VO-BB - 19 YEARS OLD!

[kgenus]

So if you don't live in or around NYC, maybe you're not familiar with the way auditions actually take place here and got a good laugh out of Bill's comment.

Please allow me to explain....

For those of us in and around NYC, who actually have home studios, you should know we too have to go into the city to audition with Casting Directors (CD). In NYC, the typical CD works out of a rented space which contain numerous audition rooms, each being used for VO or on-camera on any particular day. Some CDs are affiliated with a recording facility or one of the big agencies and have actual studios from which they work.

HSR is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. There are a number of recording studios working all types of projects, there's also Stacey Seidel and Lisa Fischoff operating Broadcasters -- I love that name. Sometimes, if you go there on a really crazy day, you might end up auditioning with another CD out of Howard Schwartz's office in porta-booths. They even have a Sennheiser MD 441U for that setup - that's isolation!

This is acting and that's what they're casting for, your ability to act. Not your recording environment. As soon as you think an SM58 is not going to get you work and you end up at an audition in front of that mic, your expectations are going to be all over your delivery. And the same goes for the booking. I won't even tell you whose kids I hear jumping off the diving board into the swimming pool in the background (Mike, you may know who I'm talking about) and you hear this person's work on television every night in the US.

If the quality of the recording with the iPhone means you don't have to carry a laptop, Bill might be on to something. The first people who might begin using this could very well be the NYC CD at the rental facility. They can take everything home to edit, which they already do, but it makes their office much lighter.

On a side note, Steven Lessard (the Bassist in DMB) has been using an iPhone in his rig for FX processing and what I heard was absolutely incredible. I only wish this was all available on the Droid.
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Genus

[melissa eX]

A number of us know one voice talent who booked a spot from an audition recorded on the iPhone with the Mikey while on vacation - camping - with no studio anywhere around . They needed the spot recorded immediately - and so it was - on the iPhone and Mikey - and that's what went to air.

That's when you know you were hired for YOU and not for any other reason.

[Mike Sommer]

I can't speak for New York, but f that's what they want, then that's what they'll get. Oh ..and I like the 441, it's a damn good mic.


But I've never denied the viability of using and iPod or a laptop while on vacation, or if you have binding contractual agreement that one needs to adhere to. My beef is when an average VO is so desperate that they can't wait the few minutes that it takes to get home or to their hotel to do an audition.

Of course you can do whatever you want. But the silliness of being connected all the time is just ludicrous.

Where the hell is the fire?

For give me if I come across as cantankerous, but I am at the moment a member of the "700 Club."
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The Blog:
http://voiceoveraudio.blogspot.com/

Acoustics are counter-intuitive. If one thing is certain about acoustics, it is that if anything seems obvious it is probably wrong.

[paddyo]

[quote="Mike Sommer"
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Proud member of F.U.F.F.

[Mike Sommer]

[scottreyns]

I've got several audio recorder as on my iPhone, including iAudition which is crazy simple and easy to use. I think it all comes down to what's a usual day for someone. For what my days are normally, I'll take in-person auditioning every time over auditioning from home, and certainly over doing it over the phone.

Several reasons:

* At 7x7 sq. miles SF is a big city but a small town. I'm normally already downtown as is the agency representing me, where my auditions normally happen. On those days I'll often walk by a Costco, but not into the parking lot. On other days I'm probably just home, about 40 minutes away by public transit.

* Being directed beats having to self-direct.

* iPhone has good audio, yeah... for a _phone_ . Yes, of course in the end talent trumps tools. I will say though, that I'm pretty sure on at least some occasions when I recorded my audition from home, I've won gigs over other actors whose skills on whole match if not beat mine, partly because I had the gear to represent myself better when the time came to represent (and/or which actors had home studios or not was being factored into the casting process). I fundamentally don't expect any potential Client listening to an audition of mine to take more than 10 seconds deciding yay/nay, so in that time I don't expect them to be thinking about how good whatever mic I was auditioning through may have been or not. When folks are competing for work therefore, if the gear's going to be potentially unequal between competitors I'll take unequal in my favor, please.

* Face time: Show people what you can do in real-time; what you'd be like to work with. Meet people; remember them and be memorable yourself etc. ... maybe get asked into spending a little extra time in the booth if the read's a double and doing so helps others trying for the gig get through the process. Maybe get looped into auditioning for another project that just came in a few minutes ago while you were on your way over. Keep it fresh and get out of the house a bit; you never know.

* Sure, fast business, but from a Client/Producer perspective one can only rush finding the right voice so much. If it's not about that and it's about just finding someone who doesn't suck, artistically that's no fun, also financially I'm in an area where there's a high cost of living. I know "doesn't suck" can be found cheaper. In other words, I don't like to think of voice over as a commodity. If time and care isn't going into doing an audition process thoughtfully, yet there's an audition process happening anyway, sometimes it just might be indicative of a gig one might not really want.

When I make recordings on my phone it's usually because I'm recording a business meeting either using Recorder or HT Recorder depending on if the meeting's in-person or not. I'm glad I have iAudition too, even if just as a backup option.

I can understand how actors in a very different situation might find as like these more regularly helpful. For example, I've spent very little time in LA but every time I go there the traffic trips me out to the point where, in my outsider's ignorance probably, I struggle to understand how anyone gets anything done. So if I were based there, also outside the house when the call(s) came ... short of it being for a very high-profile and/or unusually lucrative gig, I doubt I'd be excited to spend (2) hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic to get to an audition (5) miles away for a gig that - if I get it - would pay me for perhaps just (1) hour of my time. If one takes the view that any given hour of one's time is worth a certain minimum amount of money whether one is working that hour or not, and if one does the math and finds that auditioning frequently by phone rather than through other means makes the difference between running a profitable business or not... whatever's clever.
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Scott Reyns, voice talent serving major metros (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York) and beyond

[panright]

All good points pro and con; but I think what all this iPad hoopla is really about from a thousand feet up, is that portable audio will continue to get simpler and better -- and it won't be about "desperation" in the long run. I do tend to agree that in the short term, each "audition" should be treated AS IF you were already hired and quality should be delivered as optimally as possible unless the client knows you well.

That being said, what about an a for we sad DROID users?
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Perry Anne Norton VO
www.perrynorton.com