Welcome to the Voice Over Insider Interview Series.
In these interviews we’ll attempt to go beyond the typical questions and get to the real performer behind the microphone, and bring you their insights from an educational point of view.
This week:
Joe Cipriano Interview
Media – Web/Internet
Interviewer: Michael Smith
Joe – or Cip – if I may call you that – let me start this off the way I always do by saying thank you for taking the time out of your schedule – which we all know is one of the busiest in VO- to participate in this interview. Lord knows you didn’t have to do it, which makes it that much more special that you did.
There are some things about your career and your performance ability which fascinate me. We’ll start with the career side of things first. Your radio career is one of the better documented ones – many interviews can be found on your website – as well as on the net. So I’ll try my hardest not to make a repeat. But I can’t help hit it just a little with this:
Take us back in time – You started off as a jock – in the radio sense of the term – when you were just a kid really. A junior in high school? Did you ever, in your wildest of fantasies back then, dream that you would end up where you are today? Or did radio just seem like a cool thing to do at the time?
Growing up in a small town, I didn’t have many options to start a career in television or acting or whatever it was I was going to end up doing in the business. My dreams were to be in a sitcom or host a tv show and the only way I could start on that path locally was to get into radio. At the same time, I did community theater but I always thought radio was going to be the medium that would move me forward.
We only had a couple of radio stations in Waterbury, CT and one TV station that was a UHF channel which mostly just passed along the NBC network feed. They had a couple of extremely low budget local shows. One was Romper Room in the morning and the other was the nightly news where the anchor was also his own director. He would bring the switcher out to the anchor desk and attach it under the desk and out of sight. He could cut from camera to camera (there were only two cameras) by operating the switcher under the desk while he read the news from a script. There were no prompters. That’s the kind of tv station this was.
One of my buddies from the radio station was running camera on Romper Room every morning and told me the other camera person was leaving, so I ended up running camera on Romper Room, 5 mornings a week, then I’d go to school during the day and do my evening radio shift on WWCO from 6pm to 10pm. I’d do my homework while I was on the air.
So, while I loved doing radio it was a way to get me out of Waterbury, CT and on to a career in radio and tv which would hopefully end up with me moving to Los Angeles and starring in a sitcom. To a certain extent it all happened in a small way. I did move out to Los Angeles in 1980 because of a radio gig and I also did end up acting on a sitcom, although it was very short lived. It was the summer of 1990 and the show was called, Knight and Daye. I played a recurring character on the show which only lasted 6 episodes on NBC. It was produced by Ron Howard, with Babaloo Mandel and Lowel Ganz. We were on Thursday nights after Cosby. Imagine the possibilities. It just didn’t catch on.
From a voice over coaching perspective – I deal with a lot of old “war-horses” that have been pulling overnights in major markets for decade or two and they make a stab at VO without a lot of success because of their old announcer habits – which turn out to be a real detriment to their ability to perform on a conversational level in front of the mic. Many times they’re just “too radio” to do very well in auditions and they get frustrated and eventually call a coach.
Were you at any point in the early days, or at any point in your career ever told, “Hey Joe, can you be a little more conversational?” If so – how did you take it or respond to it at first? Was being an air talent for so long ever a problem, where it became a hurdle you had to jump in order to start landing the “real guy” type of gigs ?
There is no shortage of people who will tell you you’ll never make it, especially in Los Angeles. Not only did I get hit over the head with the “you sound like a guy on the radio” critique while I pursued voice over, I also was hit over the head with “you look too ethnic” to make it on camera in television. It was a double whammy. Both were a big surprise to me. Back in Waterbury, CT. EVERYBODY looked like me. In my mind, I looked “All American.” So that was a bit of a shock.
