 Hey, we're back. It's Monday night and it's time for voiceover body shop Great guest tonight Phil Proctor from the fire sign theater and all sorts of other cool stuff and we're gonna talk about narration and Improv and his career and all sorts of cool stuff. You got a pile of tech stuff. Don't you? Yeah, we do. We got tech news I've got some gripes and some thoughts. Hmm, and we're gonna talk about headphones versus studio monitors Coming right up a voiceover body shop two men Twin sons from different mothers with a passion for voiceover recording technology and the desire to make recording easy for voice actors everywhere Together in one place George Whidham the home studio engineer to the stars a Virginia tech grad with an unmatched knowledge of all the latest gear and technology in voiceover today Dan Leonard the home studio master a voice actor with over 30 years Experience in broadcasting and recording and a no-holds-barred myth-busting attitude for teaching you how easy it is together To bring you all the latest technology today's voiceover superstars and Leading the discussion on how to make the most of your voiceover business This is voiceover body shop Voiceover body shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials calm home of Harlan Hogan signature products source elements Remote connections made even easier Vio to go go calm Everything you need to be a successful voiceover artist J. Michael Collins demos award-winning demo production voice actor websites calm Where your voiceover website won't be a pain in the butt and voiceover extra your daily resource for Vio success And now live from their super secret multimedia studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are George Whidham and Dan Leonard Hi there, I'm Dan Leonard and I'm George Whidham and this is voiceover body shop or Vio BS Okay, well, we're back after you know like one show in three weeks funny how we take one show off It feels like a month. Yeah, I'm to me. All right. How do we do this again? cameras lights Push this button There we go, you know, it's like now it's official Yes, and it's live and you're joining us on a Monday night And we've got Phil Proctor with us tonight joining us again in the flesh in the flesh He's gonna be this is gonna be great. It'll be a great conversation. He's got a lot to cover. He's got a his book is out He's been doing a podcast all sorts of cool stuff and You're gonna be covering it looks like a large list of stuff in the tech update Somebody's got a fill time. Wow. Yeah, but hopefully people are coming in because that's what they want to hear Anyway, we'll get to all that but right now it's time for Presents the beyond BS voice over extra All the information you need for a successful voice over career And here's the voice over extra news for June 18th 2018 Negotiating rates if you enjoy negotiating voice over rates with your clients raise your hand Or send a quick yes to us in the chat room for everyone else Here's how to ditch the angst whenever you have to talk money our friend and VO pro Dan Hurst Shares with us his plan on how to behave and when we mean that we made it quite literally He's created a short checklist for us to remember based on the letters in behave Hmm Dan recognizes that negotiating rates is one of the most awkward and difficult things for most VO talent to deal with His article about this with many details is now on voice over extra and here are highlights All right starting with the letter B Which is for budgets ask the client what their VO budget is? It's a simple question and an easy way to broach the subject almost every client will have a budget in mind We think Next the letter E for expectations. What does the client expect from you? What's the scope of the job clear up any minute misunderstandings about what the client wants and what you think the client wants Now go to H for history. What does the client normally pay for talent? Never be intimidated by what they were were paying Usually when a client makes a VO change, they understand they may have to pay a little more But also have options for the higher fee if necessary for instance recording some phone messages For free The letter a brings us to annual see if you can get a retainer for instance negotiate a rate For a certain number of spots per month for a year This is an ongoing if it's an ongoing project that is next is the V for value Dan find a way to explain the new to the new client what additional value you bring to the job You can start by asking why do you want to use me? And if the client's reply doesn't mention all of the advantages you offer then fill in the blanks and Finally E is for experience What can you offer to make the job a great experience for the client? For instance, would you like to listen in while you record? Sure that can be a pain But also a great way to quickly focus on what the client wants There's much more detail about all this in Dan's article now at voiceover extra comm along with many hundreds of additional Helpful articles visit their daily for your voiceover success All right, I like those little mnemonic. What do they call it? It's a monics. Oh, I gotta have a question from the audience Why don't you spell it behavior with an R and ask about residuals? Oh Good question. Yeah, I don't think he was talking Union on behavior Oh Anyway now, but Dan Hurst always one of the smartest guys in the business He really understands what what's going on out there and how to behave and that's why he came up with that Mnemonic, yeah, and we do have a split audience, you know, we have the one stick I'm not sure actually some one of you guys might know that when you smart guys But yeah, I mean we do have a split audience some of you are non-union many Probably the majority of you because we cover the entire world with the show many of you are not but for some some that are union Residuals are definitely something you want to make sure you can get when possible, right? Even if you're not union thank you me residuals might as well ask good luck with that. Yeah, so what's new in the tech world? Well, I'll start right up by saying thank you to Jack Daniel who loaned me an MXL CR 89 microphone not one of the better known mics But then again most of MXL mics are not better known not the greatest of marketing They are over there at MXL, but it's a mic I'd seen at NAMM show a few years ago and I was pretty happy with it It sounds a lot like my 20 year old MXL 1006 but a little bit nicer and I hope to get around to doing a like a little George the tech review of that mic soon So you guys can hear it like in full quality and in context of what a good mic should sound like in a studio environment So you left it here, and I got to use it in a webinar and how'd it go did a nice job. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's a good condenser mic It's clean. It's very very heavy very talk about a way later that you can help support your heavy mic But anyway, I a couple weeks ago. I mentioned the Audient ID 22 audio interface is being somewhat problematic for a few clients And one issue just came amazingly after it being sent out to repair Tech support being involved. Mm-hmm. I was involved after all of that the client went and bought another unit And we still had problems the end result of a lot of Frustration and gnashing of teeth was the power supply and the Audient ID 22 like a lot of interfaces like it has an External power supply wall wart line lump, whatever the heck you call it. It's got one of those Turns out when he got his new Audient it plugged it in He was using the existing power supply from the old one which made sense just plug it in and go You'd think it'd be fine, but no turns out it was the power supply But now this this unit was sent back to a bit sent out to us for service the service department didn't think of this The Audient company didn't think of this The guy that he paid to support it didn't think of this none of us thought to try another power supply and In the end he'd made it just a random switch just thought you know what the heck and that was the problem So the moral that story is if you have a piece of equipment And it's acting funny in his case the signal was coming in a little distorted and it would never reach zero DB It would just always clip just shy of zero. We couldn't figure out why it was starved for power It's a it's a techie thing But it's a starving a power supply is starving the unit for power So if you had distortion and you can't figure out why there's no sense in it There's the gains not too high whatever it could be the power supply. So that's what we found there So always check your power supply is a rule that so rule that lesson Another thing I've run into lately is I pulled out a piece of gear sort of kind of out of the moth balls Once in a while I pull equipment out of a studio that I installed myself some time ago But then thanks to drivers falling behind and technical issues with gear I'll get it becomes less reliable reach down and get it before I fall over Thanks. Well, I