 So you can swear all you want the pre-show live. Yeah, the pre-show Can I swear in Spanish? I Can swear in Farsi a little bit. That's pretty cool I know a little few things in French from playing for my hockey playing day for my girlfriend. She's watching gas on board And by the way, that doesn't that's not a swear. That's actually pliers Don't ask how I know that I wasn't gonna mention it Okay, the site is updated Okay, all right, that's working all right sites up Facebook is alive and kicking all right YouTube in YouTube's Kicking all right embedded on the site outstanding We've been doing this 11 years. Eventually. We're gonna figure this out. Oh, you've been podcasting for 11 years Webcasting we live streaming. Wow. Yeah. I mean we were doing it before people even know they could do it We didn't know we could do it. Well, and then we didn't only start it You have to look at episode one and go what the hell were these guys? It really started that's the best part That's they appreciate it. Yeah, when your fans appreciate you at that beginner level. Absolutely We were influenced by click-and-clack the car talk Show from way back in the day on NPR. Yeah, that was the original concept and we've changed it around a few times I mean we we've tried a few experimental things Some of them work and you know, there was the the the great studio tour we did one month That was not so great Yeah, yeah, but you know we decided that you know, I mean we do the show live because All you people are watching live right now is we're warming up. We thank you first of all Thank you a whole lot. Thank you for doing that. Yeah, because it's the live interaction that really makes the show work so well But a majority of people watch the replay. Yeah, so they can watch it whenever they want not our whim, right and But we do we do get a lot of There's there's a lot of audience here Somebody just gave me a thumbs up Okay, so the site's ready I'm in the rundown. I'm in the I'm pinning Jeff's Hosts he's pinned I think we're Pretty good shape here. Yeah. All right two items one. We run a cold open So it'll be the three of us on screen George and I'll say hey We're here his voice over body shop and we'll say on our guest tonight is Christina Castagnetta And you can wave and say hi and we're gonna talk a little you know briefly about what we're gonna talk about tell people You can ask the wrong questions that sort of thing and then we will go to the intro and then we get to the intro You know, we'll introduce you directly and then we'll get into our questions and then the thing I Continuously forget to tell people Week after week after week is when we're done at the top of the hour when we go into the last break You know, we say thank you for being with us You can go unless you Otherwise you're gonna be sitting there staring into the camera Yeah, there is a chat so we can communicate there But some people don't realize that we now realize that you use stream yard So you're familiar yeah, yeah, but the chat is how you would it helps a lot. Yeah, yeah I do probably I probably do have to leave closer to six ish So I'll get you out of here about five to about five two. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I have to wrap up one more thing with another actor Hopefully send him some stuff so join us and then I gotta go get my nails done. Sorry At least you didn't say you have to go wash your hair, right Yeah No, but I have like I also do some I also I'm a dancer So I also do like, you know, I have to Anyway, I perform. Yeah, I have to have to maintain things. So And yeah, I do photo shoots every now and then too. So I have to make sure all that is that's okay I read it off. I like it Not a lot of women get to do that. So it's it's great. That is correct Do you love figure out the money later and then you can write everything off? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Tis the season, but I did make it late just to be here today. So Can't pass up podcasting, right Okay, so it it's recording automatically right so just give me a thumbs up. Okay. All right So everyone knows about my nails thing Well the people who are watching now the people might be watching in five minutes from now like What is she talking about? We're gonna get tips on nails Yeah, I don't think we've ever done beauty tips. I mean we've done the clearly Exactly All right, yeah, no we don't we do not use makeup here So it's like our heads a little shiny just moved before the headphones a little farther forward Yeah headphones hide a lot of problems. I get the dulling spray All right, we are ready to go one minute here Wow, I can't believe we pulled that off We didn't it we did a location shoot Got a package cut and all on time for our usual start time. Yeah Yay, I know it's hard everything getting things out Well, it's exciting we used to do a lot more location stuff and a lot more packages and I was just everything changed And so we're just kind of trying to warm back up and like hey we can go out and do that talk to people. Yeah interviewing Location which is much more fun. Oh, yeah, of course. We haven't been in the same studio together for a long time No, this is our first time in the same room in quite a while actually We used to work together in this room in front of a big green screen and tonight I'm actually loving the just the radio backdrop. I think it's working out. It's nice. I'm quite sure should we start I think Sue won't start attention. Okay. Here we go. All right. She is counting five four three Hey, guess what it's time for voiceover body shop and our guest tonight is the lovely Christina Castiglietta Who's gonna talk to us about audio drama? Hi, Christina? Hello fellas Great to have you with us. We're gonna talk about audio drama and this is a great way for voice actors To do more voice acting All right, George is in front of all my radios Boom check it out. We're in the same space. Yeah for once All righty if you've got questions for Christina or for George and I about tech throw it in the chat room Jeff Holman is in there and we will get those questions to her and It's time to roll time for voiceover body shop right now From the outer reaches they came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio and Together from the center of the VO universe. They bring it to you now George Wittem the engineer to the VO stars of Virginia Tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain The professional video studios of the biggest names in VO today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master professional voice down with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home VO studio and Each week they allow you into their world Bringing you talks with the biggest names in the voice over world today Letting you ask your questions and giving you the latest information to make the most of your voice over business welcome to voiceover body shop Voice over body shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials calm home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites.com where your VO website Isn't a pain in the butt VO heroes dot-com become a hero to your clients with a word winning voiceover training JMC demos when quality matters and voiceover extra your daily resource for VO success and now Live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are the guys Well, hello there, I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Wittem and this is voiceover body shop or VO Bs In sync in the same room in the same room which helps a whole lot Yeah, the you know the internet interfering with all that but anyway Welcome to our show. We're here to talk about voiceover and We've got some interesting stuff to talk about tonight an interesting weekend I had because I got to we finally got invited to go to a friends house in Oxnard You're invited to go play at a friend's house. We're invited to go play at a friend's house now Here's the thing, you know, I had the sudden weird observation that you know, there are people You know, you're hanging out with people who look like your parents because you forget that you're as old as they are It's like well, this is this is weird, you know, and he's mixing up martinis. I'm like, wow Yeah, it's it's fun to go hang out at a friend's beach house Yes, but waiting for seven years to do that here in LA and finally we're trying to meet new friends with beach houses That's the that's the thing you should do it. Anyway, we're gonna talk about audio drama tonight and to Help us with that is somebody who does an awful lot of this Christina Castaneda is a writer and producer of the savvy creative podcast, which features award-winning audio fiction with Magic romance and dark thrillers fully produced by indie writers and creative talent They also celebrate indie authors screenwriters playwrights and creatives who produce and publish their stories We're gonna talk about the scope of what's available out there and how you voice actor folk people Want to try it yourself or get involved? So let's welcome Christina Castaneda Hi there. Welcome to voiceover body shop. Hello fellas. Thank you for having me It's our pleasure great having you now Now I'll I'll leave this off by saying you found me on LinkedIn Not not a place that I hang out a whole lot But there was an ad there and you and I you hired me to do one of your one of your dramas, which was a lot of fun Yeah, well, technically you found me. I put out the ad and you applied to me actually No, it's not a contest. It's not a contest I was shocked to hear that Dan was doing advertising and doing it on LinkedIn So I was like, oh, this is new Yeah, I put out ads to my followers I just put out now casting put out a form then put out applications on LinkedIn Which I rarely ever go on LinkedIn because I feel like it's like Facebook but with resumes So I just stay away and yeah, and I got a lot of applications LinkedIn I got 50 and then I got a lot on Instagram as well and I just wanted someone with experience with wide range and We were on a crunch on on a deadline and Dan you replied within minutes like I was really shocked and Yeah, we just started working together. Yeah, just happened to be there with in timing is everything Yes, you know and as we say when the opportunity presents itself You gotta deliver and that's the most important luck favors are prepared and absolutely So, you know what let's talk about audio drama. This thing has been around For a long time. I mean before television. I mean, all right, let's go back. It goes around to the campfire You know where you've got storytelling and you know, and somebody's gonna be and he came down the path But it's a little bit different now on the internet, isn't it? And so we get the opportunity to do what was used to be this great art form on the radio and You know, what got you into it? so I Had been in podcasting for years not just for my own podcast, but professionally as well I did three live three live podcasts a week for a beach body when I was working in the fitness business Yeah, to an English one in Spanish and it went on every week and we did it for two years every Monday and it was exhausting and It was all like personal development interview style and although it was fun and it gave me a good background in broadcasting It just wasn't it just wasn't enough for me and I was a writer at the time I was a struggling novelist who just like couldn't Put a novel together or just like it could never get through the second or third draft And I wasn't being taken seriously as a writer at that point like I just couldn't get into the writers groups or anything and so During the pandemic I started reading my stories on my podcast just little short stories little narrations and Then I started posting videos as well And I just my following just started to grow and my downloads started to grow and then I met Chris Gregory of the alternative stories podcast Alternative stories and fake realities podcast and he is a major producer of audio drama on his own indie channel in the UK And he asked me to do voice work and I thought I've always been behind the mic or behind the camera Why would I be the talent? I'm just having fun here and I did my first voiceover with his podcast that he did and it was the very beginning of the shutdown I'd say April 2020 and He asked me to do more. He asked to work with me and for me to write a piece for him And we've been I actually learned a lot from him And the UK is where a lot of this is so popular like they have the archers They have like a lot of network audio dramas and you know in the US Like you said it's old school. There was the shadow and Dick Tracy and like the very very like mystery noir Shows yeah, but the more I started working with Chris and I started following his stories I realized that oh my god. What have I been missing my whole life? Like this is the form of podcasting I want to do so I started getting involved with more groups. I realized that horror writers Fantasy sci-fi are super big into this genre which makes sense because you can do like the you know Pew pew and monster sounds and stuff you can do so much with it just with the simple script and From that point on I decided to just start reading my writing again on the podcast and this time during the shutdown You know when we were in LA it was when the riots were happening and it was so close to my home And I could hear like because it was there was stuff happening on Venice Boulevard So I could hear things going on and I just started writing like this really dark story And because that's just what we were all feeling we were all feeling the anxiety when it first happened and then the story just evolved into like a dystopian type of story and Then I needed an actor to come in and then I needed a director to come in because I thought oh I'm not gonna do a male voice. I can't I don't think I could pull that off And plus I need help like I knew I wanted to grow it at that point So a friend of mine who's a director of filmmaker came in and then another friend of mine Started helping me as well and then Chris Gregory with his help It started growing the fans our fans. I thought that they would be Like put off because I was doing interview style shows, but it wasn't they actually really liked it They were excited about it. We started hyping it up on social I started growing the downloads were actually double than what we were getting before and I thought oh my god I have to like continue this and I finally got back into writing and loving my writing again It wasn't like a book where I wanted to throw my computer at the wall And where like the editing process was so brutal when you edit a novel But when you edit a script, it's fast, you know Like notes need to come in fast and things need to get out fast You know, like I have to send sides to another actor right now and I'm just like, ah, you know Like which scene am I going to choose? How am I going to you know, what am I going to do? and uh, it's it's but it it's that part of