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:
Beau Weaver Interview
Media – Web/Internet
Interviewer: Michael Smith
So here we are, an interview that I have wanted to do since before I knew how to type, and the jury is still out on that ability. Seriously though, one of the first voice over related web pages I stumbled across back in the good old days before every TD&H had a web page about voice over training and techniques, this man was up on the net before the rest of us.
I recall coming across his site and when digging for more information, discovered, not only was he a good VO, he was a really good VO, and has since become one of the people I most highly recommend when it comes to how new voice talent might want to set the bar for themselves if they are looking to achieve what I feel to be the most well-rounded type of success in this business; The kind where one doesnt chase constant celebrity and simply exists amidst their success while remaining grounded enough to still offer guidance and a helping hand to those who wish to some day nip at his ankles in this occupation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the most versatile voice over talent in the business, hands down, Beau Weaver.
You will not find another talent who spans as much media. You will not find another talent with more wide ranging credits to their name, and you simply wont find a talent with more creative delivery ability than this man here
1) Does that about sum it up Beau?
You make me sound like a FEDEX guy with a bad FICA Score.
2) You’re not the easiest person to find traditional bio information about. Are you going to stick to the wild coyote story here, or are there any other little nuggets you could pass along about the early days and the process that led you to the voicing, creation, recording and editing of digital audio and sound? Take us back in the “Way-Back- Beau-Machine” and tell us, if you would, about the first time you discovered a microphone
Well, I fell in love with radio as a very young child…..my Dad built what was quaintly called “hi-fi” gear from Heathkits. I listened to distant AM stations on an old tuner connected to a longwire antenna. I used to listen to Wolfman Jack on XERF, and John R on WLAC. I got a ham radio license when I was twelve…..but the clincher came at a concert I attended in my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma…..the Dick Clark Cavalcade of Stars…….where about a dozen Pop acts perform their hits in a highly produced review. They let one of the local Dee Jays from KAKC emcee the show, a young cat named Robert Walker, who was the only guy in town with long hair.
When he walked on stage into the spotlight, all the girls screamed! And some threw panties. And in that moment it dawned on me, this would be a good job to have. My world turned that night. I started calling Walker up on the phone, and then hanging out at the station, brining him coffee, answering his phones….and soaking up everything I would later need to weasel my way into an on air job myself at age fifteen. KAKC was part of the chain of stations programmed by Bill Drake, and my connection there eventually led to on air jobs in San Francisco at KFRC and later to Los Angeles at KHJ, two of the top five Pop stations of all time. Those were great days.
3) Your days as a jock are not what you are known for now but in a way you seem to long for them a bit. I must admit they look like a lot of fun. You were on the air during a time that is long forgotten about in the mind of todays Top 40 radio listener. I’m sure there are a million stories about the process leading up to success during morning drive and afternoons. Care to share any here? Or a little about your radio history when everything under the sun was analog?
Dude. Too long ago to remember here. Some more of my radio memories are on a web page: www.spokenword.com/radiodays if your readers are interested. Radio was very different then. I am afraid the large chains have taken the idea of economies of scale to such a degree that they have cut the soul out of a very personal and magical medium. What the big conglomerates have done to commercial radio is bad for the radio art, bad for the employees, bad for listeners, bad for communities, and ultimately, bad for shareholder value. They have eaten the seed corn.
These days there is not a single commercial station in Los Angeles….a market that gets about a hundred signals….that can hold my attention. I listen to NPR, and my iPod…which, if broadcast, would be number one; Im completely sure of it. But radio was truly my first love. In my heart, I have always been a radio guy.
3a) What was it that led you to Houston to be on the air? Was that in the beginning before you landed in L.A. or did you backtrack a bit in traditional radio fashion as many air talents are forced to do throughout their career?