brought this one in because it's just kind of cool-looking and this is the Tascam UH 7000 and this doesn't look probably like any USB interface you're familiar with if you're thinking of the Scarlet 2i2 Yeah, if you're thinking of any of those pieces of gear out there This probably doesn't look like just about any of them But what I like about it is the industrial design of this unit. It just looks it looks like a piece of like Audio file gear. It's heavy. It's well built like an old Marantz stereo. Yeah, like exactly They're going for that Marantz look the knobs are really well made. Oh everything on this thing quality was definitely a major focus It's got a really good headphone amplifier puts out tons of gain These nice VU meters and another little subtle thing about it all the LEDs, which I know you can't see that's not plugged in They don't blind you when they turn on like how much stuff do you buy these days? Where the lights on the unit is almost blinding you have to put tape over the dang things in your studio All these LEDs aren't overly bright. They're like a perfect brightness then on the back It's all like high quality XLR jacks where where they should be it's got AES input over here Which many of you aren't going to need I I know that AES is not that popular. It's digital, but it's got Proper XLR in and out for everything and another interesting thing is this gigantic power plug on the back It has a built-in power supply so Chances of the internal power supply being bad or far Far less because this thing the power supply was built by Tascam and it's integrated into the system Yeah, it's integrated in the unit. So it's it's their own power supply. It's not something that's been OEM'd or bought from China and Throne, you know, just thrown in the box, which can sometimes happen. So it's a really nice piece of gear. It sounds great It's got interesting features like built-in processing and we always talk about the Yamaha Right AG Zero three because of those processors It's got a lot of that stuff, but real quickly. I'm gonna say this. Here's the features and here's the bugs So features wise audiophile look build quality. It's obvious Tons of microphone preamp gain. I don't remember what the spec is, but I think it's well north of 65 db of gain So it should work with an sm7b or something like that without too much trouble Great internal monitor mixer, which can be used to do play a loopback, which is kind of cool, right? We always talk about if you want to do play back to a client. It'll do that It can also record the entire mix So if you're actually a coach and you want to record this person on skype It will do that. It'll just record whatever the mix is Which is kind of cool Not a lot of stuff can do that internal processing. Like I said, it has dsp But the weird thing about the dsp is it has eq and it's got compression and Gates and high pass filters and all this stuff. It'll only let you use one of those features at a time One at a time, which is really strange because well a lot of times you want to use more than one So I guess they were a little bit starved for dsp power when they built the unit However, many years ago and that's an unfortunate thing Um Driver updates again, I pulled this out of a studio using high seara mac os Because we had some glitches and they were really slow to get their drivers up to date I checked recently and it says seem to be current now in high seara But really when you use gear like this, especially high-end gear where drivers may not be updated constantly Do not update your systems. Just keep them locked down until you know everything is being supported and lastly, um A little weird weird thing, but the phantom power it's not an on off switch where you Click it on and click it off You have to every time you use phantom power Hold down a button on the front panel until phantom power turns on that's every single time you turn it on All right, so that's an annoying little thing about it But anyway, that's the task cam uh 7000 about 400 bucks Very high quality still available. Yeah, still current and the sound quality on input and output is Is fantastic three real nerds out there burr brown op amps burr brown op amps I got a thumb and thumbs up in the audience All right now the west system at china bands asmr video citing vulgarity and pornographic content What is this about? I had to throw this in there. I mean you guys have by now seen an asmr video Have you not have you seen the ones where I don't know what you kids are watching these days People whisper into the microphone. They speak extremely softly and whisper They like to use a lot of mouth noise so that the video has purposely full of mouth clicks and you spend way too much time on youtube Fingers over bedsheets all sorts of weird stuff. This is called asmr I can't google it asmr. I don't remember what it stands for but apparently china think some of these videos are so vulgar Absolutely stupid moronic. This is not porn By the way, this is not porn. This is just people talking in a soft whispering voice And touching and clicking the microphone and doing little things like that China says this is pornographic and has banded They probably think someone's sending them secret messages from the capitalist west It's so crazy. Anyway, I just stumbled on that little piece and I had to get that out there Thank you for thank you for sharing that you're welcome. That was definitely different All right, phil proctor's coming up in just a couple of minutes We're gonna have a little debate about headphones versus studio monitors right after these messages. So stay tuned to a voiceover body shop Yeah, hi, this is carlo zellers rocky the voice of roco and you're watching voice over body shop Yep, this is v obs proven anybody can have a show these days Hey guys, this is tom also known as the voice of spongebob square pants And you want to fill your ear holes and your eye holes with dan and george and the audio body shop Snails like it too. Wow. Hey guys, this is tom also known as the voice of spongebob square pants And you want to fill your ear holes and your eye holes with dan and george and the audio body shop You want to be an audiobook narrator? But you don't know where to turn for the best training and the truth about working successfully with acx Well, here's your golden ticket registration for the 2018 acx home study audiobook masterclass is now open for a limited time at acx masterclass.com forward slash forward slash Is that my cue yes register You'll get four weeks of absolutely Transformational training via audio video and online with support every step of the way You'll be led by david h laurence the 17th and dan oday whose past students have narrated and produced close to 3000 audiobooks on the acx platform go to acx masterclass.com Forward slash register and when you're registered before 9 p.m. Pacific on tuesday july 19th That's tomorrow david and dan will pay your first 500 dollars of your tuition. So act fast acx masterclass.com forward slash Register do what you've dreamed of doing narrating audiobooks as part of your vo portfolio Go to acx masterclass.com forward slash register. That's acx masterclass.com forward slash register As a voice talent you have to have a website But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you and when they finally do a break or don't look right on mobile devices They're not built for marketing and seo. They're expensive You have limited or no control and it takes forever to get one built and go live So what's the best way to get you online in no time? Go to voice actor websites.com like our name implies voice actor websites.com just does websites for voice actors We believe in creating fast mobile friendly responsive highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use You have full control no need to hire someone every time you want to make a change And our upfront pricing means you know exactly what your costs are ahead of time You can get your voice over website going for as little as 700 dollars So if you watch your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity and dealing with too many options Go to voicehactor websites.com where your vo website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what And we're back. Yay Uh, phil proctor is coming up in just a couple of minutes. We're gonna have a great time talking with him But one of the things that It always bugs me when i'm talking to people and you and I talk to a lot of people You and I probably talked to more people about their home studios and anybody else on god's green earth And I think that is actually probably the truth. I believe that is true You know combined thousands and thousands of customers satisfied. Uh, but not billion served, but we're working on Uh, anyway, um One of the things that uh, the people always ask me about what headphones should I get And that leads to a couple of questions like why wear headphones? You know, or what's your budget? Yeah, you know, now this is all prompted because I bought a new paris Monitors, so let me