 Hey, it's time for VoiceOver Body Shop. Hello everybody across the world and across the fruited plane. Our guest tonight is joining us from New York City, Brian Falk from Apegas Entertainment. Hey, Brian. Hey. We're going to have a great time talking to him about what he does in New York with Apegas Entertainment and audio and he knows a lot of stuff. He's been doing this almost as long as we have. Long time. Yeah. So, George and I will be right back and we'll get going here on 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 Grant with the skills to build, set up and maintain the professional VO studios of the biggest names in VO today. And you, Dan Leonard, the voiceover home studio master, a 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 voiceover world today, letting you ask your questions and giving you the latest information to make the most of your voiceover business. Welcome to VoiceOver Body Shop. VoiceOver Body Shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials.com, 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. VOheroes.com become a hero to your clients with award 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. Jeff Hurley. Well, our new system works on how it's like one thing and one board, one computer, and everything is like, it all works. It's pretty amazing what we're pulling off with these rigs. I think all three of us now have those roadcaster pro mixers. Yeah. Which once you learned the idiosyncrasies of how to use that thing, it's making this show happen. Yeah. I just thought it was a bunch of different colored buttons. They actually do stuff. They do stuff. Well, we're here to talk about voiceover. And if you've got a question, let's see. We've got Jeff Holman is in the Facebook chat room. We have Clubhouse. And if you're on Clubhouse tonight, feel free to ask a question in there. Just raise your hand. Somebody is monitoring that tonight. I think George is on it. I'm trying to do that too. It's not easy, but I'm trying. Okay. Well, we'll see what happens. And some people even ask on YouTube because we're everywhere. TVs across America and across the world suddenly have to watch VoiceOver Body Shop. Anyway, so let me introduce our guest because two weeks ago we had Kevin Gershan on who's big time television producer and he was great. He had a lot of information. This week we have somebody who also works on the side of the glass. Bryant Falk is the owner of Abacus Audio in New York City. He is as a professional voiceover and on-camera commercial and corporate producer and director for 20 years. Bryant has produced and directed spots, promos, and corporate campaigns for clients such as Footlocker, Bloomberg, Walmart, Avaston, AMC, Bloomberg, MTV, the NBA, and many, many, many, many, many more. Bryant coaches and records for some of the top names in the voiceover industry as well. And with this company, Abacus Audio, he has crafted over a thousand of the industry's highest quality and unique demos. And, and he has a new book out called The Producer's Guide to VoiceOver, a creative and practical guide to voiceover concepts in lots of other voiceover stuff. Welcome to VoiceOver Body Shop. Thank you, Dan. Catch your breath on that one. Wow. Yeah, that's one of those things. People got to learn how to control their breath. Excellent. Excellent. Well, good to see you guys on this amazing evening. And I know we're all in different parts of the world, but it feels like I'm right there with you all in your studios and we're all hanging. George, I couldn't resist. I see a certain amount of toys on your shelf in the back. I am, I am a little bit of a kind of nostalgic toy junkie. I'm going to lift up one of my favorite 3D printed. I could not find anything made this way. 3D printed. I don't know if anyone remembers Space 1999, but this is a custom 3D printed ship which I keep right in front of me at all times. And it's just, you know, takes me back there to my childhood. Oh, wait a second. Wait a second. That was with Barbara Bain and oh, and the guy from, they were both on Mission Impossible. Mission Impossible. You got it. Those are the dudes. What was his name? Oh, stripes. And they had the best guns. I don't know if you remember those things, but they just, just hate you right there, which is a blast. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on your show, guys. I appreciate the time. It's awesome. Well, it's great to have you here. Tell us a little bit about yourself. So let's see. I'm in New York. I'm in Hell's Kitchen. My place is called Abacus Entertainment. It's been Abacus Audio a little while ago and now it's been Entertainment for years. And I'm in Hell's Kitchen. I'm on 45th and 9th in the Film Center building, which used to be called the Loop building years ago, where they would come here and do ADR replacement for films. So it was kind of a fun building. Anyone in production loves to be here in the Film Center building because of that history. So it's great. 9th Avenue, 45th Street. Hell's Kitchen has changed quite a bit, which we discussed a little before. And gosh, I've been here since 2001. I started my first studio as a partnership back in 1992 and sold that. Actually, my first studio, I sold that to Madison Entertainment. And I work with them doing all the Tailgate CDs for all the sports teams. So I used to do the Giant Song when you go to the Giant's Games and you'd hear that, go New York, go New York, go. I did the New York Knicks song. So that was a real blast for a while. And then I started another studio. You know, guys who have studios, we can't help ourselves. Some people fix up old cars, production people. We always have to have a studio with some kind of gear. Whether, you know, that's my Avalon 737 right by my knees, you know, LA 610. If you're a respected studio owner, you have one. You got one, so. Well, what got you into recording studios? So you know, it's funny. It goes way back to when I was a kid and my parents would take me to Broadway shows. And I remember looking over the side of one of the theater pews and seeing a mixing console. And I remember telling my parents, I'm like, I want to do that. You know, they said, listen, go to college after college, you can do whatever you want. So I went to Hofstra University, got my bachelor's in business, and guess what? Went right into audio. And I never looked back. I've been doing audio production and recording ever since I even went to a place called IAR. I don't know if you guys remember that place, Institute of Audio Research. And it was downtown in the village. It's it's gone now for a little while. It's been gone. But it was the coolest, hippest audio joint till I'm talking 24 track two inch tape, you know, two track editing with the razor blades, building preamps, building headphone amps, you know, it was real hands on fun stuff back then. It was a different world. Now everything's on computer. So it's all boom, boom, boom. It's like drawing with crayons now. Yeah, now it's just like done, done, done. So yeah, so I've been doing that. And then, of course, I went into more of the corporate side with