I went to High School in Houston, got my first radio gig there, while in the tenth grade. After graduating, I attended University of Tulsa, majoring in not getting sent to Viet Nam. I finally got on at KAKC, my Mecca, as I mentioned. Then to Dallas, where Michael Spears hired me for KNUS, the groundbreaking Top Forty AOR hybrid owned by Gordon McLendon. That started to get me noticed by the big guys, so on to KFRC, then to KHJ. After KHJ in 1976, my old mentor Bill Young brought me back to Houston to do afternoon drive at KILT. Thats the short version of my resume, with the incarcerations and rehabs left out.
I left Houston to help found the Transtar Radio network, which is now Dial Global. We were the first 24 hour satellite delivered program service. We uplinked out of Colorado Springs. When we started, we did not even know if satellite radio would work!
But I am a little ahead of my story. When I was at KHJ, in 1976, we were a dominant number one in Los Angeles. Charlie Van Dyke was programming the station, and it was a great thrill to work those hallowed halls where Robert W. Morgan and The Real Don Steele had trod. You could still smell Dons after shave in the jock lounge. (By the way, I would later work with RDS and RWM at KRTH 101 in the nineties, when I made occasional weekend guest appearances on the station, when Mike Phillips managed to bring the whole KHJ team back together.) While at KHJ, I had a great epiphany that changed my lifes direction.
Dave Sebastian Williams, publisher of the Voice Over Resource Guide, and EverythingVO.com was also an air talent at KHJ. Back then, NABET engineers ran the equipment, and we were not allowed to touch anything.
One evening, I saw a light on in a production studio that ought to be vacant. I peeked in, only to see Dave running the board, making dubs of small reels of tape. Oh my God, Dave, what are you doing man? Dont you know you could get fined for this? Shhhhh he said. Close the Door. I was very nervous that I might be complicit in his crime. What are you doing? Making my voiceover demo he replied. Voiceover demo? Whats that? Well, Dave explained.
And suddenly, I realized I was in the wrong end of the business. Well, I gotta get one of those!
Dave went on to explain that the advertising agency world did not like radio guys….that they felt like we had a strange radio accent and would not hire us for voice overs in television, unless we learned a different way of approaching the words. That it was more about emotion and attitude than it was about voice quality.
He told me about a couple of voice actors workshops where I might begin the process of learning this new skill-set. And for some reason, I was willing to go into these classes and be a beginner.
This was not easy to do for someone who had made it to the very top of the radio ladder. My dear friend Bobby Ocean, a radio performer whose work is still a great inspiration and influence for me, heard about this workshop, held at the home of legendary voice actress Joan Gerber. His response was, Ill be glad to go to that class…….if they want me to teach.
Ocean is a great talent; his influence is heard in all radio imaging done even today, but never made the transition to anything outside of radio. In his world he was a very big fish. He was not willing to be a beginner. I was. And, I have continued to work with teachers and coaches along the way, reinventing myself countless times over the years. I have attempted, as much as it is possible to maintain what the Buddhists call beginners mind.
Anyway, after a few years of doing commercial VO work in LA, then back in Houston, I moved to Colorado for the launch of the Transtar network, as I mentioned and was doing a lot of voice work in Denver. I was hired as the promo voice for KWGN, Channel 2, owned by Tribune. My agent handled the promo voices for the two other Denver network affiliates, Roger Thompson, and Ed OBrien (with whom I had worked at KFRC a few years earlier, now the signature voice of CNBC) So, we came up with the idea of marketing ourselves to television stations in other markets.
This is so common now, it is hard to understand what a completely revolutionary concept this was. Back then, a television station in Chicago or Dallas used a local staff or booth announcer to voice their promos. But television stations were beginning to use LA and NY consultants to kick their on air look up a notch, and the local voice guy was not cutting it alongside the hot new theme music, sets, and motion graphics, and promo end plates. We saw a market, and decided to work together.
Now there was a brand new technology that was going to make this possible. Not ISDN; remember, this was 1982 – ISDN would come a decade later. The killer technology was: FEDERAL EXPRESS! We persuaded stations on the astonishing idea that they could FEDEX us the scripts (remember, no FAX machines yet!) direct us over the phone, and have a finished reel of tape on their desk by 10am THE NEXT DAY! This was miraculous.