that run fast and break things kind of Uh creative development that I really like being a part of just from my background in tech So I just thought wow, this is such a fit. I get to do two things. I love writing and podcasting I get to be on the production side of things which I already had that background in from working In the fitness industry and doing all those productions And it was just when chris actually introduced me to so many cool people and then I started joining all the groups and started You know finding the fans and I was like, this is a really loving community Like this is a really fun community and they are just so creative and expressive. They take chances You know, they really push the limits differently that you can't do in hollywood or you can't do on a major network And they are Like all backgrounds all ages all races. It's really cool. And I also realized that I said, okay How many are for latinos? You know, how many are for the latino audience because they have telenovela radio novellas But it's pure spanish or like, you know, it's it's it's super dramatic like a like a regular telenovela Right and then I just thought you know We're not taking advantage enough of this So why don't I create something for us because I don't see enough of it right now and I started finding more actors I started finding more talent And it's just growing from there and now people are asking me. Hey, what are you doing because for a filmmaker? Things are so tough for them to get their stuff made versus an audio drama You know, it does cost money, but it doesn't cost as much as you think and if you manage it well and if you Manage your time well like you can still make something pretty good or you can make a few episodes You can make something an hour long, which I don't recommend we did that and that was a disaster But you can make something 15 minutes long Yeah, an hour long a heavy file with sound effects and all these different takes. Oh my god Like we were in tears at that one and I said I will never write a long script again like 15 pages is my cut off long is like we think of audiobooks as long and Clearly like there's this dividing line between audiobooks and audio drama We mentioned it you mentioned it a little bit ago, which was You no longer having a man kind of doing a lady's voice or throwing to be a woman or vice versa That just doesn't in audio drama realism Yeah, you know it's immersive. Yeah, it's it's immersive with an audiobook It's one voice and it's continuous and you kind of get lost in the story It's a different experience. This this is a whole different thing, but you can enjoy them both equally That's what's interesting about it. Yeah, and there's nothing better than when a listener either DMs you or writes in and says Oh my god, I cried at my desk at work. I felt like right or I laughed out loud Or I was driving and it totally was scared like I had one episode where there's a crash at the end And they're like I was not expecting that or killing a rattlesnake and they were like, oh my god And I love that. I love being able to make people jump and react I mean, that's kind of what we do as writers. We kind of ha ha love to love to torch you just just a bit, you know so And and and george brings up a good point This is you know, we have a lot of people a lot of our viewers who are audiobook narrators This is this would be a whole new way for them to you know to be even more creative and be part of a Part of an ensemble as opposed to just you know making yourself the ensemble Which we know some people who are very very good at that But I would think that they would also be fabulous at doing this type of work because this is when you know if i'm doing an audiobook it's like you know It would be a lot more fun if there was music if there were sound effects You know the more more of the kind of stuff that you know that i'm used to doing as a producer I know audiobook seems kind of restricted. Doesn't it when you have all that production background? Yeah When I was doing novels, I thought oh, I want to add this like music into it How could I let the reader hear it and then when I came into audio drama? I was like, oh, duh This is like I was meant to do this but with uh audiobooks, you know, it's also the Like the the dialogue tags like he said she said I said, you know Because you're still like narrating it and in that like to me it was always hard to read things Like that as well. So because I've done some narration too as well for as part of my voiceover journey And that was really a huge change for me and I said I'm going back to reading scripts I don't think I could narrate But the great thing is that we react to each other And you never know what the actor brings and that's what's really fun When we were doing the last magician the actor who played the magician the bad magician He just delivered something that I was not expecting and he just made his character so sleazy and despicable Which was amazing And we were reacting to it and it was actually one of our best scenes that at least in my opinion And we used it to promote on social later So it was I actually just really loved that That part of the that creative process. Yeah, you discover so much. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a lot of fun Just doing it because you know a lot of us came out of theater and it's like well I get to do it again and But all I need is my microphone and the right room is george and I will tell you Once again, we'll remind you if you're just joining us our guest is christina castaneda She is a writer and producer of audio drama and has a webcast I'm sorry a podcast called the savvy creative and Check it out. It'd be a lot of fun. I was gonna say you have a good sounding environment actually like You're using a condenser mic Yes, yes, I am not everybody can get a good sound out of a condenser mic unless they've spent some effort Well with their space. So what are you doing over there? My daughter Is uh, she just finished la film school And in audio engineering and I can't tell you how many times she scolds me like mom She goes mom. Did you learn your lesson about echo? I was like, yeah, that crumple pop app is awesome And she goes no mom not the lesson you need to adjust your mic You need to do this and she scolds me all the time because she knows that if I don't get get it right Then she's gonna have to help me fix it. Just like, you know, when you I feel like that parent who's always like kids I need your help with this So she actually told me, you know, how to put a limiter on how to how to she she actually bought me a podcast kit for christmas Because she was so sick of me And she's like here mom don't mess up this time and she she's into music But she actually was the first sound designer that we had I mean for the sake of our relationship She's not my sound designer anymore But the fact that the episode that she worked on was the one that got the award It was a good for her portfolio And it actually helped her get into the music industry business But she's the one that helped me set up and then of course my son. He's also a gamer youtuber So he helped me with a lot of equipment as well. Um, so yeah, and and I say you can do chores You can help my podcast consultants in the house. Yeah, that's why I tell my kids You can do chores you can help mama with her podcast and so they're like, oh, how bad is it mom? Maybe we'll do dishes Oh, that's funny. Yeah, really to work out both ways. It's a win-win for you They either want to help you with the podcast So a single mom's got to make it work. Yeah, that's right If you've got a question for christina about audio drama and the stuff that we're talking about tonight Throw it in the chat room. Jeff holman is sitting in there writing it down personally on a pad and then transferring it to Into calligraphy into calligraphy then scanning the calligraphy. Yeah and turning it into cuneiform and then you know, that's so fancy I know it. Well, we're very sophisticated outfit. What can I say? But if you've got a question throw it in there right now, we'll get to it into in the next segment Uh, who's listening to this stuff? I mean you must be talking to your fans and what are they telling you and who are they? You know, I'm shocked that it's the fans are so much younger I thought like what would they want with a 41 year old? No, like who likes to play around with magic But you got to remember the young the generation the millennials and gen z years, you know, they grew up with harry potter The gen zers absolutely love They're the ones that you definitely can probably get some good recruiting if you want staff or if you want people to Get on board with your project because they grew up with youtube YouTubers are also doing this as well. Like, you know, because youtubers are they going to go into film? They probably could because they got the cameras and they got the audience But some of them did go into audio drama like markiplier, you know, if you watch if your kids watch youtube You've probably seen him obnoxiously gaming But he has his own Network audio drama as well. So a lot of the gen zers are going into this So I would you know, don't rule them out because they are definitely listening to it Gamers also and gamers are all ages too. Um, and I'm not just talking video gamers I'm talking like the people who play dungeons and dragons the rpg people Yes rpg people love audio dramas and when I go to these watering holes What I like to call them like discord or the facebook groups where they're hanging out because that's where I I get a lot of tips on how to do sound effects and a lot of tips on like when I mess up and I have a question where to find actors That's where I meet a lot of fans who are just like super hardcore And they love the monsters and you know, they some of them are game masters and dungeon masters Like I didn't even really know what all that was But that's where like a lot of the hardcore fans are so you got to look in those worlds Especially if you're going to do a fantasy or a monster based horror type of Script like go to those go find the gamers because they will be some of your big fans and when I was when I was younger My sister was a Trekkie like a hardcore Trekkie And I would go to conventions with her and you know My mom like made her like a little star trek uniform because my mom was a really good seamstress And I would just walk around and it was my first time seeing a convention where people were super hardcore into something And I just thought I hope one day that I can write something or put something together That would make people like literally dress up to the tea Um talk about characters with so much detail to the fact where like I don't even know how the authors keep track of it Now I have my own system to keep track of the world building but The way that they were so obsessed and like they it's almost like they felt like these characters were real I thought I want to be able to create that one day and you got to look for people uh Stories that have fans like that because most likely they're going to be able to Uh, you know like join in to your story So like using things like magic and fantasy and mythical creatures and you know heroes superheroes, you know all that stuff using those kind of Tropes will will help you build that. So how are you finding your talent these days? Besides linkedin besides linkedin. Yeah Um, well, definitely this is la. I mean If you know your filmmaker, you know your director, they're usually going to connect you And what I say is like look, I need someone I can work with I need someone who's good on a long day I need someone who's actually going to read the script before they show up I want a native spanish speaker. Please don't be someone who's just going to come in and just say they're going to do An accent like I want you to be actual native spanish speaker Um, no peggy hill high school spanish, please. I want you know, I was looking for I was looking for you have no idea how much that happens I I was I was looking for a comedian So I would go and network with as many comedians because a lot of comedians podcast So I was able to find some in the podcasting world Um, so and you just want to make sure that their voice is different from the other main characters Because that's the hardest part. They could be super super qualified But if their voice is too similar It's not going to work or unless they could do you know impersonations or something Then it might work, but you have to be super flexible there Um, so I use my network of connections first and then I and it's really hard to find people who are available At the time that you want to shoot and record. So there's also that and um, finding a spanish speaking actor I think was probably really really tough because I wanted to find somebody that was like local to la and all that stuff and Um, so I I think it's also a matter of being flexible as well Because you don't know The work ethic is most important to me. Like are you going to show up? Are you going to have a good attitude? Or am I going to have to send you home because and just pay you out for the day Which has definitely happened before so and yeah, I'm not I'm very quick to do that as well. So I think um, and also being uh, if you When people say that like they've heard my podcast before or they Follow me on social media already and they're already engaging And they're already a fan of our work Then I am a little bit more likely to listen to their reel or to just hear them out a little bit or give them a You know put them to the front of the line When i'm looking through reels as well And also, uh, I mean there's so many things I look for do they have good branding on their site? Do they have good are things broken on their links broken on their site? Is what they do clear what they offer clear and Are their reels playing because I've even been on sites where I couldn't even access someone's Reel and that was a you know, that's a problem as well So, um, I want to make sure like all deliverables are tight and wrapped and Good to have your act together everybody. Well, I mean yeah I mean also, you know the when people are very responsive. That's also a good sign as well So those those would probably be the most and oh, I will I will peep your socials too as well I'm going to look at how you answer comments. I'm going to look at if you have legit fans I'm going to look at if you um have haters, which wouldn't even wouldn't even scare me I actually think that's you might be saying something or you might be saying your opinions, which is also You know, I it wouldn't be a deal breaker for me if you had some haters in the comments or anything But I do look at how you interact with fans because most likely my fans are going to go over to you And interact with you so I want to make sure that you know You're answering comments or you don't have a lot of bots and spam and stuff. You know, I always I do check that as well Interesting. Yeah