I have been working with Listening Books since 2006 and always enjoy my visits to their underground recording studios at Lant Street, South London. There is definitely a sense of ’standing on the shoulders of giants’ when looking at the wall of fame next to the editing suite and I always feel privileged to have recorded in the company of greats such as Michael Palin and Stephen Fry.

Listening Books is also fortunate to have Stephen as Patron and he recorded this special message for you:

The charity was founded in 1959 by Norma Skemp who almost completely lost her sight in a car accident in 1954. After applying to another charity for help she was told that none was available as she could still ’see something.’ Norma, straight away, realised that there was a massive gap in the market to supply people who  find it difficult or impossible to read due to illness or disability.

I have been lucky enough to be selected to read some fantastic books over the years such as “In the Beginning” by Peter Ackroyd, and, my current project, “How to be a Teenage Millionaire” by James Moore and Judi James. For some reason, I get to read a lot of childrens books – wonder why that is? Heh, heh!

(Although I have enjoyed reading some beautiful poetry by A.E. Housman and Thomas Hardy – “The Darkling Thrush” being my absolute favourite).

If the voice over industry has been as kind to you as it has to me, why not give something back? Listening Books is always looking for new readers, so if you feel you can commit some of your spare time please click HERE.

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Just in case you’ve never heard of it before, Habbo Hotel is produced by the Sulake Corporation which is an online entertainment company focused on virtual worlds and social networking. Habbo Hotel is the world’s largest and fastest growing virtual world for teenagers, and localised Habbo communities all around the world are visited by millions of teenagers every week.

Snow Storm was a fantastic multiplayer game – great fun, so I’m told.

Anyway, this short project was to produce a 15 second commercial, the brief requiring a youthful sounding, enthusiastic voice for the intro and a big Don LaFontaine “movie voice” style for the outro.

I think it worked quite well and the Habbo Snow Storm team were pleased with it – which is the main thing!

Quick Habbo facts (December 2009):

Screen Capture from www.Habbo.co.uk

• 31 local communities
• Registered users: 158,000,000
• Unique visitors: 16,500,000 / month
• Page impressions: 990,000,000 / month
• Age distribution: 90 % between 13-18 years old
• Average visit: 43 minutes / session

Habbo Hotel can be accessed via the local Habbo sites, and through the world’s largest social networking site Facebook, where all 31 Habbo communities are also available. Through Facebook Connect, Habbo users around the world can easily find their Facebook friends in the virtual world and share their in-world experiences.

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Working with the MadBid Team is a fantastic experience. The brief for this one was to sound as much like the brilliant, lantern-jawed actor, Patrick Allen as possible (now sadly deceased). Patrick appeared in many great British films but will probably be best remembered for his amazing voice overs in the commercials for Barratt Homes (sitting in a helicopter) or his ‘protect and survive’ lines from Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Two Tribes.”

Here’s one of the many MadBid.com TV commercials.

Anyway, trying to get an accurate imitation of Patrick’s voice wasn’t easy at first and I had to produce several takes before everyone was happy with the outcome. It comes a lot easier now and slipping in to the Patrick Allen character is second nature – although I have to add a touch of madness to it!

In addition to the TV commercials, I was also asked to provide the same vocal style for the radio commercials to keep the MadBid brand consistency – but for some variety, I was asked to do an impersonation that sounded ‘a bit like’ Alan Carr, mixed with the slightly mad version of my Patrick Allen. The two opposite ends of the scale I think you’ll agree, but it makes for an interesting conversation and it stretched my impersonation skills a bit!

Here’s one of the un-edited takes before the ad was cut down to the standard ‘radio 29 seconds.’

I’ve been very lucky to work with a top team and full credit to Lee Pritchard of Media Music Now for enhancing my vocal efforts and adding some great sound effects – first class editing!

Finally, here’s another slightly different take on the MadBid theme – no impersonations, just my recording of the Madbid Tutorial from the website itself. If you fancy having a go after watching this (and it is great fun) just click HERE!

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Producing the voice files for the McCoy’s Man Crisps website campaign was great fun.

The initial brief was to sound ‘a bit like’ a friendly Phil Mitchell (from EastEnders) but keeping in step with the TV campaign.