The other, “you sound to radio” was a shock. Radio is what got me to Los Angeles and brought me some level of success. The biggest problem was, I couldn’t “hear it.” It seemed everyone else in the voice over world could hear it, but I couldn’t determine what “sounding like you are on the radio” sounded like. It was very difficult determining first of all what it was and secondly to get rid of it. I have to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten rid of it. I ended up finding a genre of voice over work, promo, where you have to have a little “sell” in your voice. I think the fact that I don’t do much commercial work supports the fact that I haven’t found a “real guy” sound in my work. I may be a “real guy” type PROMO voice, but going further than that…sounding like a Dad or sounding like a Husband for a commercial is not something I’ve achieved.
So, while I was trying to find out where I fit in the voice over world, it was a huge hurdle being typed with this “radio sound” There was frustration because I couldn’t “hear” it in my work, but I knew that it was there. I tried hard to lose it, but at some point I also got a little belligerent and thought, maybe “they” were wrong. I thought, radio got me here and what I do is going to get me to where I want to go. So, I trusted my own instincts and I think I was very lucky. If I had to live on my commercial work, I’d be in big trouble
I think it’s very telling that you see it and realize it, and are willing to look at it out in the open… I hadn’t spent any time in radio before I got into VO, so I don’t think I had radio to blame for my announcer style. It was only after several years that I got my first on-air gig – even then I was a traffic reporter instead of a jock or a news guy..
Still, I had to get over the announcer sound and work up to being a lot more conversational. It’s been an ongoing project of mine seeing as how a great deal of the work is going to the younger, more natural sounding every guy.
I’ve noticed in some of the videos made at your private studio – that you are quite the gear-head – with exceptional taste in equipment. I know that success has helped with the quality of the toys, but the setup itself is pretty enviable.
Do you owe your studio and technical engineering knowledge in whole or in part to the radio days, or did you eventually grow into a voice over specific studio environment because of your exposure to the L.A. studio scene for so long? Were you the one in that studio with a screw gun and a measuring tape in your hand?
One of the aspects of radio I always enjoyed was the equipment side of it. I loved the cool looking audio consoles and switches and microphones. I would look for ways to come up with a new sound using the equipment I had available to me at the station. When major market radio stations were doing promos with a phase effect on the voice they used a piece of equipment to achieve the effect. I didn’t have that equipment so I came up with a way to do it with two reel to reel tape recorders. I’d put the same voice track on two machines and cue them up. I’d hit “play” at the exact same time on both machines and the two identical audio tracks would play at the same time. Then I would put my finger on the tape reel of one of the machines and slow it down just slightly. When the two tracks would line up perfectly, the audio would phase and give that weird effect.
So my love of equipment stayed with me when I built my own studio. I built my first when my wife, Ann, gave me my Neumann U87 as a birthday present in 1984. She knew that I always dreamed of having a studio and she bought the microphone for me as a gift and told me to build a studio around it. I did. My Dad and I framed out a portion of our Pacific Palisades basement. I ran all the electrical and literally built the room from scratch. The funny thing was there was no reason for the studio, I just wanted to have one and I thought I could do “something” with it. That’s why I believe in “if you build it, they will come.” 🙂 That’s exactly what happened, because I had a studio I started doing more and more voice over work. To support myself and the ups and downs of a radio career, I started producing demo tapes for actors who wanted to get into voice overs.
So, yes I enjoy the technical side of it and for the past several years I’ve looked for ways that would allow me to do my voice over work from anywhere in the world by taking with me the least amount of equipment. I always try to stay up to date on the latest innovations. The latest of which allows me to take along my MacBook Pro (which I would have with me anyway) a 416 mic and portable stand, an mBox and Source Connect. It’s a small carry on bag of equipment which in the next few years will continue to get smaller and better.
Before you mentioned in an Apple Pro interview (http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/cipriano/) the idea of using Source-Connect to “bridge” to your ISDN lines while out on the road – the thought had never crossed my mind. Then I was faced with my current situation of having to move my studio and I needed to bridge over to the old ISDN lines until I put the new ones in. So for one – I’d like to say thank you for the idea because it is such a practical solution to use remote desktop to launch SC on the far side and be able to link to an incoming ISDN signal.
Have you encountered any trouble with the solution thus far, or has it been rock solid. Any little tips you might be able to think of that had made the process easier? Such as optimal settings for the mixer, incoming and outgoing signal, VU settings inside Source-Connect?