Once again, if you've got a question for Christina about audio drama and how to produce this stuff throw it in the chat room We will get to it in just a little bit Uh, one of the most important things new indie creators should know if they want to create their own audio drama I mean you've got here's a fabulous opportunity for voice actors people You know that george and I know who actually know how to hit record and make it sound like you know the way it's supposed to sound Uh, what what do people need to know to to get this going aside from the audio stuff aside from the audio um how to find fans how um how to Make the how so when you're doing a film and this was also very um A very interesting thing that I noticed with the filmmakers and the audio drama You know you look at a script and you're you're kind of hearing it not really seeing it You know what I mean like you have to instead of camera angles You're looking at sound effects to replace camera angles and things like that So you you kind of have to train your mind and train your ears a little bit differently It's really it's really a crazy thing your ears will even hallucinate sound effects For you, but a good way to get started. Honestly, it's your um, you got to know you got to have that rock star team And some people like friends could join you like my close friend who's the director She's the one that helped me out and she joined me and you got to really really be open to tightening up that story And you got to really really super believe in your story Because there are so many moments when you're putting that story together And the actors bringing something different if you're working with the director They're going to bring something different the sound effects may not work the way you planned It's like baking a cake, you know, it may come out The way you want or it may not and um, you kind of have to be able to almost Lead yourself through this process because there's so many moments of imposter syndrome There's so many moments of like this is not going to work. This is not going to work and you're freaking out Right, but it always happens right before you hit publish too You're just like, uh, it doesn't sound the way I want I want to change this and you're like, no I have to get the episode out But you're you're really struggling a lot in your mind If you're doing this all yourself So you really got to get a good team of people you can trust of people who tell you the truth And just say like look, there's a big plot hole here. You really got to fix that Or that just does not sound it sounds like nails on a chalkboard does not sound Cool at all, right? Um, and you have to you have to really Have that moving forward and then it doesn't take a lot to produce it Um, it it's actually You know, if you're overwhelmed by like how much it's going to cost to pay the actors pay this you can negotiate You can talk to people. Um, you can figure out some you can always work things out If you really believe in your story and you really want to get it out with me I knew then the last magician I knew venus magic shop was going to be great That's actually like one of my most favorite things I've done Um, and I knew like no matter what I was going to be able to make this I was going to find a way I was going to find a way to pay everybody and to get the marketing out there everything Um, you would think that people would just be on board to produce your story Like isn't it great like, you know a magic shop on the boardwalk and a magical talking cat. Who wouldn't love that, right? No, no, not a lot of people did like it You know, they turned me down a lot and it's you know, sometimes you need more than money You need like a really clear pitch. You need a really clear way of saying hey actors join me on this This would be fun Like do you really see this character? Do you really believe in the character? So you have to You have to have all that very clear Before you start reaching out to people as well because that was the lesson I learned too Was like, oh Magical talking cat not so interesting. Okay, you know All right, you have to have you can't have a little bit of the thick skin, right? Yeah Well, I mean just like any business but You like that that was a hard lesson for me that it was it was tough to get people on board It was harder than it was the first time and I wasn't anticipating that as much So I was like, okay, I need to build a strong team And I need to have a better plan I need to have more assets ready like sending the scripts and sending character sketches and everything like everything had to be solid And sent out and just you know, the way I presented it had to be strong if I were if I was going to get actors and the team together Yeah, having a team is really important. I mean We've learned that in video production. You can't do it yourself I mean you you got to have an audio person. You got to have somebody who knows understand cinematography somebody who knows lighting and scripting and the continuity and all those things Otherwise you're doing it all yourself and it takes 10 times as long and generally isn't as good So Important important to to mention. Once again, if you've got a question for christina castaneda about audio drama and how you can get involved in it and What's involved throw it in the chat room and we'll get her in those questions just a little bit so We were talking a little bit earlier about about Tech but again, not about audio tech, but what are some of the things that people need to understand in order to get this product out there product out there on platforms or yeah platforms. Yeah well, I mean Getting it out there like the best thing is like audio is definitely a lot more visual If you want to go network you have the option to try to pitch to the network like gimlet on spotify or Q-code media or Wondry or all those places because you know like some of the big hulu and apple tv shows that you're seeing started off as audio drama podcast or narrative podcast as well Also, I would be I I know I mentioned gaming earlier like you want to look for the gamers But you would definitely also want to be Looking out for the future as far as you know bringing your audio drama to vr You know bringing your sound design skills to vr to the metaverse Things like that because a lot of our content consumption is moving in that direction and soon like you know All of us just doing a podcast right here. We're going to be little avatars You know talking and everybody who is watching us their little avatars are going to be in our audience You know comedians are already doing that in the sandbox or wherever they're you know hosting their metaverse So that's definitely where it's headed So if you can start learning that technology now or you can just even go play in the sandbox for free for a little bit Create an avatar, you know if you want and start getting into that world You will see that you know, not only that's where we're headed. You can probably It's going to help you stay a little bit more relevant than just you know, here's another episode download it You know, here's another film in a film festival, right? If people see you regularly in the metaverse where they can interact with you It's going to be a way for you to keep your show going build your fans And also it's it's cool that you can be able to just interact with them. They can buy, you know, we have Magic in our episodes, right? They can game and buy one of our magic products and keep gaming that way So there's a whole future That your stories and your characters can live in this digital space And it's so fascinating like it's just really really going to keep growing So I would definitely Go for the next step beyond past podcasting AR VR metaverse Yeah, yeah, I'd just be before we go you said You said sandbox And that means a lot of things But is there a sandbox that you think of when you say the word sandbox? What are you sandboxes digital land? It's land in the metaverse. It's a gaming platform. So um snoop dog has his own land there Where like he sells like his little doggie metaverse avatars And you know, yeah, and his music blasts there, you know, I hopes having kids and possibly grandkids too I'm sure because it keeps you wanting to be engaged with that Those generations Well, if I if my son didn't game so much like I wouldn't have known a lot about this and if you if anyone has kids They know about minecraft and oh my god, you know about minecraft. Yes All of that. So why not get into that? It's because a lot of people like it's just gonna Keep going up. So you definitely want to be Involved and and I've always been a geek for techie stuff like this. So Um, and I just think while podcasting it's constantly constantly growing. There's over what 800 000 podcasts on apple. So and growing Yeah, and more a lot of them are inactive though, but you know, they're they're still it's still really hard to keep growing there What's next so and how can I make these characters live without putting them on tv or selling it to netflix? And then it just goes down a abyss of You know, yeah, look at the savings on makeup alone Anyway, we're talking with christina castaneda and we're talking about audio drama and again You got a question through it in the chat room But we're going to take a break right now and we'll be right back with more of christina And voiceover body shop right after these messages Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat This is virgin radio. Well, okay. We're not that innocent. There's genes for wearing and there's genes for working Dickies because I ain't here to look pretty. 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I don't know, but I really want to do this I'd really like to help you Please go to vio heroes dot com slash start That's vio heroes dot com slash start and you can take our getting started in voiceover class Which tells you everything you need to get started as a voice talent And I'd love to hold your hand along the way and help you with that journey Again vio heroes dot com slash start That's vio heroes dot com slash start This is the latin lover narrator from jane the virgin anthony mendez And you're enjoying dan and george on the voiceover body shop And we're back with christina castigate and we're talking about audio drama Not an area that you know, we really talk a lot about george. You know, no, we have this This is something completely new. We've always been talking to people about You know doing commercials and audiobooks and e-learning animation animation all this stuff This is an another area that clearly is growing So we're really thrilled they have it based on the volume of questions we're getting that obviously is true Right, we got a lot of questions. I'll let you take the first one. All right. Let's dig in The first one in the queue comes from daryl nobles and he says greetings all question for christina love audio drama Where to get coaching For otr for the otr resurgence. I think it means on the radio I guess that's what that stands or on the road depending on So I got to admit I'm completely self-taught when it comes to the uh, all of this I'm pretty much running and doing this on my own and just pretty much learning acting from my director's notes And then trying online stuff like just to learn And producing I had that produce production Experience from working actually like those long hours before Where can you get coaching honestly? I would just say there's so many discord and facebook groups There's a really great discord group run by julie hoverson They do table reads two times a week So I do I just go just to practice and I swear there's one guy who sounds just like scooby-doo He like sounds his voice is so good and he does all these like things And i'm like wow people can do like it's really like wow people can do this And then sarah golding. Um, she's in the uk she runs also um She she wants in a while her and I forget what the other guy's name is but they they host table reads as well So just join an online table read for audio drama. They're out there. You just got a search in some of those groups But facebook and discord There's usually people doing it. I practice there all the time Sometimes we do feedback on scripts and sometimes it's just to just for a little fun And it's really interesting to see the way people interpret scripts and write scripts and everything So yeah, definitely check those out Alrighty, uh, here's an interesting name. She shed critters from youtube. That's her youtube. She put her name elsewhere I'll find it. Oh, okay. All right. Then I know who this is Uh, hi, I'd love to hear christina's tips on starting an audio drama group with college students We have our own radio station and this is the kind of work that'd be great Would also love to know how to audition for you as well Oh My god, honestly gen z years get them involved in this right now. They love, you know, they're great for youtube They already have um, most likely they've probably done their own youtube videos They know how to promote on social media too. Like they're great on social media So get them involved as quickly as you can get the theater department, right? Because in audio drama You get to have so much fun with monologues. You can't really do this in film You can't really do this in a lot of other genres. There's still a fourth wall that you're kind of thinking of It's just a bit different. I don't know what you would call it in audio drama But you get to have fun with that so get the theater team involved find those actors find the director From the that department or the filmmaking department You probably have great access to writers as well English department, you know, you got it all And you can definitely build an entire strong team from there and most likely I think if you just search a few popular audio dramas From either their favorite youtubers or favorite tiktokers or whoever is relevant to them They'll be on board. I'm sure you know, you can you can actually build an awesome rock star team And get them fans for audio drama for life That would be amazing. Yeah, get the gen zers. They're great. Yeah. Now, how would someone audition for you? I mean, have you been auditioning people? I mean, you said you know, you're looking at reels and stuff like that But are you auditioning people flake for specific roles or is it gotten to there yet? Well, I do have a few open roles because we do have to shoot the next few episodes for venice magic shop Um, what else I have like a mean girl role if anyone wants to take on that I do have a form and a form link in my instagram if you just want to Add your information there To apply as well. I have, you know, google forms are your best friend So I put one there. Yeah, just click on my profile and you should see a form to Add submit whether you're a composer or a sound designer tech or actor Love it. Um terry briscoe asks. Hey christina. Does everyone pretty much stick to the script or is there a lot of