Screen Capture from www.McCoys.co.uk

Here is a short compilation of some of the original audios:

Screen Capture from www.McCoys.co.uk

I was delighted with the first set of audio files and thought that I’d produced an almost perfect impression of the TV voice. Alas, I actually sounded too macho(!) and we had to go back to the drawing board. After a couple more recordings, it was decided that the manliness should be toned-down a bit and the final cut is still available on the McCoy’s website HERE.

Screen Capture from www.McCoys.co.uk

The web design company did an amazing job on the Flash driven site and, of course, the agency InboxDMG did a fantastic job in choosing me!

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“Dr. Wright is a highly qualified professional, tired of a sexless marriage.
After having enjoyed a flurry of affairs over an internet dating site, his play away from home is soon to be nailed on a visit to his next and most enticing rendéz-vous yet.

This sordid affair has got him by the balls.”

Hmmmm…..when you read a brief like that, it’s always a bit of a worry! I get sent a lot of animation work requiring character voices and I really like the ones which I feel will be a bit of a challenge. This was definitely one of those projects.

Natal Attraction certainly breaks the mould when it comes to short animation stories and I’m not sure Walt Disney would approve (but then again…?). It was tremendous fun to produce the voice over for Dr. Wright and I immediately thought of the Monty Python character, Arthur Pewty, for vocal clues. The lovely and talented Mandy Kaplan does an amazing job playing the female characters in the film, especially the seductive temptress, Nancy!

The Natal Attraction project itself was written and produced by a very talented young animator called Tom Fry and since completing the project, I understand that the film has been nominated for the Royal Television Society Awards 2010, is in consideration for Raindance 2009, has already won the Southampton Harbour Lights ‘Best Film 2009′ and ‘Audience Choice 2009‘ and will be aired on Sky TV in a few weeks.

The official Natal Attraction website can be found HERE.

The Movie Poster

Natal Attraction by Tom Fry - Starring Anthony Richardson & Mandy Kaplan

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Recording all day and travelling backwards and forwards to central London (or wherever your client’s studio happens to be) can be very stressful and tiring and the old Red Bull or alternative high-octane beverage can look very appealing.

However, most of these high caffeine sugary junk-drinks are actually banned in other, more sensible, countries and certainly should be in the UK. They also affect your vocal chords and, depending on your sensitivity to the 1001 chemicals in the noxious stuff, can be quite nasty.

So, what’s the alternative? Well, for many years I have been drinking the “organic” version of the pick-me-up drink, and I can highly recommend you give it a try.

It’s called wheat grass juice and, in my opinion, is the best way to give your body and mind an energy boost without affecting the vocal chords and without putting all those nasty chemicals into your bloodstream.

The problem is that today we have never had so many cures for diseases but been so incredibly ill as a population. Most scientists put this down to one thing – stress!

Stress is a real killer (in case you didn’t know!)

Our lifestyles are massively different to those of our parents and their parents. Every day we have to deal with traffic, computers, high pressure jobs, at least ten different types of communication from Facebook and Twitter to mobile phones, instant messaging to email, fast food, spicy food, short lunch breaks, high emotions and ‘difficult customers.’ These challenges all result in one major change in our bodies – acid!

The human body is something like your car’s lead acid battery – we work on currents and voltages with the PH (acidity) of the human bloodstream being about 7.36. Now, when we get stressed, emotional, eat junk food etc. our bloodstream becomes more acidic and this has the effect of weakening the charge on the outside of our wonderful red blood cells. This, in turn, makes them stick together causing a kind of “sludge.” And that’s exactly how this condition makes you feel…sludgy. Your brain slows down, your muscles ache and you just feel plain tired.

Now, here comes the wheat grass bit. If you drink a glass of wheat grass juice, it actually alkalises your bloodstream very effectively, restoring the natural PH and the charge on your red blood cells, allowing them to pull apart again. And as we know, these wonderful little cells can then go about their business transporting oxygen around the body and brain, helping you think more clearly, retain more information, feel more awake and generally give you more energy!

Try some – it might just change your life.

I recommend: Sweet Wheat® - just click here for my favourite brand!

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Now there’s a question.

The .tel domain suffix became available to the great unwashed (that’s you and me) on the 24th of March, after a long, drawn-out, “sunrise period” (basically some time in which the big trademark holders like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Virgin and the like can get their hands on their own brand name without it being bought by a spotty teenager demanding £5 Million to sell it back to them).

Aaah, the heady days of the late 90’s when “pc.com” was allegedly sold to Intel for about £5 Million – by a spotty teenager!