production and voiceover and doing all that. But my biggest foray after that, that stuff I talked about was I had a band. I used to be a lead singer in a band. And I used to sing out, I used to play in the Bronx and all the bars in the Bronx. And I play in all the tri-state area. And what really got my hands into the gear was trying to make our first recording album and going, wow, that's AKG 414. What is this thing? It looks like a razor that I would shave my face with. I didn't even know what to talk into. I sang into the wrong side for a whole song. And I just changed the pattern on that thing. So I learned a tough lesson there. And it was just step by step. And then, you know, then I went to school for it and tried to get a better handle on it. And now I've been doing a lot of production and voiceover stuff and teaching. And basically, I mainly live on the producer's side of the glass. I do step in and I do my occasional voiceover. But like I tell students, I really love to do it so that I can ask questions that they can't of their clients. And one of the big ones I always say is I can ask a client, hey, guys, why did you book me? And I never want my talent to say that to the client, but I can because I'm doing it once or twice here. I kind of get my fingers on what it is they're looking for because I love to share those little tips and secrets to the talent because they're always on the other side and they don't get to hear what's kind of really going on in these rooms, which brings me to that book that I put together, which is that voiceover guide from a producer. Because I see a lot of people get lessons from talent, which is great, but it's a different perspective to get some lessons from the producer side. As I say, sometimes is, listen, I don't care where you find your frustration for this read, but I need you frustrated. So we got to get there and get there fast. And in the book I talk about ways to get there and how we need a certain amount of what we're doing of an opinion through everything we work on. And all these little kind of tips and tricks, which I talk about, to get you there fast. Because from a producer standpoint, we need it done yesterday. And there's no time to wait. So I really try to come up with some tools to help people get there fast. And also to help frame what it is that's happening. I think I mentioned to you guys when we were talking earlier, you know, the things I talk about, you know, you've probably heard them in some way, shape or form. But I really try to do it from a creative mind perspective. I kind of equate it to when you're giving directions to somebody, some people like to know that it's three blocks, half a mile, two miles down, make a left. And then other people like me want to know that, hey, listen, there's a Dunkin Donuts on the corner. When you make a left, you're going to see that guy. He's always there in the corner. He's got a red shirt on. Make a right turn when you see him. And that's the kind of way I wrote the book is that type of approach, which is kind of fun, you know. So what goes on at Abacus? So you're just your full service recording studio? How many studios do you have? What kind of equipment do you have? Well, here's my room. This is my cave, which I call a cave. I do most of my work in here. I have another larger studio down the hall, which lets me not only do kind of, well, before COVID group stuff, but also lets me do green screen shoots, multiple person VEO records, all that kind of stuff as well. Because it's a larger, it's almost probably at least twice or three times the size of this space. And do everything from corporate client work, whether it's production for banks or commercials, video records, we'll do talent interviews. I mean, when Broadway was open, we'd have talent come in, they would interview for shows and things, and they can go back to their show because it was right around the corner. So that was really convenient for quite a while. So we do all that kind of stuff. And recently, I mean, I've been doing a lot of Zoom production work where I'm coordinating talent for a theater show, and everyone's on Zoom, and everyone's recording, and I have to make sure everyone's recordings are good. They've got to get them all back to me. That's been an interesting combination of audio and video. And then on the audio side, we're doing a lot of remote recording these days because of the COVID situation. And that's presented some unique challenges, which has been very interesting. We have been doing a lot more Source Connect, a lot more IPDTL. I personally use Source Connect and IPDTL for reference. I record it, but I really use it for reference. And then I always want talent to send me their finals when I'm working with them. I prefer that high res option that comes in that I can really play with some more. But there's, you know, some unique challenges. Everyone's got to have a setup at home nowadays, which is another thing for us producers. I laugh because I've had a lot of production houses that since no one's coming in, I hear the audio engineer who's all the way off to the side, and he's like, no USB mics. I don't want a USB, because he has to do all the post work, but you can't go to the studio. So he's yelling all his demands to the poor talent on the other side. And they're going, no, no, I got a TLM 103. I'm okay. I got an omen. It's all right. You know, it's like, good. Is your noise floor below 60 dB? It's got to be minus 60 dB. We got a lot of that. I mean, people are always saying they're telling us it's got to be this and it's got to be that. Can you actually tell the difference between different people and a different microphone? You know what the microphone is? You know, I've been doing this a long time. The interesting thing I'm laughing is people do mic tests while on Zoom. And people don't realize there's noise reduction on Zoom. There's impact. There's so many things being processed. They all sound the same when the mics are all messed up going through Zoom. So when I do a mic test on Zoom, I actually record everything. And then I post it on the chat so that they can all pull it down and actually hear the high res version because you can't tell what's what, you know, that's a good idea. It does bring up the whole thing of like, for example, I have a 416 mic here and I have the Cinco D2 right next to it. The 416 is what I use for online. The D2 is what I use just for the booth. I'm just too lazy to press buttons. I just want it all running. So there is a difference. There's no question. You can hear, you know, the D2 versus the 416. But then I'm always challenged with, you know, people who do have noise issues at home, they can't jump to a 16. So I'd rather, all right, we'll then get a D2 because the mic you have now is picking up everything. And the D2 at least helps isolate a little better so we can work from there. These are the challenges I run into with the new QYs. They're totally different, right? Yeah, they are different. I always call the D2 is wide and flat to me. It's like this. It's like a garbage bag. You know what I mean? That's the visual for