It is far from rock solid. I chalk it up to a brilliant idea with inherent flaws. I’ll give you the end result first and that is…it’s worth it to pay for a separate company to do the bridging for you. I use Out Of Hear in Los Angeles most of the time. I will also use Digifone in CT as well from time to time. I hook up to the bridge with Source Connect on my laptop and they connect to the Television Network or studio on their ISDN and voila we have a live session. It’s a much better solution because they are set up for this and during the session, they are there to fix any problems that may pop up. 90% of the time it works perfectly.
The original idea of bridging myself through my home studio, using a remote desktop software solution to control my home studio computer works, but “IF” there is a problem…there is no one at the home studio to help out. So, you have to cross your fingers each time you attempt a bridge. I’ll still leave my home studio “set up” for a bridge, but I hardly rely on it. The money spent on an Out Of Hear bridge is worth it.
I’m sorry, but you’ll have to forgive me for indulging my hyperbolist tendencies with this next one:
You’ve been quoted as saying on many occasions, and I paraphrase, “If you want to land the big national gigs – you’ve got to move to where the food is.” And I know that your response to that comment has changed somewhat over the years.
I moved to where the food was once, very early in my career before I was really ready – and I hate to share a family secret, but it didn’t work out so well. I met an agent at William Morris (who’s still in the business today with another agency) who said to me in an initial interview when I was considering a move to the Big Apple, “We wouldn’t be bringing you up here if we didn’t think there was something to it.” Which was all I needed to hear before I loaded up the truck and headed to the Upper West Side like a 280lb. Felicity, with hopes and big duffel bag in hand.
I was really naive at the time – and really under prepared to compete in such an actor heavy / actor driven market, and lacked even the simplest of tools to deal with the constant, 400 people-plus cattle call auditions and constant rejection. When it comes to tools, I’m sure I was one in the studio on many occasions. After a while the auditions stopped, the agent left W.M. and I was left out in the cold with no contacts, no inner circle and barely a gasp of air left in the NYC voice over market. It’s an experience that has left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth for years, and one that has kept me from seeking major market representation since – but an experience nonetheless that has taught me unimaginable things along the way.
Hypothetical question here – knowing that you walked a different path to the top… Looking back to your early days, if you found yourself sitting in front of that same agent, tempting you with visions of red-carpet VO success – would you have been so passionate about the business to pick up and move across the country without any promise of work on the other side – or were you smarter than that? Were their mentors along the way that prevented you from going on such a foolhardy mission?
I wouldn’t say I was smarter than that but I would definitely say that I knew “better” than that. There were no mentors who taught me this and maybe it was just my upbringing but I would NEVER, EVER move to a new city WITHOUT a paying job waiting for me. No matter how much I wanted it. No matter how much I desperately dreamed of it. I tell newcomers this every time I’m asked for advice. I have many successful voice over friends who thank me profusely for telling them this over the years.
Let me just go back a second. You paraphrase me as saying, “If you want the big gigs you have to move to where the work is.” This was true back before the advent of ISDN technology. It was true then and I know it was true because I lived it. There was no way to “make it” at this level of Network promo or any of the really big gigs without living where they were being produced.
My advice to up and comers now is still a hard and fast, “don’t move to NY or LA unless you have a day job waiting for you” and I also advise starting your voice over career in your hometown wherever you are in the country. Being surrounded by family and friends for support is a great way to put up with the head-bashing you can get in pursuing a vo career. ISDN has given everyone an almost equal opportunity no matter where you live. I also have to say something about your experience with your New York agent. Your chances of making it big are extremely slim if you don’t get over the bitter taste you express about representation.
If you are not represented by a franchised agent, you’re most likely not going to work regularly as a top shelf voice over talent. It wasn’t the agent that wronged you, it was poor business sense on your part. You should have seen what was happening, I don’t think it was the agent who left you out in the cold, but your own naivety. I think you know that now, but more importantly you should have seen it then. This is a big heads up to everyone who is starting out. An agent is not your friend, they may be friendly and extremely nice people, but they are business people. They are in the business of finding talent that can make them money. We, as talent, are looking for an agent who can help us make money. I think more voice over talent should take business classes and understand both sides of the coin.