Our company was called Three Fine Pipes. We mailed demos to hundreds of affiliates in the top 100 markets, and soon all three of us had a roster of promo clients, and an industry was born. Okay, to be fair, Charlie Van Dyke may have been doing lines for a few television stations by then…..but mostly radio stations. We started going to a convention of the Broadcast Promotion Association, the forerunner of PROMAX, and popularized the concept of out of market promo voices.
Three Fine Pipes got me noticed by one of the big talent agencies in LA, and they signed me in 1983, and so I returned to Los Angeles. The Transtar Radio network was moving its operation to LA, so I was able to keep my foot in radio while I got a commercial career started. This was key. Have a day job! Getting a voice over career launched will take three to five years if you get every break in the book. And it is easily two orders of magnitude harder to break in than it was when I started.
Since then, it has been my great fortune to work in almost every area of the industry you can imagine. National television campaigns. Regional radio commercials. In show announce on network sitcoms. Leading rolls in animated cartoon series, including Superman and Fantastic Four. Documentary narration for Discover, History Channel, etc. Trailers and television campaigns for feature films. Promos for all the broadcast networks, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, and most of the cable nets. I was the voice of two of the rides at Disneyland, for crying out loud. I did large promo packages for syndicated television shows, like Seinfeld.
I voiced Entertainment Tonight for seven years. Was the original voice for Access Hollywood and Extra. I voiced promos for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and Live with Regis and Kelly for many years. I was a game show announcer. I have been the in show announce voice for numerous daytime syndicated shows. I even did a voice on a Weird Al Yankovic record, and voiced animatronics characters for Disney Imagineering. The VO business has been very good to me. Thank you Dave Sebastian Williams for breaking the NABET rules at KHJ that evening!
4) Going back to digital equipment and studio automation here (and I realize this is a complete stretch and kind of a sidebar) One of my favorite WKRP episodes was in season 3, December of 1980 when The Ghost of Christmas Future shows Mr. Carlson the radio station of the future with one employee and everything is automated. We laughed at it then but they couldnt have been more on the money. How many of your favorite things in radio got crushed by these insidious systems?
It makes me too sad to think about it. And, I do not like the digital processing on most radio stations now. I find it fatiguing. Please dont get me started. Its like seeing that first, great, beautiful love-of-your-life girlfriend thirty years later in an alley, obviously strung out on heroin.
5) A little more about radio here: Your technical knowledge about voice production is something I wanted to touch on a little more in the next question but before we give up the radio ghost Your knowledge of radio transmitters, antennas and related equipment extends into the engineering range on a level that would leave most of us scratching our heads. How big still, is the amateur/semi pro/pro radio broadcast scene in your life?
Well, if you are referring to Ham Radio, yes. Amateur radio operators are licensed by the FCC to communicate over specific short wave bands…..and I am still licensed. In fact, I talked the FCC into granting me the call sign W6KHJ! I have talked to other ham stations in over two hundred countries. It is an old fashioned hobby, which will be around until this generation dies off.
I have always enjoyed the technical part of the business, and have enjoyed sharing this information with some of my tech-challenged colleagues.
6) There is no doubt you enjoy what you do and that you have developed extensive core knowledge about audio production over the last 30 years. Your studio has a lot of toys but I wanted to explore your opinion on this: When it comes to recording voice over for clients in your home studio lets say youre the one doing the recording and shipping it off to a client, rather than an ISDN session where theyre recording on their end – all of the toys, processors, compressors, filters and DSP effects dont really have a lot to do with it most of the time. Arent you just shipping them a dry, naked, unprocessed audio signal?
Toys, processors, compressors, filters and DSP effects are not part of the voice actors craft. That it the work of producers and the audio mixers and engineers they direct. The voice talents only concern is performance. Think about feeling and point of view, not audio processors.