me. Whereas the 416, I mean, it's got that nice crisp, you know, bite to it. There's this little tightened up, kind of pull the girdle kind of sound. The bottom line is you'd rather have a mic that's wide and flat, that's much more directional than a mic that's really high-fi. But here's everything. Exactly. And that brings up the whole thing of like, well, isn't a better mic better? And I joke, I'm like, when you get a better mic, you actually have to get a better room. So the higher that mic, you get, oh, now you got to get a booth, my friend. You actually bought a U87? Are you crazy? You bought a Neumann U87 for your kitchen. You're hearing water dripping, you're hearing the roaches under the sink. I tell people you can hear a cat breathing three floors up. That's how crazy, you know, those mics are. They want to grab everything. I'm pretty well convinced that, you know, there are people out there that think that it's the microphone that's going to get them work, but there's not a microphone out there that's going to change the way you perform copy. Exactly. And that's, again, brings me to that beginner standpoint, which is a lot of stuff will be fine at the beginning. You're fine. Oh, you only have a USB mic? That's great. You've never used Audacity. You don't even know how to run twisted wave yet. Stick with your USB mic. Learn how to work your software. You don't need to buy anything else yet. Work your way up. Then I always, you know, send me your samples, let me hear it. If it's still not competitive, we're going to keep moving until we get to the point. My biggest problem I've been having though lately, surprisingly, is people are in their closets, but their noise floor is still too high, meaning there's too much something. There's a rumble in there somewhere. Right. So two of the big culprits is one, they bring the laptop in and the fan turns on. And it's like, guys, keep the laptop out of the room, you know, move it along somehow. So they got to get that out. Or some people still have some traffic issues. So they have a lot of traffic right outside that door. And they got to figure out ways to minimize. So gosh, my last three or four clients, I spent a lot of time just trying to get the room noise down so that I could work with the audio in a way that would be functional. That's been a big challenge lately. I've been surprised because I see them in the closet, they're on Zoom. And I'm going, why is this so noisy still? So that's one. The other one too, people don't know central air can have a really whiny little thing that just gets into every room, even a closet. It's like, keep that central air off. I know you're in Cali, but you got to sweat for about five, 10 minutes for me. Get the recording done. My first studio had no AC in the booth. So my first studio, we could do about 10, 15 minutes that we had to create the door open, get the air back in there and reset back in the old days. Exactly. I wanted to ask, in the same vein as the, you'd rather use the D2 over the 416, not over the 416, but you'd rather use it over possibly a TLM 103. Yes. If they have a 103, would you say unequivocally always use a high pass filter if available to the app? Yeah. See, now that's a challenge because, you know, from the producer engineer standpoint, I don't want them to put filters on it because I can do a much more controlled filter than the one they're using. So I might be able to save more frequencies. Whereas if they slap it on there, I'm stuck with it. So unless it's causing, see, one of the problems with these rooms is you get a natural frequency. And sometimes they actually have that issue where it's getting louder at a certain area in the base. Yeah. And then I have no choice, you got to throw it on because it's too, it's too woofy right there. Yeah, you got to control it. So instead of saying, listen, go out and buy four base straps. I want you to put them in the corners first, throw on the roll off, and I'll deal with it then. Otherwise, I try not to do that. I want it as clean as I can get it. I do feel sometimes a lot of talents a little too conservative with their levels. I'd rather a little more, my feeling is if you're a VO talent, you should have a really good gauge on your volume control when you're working on your microphone. So you should be able to give me a little more separation from your noise floor. So I've got more room. I may tuck you in at the end if we'll go in minus 20 on a mix out. But I want to have a little more separation from that floor and give me the option to tuck you in a little bit. I don't want you bouncing in your red. I know that will freak you out, but you can get in. Go pass the top of the yellow. Yeah, get up there a little. Come on, your VO talent. Hey, listen, when I interview people, no question. I'm down on the one third. I don't know if the guy's going to yell at me. There's no scripts. We're just interviewing. No question. But if you're pro and you're doing copy records, then definitely let's give it a little goose and give me some more to work from. Absolutely. I just want to remind you, if you're just joining us right now, one, where have you been? And number two, if you have a question for Bryant Falk about what he does and what he's looking for and how he handles audio over at Advocacy Entertainment in New York, you can ask your question on Facebook. Jeff Holman is faithfully in there recording your questions. So get those in there. And YouTube. And YouTube. And if you're on Clubhouse, you actually get to ask your question live. Live on the air. So if you have those questions, toss those in there. So tell us a little bit about your book again. You start, you give us a little bit. Let's dig in a little bit. So one thing I tend to kind of coin is something I call, here's an example of something I talk about in the book, I call it cliche phrases. And I've named these certain ways of saying certain things that were used to hearing over and over. I always laugh when I type get out of here on copy. A lot of talent will literally say get out of here. And that's not really the way it's typically, typically it's get out of here, get out of here. Really? I gave a conversational, but I kind of coined that a cliche phrase. It's said in a certain way that we're used to hearing. And it's, I always tell, it's a great thing to try and find these cliche phrases that are so prevalent in our communication every day, whether you're at the diner watching movies. There's so many of these like similar sounds. And the reason they're so important for talent is when we make, for example, I teach video game voiceover, when we're making video games and doing certain commercial work, we usually try as writer, we want to slip in a little of this cliche phrase to get people into our commercial or into our video game that much quicker. You see what I mean? The famous one is in every Star Wars movie. And I think there should be a one-on-one acting class called what the, because what the, that's it. You've got to do it that you can't turn it into Shakespeare and go, what the? Right. You've got to do it. It just doesn't