ask you first. Yes. Why? Because I wanted to donate my old krk rocket fives to somebody else Do you need an excuse to buy new it worked? And um, that's what it was. Yeah, and and and I and I had I went to an event last week where they were demonstrating some adam monitors and I really want to am adam adam. Yeah, and they're they're here. They're made here in la I think and uh, and I went over to uh banjo and porium and I Let me listen to the and they convinced me the yamaha's Were much bad and they were crisp and clean and they were really really good. Mm-hmm The atoms were good too though. Yeah, but they were the same price and I'm like, well the yamaha There was something in the low mid-range or something there that worked in yeah But I like having studio monitors because the power that they have They deliver exactly back what you record. So when you're playing back your files, you know exactly what you're talking about You know, you hear exactly what you said with all all of the all of the subtleties Uh of your audio there. Mm-hmm now There's a lot to be said for headphones. You give me your why you think headphones are a better idea Well, yeah, it depends on the context that you're using them for Thanks I had them Carefully perched in one ear so I can hear Dan without the head. So this is an example, right? Right now. I'm using headphones. Why am I using headphones? Because I want to hear What's going out on the air is act, you know, not maybe not as accurately possible But I want to hear what's going out on the air because I need to hear the mix of everything Right. So in this case, I'm doing two jobs. I'm on air or on camera talent and I'm audio engineer Right. So in this case, it's kind of tough. I'm doing two jobs I really want to hear what's going on, but I don't want to have to be Fully enclosed in headphones all the time. So I'm doing the one-year one-off technique If you're voice acting having headphones on both ears all the time is not necessarily a great thing When you're in the process of learning the act the craft of voice acting But when you're editing audio and listening to audio critically closely and trying to make a determination as to What should be in what should be in an edit where the edit point should be Sometimes headphones can be better and the reason I think that is because many people don't have a great monitoring environment Right You know that's the problem and that's the thing, you know now my studio is set up Acoustically so I can hear properly out in the studio out of my workspace This room is very nicely acoustically tuned. It has nice high ceiling And so you're not going to get a whole lot of color Coloration right from the room and the same way a microphone interacts with the room The speakers interact with the room. So the two of them are going to you know, they're going to correlate and Cause issues the same way a microphone does Just sort of in reverse But if you're going to get monitors get good ones if you can afford them If you get headphones, what type of headphones should you get? I mean, you know, of course we have a sponsor that makes fantastical. There is the Harlan O'Reary Yeah, the signature series Headphones. Yeah, so what's nice about these is they were they were voiced to be relatively flat Not have a lot of color to them They're not designed to be exciting sounding for music A lot of music headphones or headphones oriented for music use Have a lot of bright top-end or overly bright top-end and they have too much bass as well They call it I call it the eq disco smile Because the treble is way up on one end and the bass is way up on the other And a lot of headphones do that Those beats headphones Boy, they're really bad that way. So these headphones like these are designed to not have a lot of that coloration There's all the ones akg 240s. I like the direct sound Isolation headphones direct sound. Okay, very good. Yeah, they're made for drummers, but they're really really flat Which I think is also appropriate to the studio monitors you get they also deliver a nice flat response And that's really you it you don't want any coloration. You want to hear exactly what it was that you recorded Yeah, studio monitors aren't designed to be again. They're not designed to be exciting sounding Like for listening to music they're designed to be accurate So you might put your favorite cd that you listen to a hundred times up on some brand new studio monitors You might be a little disappointed at first. You might go it doesn't sound a lot a lot of where's the bass? Where's the sizzle of the cymbal? You know, it doesn't sound as exciting Well, they're not designed to be exciting. They're designed to be relatively accurate. So all right So not a knock-a-mout drag amount I think you and I actually agree on all this stuff Yeah, you just have to know your whatever you're monitoring on whether it's speakers headphones whatever brand they are however much they You paid for them You need to know them They need to be familiar to you. You need to listen to them. Listen to a lot of familiar sources on music Uh podcast uh NPR whatever the radio you listen to all the time listen to stuff You know really well, right and then listen to your own voice of course as well If you if you're familiar with editing your own voice, right? If if it sounds familiar, it just sounds like there's nothing Boomy about them or to this or to that, you know, you should be okay And just learn the way they'll and that way they'll translate from whatever you do to the rest of the world That's what matters no matter whether they're speakers or headphones. Absolutely. We got a couple of questions Oh, right. Yeah, neil wilson asks what kind of timer stopwatch do you have in your studio? I'm trying to find something digital as opposed to a handheld stopwatch i.e. something you'd see in a professional recording studio It's called your iphone Uh, or or your android or your android. Yeah. Oh, I can do the lap time on this one. Anyway There's there's there's two schools of thoughts on this. Yeah I mean If if I get a script and I you know it says 30 seconds I've been doing this since the ford administration I know what 30 seconds is and I'll and I can read it and I can cut it down into that into that time frame um But if it's the copy's kind of long or the copy's kind of short, I will use, you know, my my iphone and you know All right, I've got a couple seconds that way sometimes if you're doing tags or whatever They'll say you have to get this in 2.8 seconds or something crazy like that It's like could you shorten it just a little bit? You know, but yeah one two three. Yeah, but do you hear the buttons clicking and then phone beeping when you? No, of course not That's why these these these are make a they're a natural timer in fact bow weaver Um in his studio. He has an old ipad whose job is to do that thing Yeah, literally nothing more nothing more than a timer It sits on his copy stand right there and he has the timer app and that's it running on it If you have an old ipad laying around an ipad one Maxine you got an ipad one if you've got an old ipad laying around That can be a dedicated timer because it's silent and easy to read or you find an old kodak dark room timer Oh, the big manual ones those are pretty quiet aren't they they don't make any noise Yeah, yeah, and then when it gets to the end you could have it light up a light bulb. That's right exactly Yeah, you're done. All right, you can have a sign now when it hits the end it goes shut up Gotta gotta gotta speed up the copy a little bit That's another thing. Yeah, if you're recording yourself Your recording software has a timer built in and so it's another way to just record your script You can you can see the timer or a common thing with most dolls like twisted wave We do this all the time highlight what you just read just highlight it and it'll show you the selection length So it's another way to tap second too long There's a lot of ways to do it. Oh, i'm under 30 seconds. Fabulous. Yeah jack No, we got one more question I have it from jack who's actually here, but i'll read the question He says i have a personas central station monitor controller in the studio along with a lot of other stuff A few days ago it started emitting a high-pitched wine from the box itself Not my cans or monitors i can correct the issue by tapping on top of the box But this is pretty unsatisfactory. It's new so i can return it But you think of can you think of anything that might be causing this sound? Isn't that what they call microphonic? That's an old thing from the tube days if you tap a piece of gear and it makes Makes a strange weird noise. That's called microphonic I don't know if it's microphonic because there's no tubes in there could be a grounding issue But it definitely sounds here's the thing about new gear like when it fails It usually fails when it's pretty new and a lot of stuff that's I don't think they burn in a lot of gear these days burn in is when you plug your equipment in It's powered on and it runs for a good