Anyway, the .tel domain suffix promises to be something slightly different.

Currently, most domain names are just “mapped” over an IP address where the website is being hosted (bear with me, this is simple stuff). For example, www.coca-cola.com is actually mapped over the IP address: 216.64.210.28. So if you just type 216.64.210.28 into your browser’s address bar (at the top) it’s exactly the same as typing in www.coca-cola.com – if that makes sense? You can just click on the links or IP addresses above to prove the point.

The reason for this is simply one of convenience – it’s a lot easier for us mere mortals to remember, for example, www.virgin.com rather than 213.174.199.102 or www.google.com rather than 74.125.127.100 although they lead to exactly the same place. And of course it allows the website owner to transfer his or her domain name onto a different IP address if necessary (in case a server packs up or they fall out with their hosting company etc.) and we, the website visitors, are none the wiser.

So it goes without saying that the IP addresses above may not be strictly accurate at the time of reading!

Well, the .tel domain name is slightly different. You can’t just “map” your shiny new .tel domain name over an IP address, infact all you get for your £15 +VAT is a username and password for a website where you simply enter your business or personal details.

Not very exciting.

Until you realise that you are actually entering your information into the actual DNS (Domain Name System) rather than just mapping your domain over an IP address.

So what?

Well, that means that the contact information anyone enters on their .tel is universally available – in the same format.

So mobile phones, PDAs, netbooks, VOIP services and specific software applications, for use on websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and Ecademy can have access to all this contact information – in the same format!

This could truly turn out to be a global phone directory or, as a colleague of mine put it, “…global LDAP…” (and as a side benefit, it’s great for search engine optimisation).

So what are you waiting for? Click HERE for my favourite and highly recommended domain name registrar, SimplyNames.com and order your very own .tel domain name now! – and if you want more detailed information on the .tel domain name, check out: www.telnic.org for some cool videos.

Oh, and if you want to see what a .tel website looks like, check out: OverVoice.tel – and you can see (and hear) my “.tel story” HERE.

And finally, before I forget – it takes 12-24 hours to get your login, username and password from your domain registrar so please be patient! 

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VOX 2009 took place over the weekend of 9th / 10th May and was a huge success. I arrived at the Chesford Grange Hotel in Kenilworth at around midday and was immediately impressed by the venue.

As it says on their website: “Chesford Grange is an enchanting venue, steeped in history with the original house dating back to 1902 when it was a family home” – nice! Check it out HERE.

Layla and the whole team from LBS Manchester did a fantastic job of organising the afternoon’s events which kicked-off at 2.00pm with everyone receiving a special voice overs’ goody bag followed by an amazing speed networking event. The voices had about 2 minutes to pitch their services to the voice producers until a whistle blew and everyone move to the next seat and the next producer.  This was followed by an open networking session for anyone who hadn’t elected to join the previous one. Great fun and I made loads of new contacts.

A useful stand was in one corner the main networking hall where the voices could leave their promotional material. There was a vast range – from home made CDs to professionally produced DVDs and glossy leaflets. Some VOs even had their own sweets, mugs, badges and mouse mats to give away! I opted for getting some cool CD business cards produced. Basically exact copies of my OverVoice business cards printed onto small rectangular CDs that will play on any computer or CD player (mind you, I had quite a challenge getting the right software to make an audio CD which also holds PC data – it’s not nearly as straightforward as you might think). I was REALLY impressed by Wizbit (the company that made my CD business cards) and you can visit their website HERE.

Anyway, later that evening came the VOX Awards where many of the great commercials produced throughout 2008/9 were listened to and framed VOX 2009 certificates were given out – you can see the winners HERE. This was followed by the Gala Dinner and Race Night, where each table backed different horses from a pre-videoed race and won some great prizes. The dinner and disco was first class and the Après VOX bar was open, pretty much, all night. Several of us took full advantage of the late night networking opportunity.

It was great to see old friends and meet some new faces and I am sure I’ll be staying in touch with loads of new colleagues.

The following morning I only saw a few of the late night crowd at breakfast – I suppose most of them had the special “hangover breakfast in bed” service!

Next year’s VOX 2010 will be on the 8th / 9th May – hope to see you there.

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A sweeping statement perhaps but this next product I am going to talk about literally made my life so much easier, I just have to recommend it to you.