improv going on as well? It depends on the actor. I find it's always like one or two actors that will improv and some won't um I've only had that happen Once in venice magic shop. It was actually dan Who went off a little bit and then I only had that happen one other time with the last magician where they They did that as well. Um, I kind of like to see if an actor's interpreting a character I kind of like to see what they do or what they have to say um And if it works it works because I you know, I also remember robin williams used to improv all the time And it would work. So if you're good at it, then I'll kind of let it slide But if we're getting carried away and we're off schedule, you know strict capricorn me likes to be on schedule So I will reel you back in and say, okay. Uh next scene But yeah, it depends on the actor depends on the scene and it depends What we're doing and if it works it depends Yeah, it just depends you got to be flexible when you do this, right? Well, you didn't stop it when I started doing it So I play I figured I was doing the right thing. It kind of worked a little bit now that I'm listening back You know, it kind of worked. Yeah Yeah, uh All right, we'll just leave it there, uh jeff holman asks How do you monetize this who buys this stuff? Well, you monetize it like you monetize anything you solve a problem for people and they buy it, right? You solve a problem you help them entertainment can or lack of entertainment could be a problem for people to solve Sometimes they just don't want to pay a lot for it My plan is to I'm self financing it through other investments that I have that are paying off very well right now sandbox but You know, it depends on it all depends on your business model. How fast you want to grow how What you want to pour money into do you want to make money for a better quality of life? Or do you want to make money to grow and make more episodes? Like you kind of have to decide that And then um, I would say this why I'm looking into gaming because there's a lot of money to be made in gaming Versus like, you know selling tiered prices on patreon and You know selling t-shirts like I wouldn't do something with low profit margins to me It just doesn't seem to make much sense. So I'm going to hold out and try to build the gaming Um, but there's there's not one way to do it people do sponsors people do merge people People monetize chat rooms like they do all kinds of things So, uh, you know, I get facebook bonuses and instagram bonuses for posting reels So I mean you never know, uh, it depends on what problem you solve for people and what you're willing to How you're willing to do it that's gonna make money and reach the right people So I would say the best thing to focus on is fans like give your fans that love like You know and make a show that's uniquely for them. I don't care about awards anymore I don't care about any of that I just care about getting that email that says you made me laugh out loud in the middle of the work day Or oh my god I was driving and I got scared and I you know, like it just made me jump Or we have one scene where this guy's like a fake profit And he's doing like this like monologue and his voice is super strong And it just like Can make the walls shake and I want people to be like, I believe you know You want people to react and just love you Like you got to focus on that first before you're really going to bring in a lot of money um You got to find the fans find out what they want solve a problem entertain them and then figure out, you know What can you offer that they'll pay for so absolutely? Uh, you get the question from Anne grist. Yes, Anne grist. Hi Uh christina. She says remember me from brian rosa's class Yes from nashville, tennessee and I remember you and your horses Hey, how does a voice actor get into an audio drama talked about this a bit now? This is so exciting ps. You look gorgeous. Thank you, Anne. It's good to see you. I I think it was 2020 when we last Uh when when she took the course so you have a good memory Um, and I hope you're still going on with your podcast. So yes, I co taught a podcasting course uh with london rail um for probably for about three years And uh, we taught people how to launch a podcast interview style podcast And um, Anne is a very talented voiceover artist and yes, she is and um, I would say if you're going to get into audio drama Find the watering hole find where all the audio drama people that are losing their minds going crazy like me um, where we ask questions to each other facebook groups, uh, discord chats go to those table reads and um, Follow them on social media engage in their comments and uh get on their radar So that way when you go and try to audition they kind of know that you're a fan or they know that you like their work and stuff and then um a lot of these Sarah golding who I mentioned before she has a newsletter called fiction podcast weekly and they list auditions As well, and I know I um buying some ads in there when I launch uh venice magic shop So you definitely want to be like You know where they're where the inside information is and she's a great resource for that Um, it's the fiction podcast weekly newsletter. She's really great with a lot of everything of all about audio drama and I learned so much from her, but yeah, um Chris gregory who I mentioned earlier who who's the one who's I've learned everything from as well I've learned so much from him. Uh, he has sometimes open calls for actors as well and a lot of um Producers or people who are indie and creating like us will sometimes put posts for open calls So just keep an eye out for that But yeah, go to the watering hole go where they are Sometimes we go on those voice platforms But not very much like voice bunny or one two three voice crafters or whatever. We just get so much spam So we tend to stay off of those So if you're paying for those platforms, uh, that might be something to think about you Probably would be good just engaging with your favorite podcast. So Excellent. Thank you for that. No, we need more people to say that That those are a waste of money and time. Oh, really you guys pay. I thought we paid. No. No, no No, we tell people to stop using those platforms got off of those like 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah Anyway, George has a question here. So I'm gonna ask it since it was my turn Says have you ventured into spatial audio such as at most mixers? So in other words lots of you know the adding Audio dimension to to your sort of vr for audio. Yeah Oh, no, actually, I haven't I can bear I barely do my own sound design Which I'm getting better at but no, I haven't ventured in there. No, but I will check that out Sounds like you need some help. Oh, I'm new to it too. I I heard a cute code media podcast that was I was I heard about it for something and they were like you should take a listen to what this sounds like And the sound design was amazing Absolutely amazing, but that's a whole another level of complexity that You know, you don't want to get into that unless someone lands in your lap Who says this is what I do and I love what you do and I want to do this for you Otherwise It's a it's a beast. It is. Yeah Yeah, uh, I you'd be surprised the production quality that you can churn out It's it's better than you often think Yeah, um, but yeah, I will say there are yeah, gimlet same thing. I'm like, wow, how do they do this It's like watching a video on your phone versus a big screen camera, you know big screen movie Yes, yeah, there's nothing to it If you know if you know these pck Uh douglas voice guy you get this one. Okay Uh details without naming names, obviously What are some of the things that you sent people home for? Oh just because I might have missed this, uh, but uh Was there anything that you know, just I guess it's a cautionary tale Just how to how to be prepared and be great on on on your sound set It was just it was it had nothing to do with the sound it had it was purely attitude You know the complaining from the beginning was a bit of a red flag And you know it's such a long day when you do a shoot and especially you're straining your voice to you So, you know, it's it's tiring for everybody because we had like an eight hour day And even though he wasn't even going to be there the whole eight hours first on you get on your complaining Then you tell me you haven't even read the script. You don't even know anything about your character You know, you're the reason why we have to do multiple takes because you're not prepared We have a three take rule that we started back with the last magician And yeah, and it's like come prepared and it was slowing up our day and then Just disrespectful to me and to uh, you know, I felt like he was just being an overall problem And I was like, I don't care how talented you are go home And I said, you know what we're good for the day your your work is done here. I'll pay you out Thank you. Good luck. Goodbye And I I just I I just want to let you know like you cannot be disrespectful I don't care how good you are you will not be disrespectful to anybody Because I'm responsible for everybody's work environment too as well And I want it to be I want you to come back. I want you to enjoy what you do And I want you to focus on your character what you came here for any kind of tension that makes everything weird It's just awful. So yeah, the work ethic is super important and the work attitude So he had a part two and that was how are the recordings actually set up? Are they these are online or do you always have people come physically into the studio and What more can you tell us about gear? Equipment a little bit of both right So if I if I see that you have good Sound quality Then we can do it online through clean feed or whatever we're going to use to record But we do it together If someone only has a few lines or you know, and they just can't make it and they need to record remotely then we can But I do love it when people come into the studio because first off we get content We get stuff for social media I get to meet them. I order tacos and catering. It's a great day. You know, it's fun. We go to Burbank I get to With the last magician it helped a lot to look each other in the eyes and plus when you have a lot of physical action Like we had a killing scene, you know stabbing choking things like that wonderful stuff, right? So it helped to really be in that room now if you're just doing a few lines and it's Um, it's not an action intensive climactic scene. Then yeah, probably you can do it remotely But I also just loving love to be able to have stuff that we can post on instagram have stuff that we can post on tiktok So we can promote promote promote as well, so It depends on the role it depends on the actor. So Um, so yeah Well, Christina, I I'm so excited that we had you on this was we had a great audience participation tonight This is a fascinating subject if they want to get a hold of you Where can they find you? You can find me on instagram at christina with two a's cast on yada. Um, you can also check me out apple spotify The savvy creative podcast we have the last magician and coming soon is venice magic shop starring dan lennard as well And you can hear uh all of our actors and talents you will get to hear it's our first time doing magical creatures like mermaids and uh other Fun, uh creatures as well. So, uh, we'll be launching that very very soon Uh, so check us out apple spotify itunes wherever you uh listen to podcast Excellent. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. This is this has been fabulous And it's been a great education for for our viewers everywhere. So good luck with that and uh, we will see you again very soon All right. Thank you for having me guys. Welcome. Bye everybody All right. All right. Well, george and i'll be right back and wrap things up get ready for tech talk right after this This is bill ratner and you're enjoying voiceover body shop with dan lennard and george widham v obs dot tv In these modern times every business needs a website when you need a website for your voice acting business There's only one place to go like the name says voice actor websites dot com Their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept To live online in a much shorter time when you contact voice actor websites dot com Their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are They work with you to highlight what you do Then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get the big picture of who you are And how your voice is the one for them plus voice actor websites dot com has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voice over career flourish Don't try it yourself. Go with the pros voice actor websites dot com where your via website shouldn't be a pain in the You know what? Hi, this is bill farmer and you are watching voiceover body shop. It's great Did it by itself? Hey, that's okay. That was the spot for source connect I'm sure everybody on the show has seen and heard me talk about source connect enough times by now but Check out source elements if you'd like to get a demo of source connect and start using it today And I'll start to use this Yeah, my razor blade Anyway, that's funny. All right Well Another hour has gone by now. That was interesting No, I know we I keep thinking. Oh, we've talked to everybody in voiceover. We've talked to no We have another thing and it's a whole new You know thing that It's a it's a genre of interest and it's gaining this momentum And if you're not paying attention It might pass you by and you could be the next big thing Right in that genre of voiceover. So I was able to jump into it. It was a lot of fun I didn't know anything about sandbox boy. I'm really feeling my age. Oh god. Yeah, right? Yeah, and and then there's discord Which my sign checkup is I do actually make use of discord for a couple things But the sandbox vr. This is a physical thing you physically go To a location there's one in woodland hills And you strap it on with your friends and you actually Play in this virtual sandbox together. I I was I knew nothing about it So you better believe I'm gonna be trying this. I I I think might be something we could have fun with Anyway, uh, let's see here Next week on this very show which we're about to do if you want to hang out Live while we do it because you can be interactive with that is tech talk number 78 Believe it or don't that's right. It's coming. Yeah, and then the following week Well, the messes and I are heading to France for 10 days. So all right So we can't do a show for a couple of weeks But you know, this is uh tech talk 78. This is episode 228 of voiceover body shop So if you miss something somewhere over the past five six years, you can go back and find it It's all there on our website and on the facebook page. Just go back and oh that looks like an interesting topic Or somebody interesting they talk to go check it out So, uh, plus we're also going to be