work, right? There's a certain way to do it. And it's their own purpose to pull people in. So I'll go through those cliche phrases in my book and kind of discuss those kinds of ways of looking at it. From a producer standpoint, I go right into a lift versus a land. You know, you need to know, you know, only at Jackson's, only at Jackson's. You need to know the difference between a lift and a land. Just so when people say it, it's done. Of course, there's ABCs and one, two, three's. Those are all the mechanics that I try to go through as well in the book. But I do talk about different energy types. I do discuss energy as a bouncing style energy versus a straightforward, and the way I'll describe it, a lot of car spots tend to have a straightforward energy. One plus two equals three. And then a lot of retail spots or certain banking can have a bouncing energy. You've got to bounce that ball and bring it on home and get that kind of different style of energy put together so you know where to go. I have about two or three of those in the book that I talk about. I'd say the biggest thing I try to get people to leave with when they read the book is everyone has fun and voiceover. I don't know anyone who looks at it. Most of the time, yeah. Yeah. I get, you know, when someone goes, oh, man, I got to do another commercial. It's like a national. Darn. Oh, it's so frustrating. I have so many of these. I mean, you know, it's just like face. Right. Isn't it great? Right? I mean, the thing you get frustrated about is like a technical issue or you lost a file, you know? That's okay. But like, yeah, I booked another banking, you know. I laugh. I have clients complain because they do nothing on certain spots. They're like, they just want me to read, and then they pay me. And I say, what's the problem? Sounds great. They don't realize they're still doing things, but to them it's doing nothing compared to what they'd want to do. Wow. This was great. I'm so excited. You know, they would go all the way in. And it's like, I know. But that's that. It can't be morongo spots. Yeah. That's what I call those legacy spots. It's like Bob Hope and, you know, come on in. We're going to save a bundle, you know, and you get to move it around and have so much fun. I call those gifts. I mean, when those show up, it's like, hey, it's a fun time today. You know, get in there and rock it out, you know. So that's kind of fun. Turn up the syrup. Yeah, exactly. So I go through a lot of that. And I think what's great about Bruce and I, Bruce is my partner, Bruce Cronenberg. And he studied with Stella Adler. He teaches voiceover at Stella Adler now. And it's really great. He does the acting aspect of voiceover. And I teach the production aspect of voiceover acting. And it really has worked well. We kind of both believe in the idea that everyone gets something from different teachers. So we really, it's like whatever it takes to get where you have to go, by all means, find that person. I know it's worked well for us because I'll teach someone as far as I can. And then I go, great, go to Bruce and glue all those techniques I showed you together. So that when you come back, they sound seamless, you know, and that kind of stuff will work. And then Bruce will send me his people and then I'll go, okay, great. But we're going to talk about how to be surprised in three seconds, you know, and boom, how to get that surprised, move right on and get to the next part of the spot. So, but you know, again, so it works really well for us. And we definitely have a lot of fun doing it here. No question. Yeah, it's supposed to be fun. The problem is, is right now is one, nobody's working together. I mean, we're all, everybody's been separated. And for the longest time, it's been, you know, self-direction, which is very, very difficult. And people just starting out are trying to learn self-direction, but they don't know direction in the first place. So it's always great to have someone guide you along and say, well, this is, we want this, we want that. And I like your approach of, you know, a little bit more detailed and follow the, follow the path to where, where we want you to go. Yeah, I kind of, I kind of warn a lot of talent. I was like, this is the best directing you're going to get after you leave here. It's, it's no, that's not right. Can you try it again? A lot of it's that. And it's like, don't let it deter you, you know. But yeah, I agree. It's, and it's also how to keep everyone not in the bubble, you know, they get in these bubbles. And I noticed everyone in their bubbles, the diction starts becoming a priority. The vocal movement is what they think matters. And it's like, nope, it's about communication. You have to reach somebody. If you're not, I tell my students when I'm working, I want to picture your best friend in front of you. And I want a picture of your, you know, brother, cousin or uncle right in front of you. So when you talk, you're talking to someone, there has to be something going on. I do also mention, you know, we as human beings don't really talk unless we have a thought or a feeling first. So make sure you have that before you say the words, feel something, have a feeling about it. I always train people in the beginning. If you have no clue, like what you're going to say, hate what you're going to say, or laugh at the fact that you don't know what to do with it. That's one of my favorites. You know, you could take a product and do anything you want. You know, the new K Pro cereal, you hate it, hate it, the new K Pro cereal. You want to love it? The new K Pro cereal. You have no clue? The new K Pro cereal. I don't know if I like it, but whatever. That tends to be one of the best ones. It's always be one of the best ones. So yeah, it's always given the tools. I'm always trying to hand over tools I can pull out and address immediately. Especially when you're working on a job, it's not that the talent has to know the right way to do it. They just have to keep moving for me. Keep moving. You know, I warn everyone, this is my biggest nightmare. You're going to booth. This is going to be great. All right. Can you be a little more frustrated? This is going to be great. No, no, tone it down. This is going to be great. And you're like, oh, you've got to pull that down. You see, and get that in check. But if they just gave me movement, we could keep traveling and land in a spot that would be really functional for that, for that read. Yeah, I guess if you have no idea what to do, just do something different. Yes, mix it up. Change it somehow. Yep. I think they call that the spaghetti on the wall theory, right? See if it sticks. Yeah, absolutely. We're changing up. We're talking with Brian Falk from Abacus Entertainment in New York. Again, if you've got a question, throw it in Facebook or on Clubhouse or on YouTube or send it up in Smoke Signals or just write it on the wall. We will get to those questions right after we take this break. So stay tuned. We'll be right back. 