to Play)?

With automated online casting now moving past walking and starting to run (it is about 5 years old now?), there is still a lot of controversy about the concept.

Without a doubt some sort of online casting will be with us as long as we have the Internet, but how will these sites evolve? That is the question some voice talent are bantering about in a couple of forums as a result of a post that Cairo based voice talent Mahmoud Taji added to his Voiceover Emporium site.

http://www.voiceemporium.com/archives/01/tajis-frankenstein-monster/

Read the discussions, follow the links. Educate yourself. See if you can come up with the ideal online automated casting entity.

2010-01-28T18:43:42+00:00January 28th, 2010|Categories: Auditioning, Business, Technology|Tags: , , , |
Read More
Go to Top