running a an interview we did today Which is we're going to talk a little bit about on tech talk. So that that'll be really cool Who are our donors of the week? Well, we've got several but i'm going to take my opportunity. Oh, you've got a coupon. You've got a coupon code I finally made a coupon code for v obs viewers So if you're if you've been on the fence about doing a tech support session with george the tech myself um I'm offering you a discount finally You can use this coupon for your next service and you will get 20 off whatever your next booking is and that counts for webinars that we do live And any bookings that you do through this through the website booked scheduled services It doesn't work on the stacks and sound checks. It's technical. It's annoying. Sorry But it works on the other stuff. So anyway, try that out v obs fan 22 is the coupon code. Thanks, Dan. Okay, right. Oh, and by the way, we'll be back Live with our next show on may 23rd may 23rd. Got it. 23rd. Okay. Make sure you're here putting that in my calendar Okay, no Who are our donors of the week? Well, we'll start off with robert ledham steven chandler kasey clack jonathan grant thomas pinto shelly avaleno patty gibbons rob rider Greg thomas a doctor voice ant land productions. Thank you. Welcome ride. Yes, sir and martha con our buddy Alrighty. Hey, join our mailing list that way. You know what's going on I got to send out more stuff on the mailing list Uh, and you'll see who our next guest is and what we're doing and if there's any special announcements We'll throw it on there. We also need to thank our amazing sponsors harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra Soros elements bio heroes.com voice actor websites.com and jmc demos Our thanks to jeff holman in the chat room getting all those questions to us. Thank you Sumer lino another spectacular job at Directing this show. Thank you through all this craziness and of course lee pennie for Just being lee pennie. I mean, what do what does he need to be doing other than be himself? Well, that's going to do it for this segment of voiceover body shop Again, stay tuned for tech talk if you're watching live because that's where the fun is But you know, it's not an easy business We're here to help you out With all the ins and out of the voiceover business whether it be with you know other talents that are showing What they're doing and how it's done or if it has to do with technical You know, this is the place to come in the meantime The bottom line is if it sounds good It is good I'm jam Leonard and i'm george widdum and this is voiceover body shop or vio b as See a little bit Would you would you like a a lens clean a real one a real lens cloth a real lens cloth. Thank you Yeah, I mean the air gets pretty polluted in here from just me talking No, this is working out really well good, but now you're way out of focus Yeah, I knew that was gonna happen If you can do it more easily, yeah Very touchy focus, isn't it? Can I get a picture of george? Go to a single on me No, that's me the other guy the other way No Back the other way there you go closer Closer closer Good All right, it's a lot better now. Thank you. You're quite welcome. All right. Nice shirt, by the way It's a little snug Which is why you're slouching right now Okay, let's rack it up for tech talk and what are we gonna talk about tonight? We'll figure out something Okay, hold on a second. What is sue saying? So if Dan is not on camera Let's see Oh, if Dan is not on the camera, then you don't hear george at all So I have oh, she can't do a solo of me I have to do a solo shot, but dan can't chat when that happens. Okay. Did I say something? Okay, well Scissor is there a problem sue or are we good thumbs up? Should we do anything differently? She's typing You can talk sue We're not we're not really. Yeah, really We're doing a new thing tonight where my laptop is running stream yard and I have a camera plugged into it All right, so what are we to do Dan different? Here's the deal When I was doing when you were doing source connect no one could hear you Oh, okay. So that's why I just threw the bumper on so okay got you So what I have to do, which I didn't realize that your audio is connected through dan's connection. It is it is So what I have to do is just do the solo shot not the camera shot I can't remove dan. I have to keep dan in it, but I can just hit the solo shot. So anyway, okay That's a little at least you found you found a workaround because we couldn't figure that out a while ago Okay, all right. Thank you. We'll fly in we'll we'll have to have dan fly in my spot from this second half Okay, I just beat my mic. That's all. Okay. All right. No biggie. Okay. Let's roll it And you're ready five four three Hey, it's time for voiceover body shop tech talk number 78 You mean there's still new tech to talk about dan. It's like it it never ends Always something new here on voiceover body shop And we got lots of cool stuff to talk about tonight if you've got a question for us about voiceover technology You know something that's way over your head or way under your head If if there's something you want to know about technology about how to record properly All the things that go into trying to record your audio throw your question in the chat room. We will be thrilled thrilled to ask to answer your question and Get you the right answer. So that's really important. So go into the chat room and go do that Anyway, we're gonna talk we've got an interview tonight Or at least a teaser of an interview a good eight minutes of the interview. It's a very long interview Yeah, but but it's about a studio. It's a studio log You're gonna learn about what went into designing and building a very Pretty high impressive home studio. I just like it because he has a bathroom Anyway All that and more on voiceover body shop coming up right now. It's time for tech talk From the outer reaches they came Bearing the knowledge of what it takes to properly record your voice over audio And together from the center of the vio universe, they bring it to you now George widows the engineer to the vio stars A virginia tech grad with the skills to build set up and maintain the professional vio studios of the biggest names in vio today and you Dan Leonard the voiceover home studio master A professional voice talent with the knowledge and experience to help you create a professional sounding home vio studio And each week they allow you into their world making the complex simple Debunking the myths of what it takes to create great sounding audio Answering your questions showing you the latest and greatest in vio tech and having a dandy time doing it Welcome to voice over body shop tech talk Voice over body shop tech talk is brought to you by voice over essentials.com home of harlin hogan signature products source elements remote studio connections for everyone voice actor websites.com where your vio website isn't a pain in the butt vioheroes.com become a hero to your clients with award-winning voice over training jay michael collins demos when quality matters and voice over extra your daily resource for vio success And now live to drive from their super secret clubhouse and studio in sherman oaks california Here are the guys Well, hello there i'm dan Leonard and i'm george wittem and this is voice over body shop or vio b s tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk So now i got to put holman's thing on this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So i'll slide it into you. Thank you That would help a whole lot. Well, we're here to talk about home voice over studios And you know, I was thinking about this the other day george that You know, there's a lot of people trying to get into voice over and and we talk to them every day now more than ever More more than ever, you know last week we were talking about audio drama Now we're gonna have all these people wanting to get into audio drama um And people don't understand The basic the simple little basic stuff that allows us to be voice actors online and that's the ability To record properly It's not as hard as it seems But people tend tend to think that i've got to get the most expensive microphone I've got to get the most expensive booth. I've got to spend Thousands and thousands of dollars to make myself Sound great Well, we'll tell you the idea is not to make you sound great It's to make you sound like you and nothing else because You know, the most important thing is that if Everybody keeps talking about broadcast quality and what is broadcast quality? Well, it doesn't mean anything anymore It simply means that your audio doesn't sound bad means your audio is good enough to get hired Right exactly, you know, and if nobody's complaining it's broadcast quality, right, you know, essentially You know, there's the idea that there's your voice and then there's everything else You want to eliminate the everything else Which is, you know outside noise reflection of your voice The sound of your computer fan all those sorts of things you can get rid of that But It's more important that you physically set up your environment right and you know how to use your equipment And another point, you know, you don't buy great equipment to get work you work to get great equipment And once you have any equipment if you need to know how to use it There's only a couple places you can go. I mean some people can tell you that it's like, okay. Well You know, you could use this great mic or you could use this, you know channel strip and you know Everybody's an expert in one studio their own George and I have literally been doing this Over 30 years combined. We've seen Everything You know, at least we think we've I mean at least we think we've seen everything until we see something new When they start saying we need to use record voice actors with a five channel microphone array We'll know things are changing. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, and I'm sure it's done somewhere for some disney film or something But yeah, if you want real proper instruction on how to do it Right, you got to talk to the guys that actually know it inside out backwards upside down and sideways And that would be mr. Woodham and myself And we don't say it because we're egotistical. We say it because This is what we do And we know what it's supposed to sound like the acronym whistle What it's supposed to sound like like right So if you would like to work with mr. Woodham who has an extensive website and lots of videos and lots of stuff Where would they go? They would go over to george the.tech And if you're booking a service Use my coupon code v obs fan 2020 for 20 off That will get you a discount on anything that's 22 2022 thank you I've ruined a couple of checks already. I appreciate 2022 and you get 20 off and that is uh going to work for webinars anything that's scheduled webinars support sessions things like that, but that's all over at george the.tech and All of our services are there. Yes, it's a bit of a mess. It's a very wordy website Just take your time look through the menu and if you go. Hi my eyes are rolling There's too many. Uh, don't worry too many options. Just contact us and we'll steer you In the right direction for what service that you might need so don't freak out, okay But if you have a different idea about tech support, maybe you want to try my buddy That's him over there dan. Oh, yeah over at home voiceover studio.com and you know I love working with people who like to ask lots of questions Because I ask even more uh, it's to me. It's very very important You know just being a voice actor itself is pretty difficult because you gotta be a good voice actor And then you have to learn how to record properly and all those sorts of things But mostly I ask how does this affect your lifestyle? How can we create a space that is not going to interfere with the rest of your life? Because it is going to be your private space to go do what you need to do to be a voice actor And so I ask a lot of questions like that. Where is the best place to record in your home or your apartment? Or your backyard? I've done it. I've done it. So it can be done back there All you have to do is contact me if you have a studio set up And you want a consultation on on how to use it better First I need to hear what it sounds like and I have my specimen collection cup over at home voiceover studio.com If you scroll to the bottom of the page, it'll soon be at the top of the page We're almost ready to go live with that But you click on that it's a dropbox and for $25 I will be happy to do a very thorough analysis of your audio If there are shortcomings to it. If there are problems, I will explain them If it sounds great, I'm going to say sounds great You know, uh, but of course you can you can always ask follow-up questions on that as well Which is it's really important. So go on over to home voiceover studio.com and contact me there Okay, it's time for you know and in in progress George's tech update for this. I'm always finding more. I'm like, oh, I should talk about that. I don't want to forget that But but first we we had we had a little we had We actually did a package this afternoon. We did on location No less we got to head over to a client of mine ben pronsky Who runs the voice? Correct me if I say voice actors network actors network As a voice actor of his own right Who designed uh with I helped design a uh a studio into his garage, but it has some particular Issues that we had to sort out. So we shot a very long video a long interview I cut together a short version of it To show you guys right now and if you want to see the full thing later It's going to be on my website and it will link it on to the facebook and For for for v obs. So you don't miss the the long cut. But anyway, so let's check out that little package It should be sitting there ready to go v obs I am at a client studio that I've worked with for Mm a couple of years now to get the perfect home studio situation built And perhaps a less than perfect location and maybe in a minute you'll see what I mean So you see there's a bit of a problem with this location just a bit A little airline like southwest But it doesn't matter now right ben not at all not at all It's a beautiful thing. That's nothing the freight airliners are the worst like the fedex and stuff Fedex and yeah fedex and ups 730 every day. Yeah, right right after jeopardy. I have southwest schedule memorized There's a two-car garage, right a two-car garage just a standard two-car garage Come on in. Let's take a look It's really comfy in here This is an agu In the booth doing what he does Can you hear me? How about I give you some venom? Peter Parker I will destroy you Peter These doors were custom made for the space overseas Yeah, in Indonesia in Indonesia. So only the finest teak right Look at that. Look at that air gap. That's freaking crazy That's a one and a half inch gap all the way around and that was the big thing is you know, what we learned