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? Stick around. You don't want to miss this. Power 1039. At Target, we want you to come as you are. Be comfortable. Okay. Maybe not. Bathrobe comfortable. Pants for the customer on aisle four, please. Watch anywhere, anytime on an unlimited number of devices. Sign in with your Netflix account to watch instantly at Netflix.com. The ice cream maker is a big risk that can have huge rewards until you forget to turn it on. That's it, guys. Time is up. Hey, it's JMC. Thanks for watching The VoiceOver Body Shop. If you're a demo ready or looking to get there, check out JMCDemos.com and see a sample of our work. Now let's get back to Dan and George and this week's Tech Wisdom. Hey there, it's David H. Lawrence, the 17th with VO Heroes, and you may be watching VoiceOver Body Shop, VOBS, because you're interested in becoming a voice talent and you looked around the internet, you found that this was a great place to come and you're absolutely right. But you don't have any of the knowledge yet as to how to get started, and I'd like to help you with that. I've got a free course online. You can take it any time you want. It's called Getting Started in VoiceOver and it walks you through the equipment you need, the business side of things, the actual categories of voiceover work that you'll likely be pursuing, and also the mindset that you need to have when you're getting started and moving into being successful at doing voiceover for a career. So if you're an actor or you're not an actor, you want to side grade from another business you want to learn about voiceover, go to voheroes.com slash start. That's voheroes.com slash start for the VO Heroes Getting Started in VoiceOver Class, and I'll see you there. Well, looks like traveling is coming back into vogue. And Harlan Hogan's Porta Booth Pro and Plus make recording on the road a breeze. And in that spirit, here are some of Harlan's top tips for recording professional quality audio away from home in 2021. Number one, the Motel ironing board. Practically every hotel and motel provides an ironing board in your room. But forget ironing. It's a perfect height adjustable stand for your Porta Booth Pro or Porta Booth Plus. Two, if you can, turn off the heat in the air conditioning. Three, switch off the fridge or minibar. Four, request a room that's inherently quiet away from the vending machines. Harlan's been known to actually unplug them. After about 9 a.m., most hotel fitness centers are deserted. Here's a bonus tip, use voice optimized headphones and stay away from windows. Harlan has a whole bunch more tips for you VO road warriors. So check out voiceoveressentials.com before you check in and get your travel friendly Porta Booth Pro or Plus. We are back here on Voice Over Body Shop. We're talking with Bryant Falk from Apigus Entertainment and Audio in New York City. Again, if you've got a question for them, throw it in the Facebook chat room. Or if you've got a question and you're on Clubhouse and everybody just loves asking questions on Clubhouse. So get in there and raise your hand and let's get some questions from there. We'd love to hear from you. George, we've got a couple of questions from the audience so far. Want to tackle some of those? Yeah, it looks like at the top of our text in questions or chat questions, we've got Bob Liedem asking, what is the name of his book? But you could you missed the name of his book? There it is right there. No, he's working. He's actually working for Bryant. I don't even know. Okay. Available on Amazon, I believe, right? So that's the producer's guide to voiceover for the people on the podcast version. The producer's guide to voiceover, a creative and practical guide to voiceover concepts and lots of other VO stuff. That's the title. That's your title. Exactly. Very conversationally written, by the way. So very easy read. That's good. Nothing crazy. Not a tech book. It is not a tech book. Really made it for creatives. I mean, it's really for people who are looking for a approach that will fit them for voiceover stuff. Well, that's great. So should we throw to a clubhouse question? Absolutely. Hello, clubhouse. You're on there. Patiently. Go ahead, Bridget. Hello. Thanks for taking my question. Bryant, I had a question specifically. Hi. I had a question specifically about coaching after doing some light Google stalking of you. Thank you. Thank you. Actually do some coaching. I've been doing voiceover for a while, but it's only ever been in a studio with an audio engineer. I'm kind of trying to reinvigorate the career right now. I think I need a coach. Everybody says, you know, I need a coach. Yeah. So what should I be looking for when I'm looking around for a coach? Very interesting. So for me, there's a couple of things. I mean, Bruce and I, Abacus Entertainment, it's a very specific style of coaching. We're very boutique. We're very one-on-one. I think a big part of when you get started is what do you need as well? What kind of style of kind of coaching are you looking for? I know Bruce and I are very particular. You actually have to audition for Bruce. He does a 15-minute free consult and wants to hear what you got under the hood. And if he hears what he needs to, we move forward and we'll do X amount of lessons and then we'll work on demos. Everyone's very different. Like you already mentioned to me, you've done some voiceover. You've worked in studios. So whoever's moving you forward has to address the kind of work you've already done and move you in a way that makes sense against your knowledge base versus someone who's never done voiceover in their life. They're so excited. They have some acting experience or maybe they're a stand-up comic and they have a certain amount of experience from that but they haven't ever done it. That's going to be different if you have an agent. Your demo structure, when I deal with people with agents, I have to build demos differently than someone who's brand new and doesn't have an agent. So these are things that you want to kind of investigate when you're kind of looking for a coach. I would say in the very beginning, more important to find a coach that you can vibe with and kind of get on track. And then from there, you can grow into a different coach if you want, say much more technical training or much more acting style training. You can kind of shift and weave but in the beginning, make sure they have the enthusiasm and the right match for your energy. Lovely. Thank you very much. I can be a little too much for some people. I'm very excited when people do VO. Nothing gets me more riled up than like, awesome read. I love that opinion. I would love to have that. I'm usually falling asleep with most directors and coaches instead. I literally have producers say to me, they're like, Brian, so if you won the lottery tomorrow, you would still be here the next day, wouldn't you? Said you sure would. I would just maybe pick my clients a little bit more but otherwise, I'd still be doing what I'm doing. So it's got to, if you vibe off that energy that's key, I won't deny for some people it's too much. I think there's, whoa, I want to hide in a group. You know, I want to start in a group. It's like, it's