Bob Bergen Workshop in Hartford, CT

Bob Bergen will be bringing his renowned voice-over workshop to Hartford next month and I will be attending. Bob has provided voices for hundreds of cartoons, games and commercials, but is best known as the voice of Porky Pig and Tweety, having inherited these roles from the legendary Mel Blanc. Of course, it wasn't a simple bequest - Bob had been in training for the job since he was 5 years old and it was well earned.

I've taken 4 different character voices workshops in the last 3 years: two at Edge Studio, one with Pat Fraley, Hillary Huber and Candi Milo, and one with Pat Fraley hosted by DB Cooper. I'm allowing myself this one more and then I am not allowed to take any more until I make a character voices demo - a real one!

If you're a voice actor in the New England area and are looking for an extraordinary educational opportunity, you can join Bob Bergen 17-18 May 2008 by contacting Anthony Piselli.

Peter O'Connell responds.

Voice talent Peter O'Connell took time from his busy schedule of bagel noshing to respond to my breakfast story with a wonderful & hilarious post about networking and marketing. Peter is a very funny guy, but his post is not purely comedy - it is full of excellent ideas for voice actors (and all business people).

And, I'm very relieved to report, Peter has excused me for the time being from the requirement to leave my grape-nuts, Kefir and berries behind and go out into the world for bagels with potential colleagues. It isn't the time, the venue, or the meal that matters, of course - it's networking early and often. Take karate for example - one of my few long-term rituals. A few weeks ago I read about a medical communications company I had not heard of (it's huge, so I must have been networking with ostriches before this). I entered a few key words into Google to learn more about it and try to find someone whom I might contact about medical narration. To my astonishment, Google Desktop turned up an email in one of my very own folders from a karate colleague in New York. She is the Creative Director at this company! And she put me in touch with the head of the video department there - who as it turns out attended the same small private school I attended in Manhattan years ago.

I assure you that no bagels changed hands in all of this. And no grape-nuts. No food at all. As in karate, I realised (again) that you must always keep your eyes open and be aware of your surroundings.

Which is what Peter O'Connell has been saying all along. So take a marketing and networking lesson from Peter. He knows his stuff. And if you ever have him over to breakfast, give him a cinnamon raisin bagel, not toasted, with butter. Hold the Pepsi. Now, stop reading this post and go read his!!

Why I Don’t Conduct Voice-over Business Over Breakfast Like Peter O’Connell Does.

My friend Peter O’Connell is a voice talent, producer and marketing expert, and he is one of my heroes. He’s full of ideas and of energy that he invests in his business and in his family, friends, and colleagues and he’s always coming up with something new. So, when Peter says that over the years he has conducted a lot of lucrative business at the breakfast place he visits every single morning of the work week, I feel I should be listening, but the fact is I cannot bring myself to do what he does. Why is that?

In science one often speaks in terms of proximate and ultimate explanations. The latter are the “real” ones, the former are the superficial ones that sort of masquerade as explanations. Let me first talk about the proximate explanation for why I breakfast at home. This is best represented by the photograph I took of my breakfast this morning: Grape-nuts and Kefir with flax seed meal, topped with fresh and frozen berries, with a side of Celestial Seasonings Honey Lemon Ginseng green tea.

OMG. So yummy. The only place I know that serves this nutritious repast bursting with beneficial phytochemicals is my own place here by the river with the newly arrived Eastern Phoebes (the first insectivorous migratory birds of the season in this region) buzzing their euphonious song from the leafless branches. So there’s that. Then the fact that I seem to spend my first waking hours in service to the other members of my family – getting the kids to school since invariably they miss their ride these days because they are young teenagers and the school system’s start times are designed to give the most sleep to the kids who need it the least (the elementary schoolers) while those who need it most have to be out the door at an inhumane hour (or maybe it’s because they have a lousy mother who lets them stay up too late). And to save on gas my husband takes public transportation to work, but I drive him to the bus. Three days out of five, I then park the car at the college and spend the morning in my Spanish and German classes (you really don't need to point out that we should be riding our bikes. We already know it and are actually going to do it today). The other two days I get to spend the whole day in the studio and am glad not to have to go anywhere.