period of time Yeah, the better the gear the more expensive it is the longer. It's usually burned in like at grace design I've been to their factory Maxine i have They have a big rack where their gear is all lined up and it sits there and it burns in for days Because anything's gonna fail it fails usually within the first I don't know a few hours to a few days So it's um, it's seems like a maybe a power supply thing. I'm Power supplies the theme of the evening. It could be power supply. It's hard to say but um, that definitely has to get it Get swapped out, you know, unfortunately. All right. That's more geeking this than you are all prepared to handle Uh, so anyway, phil proctor is coming up We're gonna have a great conversation with him and if you've got questions for him Throw them in the chat room and jack daniel question asker Owner of big studio. I was over at a studio the day. It's gorgeous. Oh nice nice apartment, but the studio it dominates Well before we go Yes, how do they find you for tech support since we're the dudes that know all this stuff? Well, you can find me at homevoiceoverstudio.com Right on and where can they find you? I'm over at george the tech.com So if you want to hire me for just on-demand stuff or if you want to send me audio to process for you Or just do a sound check george the tech.com and I do the same. All right phil proctor coming up Don't go away. We'll be right back on voiceover body shop Are you confused about how to set up and maintain a professional quality voiceover studio? No wonder the information out there is mostly Mythology, this is the best microphone to use. You'll have to have a preamp You need a soundproof booth this software is the best your audio must be broadcast quality Consult with someone who knows the truth someone who's been there in the trenches doing voiceover for over 30 years Someone with unparalleled experience with voiceover studios Who's worked with hundreds of voice actors and designed hundreds of personal studios? He knows how to teach and cares about your success In one of the harshest environments known to voiceover your home Dan Leonard the home studio master Separate myth from fact and get a handle on your personal voiceover studio Contact the home studio master at home voiceover studio.com drop off a specimen of your dry audio for a free analysis Yeah, hi, this is carlos ellis rocky the voice of rocko and you're watching voiceover body shop Yep, this is v. OBS proven anybody can have a show these days Hey guys, this is tom also known as the voice of spongebob square pants And you want to fill your ear holes and your eye holes with dan and george and the audio body shop? Snails like it too. Hey everybody source elements They're the creators of source connect which is an incredible software package for connecting to you You your studio to other studios around the world and it's become rapidly become the Definitely the standardized software now that studios are using as an alternative to ISDN It's a standalone application. It doesn't run in a web browser So it's really very much a proven system that is Insulated from the whim of google chrome and whatever your web browser is So that you have a system you can really count on and it's what the studios are using it really is The big tool the big tool of choice In the broadcast post production and the rest of the world is really the one That is getting a lot of traction. I'm hearing more and more now now That source connect is what people are being asked to use. So be ready with it. Don't be caught Unprepared be ready get a demo right now Go to source dash dash elements dot com and get a 15 day free trial of source connect Give it a shot so you can better understand and be prepared for that big gig when it comes down to you We'll be right back here with dan and phil proctor right after this. Yeah. Hi. This is carlo Salas rocky the voice of brocco and you're watching voice over body shop Yep, this is v obs proven anybody can have a show these days Yeah, hi, this is carlo. Yep. This is v obs proven anybody can have a show these days Alrighty Time for our guest phil proctor is an internationally known actor singer writer composer director and producer His musical and linguistic gifts have taken him From broadway of the sound of music a time for singing to cities across the us canada france and the former ussr That was a long time ago. Yeah He's now best. He's also best known for his collaboration with the cult comedy group the fire sign theater Yes, along with other members of the fire sign theater He has received dual Grammy nominations The group was the focus of a seminar at the west coast branch of the museum of television and radio And they were listed as one of the 30 greatest acts of all time By entertainment magazine a major publication. Yes. Yes. Yes. Welcome phil proctor Active voice of her body shop. Of course, you can see that it's been such a long time since we we were on I was on the show Right, I grew a beard. Wow See, but of course I can't match your splendorio Mustachio, so I can show you how to do it. All right. Good little wax. There we go So, what have you been up to? Oh my gosh. You've been a busy boy. Oh my gosh Well, for instance, uh, since I saw you last besides, you know, where's where's my fortune cookie? I have written two other books featuring proctor and bergman power life on the edge in la and uh, americathon The skits behind the screenplay and these are both on bare manner press Um, we could talk about them later if you want, but these are these are things that I promised peter We would finish after he passed on so see pete. I did it. Okay. There they are Um, and I just got back from the here now festival You were in kansas in kansas city where it's everything up today terrible. Yes pretty much I had pretty terrible hay fever. Yeah, which is why a little scratchy voice here But I understand the scratchy voice is good except not in china Is that right? Okay. So anyway, uh, and this this is a wonderful festival that actually started as, uh, 1979 in, uh, another part of Missouri and it was a a voiceover festival For teaching all kinds of workshops and microphone technique narration technique Animation techniques, you know how to do copy and all that stuff and it's still going on strong And they had about I don't know 200 people who came and they were involved in all kinds of wonderful workshops And got an opportunity many of them to perform their own special radio and audio pieces Uh, and we also had the uh, I think it was the 25th year of the Mark time awards, which are awards that david osmond started and that is now an international competition With entries hundreds of entries from all over the world and this year one of the The winners of the audio award was from south africa and he came to the event and spoke to us with that strange african accent You know, which nobody can do properly. Nobody not me. Anyway So that was a wonderful, uh, fun event for me and I was honored Uh, on a friday at the cinemark theater where suziza, who's one of the founders and one of the driving forces Behind the the festival for so many years Honored my career in the fire sign theater and as a voiceover artist in general and we premiered the podcast Of my book where is my fortune cookie, which by the way is a great book. Thank you I don't read books generally, but you know, you sent me this I read this thing through as it This is a great read. You can't put it down. Good and it's profusely illustrated. You're right. I which is probably why Down wait a minute Okay, uh, so that was very thrilling and they actually played live the podcast in the theater Wow So we got to hear it and and one of the things about this and I we'll talk a little bit about this in terms of narration Because it it's being a member of the fire sign theater, uh, the Beatles of comedy by called by the library of congress Uh, I wanted to not just read my book, but I wanted to embellish it just like this is illustrated with pictures I wanted to do something with the sound and sue and her husband david David her husband david that's for anybody know right now Wanted to help me with that and so they added certain sound effects and music to the storytelling I also had a chance to correct some of the mistakes in the book Okay, because I don't if you're a writer you you copy you copy read everything over and over and over again But eventually you just kind of give up. So I got to get this book out there Okay, like there it is and and so there were some factual errors that I discovered when I was reading the book in this little studio in brooklyn where I went when about three and a half days I got to read the whole book as a Audio book which will be released as in september But we we cut it up into, uh, digestible segments for the podcast which would be services Yeah episodes, yeah, which will be uh highlighted by tom kelly Who is another podcaster younger voice and he will tell you what's what's coming up What you may have missed from the last episode and where we'll be going in the