Look, the finest voice actors I have ever worked with, are actors. There are a few reformed radio announcers in the pantheon of greats, but only a few. Voice over artists are first and foremost, actors.
On day a while back, in the lobby of Pacific Ocean Post, I found myself chatting with Sir Ben Kingsley. We had a long wait for our sessions. I can guarantee you, he was not asking me about limiters and filters. He was talking about life and literature, and art and passion and travel. Radio guys always want to talk about microphones and audio processors.
It is the job of the producer on the other end to shape the sound as they produce the commercial, promo or trailer. My responsibility as a home studio operator, is to give them a clean signal. Not a tricked up signal. My audio chain is: mic – preamp – ISDN codec or computer digi card. Clean. Simple. If they want to make it sound like Darth Vader on the other end, that is their choice. As voice talent, I just keep my attention on the performance, period.
I have had a couple of television affiliates whose production abilities were minimal, and the finished promos they sent me were dull…….so at their request, I processed the audio before I sent it to them, to make it cut through the mix better. But be careful, boys and girls. I have the skill to do that. And, I was asked to. I have been working with audio since before I could drive. If you want to play with audio processing, you are working on the wrong side of the microphone.
But to answer your question, unless requested to do so, I do not process the VO track I record for clients. I simply capture the performance, and allow the post production to be done on the client end. Working in my home studio, I do it just like I do when I work at Buzzys or Margaritamix. I step into the booth, do the performance, and then walk out of the booth. Only difference is, at home, I then put on my engineer hat, and prepare the audio file for ftp transfer.
7) Which leads me to this: Would you agree or disagree that there simply is no substitute for a good mic, a good pre-amp, a great audio capture device quality sound isolation and some solid editing software.
If you are working from a home studio, the sound you are delivering needs to be indistinguishable from the sound they would get if you were on their sound stage, or studio. That biggest problem for home recording is the sonic environment. Ambient noise. Bounce. Reflection. Bass buildup, etc. I have an ear for this. Most people dont. This is the strength of the Sennheiser 416….it picks up very little of the room. A Neumann is undoubtedly a better microphone…..IF it is in a really nice room with a lot of wood, and a fair amount of live-ness. In a dead room, the Neumann sounds muffled and flat. Like a guitar, the sound of a microphone depends on its sonic environment. You are better off creating a really good sonic environment to record in, than you are spending money on fancy audio gear.
But none of the technical stuff is really relevant to the art of the voice actor. I just happen to be interested in the technical side of this; just as some film actors develop an interest in the art of cinematography, and hang out with the DP on the set to learn that side of the business. But knowing the focal length of a particular lens does not help the actor to find the right emotional tone to make the scene work. They are two different disciplines.
I have recorded at home since, well, since before anyone else in LA was even thinking about doing this. At times, I have had a fairly extensive studio setup. But a few years back, I pared it all down to the absolute basics needed to get a clean signal to the client. The technology is just a conduit. Lets not let the tail wag the dog.
While I am on that subject, let me go on one of my personal rants, if you will. I am a long time hater of ProTools. If you are a musician, or a commercial studio doing multi- track, lock to picture sessions, it is certainly the tool for the job. But it is just wrong, wrong, wrong for voice over artists. First, it is needlessly complex for the task of recording a single track of audio, making a few edits and then converting to a specified format for transmission. You can do it, but it is hideously complicated. It takes forever to load. And, in the mac OS, any Apple updates to the Operating System will usually break ProTools. It crashes! PT is incredibly totalitarian about how it works with hardware. And those are its good points.
Seriously, the engineers at Digidesign must stay awake late at night trying to think up new ways to break your heart. Digi reps will admit that the only way to make PT work for you is to have a dedicated machine that runs no other software, NOT connected to the internet, and disable software updates.
It is possible to use ProTools to record simple voice sessions. You can also dig a post hole with a Backhoe, but what a huge waste of time and money. And what a mess it makes. Okay, so I exhaust the metaphor, but you get the idea. It is a huge disgusting pig of an application.