So the truth is, fitting a business breakfast into my daily routine is not something I have felt strongly motivated to do – the quarterly Chamber of Commerce breakfasts are a different story entirely – I look forward to those tremendously, as well as the monthly Arrive@5’s and the Chamber’s Tourism Committee meetings. But I often think of Peter’s daily ritual and wonder what I am missing out there. I wonder, does it have to be breakfast? Perhaps this fixation on breakfast is a matter of convenience and economy – breakfast is early and cheap. But what about a mid-morning coffee or tea – we could bring back “elevenses”! And, would it have to be every day? I don’t do well with ritual that requires effort. And finally, where would be the best place in my area for this to occur?

I have thoughts of experimenting with breakfast and elevenses and visiting a different local establishment each week to try to determine where the most interesting people are hanging out, and if it is a regular occurrence for them. But I suspect it’s an experiment that’s doomed to fail. This is because you can’t go out a few times and expect something to happen RIGHT NOW. Business relationships are cultivated over the long term - and many of them, as with Peter's breakfast, probably start out as a social thing, not as an overtly business venture. You meet people and get to know them and trust them and vice versa, and maybe some day one of you can do something for the other in business. And I just know that I don’t have the personality for a daily or even weekly ritual that requires what would be required for me to have what Peter O’Connell has developed over many years. I think you have to LIKE doing it in order for it to work. The closest I have come to ritual is going to karate class several times a week, which I’ve been doing for 7 years – but that is a ritual with infrastructure that makes it easier for me to go (I have friends there, my husband also goes, there are health benefits and a sense of accomplishment as well as spiritual peace). As for voice-over and marketing rituals, though, if it’s daily and it requires going somewhere, it just isn’t going to happen, which is a much simpler explanation and among the penultimate reasons why I don't do it (for clues to the ultimate reason, see yesterday's post on brain chemistry).

But I would love to enjoy these rituals vicariously – and I hope Peter will now oblige me by writing a blog post about the famous Fire-Up-the-Toaster-‘Cause-O’Connell-Just Pulled-Up Daily Breakfast Routine. How about it?

If you have a social/marketing ritual, I’d love to hear about it.

Voice actors and the Edge Effect.

Last week during a vigorous house-cleaning event I unearthed a book I had read so long ago I didn’t even recognise it. Or at least, so much has happened since then that it seemed like a long time ago. The book is The Edge Effect by Eric Braverman, and it is about the influence of brain chemistry on personality, memory, attention and overall health.

Braverman asserts that there are four basic natures among humans, each one dominated by a different neurotransmitter (dopamine, acetylcholine, serotonin or GABA). The extensive Nature Assessment questionnaire in the book allows you to determine your nature, and with this information you can learn how to restore your system to balance (since we all seem to be out of whack in this mentally and physically stressful world).

There are many books on the market that claim to hold the key to restoring us to health, and after a while one becomes rather numb to these claims. But I have long felt that brain chemistry is the “final frontier” of medicine, that it truly does hold the key to so much of what can ail the body as well as the mind. I was interested to review my scores on the Nature Assessment and to remember that according to those scores I have an acetylcholine nature, which includes 17% of the population. This is what Dr. Braverman has to say about me and my kind:

A balanced acetylcholine nature is intuitive and innovative. You take pleasure in anything involving words, ideas, and communication, and are able to share your enthusiasm with others. This nature makes for ideal counselors, mediators, think tank members, yoga and meditation instructors, religious leaders, and members of public service organizations. Brain speed impacts the creative function, so artists, writers, advertising professionals and actors are all likely to be acetylcholine dominant. An educator with an acetylcholine nature would gravitate toward teaching art or literature; an accountant would gravitate toward specializing in forecasting and projects, and a plumber might find himself teaching in a trade school.

