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 […]

Most of you know what happens the last few hours before you are heading out of town for a long trip. The email comes flooding in with re-dos, new work, emergencies, and other assorted things that need to be handled before you can finish packing.

I’m headed to LA for VOICE 2010 around 2PM today and of course that’s the way my morning started!

• Biotech client finally sent the changes to a project we did 3 weeks ago. Luckily we can schedule that session for next week.
• Government agency client wondering if the end client had ever gotten back to me with a pronunciation question – and needed the new files before the end of the week. No, they hadn’t gotten back to me, but we searched YouTube to hear the word said by native speakers and made that fix.
• Same client found one error in the last set of files I sent that needed […]
  

Yikes! Had a session today – cast off my demo – where the client was ultimately not happy with the read. This has not happened for many many years – I’d say 25. At least where I knew about it anyway. There are those clients who pop in for one session and then you never hear from them again. With a large stable of regular clients and referrals, you just never really think about the possibility that someone didn’t really get what they wanted – until someone tells you.

It was a spot for a retail store – that included a list of prices and items – that needed an unpolished conversational read. After lots of direction – which can be helpful (or not) and some line reads – which can be helpful (or not) – I got the feeling – from these very nice guys – that we were on the […]