You have never been shy about laying it out there and saying it like it is…When reading this statement, I can now say that I couldn’t agree more: “It wasn’t the agent that wronged you, it was poor business sense on your part. You should have seen what was happening, I don’t think it was the agent who left you out in the cold, but your own naivety. I think you know that now, but more importantly you should have seen it then.”
But it took me a while to get to a point where I could agree with it. It wasn’t until I had several years under my belt following that situation that I was able to realize what a jerk I had been back then. I really did have my head in my bum… I have reached out to agents since, just not as aggressively as I probably should have. I still send out demos every now and then looking for the one that has the time to invest in me and the belief to get behind me..
Listen, you can’t beat yourself up over this stuff. We make mistakes, we learn from them and we move on. I love to play tennis. I try to play three times a week. It’s like being in a tennis match and you make a stupid mistake. You know it’s a bad shot selection as you’re hitting the ball and after you hit it, you just have to say, “How can I be so stupid.”
The problem is how do you handle the mistake as the match moves on. Do you keep going back to that stupid mistake and ruminate about it, which makes you lose your focus and in turn lose the match? Or do you admit, I made a mistake. Learn from it, try not to make another mistake and get your concentration and your focus back onto the match. I guess what I’m saying is, sure you can call yourself a jerk for a moment and get angry at yourself, but you have to drop it quickly and move on.
About going after an agent, you can’t just send out demos every now and then. Again, this is a business and it’s become a huge and highly competitive business. Successful business men and women don’t work at growing their business with such a cavalier attitude. There are too many people out there who are intent on making it in voice over and they work at it very hard. They will always roll over the ones who use words like probably should have and every now and then. That’s not directed at you but to everyone pursuing a voice over career. If you decide you are going after an agent, you must make that a priority and work at it every day. Remember they are not hiring you. You are hiring them to work for you.
On the lighter side of things. I keep wondering when we’re going to see the Joe Cipriano Geico commercial. Do you have a lot of offers at commercial face time and just turn them down – or do you avoid doing on camera work in order to maintain a little anonymity? If Lucas or Spielberg came knocking would you take a crack at the big screen?
LOL. I do some on camera work from time to time but there is no one busting down the door to put me on camera. Mostly it’s because I can’t pursue it right now. I tried for a while early on but the problem would come down to, will you give up a paying voice over gig to go to an on camera audition. On camera auditions are time consuming and you must do a lot of them to have a chance to start booking on camera. There just isn’t time for that right now, but perhaps in the future.
This kind of brings me to your television work, and another thing that has always fascinated me, when it comes to your ability to push yourself into several versatile styles.
In order to work across the networks, am I correct that you really had to do some “self re- creation” along the way in order to not sound like the same announcer across the big four? Weren’t you kind of forced into stretching your range a bit to create distinctly different voices for shows that sometimes crossed paths in prime time?
Surprisingly, when it comes to comedy promos I had no problem doing “me.” I worried about that when CBS came calling after I’d been with Fox for 9 years. I thought, well, this will be the end of my Fox work if I start working at CBS. When that didn’t happen right away, I started to think I had to “change” my sound for the CBS work so it wouldn’t sound like my Fox work, but that didn’t become a reality. CBS didn’t like it when I changed up my sound, they said they hired me to do me, not a different sound. So, I pretty much do the same comedy read for the different networks. There was a time there where I was doing a lot of CBS and Fox at the same time and if you were to listen to the radio you would hear me on a CBS TV spot and a Fox TV spot in the same stop-set, sometimes back to back. It used to make me very nervous.