okay. There's lots of great places you can find group lessons too. It's really what fits you moving forward. You know, that's really the key. All right. Thank you. You got it. All right. We got a question from Dave G who's watching on YouTube. He says, when working with talent for the first time, what are the few things you look for in a working relationship besides clean sound? So am I doing remote when I'm working with them? Is that the key? I guess. Yeah. When someone's new and they're with me, meaning I have them in my booth, that's one level that, you know, hey, just play it cool. You know, follow my lead. I'm going to get you through this. We're going to have fun. We're going to work this out. Don't let your nerves take over. When I'm doing remote with someone for the first time, honestly, my dream is you have your tech stuff figured out. I'm not sitting there with you going, wait, my source connect isn't quite, wait, is it this button? That's the stuff I'm always hoping is not there, especially because if a client's there and we're at that point, it's like, oh boy, so we're going to burn through a lot of energy. You know, for me, when we do that, we get lost in the tech. We're just pulling away from the opinions we need to generate. We're pulling away from that acting that has to happen because we're dumping all this energy into our source connect and, oh, I can't get this and my audacity worked yesterday, but today it's not kicking on anymore. Wait, okay, I got, so if that's all together, I love that. And then if the, you know, I know it's funny, but the room space is set correctly so that if you are going to have your camera on, no worries. It looks like a room. It looks like a booth. I don't see crazy stuff on the shelves and something else, right? So everything's there. I have other VO talent that just does audio only. So even though we're on source connect, they decide to only just put their photograph and that's fine too. That way you don't even have to show any booth. I don't care. I just need good audio. So it's fine with me. That's another option. Yeah. I've actually had people say, you know, like, well, I've got to have this mic because I'm going to be on video and they're going to see what the mic is. Don't show them the mic. Don't show them. Give the camera off. You can have it the other way. Yeah. And I have guys, I have guys who have great mics and they still prefer, they just keep it a screen. They just, they're so professional and they're like, Brian, great to work with you today. What are we doing? You know, it's like, boom, boom, boom. And I, no problem. Again, the beauty of audio is it's audio. It isn't, it isn't about the visual. I know because of zoom, you can turn on a camera, but you can leave it off. It's one of the reasons I like source connect. No video. Just leave, let's do a source link. We're all talking to each other through audio. Keep your thing recording. That's all I asked to as you record your session. So you can send me the file after that's my always what I'd prefer. I just think it sounds better personally from my own experience. I like that. Oh, that's, I'm so glad to hear that. Yeah, I can't. I've a bead source connect audio. I've a P a bead IPDTL audio and I'm sorry, I just hear a good 15% improvement. Just even the most basic. It's like, this is better. You know, like, it makes sense. Yeah, it just there, you know, it just works. So if you can do it, definitely. I have run into some people that run into the problem of getting a dual feed. So feeding their zoom and feeding their home recorder set up their audacity down windows. Yeah, is that because I'm getting that and boy is that drives me nuts. Because I really wish they could get that resolved long before. So yeah, that's probably my beginner stuff that I prefer is making sure everything is running. I did have a student and she booked a huge wonderful gig right out of the gate. And I basically logged in almost 45 minutes before the session. We went through all the setups, you got everything golden and then rocked right through the session. So, you know, if you have producers that that are willing to do that for you to totally take advantage of that, you know, I just said that because I wanted exact pretty much ask exactly that. When is it kosher for a talent to reach out before a session to say, hey, can we do a tech rehearsal? Is it normal protocol to do this? Yeah, so it really there's definitely different levels of jobs that come in. When you're doing video game voiceover, I log in a whole day before with the engineer only. And it's literally like, hey, one o'clock, how are we doing? No one else is there. Producers not there. Nobody else. Just the engineer in their studio. We're in our studio. We lock in the next day. It's still 15, 20 minutes early. We're all set up. And that's how we do those big sessions. The smaller stuff as talent, I think it's totally viable to jump in again, depending. Here's the thing. You want me to record and we're zooming and then I send it to you. You don't need as much time. You want me to source connect in with you. You want to hear signal, make sure I can record on my end. Hey, can we add 20 minutes, half hour before session just to make sure we're good? I've literally done that as well. And we have 15, 20 minutes and we just leave it up. And we're just like, yeah, listen, I'm going to finish something over here. I'm going to leave the session up. So once they get online, we're just fine with me. So that's worked well too, where we just all leave our stuff up after we're good for a good 10 minutes. And then, you know, client shows up, they log in and everyone gets in and we start rolling. I'd say the other big challenge is, you know, try to make sure you have the latest script. It's so tough, especially in corporate stuff. It changes so fast. So you would swear, you're like, but you sent this yesterday. No, I'm good. It's like, no, sorry, we've had three more changes since yesterday. And I wish people like, you know, we know, hey, why don't we call it script A, B, C, or version two version? No, they don't do that because they don't do this stuff. Like I said, pink, blue, orange, green, yellow. No, it's all the same. They just changed it on you and you're like, huh? So I personally, when I'm dealing with small enough copy work for commercial, I literally read through the copy for them first and go, Hey, is this the one? Are we in good shape? And I can tell you, one out of four times, there's something that got changed. Oh, wait, oh, no, that's not right. The year's wrong. And it's like, well, I'm glad I read this. Okay, great. Another thing too with talent is if you're confused about something on copy, totally ask. It's totally cool. Don't declare, just ask. I know this is wrong because a period shouldn't know. Hey, I'm kind of confused. Do you want me to say it this way? Or like, that's great. Validate the producers. I love that. So to me, that's the best way to always approach it when you're doing that kind of stuff. So any other questions? Were you good? Oh, we got questions are us. Jordan, she wanted to