was The level of low and frequency that we were dealing with we had to truly decouple and oh, yeah So this is this is a completely decouple construction that's channel strips and all that Technically the only coupling would be this piece of concrete right here, right? This is it's not a cut slab, which some studios do Concrete doesn't really carry sound sound very well. It's really low low low low stuff So and then all of this is hardwired except for my bluetooth mouse So it's all connected directly to ethernet on the outside of the of the booth. Yeah hardwired is the way to go Yeah And this size triad orbit was perfect for it because this the booth is only five by six So it's not a huge booth. No, it's a good size. It'll fit two people for a chair I've been doing some podcast recording people are using the space to do podcasts in here And it's comfortable with two tall chairs and I've got the the 40 73 directional here and I've got the tlm 103 so Yeah Everything was custom made obviously to fit in the space the table was cut everything was drawn and Measured and agonized over every square inch of this place was agonized over The big thing is that instead of just going with standard like 24 by panels Your recommendation george was to just just cover the walls with panels and like this one for example is just one large panel with Ronald installation, you know and uh You know and then the other big thing obviously is that we have An erv system in the closet outside that's pumping fresh air from outside into this space So we have the central air and in addition we have the erv that's pumping fresh air in which is That's a big deal. Not everybody in Milwaukee. Most studios don't do that. Yeah, and not especially like a quote-unquote home studio This is definitely like This is beyond the home studio. This is definitely next level. Well, I mean, but you can sit in here and work comfortably for hours I do I do I mean the majority of my work is group adr where you're doing a movie for eight hours You know, so you're literally sitting in the booth for you know hours on end But the you know The big difference was it wasn't just for personal use because of voice actors network I wanted to be able to host like a workout group or a class here And that was sort of the original purpose. But then when the pandemic hit it was like, oh, right Right Yeah, so we got four inches four inches here We have is it four inches on this is this is actually three three and a half. This is six Oh, we got six on the ceiling. I said six. Yeah That's awesome. Yeah Is all rock wall or all rock wall? Yep. Is that wall so three three and a half? Is that the same as this? Yeah, all these are three and a half on the walls and the ceiling cloud is Is the uh, the six inch Very nice, but I'll tell you what come in here and close both these doors Is that door? Don't think I've been in a room this quiet. All we can hear is our Tintiness Yeah, it's it's really loud in here as a matter of fact Yeah, yeah, yeah Are you gonna play some Did you just did you just watch me talking to the headphones like a microphone? Did everybody see that? I have it on this one. I make sure I don't know if your hearing is place play some music so we can hear if there's any bleed Okay, he is I think he's blasting some star wars right now Yeah, it's I I know it's blasting I can tell I'm looking at the view meter on the Apollo and it is cranked. It is like That's great. Wow That is good, man So we were talking a little bit earlier. How long ago did the project start in earnest where you were like, okay? I got a team we're ready to go. I paid a deposit. How long ago was that? We broke ground in October of 20 We filed for the permits in November 19 and it took almost a year to get the permits from the city of Burbank No, it's better than the city of los angeles. Yeah, right, right But then obviously when the pandemic hit it slowed everything down as far as the processing time and then we started to run into stuff with the contractor where supplies weren't available or You know a lot of that stuff started to rear its ugly head Uh, but yeah, October of 20 is when we actually started the construction and got things underway So and we were bare bones. So Yeah, it wasn't breaking ground It was sledgehammering and sledgehammering there was trenching because we had all the utilities because of what it's not just a the studio Where it's a it's a An ad you an alternate dwelling unit and through the city if you're going to have gas water Electric they had to do the trenching. We had to get you know the approval process along that way So um the the studio the booth was kind of a separate entity So so adu was a new thing that didn't start much longer before I mean it was pretty new before you Chose to go the adu route, right? Yeah, which is all about a certain type of permitting I guess to allow you to have more Residential square feet on your lot than normally permitted so that we can get more housing in los angeles Yeah, that was it is because of the housing crisis They started to sort of expedite the process of permitting so that uh, you know There's more mother-in-laws living in the back house. I guess Instead of in the house with you, which is you know in florida All right. Yeah, so that that was the the little package we cut today It goes on for a lot longer than that if you really want to know kind of the the nitty gritty Of what went into designing and building this space Uh, check out the video. We'll we'll get the I'll get a final cut of that In the next couple of days, it'll go up on the My youtube channel and we'll have it up on the v obs Socials so you can't miss it But anyway, that was that was fun and I was glad dan could join in it was that made it even more fun It was you know, and we got to have lunch too, but that's besides the point But yeah, it was nice to have been another to invite us in there The thing is is there's so many details that went into it And and the idea is is you don't build this to get work You work to get something like that and he's been very successful and uh and making a living doing voiceover So it was essential, but you don't build something like that because you want to do it You build it because you're doing yeah later. He mentioned he's been in the business On some level 17 18 years, but as a full-time voice actor About eight years. Yeah, so there you have it. There you have it. All right another news I don't have a ton of news But a couple a couple of things the apple max studio computer that I was obsessing about when it came out And then I realized after reading reviews talking to people that you know in facebook like uh I have a facebook group called mac and ios for vo I posted about it there saying hey, how's it going? Can you hear the fan because I saw some youtuber probably trying to get clicks posting audio of the noisy fan, right? And the bottom line was that anybody that's going to be using it for anything that we in our world are going is going to do Will make the keep the fans running at such a low speed You will have no clue that are even on like that's what everybody is saying the fans are essentially silent um if you are doing uh heavy heavy duty uh Really heavy duty video production or rendering of photo photogrammetry heavy duty stuff Maybe then the fans might be audible, but my my contact said yeah, we were trying and we were doing some 4k You know uncompressed video editing and we thought we were going to make it break a sweat Not not even close It's a seriously seriously powerful computer I still contend that any of you who watch the show were into voice over and really just want your next studio computer The mac mini m1 is with and I would get the 16 gigs of ram The memory upgrade which you have to wait a little while to get that. It's absolutely worth Waiting for that extra extra bit of memory. It does help You're going to be very happy mine and dan as well have we've just had excellent experiences Very quiet computers drama free. So anyway, if you get the studio, it's bragging rights, right? And if you wait until june or I think it's uh, that's the next worldwide developers conference and you buy the whatever the next mac pro is Well, touch you um Yeah, and it takes up a little bit more space than a than a mac mini. It's like a double stack triple stack orio version of the mac mini Right same exact footprint um other things universal audio has realized that there's a bigger market out there for people that don't want to buy the hardware And just want to use any old audio interface So they finally decided that they'll license their plugins without their hardware and it's called spark Who is this for? Most but not most of you not really But um, if you do if you're already bought into the apollo sphere a universal audio uad plugin world an api vision channel strip Or different plugins that you rely on your for your sound as part of your life Then maybe you want spark so that you can take your say your mic port pro on the road A little tiny mic port pro instead of a big old apollo And still have the same plugin chain with you. Okay, that's who it's for It's really not that big a deal But it's kind of the thing that's created a little bit of a buzz in the universal audio Users groups, so I thought you guys should know about it another plugin news and the last thing is uh, we did an interview on the pro audio suite podcast of um, a company called gpu audio and their website is gpu.audio And this is the geekiest of the geeky stuff, right? So this is creating platforms for recording and processing audio that do all the processing on the gpu Not the cpu the cpu is what's always done that work on all of our computers But there's all these extra parts on the computer whose job is typically for graphics So these guys are saying what about taking advantage all that hardware and putting it to use for audio So it's very bleeding edge It's really and right now it's really a pc platform thing But what they're saying is you could have a pc in your studio. That's like a server That's where all the processing happens and it could be plugged into your computer over a network And you can send audio into it and it does it incredibly low latency like Real time and you can do incredibly heavy duty work So this is really bleeding edge I thought I would bring it up because we talked about it on the podcast and it was just Really interesting to hear about but anybody any of you that's it's you know, as fancy as tickled By the bleeding edge extremely geeky stuff Go check out gpu dot audio One of the things I see them being able to do eventually is you could have an audio interface Like one of these and hit a button and the noise floor goes away like just goes away Non-issue the processing is happening all inside a gpu chip and that it's no latency It's like the magic button. That's what's going to be happening. I think you know, we're going to see On the horizon and it's going to it's clearly going to allow you to record voice over or any audio Really almost anywhere. So it's going to be interesting. See what comes. Yeah. Well, it was interesting being over at Ben's place One because man those planes are allowed as they go over there. Why why anyone would put You know live there Why because they got the house for a great price. It's a great. It's a bargain of a place and hey, I don't own a house Hey You know, I I'm I'm still rented. So It's pretty odd. I mean, I thought he was crazy too. Believe me every zoom meeting we'd have and we'd be talking He'd be sitting in that empty garage, you know, and we We were interrupted every few minutes. Yeah. Yeah. No, it came out. Okay. Yeah, and I was I was pretty impressed People just need to understand that one quick comment The difference between I wonder how many times I've said this between sound proofing And acoustical treatment. They are two Different physical things The next person that says I'm going to get some soundproof foam. I am going to I'm going to be nice to them, but I I may use that soundproof foam to keep them from saying anything You know, we'll just put that in your mind the way you will it The stuff does not keep sound out Soundproofing is what ben did in that place, which was Really expensive, but it was worth it because of where he was and the amount of work that he does and so I mean it would cost him a lot more money to move that house or buy a house of an equivalent amount of square footage The amount of space in the garage and pick a quiet neighborhood further from the air It would have cost a hell of a lot more than probably he's spent To build it. So in the end, he might have been winning. Yeah, one thing's for sure. He's never moving He's gonna be there for a while Anyway, we if you got a question for us on your home voiceover studio or just something in general about that throw it in the chat room And jeff homo to get that to us and we will answer your questions Right after this break where you can hear from our wonderful sponsors here on voiceover body shop So don't go away. We'll be right back You're still watching vlbs And now a word from harlin hogan and voiceover essentials dot com Has this ever happened to you? embarrassing The washers on these booms. Ah, they're not so great at holding up your expensive microphone And here's the answer the adjustable boom stop is great easy to attach and works like a charm No more droopy mic. It's simple ingenious and infinitely adjustable The padded non-slip pouch fits almost any size boom arm unique double loop webbing system for unlimited angle of the downstrap Works with tripod and solid round bases light gray webbing lets you mark and repeat stand settings for each performer It's three ounces of protection for your expensive microphone with free standard shipping in the continental us Hold up your mic with the abs adjustable boom stop It's that time of the show where we thank our lovely wonderful amazing sponsors Source elements the creators of source connect and a growing suite of Audio production tools that allow producers to work remotely from their clients and their talent All over the world and you'll hear so many new technologies coming out right now that work on web browsers and have these You know clever cute names. I'm telling you Those are all great and they're used all the time for producing podcasts and stuff But the jobs that actually are likely going to be paying you the big money Are generally using things like and specifically Source connect because it is a tool that allows the production to flow and run the way they are accustomed to The audio flows from your mic over the internet Straight into the timeline of pro tools and the engineer gets to work edit do takes Uh, they get to pipe in direction from the from the director Have the client listen in make an edit Get approval it all happens real time and that's why source connect is part of a lot of the biggest and best paying production so If you feel like you're ready to be playing at that level and you're seeing