episode to follow So every friday at pod bean dot com and various other places, you know how these things go Right, uh, they're they're like roots. They travel out in other places There'll be a new episode from the book. Where's my fortune cookie available at amazon dot com But the main and most exciting thing. Yes about if that's not enough that's not enough, right? There's more The most exciting thing about my being honored in kansas city Was the fact that we were able to announce that the library of congress Purchased the archives of the fire sign theater for half a million dollars That's it Ain't that enough I'm really thrilled and honored, uh, you know for that to have happened. Yeah, I mean it was Back in the early 70s and a friend of mine dragged me over to his house. I used to I used to be in my early 70s I'm getting there, uh, but I remember him saying gotta listen to these guys and you know You know, who are the bozos on this bus and you don't crush that dwarf hand me a block Great stuff. My favorite though was the fake shakespeare. Uh anything you want to yes Yes, word. My favorite quote is may you standee deep in cow flim That was so much fun to write. What was how did that come about? Well, it actually started at the renaissance pleasure fair one of the very first renaissance pleasure fairs Where also the flying caramazo brothers started to do their stuff and where we became lifelong friends And uh, we performed it as waiting for the count of mounty cristal or someone like him Yeah, that was the ur material for this. It was a stool mondong kind of melodrama And it slowly evolved and grew into a more Shakespearean experience and then we were hired by national public radio on a show called What was it called something airplane? No, I don't know We were we were hired to write an hour long version of it with live music With authentic old instruments from the Shakespearean period and we wrote a wrap around I was derrick escrow a directive from australia and I was manning this particular radio piece and And and we had this whole backstory Which you can hear on the record everything you know is wrong, which is still not everything you know is wrong Anything you want to right everything. I know Everything I say is wrong too But anyway, and and I'm so glad you like it because that's really also one of our favorites We also published a book of Of that of the scripts And it's and it's annotated the joke of the book is that it's extensively annotated And we wrote all these crazy funny footnotes You know like some Shakespeare editions are because it's old language everything the book is probably a 70 footnotes All right 30 scripts so like a paragraph in the line. Yes Right And then the history of that you know and and we we wrote a whole full false history about yield fire sign theater In learndon back in the day, you know, it's a very funny book. I the next time I see you I'll gift you a copy. Oh, thank you. All right, because you'll you'll enjoy that But that the one thing that that sue said to me about promoting the podcast is we all Know about well, we know about the fire sign theater, but a lot of people out there I'm sure do not know those not born at that particular four-man satirical comedy group that that came together on radio free eyes On kpfk listener supported la radio back in 1965 or so And we we got a contract From gary usher at columbia records to do our first album waiting for the electrician or someone like him and yes, and and we still are by the way and From that a fellow named john mcclure who was working in the spoken arts division at columbia Said we've got to sign these guys for multiple albums And here's the trick in exchange for a reduced royalty, which i'm sure we could all use in this country right now Reduced royalty. We don't need a monarch in exchange for reduced money. They gave us unlimited studio time Okay, so we could spend hours in the studio right creating our multi layered records and you asked me also about The the performance How did you guys do this? I don't write a lot about it in the book Actually, I I mentioned it and the reason that I didn't get into the weeds with the fire sign theater is because we were together for 50 years And through divorces and suicides and all kinds of strange pairings, you know And and naturally like any great band there are going to be breakups and things but we couldn't replace our drummer You know it was just it was just the four of us always just the four of us And we had this magic together and we made this magical comedy music together And and we and what kept us together was love Love but Dave osman for instance wrote a book which I also should have brought you a copy to look at at bare manner press called fighting clowns of hollywood And those are his observations and notes when we were doing a record called The fighting clowns with artwork by the late great phil hartman by the way And it was a live musical album that we did at the roxy And recorded, you know with a big old truck In those days you had to have a big old truck Oh, yeah now, you know, you know this little thing here. Oh, yeah, you know, you know stick in your ear And and anyway, uh, that that is it became an amazing album But david shows the warts and all because you know, he he he Excercates me or whatever that word is he he uh, uh, he he's mad at me at one point You know for for something that I didn't want to do and he's mad at phil at another point And he's mad at peter at another point and we're all mad at him, you know But but it shows the process. We got through it and we did it and here's the funny thing about writing with three other guys Oh, so all this stuff was written. It was. Yes. It was all totally scripted. Oh my god And that was always the hardest part. Yeah, okay Because there were four guys four strong egos four fire signs. I'm a leo There were two sagittarians and unfortunately philosin is an aries. Okay, so, you know stubborn mule I mean ram, you know, so so we we constantly the writing process was arduous Which is why we smoked a lot of marijuana and drank a lot of brandy El presidente We drink brand and I would make model models out of paper castles and things. Well, you know, I'm telling you but but the but we would eventually come up with Some material and then we could go into the studio And we could lay it down and we could see what it sounded like and that would inform us as to the next You know process of writing the next stage of the story I got a butt in on the studio sure you did the remotes But when when you had that unlimited studio time to play around When you were getting that time was that on a four track? Studio man. How many tracks did you have to work with? We started at columbia records at columbia square Recording in radio studios. Okay, so just half-inch classic great radio studio. Yeah, and and the biggest studio which had an audience Bleachers was where I think bob hoped it is stuff and you know, who knows who else but but We were in this this magical space and doing this this incredibly complicated work And yes indeed george when we started it was maybe an eight track You know and we'd have to we luxury you got eight tracks back then Hey big time columbia records, you know and and we would rapidly fill up the tracks Or philip would fill up the tracks or fill awesome And and then we'd we'd run we'd we'd have something else we wanted to overdub uba dubbing Oba artist. Yeah, and so they do a thing called ping-pong right where you throw up throw all the tracks One track mix them and then you free up the other tracks and you can lay some of this now We caught freezing them basically freezing them once that's done. It's done. You know, it's okay. You commit Yeah, you as you commit or you committed And and and as we continued to work And once we broke out of columbia and started using other studios warner brothers We recorded at one point at rca at another point That tracks the the tapes got bigger and bigger and bigger until We have a picture of us with these huge Reels of tape with big thick like pasta tape, you know, yeah, and then it all went away It became digital Okay, right, right and it was gone And and the studio became the little box like the thing you were holding in your hands And and that allowed us to do a different kind of location recording. We use contact microphones. We set up Little like almost a movie studio like scenes where we could walk from one Part of the studio into another to create a certain versimilitude to get back to the writing process. Yes. Yes what we learned was when we went in with our arduously created scripts and started playing the roles We started changing things And if you look at those early scripts, which will be in the library of congress now if you want to look at them Next time you're in Washington every every single one of us to the four of us has scripts that you did like hieroglyphics You know little notes and things and eventually We we since we do we take after take after take we almost throw them away and improvise On the premise