VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[jsgilbert]

In between the "Tell us what it was like before console game systems and the internet" questions I get, I am often asked the great and important questions regarding voice over. You know the ones that have no answer.

Here's one little story that might give a clue just how starnge our business is.


A number of years ago I was at one of our local recording studios and had just finished doing a session. Before running out, I wanted to catch the studio manager and say goodbye and thank her, since she was responsible for the gig.

Turning a corner to go towards her office, I heard some shouting and a small bit of a commoion. I thought it best to turn heels and save the thank yous for another time.

Suddenly I heard her call out my name and when I turned back she was standing with another woman and gave me a hand sign to come over. "Do you have to be some where now?", she asked. I responded "not in oparticular".

She then explained that the woman next to her was a good client who was supposed to be in the studio recording a commercial. The only problem was that her "talent" called 10 minutes after the session was supposed to start saying that he was too sick to record.

The woman was fuming and despite my not being a part of her problem, I was a voice acvtor - a member of the breed that was currently making her life miserable.

She broke the awkward silence by saying "Debbie says you are very talented, but I'm looking for something very special for this script... Would you be okay with doing a little audition for me right now?"

I told her that was fine and invited any direction she might have. She handed me the script and as she did, she indicated to just read it over and give it my best shot.

When I looked at the script I realized it was something I had actually auditioned for a few days earlier through my local agent. I certainly wasn;t going to share that information with the client. But now I had a real conundrum. I could assume that however I chose to do my audition a few days earlier wasn't what they were looking for, or obviously they would have hired me to do it in the first place. But when I looked at the copy, I remembered how I had approached it and I thought I had really done a good job. So I mde the decision to pretty much read it the way I had read it before.

I broke into the script and read it straight through, pretty much without a hitch. After a few seconds of slience the woman said " It must be providence." She turned to the studio manager and said "This guy's a lot better than the jerk we were going to use". She then turned to me and asked who my agent was. I told her and she said, "I sent this to them. I wonder why I didn't get an audition from you."

I think I covered it up by saying that I had been out of town and maybe couldn't read for it because I wasn't around.

Later on, I spoke with my agent and I was most definitely included in the CD they sent to the client.

The spot ran for quite a while. lots of nice reisduals and I even wound up doing a couple more similar spots for her. I couldn't begin to tell you why she never heard my audition or perhaps she had heard it and it was ata time she was busy flossing and checking her e-mail.

The one thing I can tell you is that the longer I do this, the more I find that many things don't seem to make sense.

I hope you all have very happy holidays.
_________________
j.s. gilbert

js@jsgilbert.com
www.jsgilbert.com

"today is the first day of the rest of the week"

[bobsouer]

J.S.,

I do love your stories. Thanks for sharing.
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Be well,
Bob Souer (just think of lemons)
The second nicest guy in voiceover.
+1-724-613-2749
Source Connect, phone patch, pony express

[Deirdre]

That is indeed one helluva story.
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DBCooperVO.com
IMDB

[cyclometh]

Lesson:

Luck has its place, but is only enabled by persistence.
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Corey "Vox Man" Snow
http://voxman.net

[jsgilbert]

Oddly, this was back when that client probably would have gotten responses to her audition from 3 agencies tops.

Who knows if my audition was heard or not?

One can only wonder now, what's going on when you realize that even a relatively small gig may have 10 - 30 talent agencies submitting. It's obivous that nobody from any agency is going to listen to that many auditions, so how does it work. Is it the first talent agent to respnd gets their people listened to? Do the clients simply go in and cherry pick and pull a few auditions from each agent from the actors they thik would be best suited.

Or does it come down to some intern culling through the auditions and presenting some choices to the producer?

I'd love to know. On my end, as a producer, I rarely ever submit more than 5 - 10 talent for any given role. The clients will often ask me to give them more and I ask them to listen to the 5 I'm presenting and if they don't like any of the choices, I can round up more auditions.

Even on some rather critical and large projects, I have rarely had a client need to go beyond the 5- 10 choices I gave them, although we rarely will agree on the number 1 pick.

So what's up with getting 150 - 400 audiitons for a single role? How does it play out? I sure would love to be a fly on the wall.

This has definitely had some effect on many of the heavier working talent I know. Lots are still getting work, but we all tend to admit that booking ratios have dropped considerably.
_________________
j.s. gilbert

js@jsgilbert.com
www.jsgilbert.com

"today is the first day of the rest of the week"

[jrodriguez315]

Great Story.

Say, has anyone ever mentioned that you resemble Jeff Bridges?


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Joe Rodriguez, Bilingual Voice Actor | The Voiceover Thespian Blog

[todd ellis]

i once heard a guy tell jeff bridges he looked a lot like j.s. gilbert!
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"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?