get the one from chat room again. This is from Vita or Vita. Hi, Vita, you got it right. Hello, everybody. Hello. Hello. Quick question for you, Brian. Yes. I usually use Source Connect for remote sessions, never had an issue, but recently I had a session and the sound engineer asked about my ports being mapped. He heard me fine, but he mentioned sometimes. Portal mapping. Things drop after a while and I'm going, well, that's never happened before. So we got through the session towards the end. They brought in other clients to add to the ones that were already on for the session and it did drop. I'm trying to understand what it was. I did a little looking kind of like a firewall issue. Does that have to do with connecting so many different people? Or is that just a straight up and down Source Connect? Yeah. George, you can take this one too. It's up to you. I'd be happy to vomit my knowledge on here. It can be a bit of a mystery and they've actually added their own kind of work around to this. It's called Source Stream. Since I mentioned that, Brian, how often did that come up? So again, too, I always try and experience what students go through. I'm not somebody who just makes a decision. So yes, I booked a Source Connect. I've booked three of them this last month. And what do I do? I say, I don't know what I'm doing. Help, help. And I jump on Source Connect. They have a monthly fee or a yearly fee and you hit the button. I scheduled an appointment. They called me that appointment next day. I'm very big on, hey, if you're going to help me on software, you've got to be able to get into my machine. Because Sweetwater does it. They do it too. I loved it. So they jumped in. They did a portal mapping for me. Now, there's two things. You've got to have hardwired Ethernet. A lot of my new talent thinks they can do all this work on wireless. And it's like, you've got to get a cable from your computer into your router. Oh, but I'm like 100 feet. Yeah, I have 100 foot cable running from my living room all the way down the hall. Yeah, that's how we do it. For the gig. For the gig. Warn people, don't let me make sure they don't trip over it. Right. Oh, I tape it up around the door. So what? It's a gig. It's worth it. So you do need to be wired in to your Ethernet. Then Source Connect will build the portal out from your computer through your router. So you have a more direct connection going straight through. So they do help on that level. Listen, you're still going to get some dropouts sometimes. It does happen with computers. The biggest plus, though, to your Ethernet hardline is even if you only have 20 megabits of upload, you get the full 20. When you're wireless, it changes. It's constantly going through changes. Especially in a city. Yeah, city's a nightmare here. And I'm in Queens as well, and it has to be hardlined in to make it work. So I hope that helps. I mean, if you are having issue, I know at least my experience with Source Connect has been pretty solid with them. I know the guy told me they upped it from 8 technicians up to 35 technicians now. They might be about 40 because it's exploded. It's really exploded. So that's been a plus. I've been able to talk shop with the guy and talk about computers and the M1 chip and they seem pretty knowledgeable about the whole Apple thing. So that made me feel better. So that might be a way to solve that as well. If you are already in the Source Connect family and doing that kind of stuff, I know I'm doing Source Connect standard. So I paid a fee and then I've got the thing with my name and they can find me. There's Source Connect now, which is free, which you might be able to get by with, but you still want to have that Ethernet connection for sure. That's my level one, get the cable. Level two, get a portal built from your laptop through. That's level two. And then what George mentioned, I think is that new the stream system that you talked about. That's a fallback. So if the port mapping all fails, there's this thing called Source Stream and the engineers in the studios can say, hey, turn on Source Stream. It's in a little advanced menu at the top of the window, at the top of your computer and that will sometimes deal with those random port blockage problems. We got a question. I do use the Ethernet, but thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. Cheers. Good luck with that. It helps. Yeah, we got a question from an old friend who I missed terribly, J.S. Gilbert. He has a real question. Okay, J.S. says, most of us are working in a six by six or smaller booth, which usually needs to be dead quiet. Aside from doing a little roll off at 80 or 100 Hertz, is there anything we can do to the booth to get a little bit more life in there? Oh, you want to juice it a little bit? Yeah. Okay, well, if you look behind me, I will call those the juicers. Do you see those right there? The diffusers. My diffusers. And what they do is they add a little bit of bounce into the room, but they don't send the audio straight back to me. If you notice the little pocket, some are a little deeper. Some are a little more shallow. So when the audio hits it, it still does a little bounce, but it won't go straight back. It does it more random. So picking up a type of diffuser might help keep it a little live for spaces like I'm in the production space. The tradition is half dead, half live. And that's kind of what I'm doing. I foam and stuff. And then I have some diffusers and a few hard surfaces left to give me some bounce still when I'm mixing. In the booth, if you really are getting that anechoic chamber problem, because I actually made one produce production studio so dead once, we had to rip half the foam out because it was bizarre. Everyone's like, I feel like my brains are being sucked out into the room because if you don't get reference, it really sounds bizarre. So we ripped half of it down. So if you really think it's too dead, I don't usually experience that. It's rare. It's rare at home studio. Very rare. Usually the problem I'm having is I talked about those natural frequencies and what's happening is the size of the room amplifies specific frequency areas. And I'm finding that's the bigger problem. So as you talk through your pitch, certain areas get really loud versus others. And that's where the base traps have to come in. You got to get those corner foam pieces that you can stick in to help control that frequency issue. That's what I usually experience. The only other thing I can say too is I do hear a difference between Oralex foam and packing shipping company foam that claims to be audio or bed foam. Oralex, it's like they put some kind of carbon or something in there. Man, I can use almost half and get that incredible sucking energy from their foam. So I have experienced a difference with the Oralex personally. It has been better. It's the real thing. It's the real thing. Yeah. This one's from Walter Williams. And he says, great advice from Brian for Vios at any level when self-directing, what's your number one rule? Self-directing, I always say whenever you do a read, you must, like I said, put that