because we've gotten to know the characters right and we knew what the material was We knew what we were trying to do and new jokes would suddenly appear And the interaction You know fed us because the joy of fire sign theater Which has never been replicated was that we were our writers our producers our musicians our actors All wrapped up together in one crazy unit of four crazy guys And we called ourselves the four or five crazy guys because the fifth guy Was the result of the interaction of all of us Where we kind of lost ego We lost ownership of what it was that we that we wrote and took on a life of its own It took on a life of its own and it became more than the sum of its parts fascinating Hey, if you're just joining us, you've already missed a whole lot Uh, we're talking can't you play it back? It's a great thing about if you listen to it on a podcast you can do that That's right or watch the replay tomorrow. Um, and if you're hearing me say this why are you why do you care? Uh, phil proctor's our guest if you've got a question for him throw it in the chat room and jack daniel Who's been sitting here patient drinking? Uh, yes, supposedly and he'll be uh, Relaying those questions to us and i'm sure lots of you out there remember fire sign theater or have a question about some of the Stuff we're talking about and and and dan if you don't hi george If you don't remember fire sign theater, yeah I'm the voice of howard on the rug rats Where's phil and lil okay? I'm also The uh, uh the the seahorse father in finding nemo You're a clown fish. It's not funny. I'm also in the game Assassin's creed the villain dr. Warren viddick See Aspergo, what's you and the drunken french monkey in the dr. Do little movies. Oh, I remember that Yeah, I did five of those that was a wonderful thing and oh, yes charlie The the the this monsters manager In monsters incorporated. Okay. I called in the the squad, you know And finally at least of these pictures that I have I played the chef in the academy award-winning anime Spirited away, which if you haven't seen it isn't it a beautiful beautiful movie mystical and magical So, uh, I have I have had this other bizarre career Which also involves movies and television and all kinds of stuff. It's it's in the book It's in the book I'm is on that come or the podcast on pod bean that come every friday You'll hear a little another little mystery about oh there. I am with bob comings who they probably probably don't know either, right? Uh, and oh here. I am on all in the family with archie bunker Oh, good. Okay. Yeah, so I had I've had an amazingly Wonderful career sick about 65 years in show business Because I started as a little kid along with elliott gould on a live radio show television show in uh, New York called uncle dany reads the funnies Where basically it was at the uh, new york at the daily news building uh on wpix tv And dany lennard. I think his last name was wood. Well, maybe it's you Uh, it's your relative. It's your long life There's a number of famous dan lennards. All right. Anyway, he would read the comics and they'd show the comic strip Dick tracy or little orphan annie or what have you and then I and another pretty little girl would comment and improvise On you know, what was going on and elliott gould was also one of these guys who did this at the time But do you think to have in common with him? You know now you you were you were in your Your wonderful newsletter, which I loved all thinking, you know, I planted proctor. Yes. It's fabulous stuff. I get it out. I'm like Oh, it's hilarious. But you've also we've we've also lost a lot of people in the last few months Oh, one of them was harry anderson who you know fairly well. Tell us about harry anderson Well, here when when proctor and bergman these these two guys were were touring in our touring years um We ran across a guy in uh austin texas Uh who was a magician. He was working as a bartender and doing wonderful magic and we needed an opening act So we said okay because the guy who was going to open for us in austin was going to do a lenny bruce Set and I said no, no, no, we can't do lenny bruce before proctor and bergman. It's just too wrenching So we we we said harry do you think you could do some magic to open for us? Sure and he wowed them He did his is a needle through the arm routine and he was brilliant And so we ran into him again in houston And we did the same thing we said we our act is entirely different now It's more like a new age act could could you do something like that? he showed up in like a Dushiki some kind of transparent clokey thing with lights underneath it lighting, you know look like a peter max post Yeah, amazing, and he did this psychedelic set that was just so afterwards Over a dinner we said, you know, you really got great stuff harry. You should come to hollywood And the next thing I know one maybe Seven years later i'm guest starring on his show On a night court three times and then later on dave's world And harry had this phenomenal success But retained his sweetness his openness his friendship And he he would He would go out of his way to make sure that he was always connected with all of his friends He called us out of the blue Always inappropriately When when sigfried and roi had that terrible accident where the tiger attacked roi He called up and he said Pardon me roi. Was that the cat that ate your face off? And then he said too soon and hang up You know, and I call it back and we talk about talk At the latest one the last one before he passed away Of complications of the flu when he had a stroke in the hospital. Oh god, i'm out talking about that I just did talk about that but i want to tell you about the last time I saw him the last time he called it was this Don't know why i've got lipstick on my fly Stormy danu Never too soon so my my wife melinda and I uh when we Dave osman And I have created a piece called the art of radio And it looks like we're going to be doing Some performances of this here in los angeles, and I'll let you guys know let you all know he comes our guests And we premiered it at the library of congress At a wonderful theater called the coolidge theater And after that we were in the dc area washington dc Harry lives in lived in ashfield north carolina. We have many friends in ash gorgeous place. Yeah, great place A lot of voiceover people there actually. Yes, so I've heard And so we drove and spent three days at harry's new house because he had another house We used to visit with his two new dogs and his beautiful wife elizabeth And his this house is like a big old gothic place, you know and absolutely crammed with his with his magic A paraphernalia, you know even he had like an outbuilding filled with paraphernalia that he just sold to somebody And then another outbuilding which which had posters and all and all kinds of of other Scripts and crazy things and we stayed in the j jonson's suite j jonson has been a long time You can call the ray and you can call me j that guy No, j jonson is the the pump of the ventriloquist very famous ventriloquist who was on soap Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes, and j actually Was the the the host at the magic castle memorial two weeks ago heartbreaking and wonderful and fun and funny and Anyway, harry has the j jonson's suite because he had been doing some theater with j Locally and in in the north carolina area and they were going to mount a production of a play called jb Which is a poetical play and our friend john apachele made mask a mask of the devil and a mask of god It's a very strange play about these two two guys in a carny Who decide to become god and the devil to tell the story of joe And harry was really ready to do it until he got sick, but uh in this in this house of his I asked him. I said did you move your electric chair? From the old house to this one. He said, oh, yeah, and I bought another one Now how many people do you know? Who have two electric chairs in their house? That's an interesting collection. Well, one of them is for the guest. Oh, okay Of course and and he said an absolutely wonderful thing Quite early in his career. He said a wonderful thing about radio he said Radio is like magic It has to be believed to be seen Interesting. Isn't that beautiful? That is well said. Anyway, we miss him greatly He had three memorials one at the sportsman's lodge where he used to stay when he was Filming his show the second one was at the magic castle and last we last sunday in new orleans At uh, they had another memorial for that. Wow A great talent rest. Yeah, our guest is phil proctor here on voiceover body shop again If you got a question throw it in the chat room. We'll be right back with a little bit more with phil proctor So stay right. We are All new iPhone reserve your disney world season pass now through all the runny noses three in the morning coughs An all-new american crime story tonight on fx this week only It's pasta fest at all of garden heart rate crime blood pressure Perfect. I grew up with the classics and now with stop hub. I