What should you use instead? In the mac OS X OS platform, I heartily recommend Twisted Wave. Google it. It sells for about $90.00 and will do everything you need. It is simple as pie. Navigation of the waveform is a total dream. For power users, it works with AU plugins and has customizable keyboard shortcuts. It loads in under a second. I worked with the developer in making some usability tweaks that have made it really ideal for what we do. It is so fast and so easy, you will weep for all the hours and tears you spent struggling with the inscrutability of ProTools. I have no financial interest in this.
If you are using Windows, then Sony Sound Forge is unbeatable in terms of speed, ease of use, and features. But most voice over artists will not need more than their lite version of the software called Sound Forge Audio Studio. Leave ProTools to the big commercial studios, where they have staffs of engineers to attend to its headaches!
8) When it comes to your entertainment marketing success (Trailers and Promos for those who arent familiar with the term) Id like to think youre one of the lucky ones: Great talent, great studio, the ability to work from home, renowned reputation, etc. Some people out there might believe that you just woke up with a Silver Voice Over Spoon in your mouth. Lets set them straight. What kind of struggles did you have to go through in order to end up working outside of the inner circle of L.A. studios via ISDN?
Well first of all, I have to tell you that I know plenty of voice over folks with much more natural talent that I have. But few of them work as hard as it as I do. I start over at zero every day. And, I have had a lot of help from some very talent agents and managers, and have been personally championed by certain clients who really believed in me and helped open some doors. And, I always try to give added value to the producers I work with…..I give them a dime for their nickel.
As far as ISDN goes, you may know that I had the first home studio digital connectivity here in LA. In 1989, one my television station clients hooked me up with the early telco switched digital system called Switch 56. In 1990, we bonded two lines together to get 128kbps bandwidth with a CCS codec which was the forerunner of the CDQ Prima. But, (here goes another one of my rants:) the Musicam equipment is incredibly difficult to use. The Prima is just a nightmare as far as usability goes! I quickly bought a Telos Zephyr as soon as ISDN National service became available, and have never looked back. I used ISDN with a handful of broadcast clients, but it took a number of years for the technology to catch on out here in LA. It gained acceptance in New York more quickly than it did in Hollywood.
Because in promo work, almost everything is recorded to picture, there was a lot of resistance to it. There was a time when I would drive to a dozen different studio locations in a day.
We actually have Don La Fontaine to thank for finally getting the industry to use the ISDN technology out here. While Don had long had a home studio, he actually employed a driver to chauffeur him to sessions. This was no affectation. It was the only way he could keep from killing himself or others in LA traffic, such was the insane volume of his bookings.
He had a standing session at Woodholly everyday where they would bunch up six or eight sessions in a one hour slot! I can remember running into Don at the Woodholly coffee machine at nine am one morning. Hey Don, is this your first session of the day? Um, no, he replied sheepishly, my fifth.
I told Don for years that if he would ever just announce to the industry that he was not going to travel any more, that they would have to use him via ISDN, then the rest of us could stay home too. I was right. When Don decided to stay home…..it became the accepted norm. I could give him a big kiss.
8a) Just as A students seem to get all the breaks, do you think the big projects would come your way if it werent for your hard-won ability to work out of your own setup?
Make no mistake about it, having and ISDN codec will not get you the work. But it does make it possible for me to do more bookings in a day because it eliminates travel time. And, I must say, that since adopting ISDN, the producers, particularly in the promo and trailer world have become a little spoiled. Now, their expectations about how quickly they can get us have increased exponentially. It used to be that a session would be booked a few days in advance. Now, its a few minutes. And late at night. And on weekends.
9) If you had decided on Kansas City, Missouri for a home many years ago do you think you would have ever gotten the breaks you did in radio and subsequently voice over? Though location is less of a concern for established talent, its still a concern. For new talent, what are the chances of landing in the Big Leagues if they choose to stay in East Poughkeepsie submitting auditions to internet voice over databases?