The issue concerns making backup copies of your work – and it doesn’t just have to be work. It can be family photos, games, documents, well, anything computerised and digital really.

OK – so here’s the scenario – up until the middle of last year I was painstakingly backing up all my voice over files, emails, customer data, photos etc. once a week onto a 20GB hard drive, plugged into my computer via USB. Every Friday afternoon, I would wipe the previous copy of my data and upload the fresh and changed data to the drive and carefully place it on top of my PC for safe keeping.

Then I thought:

“What happens if there’s a fire in my studio?”

So I started to take my hard drive around to a friend’s house each week – not ideal, obviously, but this seemed like a more secure way of doing things.

Then I started to think that there must be a better way of backing-up my data – and a better use of my time! So I researched the online storage companies and frankly couldn’t come up with a solution (and a pricing point) that I felt comfortable with. There were companies offering underground storage in secure bunkers, old nuclear facilities, banks and tanks – but nothing that really suited my needs as a self employed voice over, working largely from a home-based vocal booth.

Then in July last year, a colleague, hearing about the ridiculous lengths I had been going to, to secure my data, recommended a product called Amazon S3. At first, I didn’t believe this kind of service existed, but after much research (I always look into these things to the n’th degree) I was amazed at how simple and effective this service really is.

To keep it brief, in 2006 Amazon (yes, Amazon the book people) , realised that they had created far too much storage for their ever expanding bookstore (OK, so they sell a couple of other items too) and decided to sell some of it off to developers. Now, at this point you had to be able to write techy-type code and API’s to actually access this storage so it wasn’t really for the likes of you and me (me, especially!).

Rolling on, 2007 brought a rash of companies providing simple, graphical, web-based interfaces to access the Amazon S3 storage offering. My favourite is Jungle Disk and I highly recommend it to you – it’s fantastic!

Very briefly, you can buy the Jungle Disk software for a one-off cost of just $20 (whatever that is in real money) and that includes lifetime updates (not great if you’re planning to die anytime soon). And then it just costs 15cents for each GB of data you upload – billed by Amazon. And yes, if you already have an Amazon account, you can use that.

So, why is Amazon S3 / Jungle Disk so good?

* Well, you can automate absolutely everything. You just “tell” Jungle Disk what to back-up (folders, files, photos, whatever) and it does this seemlessly, automatically and in the background at whatever time of day you specify. A good friend of mine backs up his email every minute!

* The Amazon network, I believe, is one of the most secure, stable and reliable storage networks out there. Amazon, quite simply, can’t afford to have any outages – after all, it’s their business!

* The restore process is extremely simple. If you actually do have a fire or other disaster, getting your data back from Amazon could not be more simple I know, I’ve tried!

Anyway, my advice to you would be to try it – you have nothing to lose and this service just might change your life too.

These days I don’t even think about storing and protecting my data on a Friday afternoon. I’ve got better things to think about – like going to the pub!

Check out: www.jungledisk.com – you wont regret it!

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Recording in a hot vocal booth for 8 hours straight can certainly cause some strain on the old vocal chords. Audiobooks, in particular, can be very hard work – especially novels where character voices change in practically every paragraph.

Quite often I get asked to do a Hollywood-style, Don LaFontaine, subsonic movie trailer voice over in the morning and a high-pitched cartoon voice after lunch. This obviously takes its toll on the old voice box. Once I made the mistake of recording one of these super-deep movie trailer voices first thing in the morning, without warming up. Nasty experience, my voice was completely shot for the rest of the day. But that’s what it all boils down to – experience. I have learnt not to do this style of VO without warming up for at least an hour, or better still, wait until the afternoon. If you can benefit from my experience, that’s fantastic!

Anyway, for a number of years I have been using one of the best kept secrets in the voice over industry to make sure my vocal chords are in tip-top condition, and when they get a bit tired I can pep them up and get them back to full working order.

Although I frequently get asked, I don’t usually endorse any particular brand of product but on this occasion, I heartily recommend Vocalzone (www.vocalzone.com).

These little beauties have saved my bacon on any number of occasions and on those days when you wake up feeling, shall we say, a little ‘worse for wear’ (yesterday, for example!) they can be a real life saver.

Question: How loud can one sing Auld Lang Syne as a comedy Elvis without breaking something?

Answer: I’ll let you know when I’ve finished paying for the hangover (and the breakages).

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