can get authentic tickets to the best shows the all-new chevy crews From 16 995 Fee inspired then get the beauty that's uniquely yours at sephora this week at home depot It's our garden fest sale with up to 30 off all garden tools sod and seeds Hi, it's j michael collins and these are just a few examples of the first class demos My team and I are producing if you'd like to have something similar Visit jmc voiceover dot com and click on the demo production tab to find out more All right time to talk about voiceover essentials. It's their vo accessory sale Extended for one more week due to popular demand from abs straps What you're gonna throw me the abs strap There it is That looks dirty. It is it will save your microphone from a potentially fatal fall to headphone hangers To their voiceover recording led sign with remote Here Oh my gosh, I only plugged it in then we'd really have something but there you can see it says voiceover recording. Yes It's on sale And here's the thing If you you Larger the more you buy One more week and that's it click on the on sale menu item on voiceover essentials dot com for full details Get a minimum of 10 off on any accessory purchase By $50 or more of accessories and get 12 off by $100 or more of accessory items and get a full 15 off And that discount applies to select accessory items only like their vo1a pop wrap brown pop filter Headphone hanger adjustable desktop stand the abs boom strap There it is The boom jock I have been searching all over for the place the place for this. I found it this afternoon Alrighty Yeah, hi and they're wildly popular multicolored led voiceover recording sign with remote Check on sale menu item for full voiceover details at voiceover essentials dot com And there it is. Alrighty We'll be right back Yeah, hi, this is carlos. I was rocking the voice of roco and you're watching voiceover body shop. Yeah, I wish I name this company Yes Hey guys, this is tom also known as the voice of spongebob square pants And you want to fill your ear holes and your eye holes with dan and george and the audio body shop Snails like it too All right, we're back here on voice. I wanted to ask you about this wonderful deal Yeah, at voiceover essentials. Yeah, can I get a discount for because this is all I I have right now The shrinking doll you want it's already a little discounted. Okay Harry Anderson gave me this he made it for me He made it for me. You you can make it yourself. This is a real dollar bill. I've been carrying it around so long It's falling apart But uh, there's a secret way to do this Mm-hmm Can't tell you because I am a life member of the magic castle We want to talk a little bit about narration technique. Yes Because narration is what I think most, you know, a lot of our audiences like they narrate stuff. That's right It's e-learning. It's audiobooks. It's all sorts of stuff There are like thousands of audiobooks that are now coming out everything since Gutenberg. They want recorded It's just about that's right. What's the key to good narration in your mind? Well Inhabiting the material Honoring the material. It's the same thing that that makes theater exciting You have to honor the author and The narrators that I whose work I most admire are ones who can bring Dramatic reality to the characters without going crazy about it. But it's very subtle but They can bring a reality when characters are talking to one another and they can bring a Sense of mystery really to everything that they're doing so that you get you do not always anticipate what's going to happen next and The one thing about narration that bothers me personally and the reason why I did the the recording of Where's my fortune cookie in the podcast which you can listen to on podbean.com I wanted to make it as as illustrated as the book itself Is with pictures and I figured that the best way to do that was with Character and sound sound effects and music which you're not really allowed to do I was gonna say but that's the way audiobook should be Yeah, they should be but most of the audio producers simply want to keep it there to talk about budget, right? They want to keep it simple read the book But here's a funny thing that happened to me my wife melinda peterson who appeared in several plays with me at the Here now audio festival in kansas city She's sitting in the audience of my honorific on friday afternoon Where we're gonna you're gonna premiere the podcast And so the podcast is premiered now in the podcast. I read the forward which is called I think forward into the past And and I thank in the forward, you know my daughter christin and various other people, but I don't thank my wife because I dedicated the book to her and it says right here this book is dedicated to my darling wife melinda And guess what wasn't part of the recording when they played it and why wasn't it? Because audiobooks don't read the dedications All right now my mother suffered from macular degeneration, which I also have the dry form so it's slow There's no cure for it, but it's slow. So maybe there will be if I can, you know, see it happening And uh, and she used to listen to books. They weren't on tape. They were on disc Books for the blind right and uh, and everything is read when you read a book for the blind Including, you know, all the stuff about the the what library number it is, you know, all that stuff copyright So I was shocked when I learned that they don't read the dedication, you know, that's just an arbitrary decision It takes a how much time does it take to read a dedication? You know, so I have certain problems with I mean, that's a minor quibble, but you understand what I'm saying And I actually met some people at the here now festival in kansas city Who worked out of their own studio in a very inventive way They created this one fellow in particular Dan Hayes, I think his name is he created Different voices Really distinct character voices for each of his characters a little bit like harry shearer Does in his radio show the show and overdubbed himself and produced it with music and sound effects And filter effects if they're on the phone and everything and I was blown away And and he has done this because he was Started as a narrator and he got bored with it And he said what can I do to expand the art and give me control like the fireside theater So he produced he figured out a way to produce himself In his studio there in kansas city and he found clients who want a more dramatic Interesting involving. Oh, that's great to hear illustrated story, right? That's why I stopped doing audiobooks. This is just takes a lot of time. Yeah, and it's you know I I do recommend it for people who want to get into the voiceover industry because it will teach you Discipline it'll teach you a lot about how to bring a story to life Which will help you in any other form that you're asked to do radio commercials cartoons. What have you? the I think the the the secret to transitioning from narration To these other forms is the art of exaggeration Okay, because you're allowed to exaggerate in in the world of audio has to be believed to be seen and And and but in narration it can become distracting because people are listening to it while they're driving or they're jogging Or doing other things we can't talk about on the radio and and and so it requires a certain kind as you say of kind of Boring approach to it right and you bring as many colors to that as you can and that's why some of these narrators are Better known than others in listening At the awards ceremony audiophile awards for in various categories At the here now festival on saturday night I remember they play snippets from these various things and this is what I remember mystery He walked into the room. It was dark the candle suddenly sputtered out. I turned and I saw fades out comedy I don't know what was so funny about it. I was wearing a skirt. So what? I'm a kind of a colorful guy and then she said to me fades out a cult a not a cult dragon stories the dragon was fiery And he had a coppery hue to his scales. He turned and his great claws rose I even All the same kind of the kind of thing but with different colors to them, you know And and I found it amusing that there was such a sameness to all of it, you know Interesting. We've got lots of audience questions. Okay. Oh, that's great. Yes So, why don't we get into some of those? Uh, let's get into the weeds. Yes, one for by the way. You got any weed? Here's some over there Alrighty, uh, jack, this is legal anywhere. I know in california bad Okay, let's hand jack daniel the microphone. Oh, he gets to ask his own question. Oh, wow Phil yeah, hi. What do you think of the effect of comedy on comedy of today's hyper politically correct atmosphere compared with the freedom You might have had when you were doing fire sign in the same way. Yeah, it's it's definitely chilling um, a lot of Very well known comedians as you probably heard are unwilling to go on the road Because they they feel that the the pc movement which comes from the left and the right by the way