Location is much more important that you realize. Technology has changed this to a degree…..but only to a degree. There is still a perception among the talent buyers at national ad agencies and the networks and studios that goes something like…if they were really any good — they would be in Hollywood. Or New York. Now, you and I know that there are folks in Phoenix and Minneapolis who are every bit as good as LA and NY talent. But you are not going to change the perception of the industry that the best media talent are on the coasts. If you think you can beat the worldwide power of the Hollywood brand name….well, best of luck to you!
I know this is not what your readers want to hear, but I really believe, still….for most national work, you DO need to be in LA or NY. We can think of a couple of recent exceptions….a precious few from outside the Hollywood/NYC axis have made it into the big time….but the exceptions prove the rule. If you establish yourself in LA and then MOVE to Kansas, thats one thing. The technology can make it so your clients dont even know you are gone. But the industry believes that the LA/NY talent pool is the place to cast for national work.
Okay, let me modify that just a little. Let me propose that you need to at least be perceived to be a member of the Hollywood/NYC talent pool to do national work. Even if you do not live here.
If they have to call an LA agent or a New York agent to book you……maybe it does not matter that you are doing the actual recording session from Maui. Or Charlotte. There are a few LA/NY agents who are beginning to work with out of town voice actors. But to make a dent in national media as an unknown from Arkansas, is, well….lets say a significant challenge. Maybe one of your readers will be the one to do it!
Remember, I am talking about national work here. Obviously it is possible to have a nice career doing various kinds of voice work from pretty much anywhere.
The voiceover databases, as you call them, are a mixed bag for sure. They are providing a market for a lot of smaller market talents, and even some voice actors out here who are not represented by talent agents are listed on them, and find work. However, they are driving the price down to the point of absurdity. I see people doing jobs that should pay $1500 for fifty dollars. Im not kidding. And, its virtually all non-union.
10) In mentioning voice over databases my distain for them grows daily. Do they suit a purpose, or fill any kind of need in you opinion? Do you in any way think they harm the business or besmirch the craft?
Look, I dont mean to criticize anyone for doing what they can to feed their family, but they are doing a great deal of damage to the business. Artists cannot negotiate for themselves. When they do, they end up virtually giving work away for free. And the practice of having voice actors competing against each other in a race to bid for the lowest price is absolute insanity.
I have been a member of SAG and AFTRA since 1973. I originally joined in Dallas, where there was, once upon a time, a thriving community of major voice over talent doing national work. But in the early 1980s, everyone took a hard right turn (politically) and became suddenly anti union. And most of the talent there withdrew or declared financial core status. And as a result, the business has been decimated. It barely exists now. Producers want to pay actors hundred dollar buyout.
But do you know where most of the Dallas voice work goes now? To LA voice actors, as union jobs. Business people believe that they get what they pay for. If you are accepting fifty dollars, then you must be a fifty dollar actor. If they have something they feel is important, they come to the Hollywood talent pool, and pay fair market union rates.
11) Source-Connect seems as if it might eventually supplant ISDN as the go-to technology for voice delivery, but I think all of us early adopters can agree that it has a long way to go in order to do that. Are you on the SC bandwagon yet? And if so, what the hell is everyone waiting for? Cost-wise it crushes ISDN in every way. Whats keeping everyone attached to the old BRI system as so many phone companies are grandfathering the technology and moving on to light-pipe internet data transmission?
Actually, I am not a fan of Source-Connect at all. Its unreliable, and requires too much upstream bandwidth. The Switched digital network has a lot of advantages. First, a switched connection is stable. Using the public IP (internet) has inherent data bottlenecks. And, the huge installed base of ISDN codecs that have finally achieved a degree of standardization is hard to beat. And, assuming you are not using the dreaded CDQ Prima, it is much easier. ISDN is rock solid and reliable. Press two buttons: Boom. You are there. (Of course, CDQ Prima owners dont know what I am talking about! Musicam engineers are almost as arrogant as Digidesign! But I digress.)