Well, I didn’t teach art or literature, I taught biology, although I always had the feeling I should have been in the humanities. That may be what made me good at teaching biology though – it was hard for me to understand it, so after I had finally wrestled the subject to the ground, I was able to explain it in a way that a non-scientist could comprehend.

We are in the very early stages of understanding the brain, and I imagine that the information in Braverman's book is going to seem simplistic in a few years, but I find it very intriguing. Fellow voice talent, if you happen upon a copy of Braverman’s book and take the time to answer the questions on the Nature Assessment test, stop back and let me know how it turned out. I’m curious to know if we’re all in that 17% together!

Voice-over Networking: NATURE Edition.

You just never know what cool events are going to pop up in my little town. A few days ago I heard, rather at the last minute, that the local PBS station was hosting an evening with Fred Kaufman, Executive Producer of Nature. I love those shows, and documentaries are of course of great interest to a voice-over artist since they are almost always narrated. So I inquired and there had been a cancellation and I managed to get a ticket. The event was held at my beloved Garden House at Look Park, just a mile and a half from my house, so that made it all the more appealing.

The lovely stone fireplace was once again blazing with a welcoming fire, just as it was the last time I attended an event at the Garden House. On exhibit were the winning photographs from the WGBY Wild About Nature Photography contest, as well as a number of other excellent nature photographs by local artists. I marveled at these wonderful works and had a very pleasant conversation with a WGBY staffer, who kindly requested my business card so he could pass it along to one of his colleagues at the station.

Ample h’ors d’oeuvres prepared by the Blue Heron Restaurant were available, and I helped myself and took a seat next to the small band, Cidade, which was playing Latin music. A guitarrist, violinist, bassist and percussionist made up the group, and whereas I suppose I should have been networking, I couldn’t tear myself away from this wonderful music. I had never before heard a band play tangos as listening music – most bands don’t even seem to know what they are.

Before long it was time for the warm-up act for Mr. Kaufman: Julie Ann Colier, a raptor rehabilitator from Wingmasters, brought along several owls and hawks to show us. Julie grew up in western Massachusetts and she talked about some of the changes in status of these birds since her childhood, such as the drastically reduced numbers of the American Kestrel – our smallest falcon – due to pesticide use. The owls she brought, as well as the Red-tailed Hawk, are doing fine, but numbers of the beautiful Golden Eagle have declined sharply in the northeast in the last 40 years.

Fred Kaufman gave a wonderful talk about some of the highlights of the projects he has worked on over the last 25 years with Nature. He also showed film clips from several of them including the famous footage of a fox hunting mice during winter at Yosemite, and an incredibly touching scene of two female elephants being reunited after two decades apart. One clip he did not show is included in a two-part program currently airing entitled “What females want and what males will do” (6 April and 13 April 2008). Featured in this footage is the courtship dance of a manakin (I believe it’s the red-capped manakin, Pipra mentalis). I found a video of this on Youtube, set to Michael Jackson music (you’ll see why). [UPDATE: The video has been removed from Youtube, for reasons unknown to me. My apologies for the inconvenience.]

I talked with Mr. Kaufman after the program, and learned that they now have one narrator whom they use for all their Nature documentaries – the wonderfully talented F. Murray Abraham. A great choice! Of course, I had hoped that they were adrift and scanning the small towns of western Massachusetts for a voice actor to take over this job, but I cannot deny that Mr. Abraham has more film credits than I. I’m working on that though!

A most enjoyable evening! As always, the WGBY staff did a super job of organising and publicising a wonderful event.

When a voice actor gets sick - Or, what I learned about misery this week.

Until this week I hadn’t been sick in two years. I attribute this to my generally good nutrition, regular exercise, and a bottle of the black elderberry extract I take when I feel like I might be coming down with something (it’s supposed to have potent anti-viral properties). But this week my usual arsenal was no match for the flu bug that my sons brought home with them and actually, I had run out of elderberry syrup and replaced it with capsules which seemed like a more economical way to achieve the desired result. Either the capsules just don’t work as well or there was nothing that was going to stand in this bug’s way - I’ve had a fever and wicked respiratory symptoms for 5 days. Now that I seem to be on the road to recovery though, and thus cannot be accused of whining, I wanted to make note of a few things that helped me.

