Hispanic American Urban Cool

These words describe my friend and colleague Anthony Mendez, a NY-based voiceover pro who was recently interviewed by Radio and Production Magazine about how to become successful in this business. As a fellow Hispanic-American, I was really inspired by this article and I hope you will be as well.

Getting started in voiceovers

This is a question that comes up quite a bit. My online colleague Dave Houston wrote a really great article addressing this very question. Take a look, you might learn something!

Accents and Dialects - Upcoming class!

Hey! I just came across an upcoming Accents and Dialects class being taught by the one and only Mr. Pat Fraley!. Mr. Fraley is arguably America's #1 voiceover teacher. The class will be in November in Buffalo NY so if you can make it, do it baby, do it!

Accents and Dialects, that is the question.

It has never been more important for voiceover actors to learn to do accents and dialects. Why? audiobooks and computer games. These industries have literally exploded in the last couple of years!

I was at Barnes & Noble last night browsing the audiobook section and I must say I was absolutely floored! It looked to me like every single book published these days is done in both print and audiobook formats. That's a lot of voiceover work for a lot of actors doing a lot of voices.

What about video games? They have become as important, if not more important, a part of the entertainment industry as movies! The current release of Halo 3 is, according to Microsoft, the biggest entertainment launch in history selling over $170 Million on it's opening-day! That's more than double the the 1st-day earnings of Spiderman 3, the biggest movie opening in history thus far.

These two increasingly important industries will continue to need more and more talented voiceover actors who are versatile and can do many characters, accents and dialects.

I don't know about you, but I think I'd like to get in on some of this action. Here is a resource that might help you (and me) get started.

MTV Gives you Legally Blond: the Musical

I just read on another blog that MTV will be airing the entire Broadway production of Legally Blonde the Musical! The first of at least 3 airings is supposed to be on Saturday, September 29th at 1:00 but I would check local listings to verify that. For those of you who love broadway shows, here is a chance to see one that I've heard is pretty darn good, for free!

A couple of cool tools for your voiceover arsenal.

While browing the VO-BB, a voiceover industry bulletin board which I cannot recommend highly enough to anyone working, or wanting to work, in any aspect of this business. I recently came across a couple products I found quite interesting.

1. The CEntrance Microport Pro. Now I haven't gotten hold of one of these babies myself, but it was given a rather good review by a very respected voiceover pro, Mr. Frank Frederick and when it comes to VO technology, Frank's word is as good as gold as far as I'm concerned. You can read what Frank had to say about it here.

2. Adobe SoundBooth CS3. When it comes to recording software, there's a new kid in town! This product brings advanced recording functionality to the novice / intermediate crowd and boy does that include me! After going through the features videos on their site, I can honestly say that I can't wait want to get a copy of this for myself.