Source-Connect requires way too much upstream bandwidth for home users. If you have pro studios on both ends with T-1 or better connections, sure, fine. The latest versions of SC are much improved. But, it needs 300 kbps or more. of upstream bandwidth. Most consumer broadband connections are asynchronous with very little allocated to upstream. And, though improved, it is still crash prone, and unstable.
Instead, I heartily recommend AudioTX Communicator. It is a PC (only) program that I have used for at least seven years. It needs only about 128 kbps upstream, making it work in a remote location like a hotel, or a home ADSL connection. Its rock stable. And, it will also work with the ISDN network. With the addition of a one hundred dollar USB ISDN adapter, you can use this software INSTEAD of a Telos Zephyr or CDQ Prima. And it will work with an old laptop…..does not need much computer horsepower.
The price is about $1,400, versus, about four grand for a hardware codec. And, if you have only occasional ISDN session needs, Ednet, Digifon and Out of Here will provide bridge connections at nominal cost. So, the client dials the Digifon ISDN dialups, and YOU are connected to Digifon via AudioTX on the internet.
I have used it for years and years on the road, with great success. It is much better than Source-Connect, and much more versatile. Digifon is a dealer for them. This is a great way to make your studio ISDN capable with a smaller cash outlay. Its a great product. I use mac hardware now, but it is easy to install a windows partition using Bootcamp on Intel macs, which gives you the choice at startup of booting into either Windows or Mac OS X. Using a Bootcamp partition, the mac thinks it is native Windows box. By the way, it is the best Windows machine I have ever used. Works great.
The telcos would love to do away with the switched digital network, and eventually, it will all go to fibre. So, IP transmission is on the horizon….but it will be some time before the installed base of ISDN users will make the change. Maybe when Don La Fontaine does it! But in the meantime, get AudioTX, and have the choice to do either.
12) Your use of the 416 microphone is well noted, and we all know that it can pickup your toenails growing from 8 feet away. Have you developed any tried and true techniques for working close proximity to it, which youd be willing to share here? Have any other Microphone/Pre-Amp combos snuck their way into your studio over the years?
At least for my voice, producers always prefer the 416. I know there are a lot of haters out there. And there are better microphones…..but in a less than perfect room, the 416 gives a consistent sound that is easy to match from week to week. Important in promo work. I have a Manley Reference Cardiod that I have had for years. I bought it because it looks cool. Don La Fontaine uses it, and it sounds great on him….but for me, I cant beat the 416. I have one for both my studios, and one for on the road.
SIDEBAR: Until the late 1980’s the now ubiquitous Sennheiser 416 was unheard of, except as a boom mic for location recording. How did this mic come to supplant the predominance of the reigning Neumann U-87 in professional recording studios as the VO microphone of choice? Blame the late, always cantankerous Ernie Anderson.
In the Eighties, Ernie Anderson was the undisputed top banana in the voiceover world. A radio and television star in Cleveland, he made the move out to the west coast with his radio and comedy buddy Tim Conway. He became the signature voice for the ABC television network and the ABC O&O stations. Ernie was, shall we say…. a “pill.” He would rant and rave, and piss and moan, and send female PA’s running from studios in tears. He was cranky and obstreperous. On a good day.
At one point in the late 1980s, Ernie got a little paranoid. There was an announce booth adjacent to POST 2, the bay where they would narr and sweeten the network on air promos. Ernie was convinced that the audio mixers and room producers across the glass were talking about him. And they probably were, so egregiously bad was his behavior on a daily basis.
So, one day, he refused to sit in the booth any longer. He took a seat between the audio mixers right at the console in the control room. “You want me on those goddamn promos….you’ll have to mic me right here,” thundered Ernie,in his basso profundo.
The control room was small, and very noisy. It opened directly onto a room where big one inch tape machines whirred and clanked, behind a flimsy sliding glass door. This was not going to work. It would sound terrible. But Ernie would not budge.
