VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[lisaloo]

Well, here's a true thing . . .

What we (collectively or individually) think of someone's demo might be a predictor of whether or not he/she should give up or get out or whatever, but it is no guarantee that:

* they will

or

* they should

Sometimes people make it despite the odds and despite the quality of their demo. A friend told me a harrowing tale the other day about a session he had last year. He was one of two "professional VOs" called in to do some car spots (decent, national radio campaign).

My pal - a 30 year veteran - was on two spots. The other man (younger) was unknown to my friend, but hey . . . that's not unusual. You meet new people all the time.

The workload was divided thusly: two spots for my friend and 14 for the other guy. My friend arrived on time for his session to learn that the other guy's session was running a bit long. Again, nothing new. So he cooled his heels and sat in the hall outside, listening to what was going on through the open studio door.

As my friend admits, he is prone to hyperbole. But he swore he wasn't exaggerating when he said that this guy could not get one line in the clear without muffing it. Things dragged on and on like this for another eon while my friend waited, appalled.

He also found it curious that the guy in the booth seemed clueless - and didn't seem to understand that his performance was a problem, either. There were no, "I'm sorrys", nothing. No acknowledgement from the VO (or the client, for that matter) that anything about this guy's inability to read the English language was a problem for anyone.

But my friend was just sure that after the guy left, there would be talk about how excrutiating the other guy's session had been -- and maybe even a windfall of a few more spots and applause/acknowledged relief for the real pro who did his paltry two scripts in five minutes.

But no.

Aside from an unspoken moment of "what the hell was that" between my pal and the engineer, the client said nothing about the previous session except to indicate that they got enough of each line to paste the other 14 spots together just beautifully.

No kidding, folks. We are talking about Frankensteining 14 national radio spots with a "See your local" from take 79 and "dealer" from take 96, "for details" from take 108 and "today" from take 999. And nobody but the engineer and the ol' veteran found this unacceptable.

And then, my friend told me, something was said that made it all make sense:

The copywriter mentioned that the guy who'd just left was a video editor friend of his. In fact, the copywriter/director is a former editor himself.

Aha, the veteran thought. That's it!

If you grew up in this world (and now this business) always knowing that there is nothing the computer can't do to fix or amend something, you are far less concerned with the quality of what goes in as source material.

And that's our world today, ladies and germs.

Yes, this is a really vivid example and no, most clients would NOT be okay with this. Surely even future generations of producers and engineers will demand and respect a good performance by a human being.

But the people who hire us are only going to get more and more comfortable with fixing things in post. The vocal performance they capture in the moment will matter less and less as folks get better and faster at manipulating it after we leave. And there will be fewer and fewer clients who have memories of life before digital.

My point, as this relates to demos?

Ya never know who's gonna work or not. A good demo matters and we can be honest and tell someone that their effort is not up to industry standards, but as far as telling somebody they'll never work . . . we just never know. Beyond being a waste of breath (people that delusional never listen anyway) and not very nice, anyone trying to predict the future in this business also risks being very wrong.



Lisa

[mcm]

Lisa, that was certainly a riveting tale (btw, you have a great way with words!).

I like to think that Digital Is Our Friend, though -- in other words, it can be used to patch a little hole in an otherwise good performance by a pro, and that the people who are willing to suffer through an interminable session like the one you described are going to remain in the minority. Who has that kind of time?

Your story is a great example of why we should not allow ourselves to agonise over "why I didn't get that job". As long as we are doing our part, we have to let go of the things over which we have absolutely no control.

[Deirdre]

The moral of the story is: make friends with copywriters.
_________________
DBCooperVO.com
IMDB

[mcm]

[Philip Banks]

A "name" TV presenter once said to his producer.

"Pah! I'll p*** through that in four hours!"

What was he going to find so easy? He had to record the voice over segments for a one hour documentary. A one hour commercial TV documentary, so that would be 48 minutes worth of material. Most of the audio was him doing pieces to camera, so let's halve that, say 24 minutes......well obviously he wouldn't be talking for the entire 24 minutes. A lady I knew was in the session and referring to his voice technique said.

"I trained him".

That would explain why he was such a fast worker.