J. Michael Collins

An Interview with Paul Stefano & Sean Daeley of The VO Meter Podcast

This week I had the chance to chat with Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley, two excellent voice actors who host one of the industry’s hottest podcasts, The VO Meter. As a podcaster myself and a big fan of The VO Meter, it was great to get a behind-the-scenes look at what makes The VO Meter so successful.

Here’s what Paul had to say about the podcast.

What sets the VO Meter apart from other podcasts in the voiceover space?

We try to be as upfront and honest about all the wrong things you can do on your way to a successful voice over career. Most people only tell you the good things that happen to them. We share EVERYTHING.

What was the genesis of the podcast? Why did you decide to do it?

It started out as a way to help people who were just getting started, like us at the time. There were a lot of podcasts for seasoned pros. We thought it would be fun to hear from somebody “just like you” so to speak who was going through the same trials and tribulations. That has changed a bit now that we are both seasoned pros, but we still keep that focus, of helping the “newbie” as much as possible.

What do you look for in a podcast guest?

We like to have people on who are like us. Tell it like it is, while also offering insight. Also, it’s important that they can laugh. Both at us, obviously, but also themselves.

Tell us about some of the most interesting guests you’ve had on.

Well, our first-ever guests were Michael Schwalbe, Moe Rock, Matthew Curtis, and Heather Costa. Prior to that we only did a back and forth conversation with ourselves. I’ll always remember that episode because frankly I was shocked anybody else wanted to talk to us! I’m also eternally grateful that we’ve been able to have most of my early mentors on as guests. People like Bob Bergen, Doug Turkel, Melissa Exelberth, Peter Bishop, Trish Basanyi, Terry Daniel, George Whittam, Dan Lenard and YOU JMC. Finally, we are very proud of the episodes we did on racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation diversity.

If there was a wish list of three guests you could get for the podcast, who would they be?

I can honestly say there isn’t anybody we haven’t had on that we’d consider a “dream guest.” Part of that is because the VO community is so giving. We’ve had so many legends on already that it’s an embarrassment of riches. Joe Cipriano, Kay Bess, Scott Brick, Mara Junot, Johnny Heller, Daniel Ross, Melissa Disney, we already mentioned Bob Bergen, the list goes on. Simon Vance reached out to US asking to be on, which blew our minds at the time. I guess I would say I hope we just continue to be blessed with people who are so giving of their time.

For those considering starting their own podcast, what are some of the benefits and drawbacks?

Don’t. Sorry, we’re full. Seriously, though, really understand what you are getting into. It takes more work than people realize. While we were new (ish) to VO when we started, I had a BS degree in broadcasting. I knew how to produce a radio show, which is essentially what a podcast is. It’s a full production. I spend hours on each episode and I think it shows in the quality.

Talk tech with us. What gear do you use to record, and what software are you using?

Well, as you may know, we have a segment called Questionable Gear Purchase, which talks about whatever gear we bought or sold since our last show. We are unabashed tech GEEKS. I almost never have the same mic from one year to the next, sometimes month. In fact, as I write this I’m waiting for FedEx to deliver a new Antelope audio mic to my house! Having said that we do love Sennheiser/Neumann products, as well as Studiobricks! Not, only because they are sponsors, LOL. I’m not only a client, I’m a member! It may be interesting to note that we record the show with Twisted Wave, over Source Connect and I still mix with Audacity.

If people want to listen to the VO Meter, where can they find it?

www.vometer.com, and follow us on Twitter @thevometer, or like our Facebook page.

Hire Paul Stefano for your next VO project at paulstefano.com

Hire Sean Daeley for your next VO project at dailyvo.com

Graeme Spicer Joins This Week in VO with J. Michael Collins with a New News Segment

by J. Michael Collins Leave a Comment

I’m thrilled to announce that This Week in VO with J. Michael Collins is bringing Graeme Spicer onto the team with an industry-first weekly news segment within the podcast.

Starting with Episode 23, which will be released this week, Graeme will bring a short roundup of the latest happenings in the world of professional voiceover, covering all aspects of our industry. Keep up to date on the stories that are making headlines in our community with this concise weekly digest, brought to you by one of our industry’s most trusted talent journalists.

Also, in the interest of ensuring that This Week in VO is in fact a weekly podcast, Graeme will fill in for me from time to time as host, stepping in when my travels or work schedule makes it impossible to host a segment that week.

More About Graeme Spicer

Graeme Spicer is not just a successful voice actor with more than two decades of experience, he is also one of the industry’s most respected moderators, interviewers, and investigators. Graeme has made his name synonymous with ethics and integrity, holding the powerful in our industry accountable and exposing abuses among those who profit from the work we do. Graeme is a frequent leader or speaker on conference and webinar panels about ethics, online casting, business, and issues facing the voiceover business.

I’m excited to add his voice to This Week in VO!

How the Metaverse will Change E-Learning

by J. Michael Collins Leave a Comment

The metaverse.