So one of the audio mixers hiked over to one of the big sound stages where ABC Soaps were taped daily, and borrowed one of the boom mics…..the Sennheiser 416. He thought maybe a shotgun mic with a pattern as tight as a laser beam might cancel out all the bounce and tape room noise in POST 2. They set it up as the mixing board where Ernie had installed himself. It worked. And, they soon discovered, to Ernie’s delight, that the shotgun mic made him sound like a million bucks.
The mic had a wonderful proximity effect bottom, with a natural midrange spike, so that the resulting voice track required almost no eq to cut through the production. It was a great time saver in mix, and more importantly, none of the room noise could be heard even on softer dramatic reads. Unlike a Neumann, which depends on a room with good acoustics to really sound great, the 416 will forgive a poorly designed recording environment. And, you can match tracks recorded on one 416 six months ago, with another 416 at a different studio today.
Ernie started ragging on the audio engineers at all his other daily stops, L. A. Studios, Hollywood Recording, Margarita Mix, etc….insisting that they get him a Sennheiser 416. He bought his own and took to carrying it around with him. By the early 1990’s, the 416 had become the standard in commercial studios all over town. However, you will almost never see this mic in New York or Chicago. And now you know….the rest of the story..
13) One of my favorite demos on your site is and always has been the B.S. Announcers demo. Ive always enjoyed the sense of humor in it, as well as the demonstration of range. Do you find that demo leading to a lot of work, or was it just a joke that took on a life of its own? I mean, you call it B.S. because it is right?
I put out Bullshit Announcer Demo reel back in the early nineties, I think. I had always done a lot of over the top announcer stereotype characters, as much homage to William Conrads work on the Jay Ward animated series Bullwinkle, as much as anything, I guess. One day the director of a commercial session asked me to try one of those bullshit guys you do and I realized that was the name for the genre. So, against my agents better instincts, I put out a demo reel with the words BULLSHIT ANNOUNCERS on the cover. I have gotten a lot of work from that.
14) Last one and it has nothing to do with VO. Some of the stuff that has floated around the internet over the years has led some people to believe you have a real spiritual connection to the outdoors and the realities and plight of Native Americans. What are the truths behind the conceptions? Is that image one that was correctly harvested from outer space, or a misnomer of sorts?
Tru Dat, Kimosabe. Dont get me started, because I will go on and on about this. Born in Oklahoma, with some Cherokee blood, my interest in American aboriginal culture and spirituality woke up here in California in my thirties. This is the great passion of my life. There are five hundred First Nations Peoples, who caretake a distinct and unique wisdom tradition. This is one of the greatest treasures of North America; this non- dualistic, deeply spiritual way of life is intimately connected to the earth. It acknowledges that all things come from woman, and honors the great feminine principle. The Native American philosophy is the original sustainable lifestyle, and is a model of respect for the interconnectedness of all of creation.
It has been my extraordinary privilege to learn from Seneca, Navajo, Cherokee, Muskogee Creek and most importantly Lakota elders. I have been allowed to participate in the sacred ceremonies of the Plains tribes, and to build relationships with some wonderful teachers. Over the years I have come to love the Sicangu and Ogalala Lakota people and their ways very much. I spend time on the Rez in South Dakota every summmer. The things I have learned from the Lakota people structure how I live my life. I am a lucky man. Wopila Wichoni. Mitakuye Oyasin.
I’d really like to thank you for taking the time to participate in our Voice Over Insider interview series. It has been a realization of a long time dream of mine to be able to rap to you about some of things that got you into, and keep you in VO.
I cannot imagine being in anyones dreams, but thanks for asking.
I’ve always admired your range, skill and ability and your willingness to tell it like it is when it comes to new talent trying to break into the business. I wish you all the best in the future and hope you keep us in the seats for years to come..
Thanks Beau.
No, thank you.
No Really thank you.
No, you….oh stop it.
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