There are scads of over-the-counter remedies for cold and flu symptoms, and I must say, there isn’t much of value out there. I’ve never found a commercial product that has any effect on a dry, hacking cough. Yesterday, at the height of my misery and despair, I Googled “dry cough relief” and came up with a most astonishing recipe. It contains cayenne pepper, ginger, cider vinegar and honey. I mixed up this potion, wondering if I was the world’s most gullible person, but I was truly desperate. I tentatively tasted the brew, blinked rapidly numerous times and yelled, “I say!!” It did not taste good, but it was not the nastiest thing I’d ever tasted either. It was extremely potent and extraordinarily effective. Whereas up until that minute I could hardly stop coughing, I was able to take a lovely nap after this, undisturbed by the vicious hacking. And I have scarcely coughed since. I took a few more doses of pepper potion during the afternoon and evening, attempted to drown myself in my Neti pot, and then took a hit of an oxymetazoline hydrochloride 0.05% spray (the generic equivalent of Afrin) at bedtime. My sinuses by this time were pretty worn out from abuse, but I managed to sleep peacefully for about 7 hours, my first good night’s sleep in 5 days. I still woke up with a fever and my throat felt like I’d left it out on a craggy mountain peak at around 12,000 feet elevation with a cold wind blowing, but as the day wore on it became clear that I was out of the woods. Oh, and slippery elm tea is a must for soothing the throat. I use Throat Coat by Traditional Medicinals , purchased at the local supermarket. It's pricey at nearly $5 per box of 16 bags, but it's worth it.

So, what effect did this have on my voice-over work? Needless to say, it wasn’t a good thing, but I managed to get most of my work out of the way early in the week before my voice sounded too terrible. I had some scripts from a regular client yesterday and today and promised them I would re-do them in a few days if they wanted me to, and then had some jobs come in late today that I plan to do tomorrow when I’m pretty sure I will sound normal or close to it. In short, I sort of dodged raindrops all week and managed to get through without having to say I was too sick to work. The universe can be quite obliging that way, and I was pretty darn lucky this week.

You will doubtless want the recipe for the anti-cough potion and here it is:

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon powdered ginger
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons water

Dose: maybe 2 teaspoons

I accept no responsibility for what will happen to you if you try it. For me, it was miraculous. My thanks to Bonnie K. McMillen, RN for sharing the recipe.

Richard Thomas in voice-over session at Tapeworks.

Erin Paul of Tapeworks in nearby Hartford, CT was kind enough to send me the following press release (thank-you Erin! I'm always pleased to hear news of local studios):


Richard Thomas, renowned TV and stage actor, visited Hartford’s Tapeworks recording studios Tuesday to record voiceover tracks for Mercedes-Benz latest radio and TV spots.


The session was recorded using ISDN technology, which allowed Thomas to voice the spots in Hartford while being recorded by a production team in NYC. An in-studio monitor screen provided a video reference for the TV spots, giving Thomas the feel and attitude needed for his delivery.


Television and movie actors are often chosen to voice commercials even though their voices aren’t always recognized by the average viewer when their face isn't shown on-screen.

Mercedes-Benz chose Thomas as the voice of their new campaign, much of which promotes the Certified Pre-Owned sector of their dealerships. Thomas warm and soothing voice credibly amplifies Mercedes’ pride in their cars and engineering skills while affirmatively answering the old chestnut; Would you buy a used car from this man?


Thomas is in Hartford this week performing 12 Angry Men at the Bushnell. The show went on tour in February, and opened Tuesday night in Hartford and will run through Sunday March 30th.


Tapeworks is celebrating its 33rd year as a Hartford mainstay. The studio is regularly the temporary home of TV and movie celebrities when their voices are needed elsewhere.

Richard Thomas (left) wraps Mercedes session with the help of Tapeworks staffer Erin Paul (right)