Depending on your perspective, it is either the next revolution in human interaction, or a Mark Zuckerberg fever dream likely to amount to nothing more than a fistful of Shiba Inu Coin. Nevertheless, serious corporations, with serious money, are getting on the bandwagon. Facebook and Microsoft are early leaders, but the metaverse has piqued the interest of retail brands, gaming businesses, and now academic institutions are starting to take notice. (https://theconversation.com/facebook-the-metaverse-and-the-monetisation-of-higher-education-171036)

If you’re a voice actor who works in E-Learning, you’ll already have noticed the trend towards gamified, interactive, and personality-driven content. While there is still quite a lot of old-school formal E-Learning narration out there, the shift towards more creative content is impossible to ignore.

The advent of the metaverse will only accelerate this trend. Imagine an academic E-Learning program in which students come to a virtual classroom or auditorium, and you’re the professor. Except you’ve pre-recorded the core material, and hundreds of possible responses to student questions and interactions which will be delivered responsively in real time by AI. Or training narration for surgeons where you walk them through a fully-immersed simulation of an operation, with your character wearing the skin of a senior colleague. Even something as boring as corporate onboarding may take pace in the metaverse in the future, with a smart-alec trainer voiced by an actor trying to keep it real with the new hires.

If you’re worried that AI will take some of these jobs, well, it will. But probably fewer than you think. Why? Character-driven content requires acting, and at its best AI can only hope to be as good as we are, never better. Low budget projects will migrate towards AI, but major brands and institutions that are less cost-sensitive will want the quality that only a real VO can provide.

What does this all mean for voice actors who play or want to play in E-Learning? Like so much else in VO, it’s time to sharpen your acting skills. If the metaverse truly takes off, E-Learning will start to resemble commercial, animation, video game, and other genres that have gone considerably more conversational. The days of “click next to move to the next slide,” might finally be numbered.

Are you ready?

Predictions for 2022

by J. Michael Collins 12 Comments

In an annual act of self-immolation guaranteed to make me look like a moron, it’s time for predictions for 2022, both for the VO industry and the world at large.

Behold…..

INDUSTRY: Everyone will continue to panic about AI yet will be shocked at year’s end when most working talent have earned more than the year before.

THE WORLD: Sports prognosticators will have mouths agape as the Cincinnati Bengals upset the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl.

INDUSTRY: VO Atlanta will kick off a rocking 2022 full of live, in-person voiceover conferences that will fuel good spirits and revived friendships throughout the year.

THE WORLD: The rapid spread of Omicron will herald a clearer-than-expected end to the pandemic, and by the end of March the world will look a lot more like 2019 than anyone would have expected.

INDUSTRY: Commercials will become more and more geo-targeted, with different VOs attached to the same copy in different regions becoming more common.

THE WORLD: The expected party summer of 2021 will actually happen in 2022, leading to a short but intense economic boom. Travel stocks will soar starting in February.

INDUSTRY: More and more VOs will see the light that snark and conflict on social media isn’t a good look, regardless of who is right.

THE WORLD: Despite saber-rattling and skirmishes, neither the Ukraine nor Taiwan will be invaded in 2022.

INDUSTRY: 2022 will be the year of the anti-trend in casting…..with casting specs finding a happy medium between reads that have been trending hard for the last two years and more classical approaches.

THE WORLD: The Democratic Party will lose the House but retain the Senate.

INDUSTRY: There will be two or more dramatic mergers or acquisitions in the agency and management world.

THE WORLD: Emmanuel Macron will unexpectedly lose the French Presidency.

INDUSTRY: Jenn Henry will wear a tiara in public at a major industry event.

THE WORLD: Will take a deep breath and remember that we have more in common as human beings than we do things to fight over.

Here’s to a happy and successful 2022 for all of you!

The Shifting Standards of Voiceover Demos

by J. Michael Collins Leave a Comment

Recently I had the chance to be a part of two fantastic conference-driven discussions centering around voiceover demo production. The first was a live demo review at the Mid-Atlantic Voiceover Conference, MAVO, which I hosted with long-time CESD animation mega-agent Pat Brady. A week later, I joined world-class demo producers Chuck Duran and Cliff Zellman, casting directors Mary Lynn Wissner and Donna Grillo, and industry mavens Joan Baker and Marc Guss for a special That’s Voiceover edition of their popular weekly podcast The State of VO. These two sessions reinforced many of the trends and standards in voiceover demos I’ve been seeing and speaking about recently. Here were some of the big takeaways:

What’s NOT Changing:

The classic demo concept remains king and that is not changing anytime soon. Gatekeepers and many buyers want to hear a full compilation reel that shows range within what the market wants ad what you do well, that is thoughtfully scripted, directed, and produced, and that demonstrates what you will sound like over national level production.

The production balance remains important. Pat reacted poorly to demos that were both underproduced AND overproduced. There’s a fine line that allows the voice actor to shine while still demonstrating elite production.