that word source connect pop up more and more often on scripts It's time head over to source dash elements calm And get yourself a 15 day free trial and if you need help getting it set up george the dot tech slash sc Where i've got tutorials tips instructions and services to get you up and running more easily Anyway, thanks for listening. Let's get to those tech questions right after this Well, hello there I bet you weren't expecting to hear some big voiced announcer guy on your new orientation training for snapchat. Were you? This is virgin radio Well, okay, we're not that innocent. There's genes for wearing and there's genes for working Dickies because I ain't here to look pretty. She's a champion of progressive values A leader for california and a voice for america. It's smart. It's a phone. It's a smartphone But it's so much more. It's a the files are ready. Don't forget to pick up the eggs What time is hockey practice check out this song. It's the end of the road for ring When hope is lost the i8 from bmw Who said saving the planet couldn't be stylish? Hey, it's j michael collins. I bet you think i'm gonna try and sell you a demo now, huh? I think they speak for themselves, but I will give you my email. It's j michael at jmc voiceover dot com Now if they will stop waxing this mustache for a minute, we'll get back to the show And we're back here on voice super great job on that spot. I you know, I Had look over so I want that I want that do that. It's great at it right in the house Yeah, it's nice to have your own in-house production staff here. You know those sorts of things Anyway, again if you've got a question about your home voiceover studio, you know acoustics equipment How to use the stuff you've got or how not to use it or should you buy more? Yeah, should you buy more? You know, I mean we talk about that. Yeah, you could buy this you could buy that You know my opinion is always like what's the best microphone for voiceover? Probably the one you got unless you got something it really sucks. It's some 70 Anyway, not that we don't have these microphones, but we use them to just demonstrate how bad they are for voices Somebody sent me a clip. She's like, can you master this for for an audiobook? I said I can I can I know you're the audio is done. I'll make it work. But man It's so noisy and they're like, let me guess she didn't even tell me what the interface was It was an sm7b. She didn't mention the interface and I said I can tell you're using a scarlet And she wrote me back. She was using a scarlet probably said at 12 o'clock You know, it was just like the noise level wasn't the hiss was insane. So please please use the right care everybody Yeah, don't use those dynamics anyways if you got a question throw it in the chat room right the second and George and I will answer that question We promise if you're watching live if you're not watching live, you missed your opportunity Anyway, let's start off with uh mike max goldberg Go Uh, he says I realize there's a bit of ambiguity regarding the focus right interfaces But just wondering is there a noticeable difference between the first generation and the third generation the current Scarlet interfaces Great though. Thanks. It's a great show. Thanks for doing what you do guys. Thanks. Well, we appreciate that You know, the scarlets have been around forever. Is that which one are you holding up? This is the first gen That's a first. I think it's the first gen. It might be it might be a second Let's I think that's the first gen You know the difference the only way I can tell the difference is is the knob knurled or smooth It is the big knob. The big knob is smooth. So it's a first gen. This is a first gen So so when you took that as service dan, did you find it to be a poorly performing unit that didn't sound good? No, because this is the unit we used for audio on the show for a good long time Yeah, we did actually And so if you plugged it in today, it would still work. It would still function fine So I think there's actually things I prefer about the first gen I like that it has actual physical switches that when you turn them on stay in that position Right, you know the new one has a fan and fan and power push button that you have to push And engage and if you forget it will be off Yes, there is a fix for that a lot of people don't know if you install the drivers for mac There is a console thing that you can open and permanently set the fan and power on So that is possible, but still Software buttons instead of physical switches. Okay, so I like that when you turn something on it stays on permanently So I like that about the older scarlet, but the new scarlet is going to have better hide the headphone level output A little bit more gain That's about it, right? Well, I mean, let's it's got the it's got the new one's got the air button the air which is almost never No one seems to be of help. It's it's it's a loop back Essentially, so you can play stuff off of your computer back out towards the one I'm thinking of is the air button That's like a tone button when you press it. It makes it Brighter sounding really that's another thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but it's Nobody needs that nobody It's got a monitor button on it to turn monitoring on off the old one has a switch I I have not, you know seen a really solid shootout like saying a b compare them But um, if you've already got a first gen and it's still working without a hitch without a glitch Day in day out and you have no complaints about the noise Sound quality or anything else? I seriously doubt you're gonna find an advantage to use the new one if you're gonna buy something new Go upstream go to um Uh, you know the next kind of level I like the SSL to I think that's a nice up step from this one Um, yeah a lot of people are using that. What do you think is a good level up from the scarlet series? I was gonna say the SSL to I have not tried it myself I mean, I mean we did that I have one now. I should I'll bring it next time I would like I would like to try that You know, we did the shoot out a couple years ago and we replayed it once and to me it was like As long as it's over a hundred and twenty dollars It's probably okay. There are ones that really suck Uh The real low end barringers now barringer makes great stuff for live audience. I'm good stuff But they're this low and euphoria stuff is a little Noisy. Yeah, it's really noisy and uh, so You know, if you stick with the good stuff the yamaha The ag3 or the ag the ago3 or the steinberg which is their same thing. Yeah, right and uh, you know And then there's the mic port pro which our good friend debbie dairyberry just dropped off here and I just do it It's in this box right here. Yeah uh, and um You know that one works great and she loved it because it had a limiter and because she does animation She has to Yell at certain times and as long as you have a limiter It's a safety net it worked and it worked really well for her. So it's a safety now. So she bought one Yeah, so I appreciate you lending that to me so I could lend it to her so she could decide to buy one Are you paying attention mike goodman? We have an opening for a sponsor on the show Could fit right in here. Um, anyway Anyway, yeah, so yeah, we like the ones We definitely are going to recommend the ones that have the least complex drivers Don't have a lot of console software blah blah blah plug it in and set the gain and Those are the could be the things that you're gonna mainly hear us recommend. So absolutely. Yeah All right bc has a question George You mentioned echo cell versus other absorption products requiring gloves Does orlex foam require gloves or is it just my hands that get itchy handling it? I You know, I I've never gotten itchy handling. It depends on what you've been Laying your audio our orlex and I I mean if you're talking about actual orlex brand foam Um, I'd seriously doubt I mean if you get itch if If your hands get itchy then you definitely have some kind of a possible Allergy allergy reaction to Something in that I yeah, I've never seen that happen really. Yeah, um It happens with fiberglass and rock wool Definitely you do not want to handle a rock wool or fiberglass Or any of that spun mineral stuff without gloves. I wear I wear my flight suit with gloves and taped on Yeah, and a mask when I work with that stuff. Yeah, yeah, you definitely do not if you use any of that stuff seal it up really well if you're using The cotton based stuff you're home free that stuff has zero Toxins and you can you can sleep on it. I mean it's or sleep in it But if it's made out of glass or minerals you do not want to really handle it very much. So Um eco cell is is just another eco. It's a new eco friendly version of like a like a Spiberglass I don't think it necessarily means that you don't want to wear gloves Always always follow the ins you know the guidelines of the manufacturer If they say gloves and mask and matte and goggles then Definitely do that. Yeah Then he asks are there air quality issues with orelex and other products other health issues to be aware of Thanks. Well, yeah, I mean now we've we've dealt With off-gassing say with moving blankets sometimes And that seems to be an issue But some yeah, some of them have like, you know, they're made out of very synthetic product, you know that has Floor carbons or some kind of you know Synthetics and it can be stinky. Yeah, you know some of the blankets. So keep that in mind I always when I'm reading reviews of them. I'm reading people's comments saying it's smelly Or stinky. Yeah, you can air them out. You can wash them in the washing machine Actually, believe it or not. Take your move. Take your freshly purchased blankets rich I'm giving rich green credit for this one. Take them to the laundromat. Put them in that huge Heavy be washer and wash them. I don't know if I would do that with acoustical foam No, I don't think that'd be good. I don't think it would hold up to that. No, no But but um the the the best quality products are very low VOC Or no VOC, which is the volatile organic compounds And uh, you're gonna have very little issues with almost any of the modern Products coming out and the stuff that's made with cotton has none of it. The stuff made out of pet The plastic recycled that actually ends up looking like felt Has absolutely no vocs and any odor and you can handle it. It's great stuff. So We're getting into a post Chemical VOC world or you know, at least a post off-gassing smelly world. Thankfully. So that's nice to see um Other than that just yeah, read read the package Google it. Um, find what the results are or at least what people are saying Who own the product and if you have any questions, obviously reach out to us about specific products Absolutely All righty, uh tj met the capo voiceover just wanted to say thanks to dan and george for helping me with sound issues I'm having from a few weeks back taking your advice and getting the at for the 2035 Oh, great. Okay Problem solved. It's it's an awesome awesome value Microphone it really it really is it's never I have never heard one sound bad Let's just put it that way It may not be the best mic you can buy But for the price it is an it is an excellent value. So I'm glad you Found it worked out for you. Yeah, I'm trying to remember what the issue was. He sent us some audio and I'm like You know, you're using a crappy mic. No, it was an 80 2020. That's why oh, yeah Yeah, it was an 80 20 usb now. They are so close in price, but the 2035 is a whole different class Yes, it's about about 40 50 dollars more for the for the 2035, but he was on the usb version I think he was on the 80 20 20 usb. Yeah, the newest edition might be pretty good I don't remember but the original ones were pretty Pretty hissy. Yeah, I think it's time to do a usb mic shootout. Oh, it's time for that again Yeah, I mean done that in years. We haven't done a usb mic shootout I mean we've done the interface shoot out. We did a did we do a wovo kind of vegas Uh, we did it. We did a mic shootout there too. We did a usb mic shootout in a whisper room Yeah, well, there were a couple of different mics. We used to few usb mics We used a couple of other ones and but it's been years. It's been like eight years Yeah, since since we did these things have evolved. Yeah, so I I think there's some really good usb mics out there You know, there are you know, the epigy mics are all really good Yeah, and people who are like, you know, I want something that's portable. I'm like, well here This is the answer. It'll do everything you want Rhodes doing some interesting stuff. They're even that mic right there has usb capabilities Oh, yes this guy the The video might go to go to this is great. We were actually using this this afternoon with the The josip riano steady cam Yeah, and and it's a great little mic, you know, and it and it works with your iphone Now the only drawback to it is that it requires a very specific usb cable Yeah, yeah, it does So, yeah, you have to order that from them doesn't come with it. I ordered two just in case so with that cable It's like 130 bucks How much is that cable that cable was 34 I think there you go. So it's a usb mic for about 135 bucks if you buy the special cable Right anyway, but uh, yeah, it's they're getting more and more affordable and better sounding all the time Grace newton says, um I'm shopping for a double wall whisper room. Uncle Roy says I'll have to treat it with oral x and blankets And for the initial price of that whisper room, why isn't it a one-stop shop? Well, that's an excellent question That is a darn good question One that we've been dealing with for many years. Yeah. Well, that is changing Yeah, because the fact is is that That is changing people don't get the idea with a lot of these these soundproof booths They were never Initially designed for voiceover and if they were There were some brands that have that name Voice or vocal, right? They weren't well Acoustically designed for for that job, right, you know, but so the problem is is they they're acoustic sound that great They keep sound out for the most part Yeah, they they reduce noise but because a lot because a lot of them are are square or rectangular and have 90 degree angles in them They require bass traps. They require Really understanding what needs to make it not sound like you're talking in a tube. Yeah And yeah, you've got you know an uncle Roy is right because we told him Uh Yeah, you can use moving blankets in there You can use orlex foam, which is you know preferred because As we orlex foam is made to do what it does It's it's not there to prevent bed sores right, you know, it's uh It really has a chemical composition that that absorbs and diffuses sound The best of all all that's done a foam anyway, but you can also there also, you know other acoustic panels You can use yeah like anything with the rock wool paneling like we were talking like in that interview earlier with ben You heard the word rock wool