photo of someone. Make sure it's to someone. I laugh at how I can talk to a talent and we have a normal conversation. Hey, you hungry? Oh, yeah. So where are you going after this? I'm going to do this. And then I put them in the booth and I get this when they start reading. And I look at them and I said, you know, if you do that to me, it's bizarre, right? If I was a friend, I'd be like, are you feeling okay? Right? So trying to go for that conversational sound, getting away from being in the bubble is really the most challenging. So I'd recommend that. But when it comes to copy, rip down, breakdown, I tell everyone, you must find the forest of the persona before you walk through the trees of opinion. And I know that's so star trekking in Leninimoy. But the idea is read your copy once, turn it over, say the product name, Doritos or some other company. Oh, Snackchips. Oh, fun. Lifting. That's your approach? Great. Turn the copy back over. Now figure out your opinions within that persona that you've decided on, right? If it's a children's hospital, concern, caring. So it's a different approach, but then you must dig in and uncover those opinions within that persona. Yeah. Well, Brian, thank you so much for joining us tonight here on VoiceOver Body Shop. Again, the title of the book is, I got to go over. You can't memorize this. The Producers Guide to VoiceOver, a creative and practical guide to voiceover concepts and lots of other VO stuff, and they can get it where? Amazon. Just type it in on Amazon. A lot of typing. Yeah, just type in Producers Guide to VoiceOver. It shows up. And there's a lot of animation and there's cartoon drawings and everything. It's a really fun book. It's about sharing the fun of VoiceOver as well. It's not just about you must learn. You'll see the opening cover, one of my assistants, Amy Archibald, she's an amazing graphics design person. So you could hand this to a young actor, a teen actor, and they would eat it up, huh? I think they'd really enjoy it. Yeah, I think they'd have a blast because I do a lot of... I have trains and I talk about a train read and ball is bouncing downstairs and I have a kid jumping off a diving board and it's like, what? What's a diving board? I have to do a voiceover. Exactly. And when you see it, you'll learn it. That's the idea. Outstanding. Well, thanks again for joining us, Brian. We look forward to meeting in person again one of these days so we could get the chance either back in New York or some conference or somewhere. Exactly. Anyway, Brian Falk from Abagus Entertainment. All right, we'll be right back and wrap things up and rack it up for Tech Talk right after this. Yeah, hi, this is Carlos Ellis Rocky, the voice of Rocco and you're watching VoiceOver Body Show. Hey, everybody. Well, it's time to talk about Source Connect as we have already in this show actually quite a bit. So you probably by this side have an idea of what this thing might actually be and that it might be important because Brian, the producer, the guy who's going to be recording you is definitely using this tool. And as are so many other studios and engineers and productions all around the world actually, a great little piece of information I did not know is that they've got over 30 technicians now trying to cover the entire 24 hours of the clock so that you have someone you can get help from almost any time. And that is really crucial. That's really something that sets it apart from as far as I can tell all of the other similar systems that allow remote recording. Some rely on Facebook groups, some just rely on emails. These guys have invested heavily in live support and it's a really, really big part to making sure that not only you as a voice actor are feeling comfortable with the technology, but the engineers who rely on it feel comfortable that they also can get help if something goes wrong. And again, the technology is only as good as the support and that is really something that sets it apart. If you're thinking about getting started with Source Connect, get a demo, get a 15-day free trial. Head over to source-elements.com, sign up, tell them we sent you and if you need any help, let us know. We can help. That's something that we do. Anyway, we'll be right back to wrap up right after this. This is the Latin Lover narrator from Jane the Virgin, Anthony Mendes. And you're enjoying Dan and George on the voice of our buddy, Shaw. Oh, well, Brian, now that's the kind of information people need to hear. No, it was really good. It was great to hear from a producer, you know, in the trenches. Absolutely. Well, let's see. Next week on this very show, we've got Tech Talk number 55, which we're about to do. So stick around if you want to watch it live and ask your questions live in my best Billie Eilish voice. We'll explain why he mentioned Billie Eilish. Exactly. Then on May 3rd, we have noted narrator and voiceover guy, Neil Ross, who has a book coming out. And he's quite fascinating as well. So stay tuned for that in a couple of weeks. Who are our donors this week? Oh, yeah, I'm going to get this in one take. And one breath. Lee Penny? Lee? What are you giving us money for? You're an old friend. Hey, Don Lee. Michael Kearns, Christy Burns, Graham Spicer, Uncle Roy at Ant-Land Productions, Michelle Blanker, Sarah Borges, Christopher Apperson, Philip Sapir, and Trey Mosley. Those are the easy names because we have these people who are on subscribe. I see their names all the time. And if you subscribe, I'll be saying your name or even butchering it from time to time live on this show every time. So please just either donate one time if something was really helpful or you can subscribe for a tiny little bit of money on our website at vobs.tv via PayPal. So if you want to help out, that's how you do it. And it helps. And that's why it's technologically perfect now because of all the help you've given us. It has been flawless. It has been. Right, everybody? Tell me please. Absolutely. I bought a brand new camera just to do this show today. So please tell me. And you look marvelous. Anyway, we need to thank our sponsors as well without we could not be able to do this show. Harlan Hogan's Voice Over Essentials. Voice Over Extra. Soros Elements. Vio Heroes. VoiceActorWebsites.com and JMCDemos. Thanks to Jeff Holman for doing a yeoman job in the chat rooms tonight and and on Facebook and on YouTube and all those other things. George, you're the one tiny milling clubhouse tonight, aren't you? Yeah, Danny. Danny had a gig, so we let him slide. You know, it's okay. It's okay. You gotta work sometimes as an actor. That's right. And of course, our amazing technical director who's finally feeling better after her COVID shot. Sue Merlino. We're glad that you're all better. And of course, Lee Penney for being Lee Penney. And again, for making a donation. We appreciate that. Alrighty, we're going to reset for tech talk. So if you're watching live, stay tuned for that. It's time to wrap it up for this particular version. No, I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Wittem. And this is VoiceOver, Body Shop, or V-O-B-S.