Western Voiceover.

This morning I drove west to the Berkshires for a recording session. For some reason, when I worked in the academic world, I always lived west of my university or college so I was always blindly driving or bicycling east into the rising sun and west into the sunset. I thought of that this morning and was very glad to be going in the sensible direction. And of course, any opportunity to visit the Berkshires is cause for great happiness as it is so beautiful there.

My destination this morning was a studio whose owner I had first contacted in January 2005 – just two days before my first email to Lorie Conway with whom I eventually worked on Forgotten Ellis Island – way back then I was following my voice-over coach (Charles Michel)’s advice and starting my marketing efforts in my own backyard, namely Massachusetts, and I branched out from there. Steve was conferring with his colleague Darrell last week, whose agency needed a commercial voice-over for a hospital in New Jersey. Steve suggested me, and Darrell called me. As it turned out I had worked with Darrell before, but never with Steve, and I didn’t know they knew each other. And I had never met either of them! So this was a very pleasant occasion for me. Steve has a beautiful studio in the mountains – it looks like a lovely vacation lodge and indeed I came away from there feeling as if I had been on holiday. The session lasted about an hour – nobody seemed to be in a big hurry – they got the script’s writer on the phone and we discovered that the spot was too long. The writer said in bewilderment “but I read it myself and it was 57 seconds” and Steve snorted, “you probably read it to yourself!” I was reading at a pretty good clip but it was still overstuffed with words, so the writer started slashing them away and by the end my script was quite a mess, and I played a game with myself to see how many edits I could read correctly –fortunately it was all of them. I must say I got huge (but unspoken) satisfaction from witnessing a writer realising that a) his script was too long 2) it wasn’t my fault and c) “I read it myself and it was just the right timing” does not necessarily mean that the script is the correct length – you won’t know until the professional voice talent steps in!! They also needed me to do a “humming track” which would be underneath part of the VO. It was quite funny to hum and then have the writer ask for various kinds of takes on the humming – a new experience for me.

Another new experience today was one that I know many of my colleagues are familiar with – “since you’re here would you mind doing another commercial for us”. Why no, I wouldn’t mind at all. So out came the script for the New York State Cerebral Palsy Association. A challenge – they pronounce it “sara-brul” which I had never said in my life before today.

Such a pleasant morning. I love to leave my studio coccoon and meet people in this business, and being directed live is so educational. And it doesn’t hurt to visit a recording studio with a view like this one!