Your natural voice is the priority. For several years now the orthodoxy has been to lead a demo with an authentic, natural, conversational read that sound like, well, YOU! This remains a best practice.

A bad first impression can still be a killer. Make sure you are ready before you do your demo. And make sure you understand what level you are ready to play at. A VO who is ready to book consistently on P2P sites deserves to get the best demos they can have, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are ready to submit to a top-5 agency. Make sure you have this conversation with your coaches and producer!

What IS Changing in the Standards of Voiceover Demos:

Length of spots. Mary Lynn mentioned a clear trend among buyers towards asking for longer spots in reels in order to hear talent tell and sustain a story. This has long been the standard for non-broadcast narration, but commercial buyers are now moving in the same direction. It was even suggested that in the future commercial demos may drop to as few as four spots to accommodate this trend. Having some quick-hitters is great, but if your commercial demo doesn’t have at least one or two pieces between 15 and 30 seconds you may be falling behind.

Length of demos. The myth that your commercial demo should be exactly one minute long is just that. A myth. There are a vocal minority who prefer this format, but they are a minority, and any good producer can whip up a 60-second version of your demo if requested by a particularly picky gatekeeper. Commercial demos, in part because of the trend towards longer spots, will be getting longer. Pat Brady said a minute twenty was her limit. The State of VO panel came in around a consensus of 90 seconds. Either way, you have more room to showcase your skills with these standards. Meanwhile, non-broadcast narration demos continue to hit around 90 seconds on average, while TV Narration/Documentary reels, Promo, and Video Game and Animation can start sneaking closer to two minutes before you get in trouble. In the era of VoiceZam and other easily-accessible players that can separate demo tracks, there’s no need to set aggressive boundaries on demo length anymore, (though anything over two minutes can definitely start to get a little excessive.)

The dawn of the single-spot as a demo. Mostly an online casting site trend linked to search, the concept of having numerous single spot demos featuring 20-30 second reads that stand alone to demonstrate various deliveries, (frequently accents, impressions, etc…,) is a growing trend. Most producers offer single-spot production for far less than a full demo, and this can also be a better format for highlighting actual booked work than having it on your primary reels.

Conclusions:

Voiceover demos are an evolving art. Rarely is change in this area dramatic or revolutionary…..but staying on top of trends is critical to remaining competitive. We’ll see what the new year and beyond will bring, but this is a taste of what’s to come.

Is The Voiceover Industry Really Oversaturated?

by J. Michael Collins Leave a Comment

Feels crowded out there, doesn’t it.

In an age where work-from-home has become the rule instead of the exception, where we are experiencing the Great Resignation of people from jobs that treat and pay them poorly, and where on-camera and theater actors went more than a year without consistent work, the voiceover industry seems like the refuge of choice for many looking for a new source of income. Heck, even John McEnroe has gotten in on the trend….kind of.

With voiceover schools and coaches popping up like cicadas after a two-decade slumber, new aspirants are flooding into the field like never before.

By definition, that means there’s less pie for those who are already in the game, right? And those newbies? Good luck!

Well, there’s no doubt that the industry is as competitive as ever, but like with most things in life, there’s more to the story than a simple equation of more people equals less opportunity.

Voiceover is not taxi-driving. With respect to the folks at your local yellow cab company, anyone can learn how to drive and become familiar with their surroundings. With GPS, that last part doesn’t really even matter much anymore, does it? Driving a taxi is honest and hard work, but what it doesn’t require is inherent talent. A spark of creative genius and an actor’s soul is hardly a necessity. Voiceover, however, is a much different beast.

I’d guess that there are probably several hundred thousand people in North America calling themselves voice actors. Sounds like it would be pretty hard to stand out, right? But how many of these people are actually working? Chances are it’s no more than ten thousand, and out of those, maybe only a thousand or two earning anything that looks like a decent living. Indeed, it’s no surprise that when we hear major TV commercials, listen to great storytelling on documentaries, watch our favorite cartoons or play our favorite video games, the voices we are hearing are often the same few dozen people that many of us in the industry have come to know quite well over the years.

This isn’t because it’s a closed club or an old-boy network…..it is because talent and determination rise to the top.

The bottom line is that there are more people trying to do this job than ever before, but in reality it’s one in fifty or fewer that have the requisite skill to make it happen, and of those only one in five who have the business acumen to fulfill their potential. In some ways it’s like the professional poker craze of 15-20 years ago. Millions tried their hand at it, but watch the World Series of Poker and guess what, it’s still the same few dozen sharks and a handful of rising stars at the final tables.

In voiceover, what was true five years ago, ten years ago, and fifteen year ago remains true today: If you have the talent, the drive, the technical savvy and the business sense to make a go of a voiceover career, you may not get rich, but chances are you won’t go hungry either. Phil Ivey isn’t worried about the other people at the table. He’s gonna play his hand, and most of the time, he’s gonna win.

J. Michael Collins

More About Graeme Spicer

CONTACT