The biggest change, or reinvention on my part was when I started doing drama promos at NBC. I came up with an entirely new sound for me that no one had heard before, not even my agent. Again, as it was earlier in my career there was no shortage of people saying to me, “You can’t do that.” You can’t do drama…you’re a comedy voice.” I can’t express enough how much you have to take your career into your own hands. The chances were stacked against me for actually landing a drama gig anywhere, but I was determined and when I played my newly produced drama demo for my somewhat suspicious agent she was extremely surprised. She submitted me to NBC in May of 2005 and while my wife and kids and I were on vacation in Italy in June I got an email from her and this is the exact email, I saved it. She forwarded a note from the head of promos and this is what it said:
“Sorry it took forever to get back to you. A number of us liked Joe and I believe we we’re booking him for some spots. Thanks for the good leads.”
My agent included this remark to me in the email she forwarded: “Joe, Now what?”
I wrote back from Positano, Italy: “Woo-HOO. Ha ha…lets go work at NBC.”
I ended up doing most of the drama promos for about a year and a half at NBC, enough time to lay the groundwork for other producers and networks to start thinking of me as a drama voice as well. Don LaFontaine, who is a good friend of mine, still says to me, “I believe your drama voice is the real you, you have to work hard to do the comedy, but the drama sound is your real range.” That’s a great compliment from someone whom I respect very deeply.
I cant help but wonder how all of it comes together…
Do the network heads all get together and say “Wow, well take him for comedy, you guys use him for drama. We’ll let the other guys have him for family…” Do you see where I’m going with this? If you can – without upsetting anyone – can you give us a little inside skinny about the whole process of landing multiple roles on so many different networks?
The marketing people at the networks just want their promos to be the best. They hire the best writer/producers, they work on the best creative ideas and when it comes time to put a voice on a campaign they go with what they feel will represent the show the best and will help in the process of making this a marketing success. I think most of the new voices for Network Promo come in from the Trailer field these days. It’s very prestigious to have a successful trailer voice, voicing your Network Promo.
Here’s a script of yours from the way-back machine:
“Universal Pictures presents”
“Everything you always wanted to do in high school, with everyone you always wanted to do it with.”
“They’re the students of Ridgemont high.”
“Brad Hamilton- the fast food king.”
“Charles Jefferson – a man with a mission.”
“Linda Barret – not exactly the girl next door.”
“And Jeff “Surf’s Up” Spicoli.”
“See… Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
In looking at that script now, using Fast Times as a benchmark in the time-line, were the early 80’s the birth era for modern day entertainment marketing?
If you watch that trailer today, you can see how the medium was finding it’s footing. You probably won’t hear a voice like that on a trailer today. It’s too pushy, too selly. But it was for a movie going after a young audience and at that time in 1982 it’s kind of reminiscent of top 40 radio back then. High energy, fun and in your face. It worked.
When it come to trailers and promos, so much has changed as far as production elements and delivery style since you first started. Read styles have changed – to be much darker in delivery. Production is full of booms, sweeps and staggering effects and scripting has gotten more cryptic.
Did studios just get more creative with trailer production throughout the years and leave the old, “simple” trailer style behind? Or did the market place change where audiences began to demand so much more. Is it societal change in tastes – or oneupmanship between production companies? What are the primary factors behind such a broad sweep in what people hear in the theaters and on television – now versus then?
Trailers became an art piece. There is way too much money invested in marketing a film and way too much pressure on having a huge opening weekend for a movie to just throw together a tv and trailer campaign. It got to be such a high pressure and very important part of whether a movie will make it, that a whole new industry was born. That industry brought in the best of the best in audio mixing and writing and producing skills. Probably some of the best marketing people in the world work on trailers. So, trailers in essence became mini-movies in themselves.
So would you agree or disagree that the amount of investment going into these productions is the most prohibitive factor when it comes to new talent breaking into one of these gigs. They want to deal with a known talent in most situations because they have a proven track record. Studios and production companies aren’t too keen on betting the farm on unproven, untested talent – are they? To some extent I would think this is what keeps a lot of young talent out of the radio imaging business as well.