Boy, that stuff is incredibly effective uh per square foot. It's much better in my opinion than the foam So um, that's always going to be my Vote like if I was going to buy an eight thousand dollar whisper room I would say give me all the money back for your foam I'm going to put my own panels in there and it's going to sound a lot better now They did just release a vocal they finally actually have voiceover edition models of their boots about time So they've been paying attention recently Yeah, um, and I did hear a sample from one recently and I thought it sounded pretty good I was actually surprised, but that's because it includes audio mute brand Paneling which isn't foam. It's actually Well, I'm not sure what it's on is on the inside, but it's not foam and it actually does a much better job It's still um Your mileage may vary and that's only in a four by four size, which I I do not recommend going square Go go rectangle whenever possible. Yeah speaking of which yeah had a deal with the studio bricks last week A big studio a double size studio bricks. Oh, wow Custom one. Yeah, and you know any any any an old department building in downtown los angeles I mean, I think the place was a hotel at one time You know concrete floors. Yeah, you know concrete furniture. No not concrete Anyway, it was huge and it had a three section roof and they could not get the last Section of the roof on so it's like, okay So pull it off it took three of us to get the roof section off and the ring that goes along the top Yeah, yeah, and we're like pushing it in and I'm like You know, there are hex nuts in here for a reason To hold these sections together Loosen those up pull it apart poops right in the place How about that and then tighten it back up and it was airtight So weren't they glad you came to them? That's what they pay me for I ain't yeah, I ain't driving all the way downtown to wheelchair boulevard for nothing Well, yeah, every every product like this has to be assembled properly They might make you think that they're super easy But the devils and the details follow the instructions do in the right order And uh, and there's sometimes tricks involved. Yeah, and and the floor wasn't quite lovely. So they're I mean, I mean it was leveled out You know, but there are little tiny gaps where you can might see the dowels and stuff And but it didn't you know, if you don't see light coming through it It's I yeah, I have very rarely even if you see a small gap on the outside It rarely ever translates to a noise leak. So all right a question from jeff holman. I'm not sure if we're allowed to discuss this but Well, actually it is it's in the video. Oh, okay It's not in the edit you saw but in the full edit right you will you'll be finding that out But it was definitely north of a hundred thousand Yeah, how much did it cost to build? Well, that was we don't know that was for the whole ad That was for the whole ad you that was a kitchen bathroom Yes, you know air conditioning all the things that went into it the booth itself It's kind of hard to say the doors of the alone were like four grand right for that pair of doors So, you know that that was a big part of it Uh the glass But the rest it was just tons of labor and time and you know the assembling He said to build to buy a studio break of equivalent size Would have actually from what he thought was going to be more costly than building it so and That might be true for that price for that size range, maybe It depends where you live depends on how much you're paying for labor, but right um Yeah, it but it's certainly more soundproof than any studio brick could possibly ever pull off because the walls are 10 inches thick inch and a half air gap right it is a serious serious A piece of equipment right and and and he had it built into the wall It may became part of the structure. Oh, yeah, it looks like it's just all part of the room It's just belongs there, but it's it's separate Yeah, and then there's some of us that bought a house that had a booth in it Yeah, no helps someday. I could be so lucky. Yeah, I'll try Alrighty tj, mezzacapo asks You guys said my interference was let a hiss was likely a grounding problem What's the best way to set the cables to avoid this issue? Well a grounding problem Well, the mic you've got The one you're using today my uh, my it's a it's a k47 kit mic. Yeah the kit mic that I built Yeah, and you know and turned it on and went holy crap. It works That was really something not a very intricate soldering with that. Yeah, um Some I think the point was is that tube mics and what I mean by tube not because they have a tube in them but because they are tube shaped, which is why they're called tube mics and uh Sometimes they can get loose And as long as you tighten things down really tight that makes sure that the uh, the grounding within the microphone because it's all connected through You know the ground wire, which is the number three on the uh Is number three or number one the ground I think one is ground two One or two minus three is plus or something like that, right? But yeah, it's it's if that's loose or it's right You will get hissing you will get buzzing um But hissing generally is an indication that you're not recording loud enough and you're adding more gain We have a very low output mic mic, you know, or the mic itself is damaged or not functioning correctly So the SM7b Or an re20 An SM7b is an amazing mic for being yelled into yeah Right, right. That's that's what that mic's really really good at Which is what jocks do on the radio, right? Joe rogan does on his podcast and you know, uh, Heavy metal singers do in the studio. That's what that mic's good for Exactly. Other than that in terms of other things you can try Um, it's a very long troubleshooting process sometimes because it depends on how much gear you have If you have a very simple setup with a mic a usb interface and a computer That troubleshooting takes a lot less time because there's fewer things to swap out But you essentially have to just swap things out One by one you have to have a duplicate of everything To try and figure out what is the one thing that's causing the noise. That's really what it comes down to Right, that's the process that I go through one by one, right? You look in my closet There's a pile of cables hanging there Some of them should probably be thrown away Maybe but they're holding on to other cables. So you're making sure that those cables don't get lost. Yeah, exactly Um, he said he tightened his mt1 mic and it's still hissing. Well, it's not hissing then I would definitely uh, I would definitely reach out to the manufacturer which in that case happens to be road um, I would uh Change, uh, if you've already changed every other variable and already swapped out every other thing It's probably the mic And uh, that's not a mic known for hissing. No nt1 is known for being very quiet very very quiet Yeah, but it also has although their output is improved lately I think they they improved the output on the nt1. Maybe was it real? It was a little lower than other mics Right. I mean you had a really you really had to push the game on it Yeah, if it depends on the interface does the interface have enough gain the preamp in the interface So I think it works fine with like a scarlet. I don't know if I've ever had any trouble. I I haven't so yeah, mm-hmm Okay, uh bc has a question Based on something we were talking about the ssl2 which is an interface Included a vocal strip to plug in an all-in-one compander deesser deplosive and three band eq Could I use this in a stack for voiceover editions or does its all-in-one nature? limit me Interesting thought I if you're gonna put all that stuff in there. I would think that they would include some variables Yeah, I mean if they're all just on off switches I would be very wary of its usefulness Um, because an on off switch processor rarely is a good one unless it's just a simple limiter Like what's in the mic port pro? Generally, there's a lot of parameters that need to be adjusted now I'm taking a quick google search Because I have not yet amazingly played with the vocal strip to plug in I I really haven't Um, and it looks like it has potential to be very useful. It's got an eq. It's got a parametric equalizer. It's got like you said a de-ploser deesser If you are popping the mic so often you need a plugin to fix it You need to study your mic technique a little bit because I can go Peter Piper picked a pack of pickled peppers For the next six years and I'm not going to get a plosive and you see no screen here There's no pop screen here either. It's just in the right place, right? Right. Um, it's got a compander Which is a weird word for a compressor and expander These are all tools that when used properly by an engineer who knows how to set them and configure them can give you a great result Otherwise I can use the tools included with any DAW and get pretty much all the same results. So Yeah, it could be good. Maybe one of these days. I'll play with it. I do have a ssl2 at home So I guess that means I have a license to use this $200 plugin So I'll give it a a shot and see what I see what I think. Yeah Well, guess what another hour of life has gone by but Your voice over tech questions have been answered Uh and enjoyed and and thoroughly enjoyed because as you can see when George and I get questions It makes our day because that's that's what we're all about. Yeah Anyway, uh, we're gonna take a quick break here and we will be back to wrap things up for a couple of weeks right after these messages Yeah, hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky the voice of rocko and you're watching voice over body shop Hey there, I'm david h. Lawrence the 17th and With my company vio heroes and my team of coaches and my community of voice over talent We guide voice over actors along their journey And you may be watching v obs here, uh and not nearly as far along as many of the other people who are watching You may not even have started yet And we actually specialize in helping you do just that so if you're watching all the stuff going on here on v obs I'm going I have no idea what they're talking about. I don't know, but I really want to do this I'd really like to help you Please go to vio heroes.com slash start That's vio heroes.com slash start and you can take our getting started in voice over class Which tells you everything you need to get started as a voice talent And I'd love to hold your hand along the way and help you with that journey Again vio heroes.com slash start That's vio heroes.com slash start In these modern times every business needs a website when you need a website for your voice acting business There's only one place to go like the name says voice actor websites dot com Their experience in this niche webmaster market gives them the ability to quickly and easily get you from concept to live online In a much shorter time when you contact voice actor websites dot com Their team of experts and designers really get to know you and what your needs are They work with you to highlight what you do Then they create an easily navigable website for your potential clients to get the big picture of who you are And how your voice is the one for them plus voice actor websites dot com has other great resources Like their practice script library and other resources to help your voice over career flourish Don't try it yourself. Go with the pros voice actor websites dot com Where your vio website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what? Before time began there was v obs dot tv watch or else And we're back to say goodbye. Well, uh next week You know, we're going to run an interview that we did the longer version of the interview that we did with With ben uh earlier in the show so you can hear all of the details of what went into went into that construction Which was quite a bit, uh, but uh, i'm going to be gone for a couple of weeks So we're going to be gone for a couple of weeks, but we're going to start up again on may 23rd, we will be live But look there are so many episodes that you could possibly be watching if you missed them. Go find them It's you can watch anything you want even the old ones like from get a laugh. Yeah, what's up on the first season from 2011 2012 like e-wabs into youtube and start to laugh. It's it's all there. Anyway, who are our donors this week? Well, we'll start off with jonathan grant christopher epperson sarah borges philips appear tom pinto Shelly avalena george widham your dad. That's right. brian page patty gibbons rob rider greg thomas A doctor voice nathan uh ant land productions. That's uncle roy shana pennington baird martha con Don griffith tray moseley diana birdsall and sandra man willer excellent. All righty You ever notice how when you do the award shows and they read names? They don't do the Doctor voice george widham. They always go george widham Doctor boy brian page Why is that? Because it sounds nice and formal. I guess so I guess Anyway, uh, again, if you need help with your home voiceover studio, that's what we're here for you want to work with me Go on over to Homevoiceoverstudio.com. She's so sharp And if you want to work with george, you go to george the dot tech and we've got a webinar coming up in May for audacity and we have our tech support over there and a coupon code v obs fan 2022 Which will get you 20 off the next Service to get to use it once it's a pretty big discount But if you book any services on the site, you can use that it's for the scheduled Services only already. Well, we need to thank our sponsors like harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra Soros elements vio heroes.com voice actor websites.com and jmc Demo's thanks again to jeff holman for a great job in the chat room tonight as always Sumer lino for doing it from home and still making it look like she's Just sitting here with us and we really appreciate that and of course lee pinney For just simply being lee pinney. He knows what that means and the rest of you are going what? Like the last seven years what what is who's this lee pinney? He's got to come visit us and stick his face in here one of these days Anyway, that's going to do it for us this week. Again, if you've got a question for us You can write to us at the guys at v obs.tv And uh, we'll be we'll put we'll put it in the front of the queue You know as opposed to the the people who are calling during the show You'll be the first one we answer. That's right because it's they're an email Or anyway, um But that's important. Uh, so ask your questions, but we're we're thrilled to help you out with your home voiceover studio Uh, but you know It always amazes me that people are like, it's gotta sound great. It's gotta sound It's gotta be right But the bottom line is if it sounds good It is good. I'm dan lennard and i'm george widdum and this is voiceover body shop or vo bs tech talk tech talk tech talk tech talk See in a couple of weeks, everybody. Have a good one. Bonjour