A major film is not going to go with an untested voice 99.9% of the time. They may start out with a “new” voice as they are working out the kinks of a campaign. They hire voices all the time for sessions before the campaign hits the market. I’ve done multiple sessions for new movies over a 6 week period as they are working out the strategy and then you just keep your fingers crossed that you will make it to “finish.” I’ve had it happen to me several times where I’ll work on a campaign for 4 to 6 weeks and just as it’s about to go out the door they get cold feet and put Don on it or Ashton on it. There is just too much riding on it to go with a newbee.
Young talent or new talent break in to trailers two ways. Either by voicing a few smaller movie campaigns that have some success and from there they start moving up to bigger movies. The other way is when a new voice comes on the scene that is just totally awesome and different and NOW. Something that just shakes everyone up. There have been several new voices that have broken into the trailer business that way and have become go to guys.
It’s been a while and I know we have to close this up.
I know your journey to the top of your game wasn’t some walk in the park – where you just woke up one morning and “presto-change-o”, you were a national commercial market king. Though it would seem to an outsider that you had a relatively easy go of it – outside of the length of time it took.
Where there ever any really bad struggles along the way? Nail biting times where you felt all might have been lost, where you questioned your future in the business? Did anything ever happen along the way where you felt you might have made a big mistake that couldn’t be reversed? If so, how did you overcome?
I of course have had awful, heartbreaking setbacks throughout my voice over career even after a time when you might think I was sitting pretty. This is a very difficult business to handle sometimes. There are decisions that are made for whatever reason, that just don’t make sense. If you take them personally, it can be very difficult to keep moving on every day.
I never thought I made mistakes per se, there were things along the way for example when I was offered the job of being the live voice of the Emmys, which I desperately wanted, dreamed of doing, but I turned it down because I was the voice of Fox and I thought it would be disloyal to Fox if I were to voice the Emmys on ABC that year. That was a mistake and it took years before I had the opportunity to do the Emmys again. I’ve done them twice now and hope to do them again this year. Just depends on what direction they decide to go.
The most difficult disappointments are the ones that you just don’t see coming and the ones you can’t make sense out of. You can drive yourself batty trying to figure out, “why.”
Going back to agents – this may help dispel or confirm some conceptions about their amount of involvement in a performer’s career choices: “but I turned it down because I was the voice of Fox and I thought it would be disloyal to Fox if I were to voice the Emmys on ABC that year.”
I can understand your feelings of loyalty to a long time client – but were you completely alone in the struggle of making that decision? Was your agent or anyone else at the time offering guidance as to such a big decision? Or is it commonplace to have performers face that sort of conundrum on their own?
I always discuss decisions that need to be made with my agent to get their input. I find that usually agents will lean towards a more conservative decision. Back then my agent agreed and said “lets not upset the apple cart” Meaning, protect the Fox gig. I’ve had this happen many times early on in my career when I was doing just about everything at Fox except dramas and a network like ABC would call to book me on a promo. I’d always very respectfully turn it down because both my agent and I would agree, “is it worth blowing the kind of money your making at Fox for a one-off promo at ABC?”
In retrospect, I think I was a little too conservative then, but there is no way to know what would have have happened if I did the one-off. Again, you make a decision and you move on. I was silly to turn down the Emmy’s on another network to protect my Fox gig. I did it because I thought it would be best for my long term with Fox, but really I should have done it. Lesson learned. These days I do the Grammys, the Emmys…any live show no matter what network it is running on. It is good for my career and in a way it’s somewhat prestigious to have the Emmy guy doing your promos, if you know what I mean. It’s a bit of an image boost.
Once again – I want to express my gratitude to you for taking so much time to do this interview. There are so many people out their in the VO world with stars in their eyes, and I admit to some extent to being one of them, that look up to what you have accomplished and the work you have done and wish to find a little of that success for themselves.
I try to do these interviews to help bring people at your level of the VO game, a little closer to earth for the rest of us curious onlookers. However with you – it didn’t seem like I had to bring you too far at all. You have always been very down to earth, and far more generous with your time and willingness to teach and pass on good words than I think many people would have expected.
Thanks Joe..
Thanks Michael
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