It's a pincher squeeze Has taken the fun out of satire and parody which by its very nature has to express In a funny form like a like a jester some of the Some of the ruder things to say ruder things like george carlin was the the greatest crudest most wonderful jester in the world and and and I think that Basically comedy now is expressly The late night shows and the other cable shows Which which daily the daily show and and the colbert rapport started That colbert for instance is he's merciless in his monologues. Absolutely. I love his monologue and and it's very important That these gestures can still speak to the nation Because you know if you can't laugh about some of this stuff, you're gonna cry You know, and if you laugh hard enough, you'll cry anyway. That's true. All right, so that's kind of my take on it anyway Next question. All right. This one's from devox who watches you guys or watches us actually you guys Watches guys. He's watching us from japan. Oh Apart from the weed and the brandy any techniques or tricks That you discover that make your writing or recording sessions just go better for you more efficient or more creative We started on the radio four guys Improvising together on the radio And we soon and we did shows like the fire sign theater hour hour Two hours of comedy together, you know broken by records and uh interrupted by records and a guy named the The real earl jibe who was our engineer We used to sometimes drop in sound effects in the middle of one of our improvs. So we had to respond to that But we learned quickly that we had to bring in material of our own Because there was a place for it, you know, so we would all write stuff and bring it in And that is what added to the mix because what we would bring in Sometimes it was written for the other guys to you know to play kind of on the spot without any rehearsal here There's your part and there's part and let's do it And earl you can put in sound effects or whatever and other times they'd be individual bits that each one of us would come up with And that would inspire our writing for the for the the records And the other thing that we did and I don't know how easy this is for other people to do But we perform our material on the stage Before we put it down in the studio We used to go to a place called the ash grove, which by the way was burned down twice The ash grove And and it's now the improv and it's been the improv for for age hasn't burned down It burned down the house with funny comedy, you know, but uh, we we would bring pieces in like don't crush that door Of hand me the pliers which is Which is about channel surfing right we predicted channel surfing We did it as a a stage play with masks and things to make quick changes And it was called a life in the day Okay, and And it morphed because the audience told us what was working What wasn't working where the jokes were And after you know doing it for a weekend or something we could go back into our writing sessions You know with with with renewed vigor As to the arc of the story and the development of the characters now you I do this myself when I'm reading for something I will improvise Myself with the character I'll I'll before I lay it down on on as an audition For my own home studio. I will play with it And you were asking me earlier before we started talking together about uh How to enliven copy? Okay, especially comedic copy One of the ways to do that is if you get a piece of straight copy read it with an accent See what it sounds like if you read it as a german or perhaps you are french, you know, or spanish or maybe a russian You know, what does it colors? Do you bring to this? How does it change what you're a dunk? Or read as a cartoon character Yeah And then read it straight And you'll find that you will be imbued The copy will be imbued with different colors because of what your brain has just discovered by playing With it, you know improv improv is impish behavior And it's and it's in one in a certain way improving What you're doing You know, absolutely. There's a golden nugget for you right there. Absolutely. Yeah, well with secret sauce That's right. We have another question from maxine right here in the audience Hey maxine pick up the microphone and ask the actual question beautiful maxine Um, so hi, I love everything that you're sharing um, but i'm always interested in uh, the person behind the amazing accomplished Wonderful beautiful fantastic voice actor and i'm just curious what you do um in other parts of your life like what do you do with your Discretionary time Like do you play golf or do you like what other things do you do in your life besides voice? Photography If you visit my Website first of all you can you can connect with planet proctor at planet proctor.com, which i've done Okay, and it's it's a free blog and it's beautifully illustrated by my friend, uh, chris chris grows up in uh, lake arrowhead And uh, and I love writing it and I love seeing what he does with the stuff. I've I've written how he lays it out and everything Uh, that and that's a hobby too That I that I've been doing for like 20 years writing this this crazy blog Uh, which which gets as he comes from the internet But my both of my uncles were professional photographers back in ghost in indiana And so as a kid I worked down in the in the dark room, you know with the chemicals and making pictures And a kodak timer and a kodak timer Yeah identified with that immediately and and so I I I learned At an early age how to see things Through a lens and how to capture them and I do this day. I love doing it I took a picture today, which I posted on my my uh, facebook of of Some palm trees and the shadow that they were casting on this stark white building And I I see as long as I still can see With with my you know, no macular degeneration has ruined my eyes completely yet I I see things all the time around me and I want to capture them Uh, I'm also married to uh, melinda peterson who is a wonderful actress We just celebrated 26 years of marriage and this is my My third and last My final as she calls him. I'm his final wife, okay And and that takes up a lot of time our marriage is is important. We love to travel together We're going to be going to a mini high school reunion with a friend of mine in cambridge, massachusetts Guy named jimmy merrow who's now a professor emeritus of art But when we were at riverdale country school in the bronx in the dorm together He was the one who introduced us all to rock and roll He used to turn during breaks in our study Hours he would turn his crank his radio up on a rock and roll station and go where's rock and roll? And we're all going wow wow wow wow and and and later he became an expert in illuminated manuscripts and was flown all over the world to to go to various Mansions and the states all you know in france and germany and everywhere and and they would bring out their illuminated Bibles their family bibles Illuminated is the the monks would use gold and and fancy lettering right all of that He became an expert in this And he ended up now at cambridge university and after that We're going to take the the thistle train the thistle express up to edinburgh And we're going to rent a car and we're going to drive the old whiskey trail Oh, I've heard a few people that have done that and that's yeah, we're going to get malted And scotched you know and then we're driving back down to edinburgh and we're going to be at the at the fringe festival Uh, once again for another year and seeing all our friends who are doing plays and things that outstanding And we're going to see the tattoo at the castle the tattoo is this incredible military Yeah, big bagpipes You can galore and drums and everything you know military precision and it takes place at night in the castle George you have the last question Yeah, um if fire sign theater was launching now, let's say let's just let's time shift Take the four of you and now it's 2013 or something Um, do you think you would have been shooting to be like a netflix series or a youtube channel? Or do you think you would have just stuck with an audio format? No, we The one real tragic thing that happened uh to fire sign and it's in the book Was we had a producer named wacko Jerry bryant was his name and we were writing a fire sign theater movie You know the kentucky fried movie came out air plane was a big hit with with the poster done by bob grossman Who just passed away who did the don't crush that dwarf hand me the pliers who was peter bergman's room made it Yale, you know, blah blah blah blah and Anyway, what was I saying? You would you have done done? Oh, yeah Yeah, yeah, we were gonna make a movie a fire sign theater movie And it was going to be called eat and It started with the fire sign theater presents like a a sign and the and and all of the bulbs Started going out and so you just saw eat. Yeah, it was flashing And we move in and it was a diner. Yeah, and that was the beginning of the adventure. He drowned in hawaii Oh, my gosh, hawaii and nobody else came forward in his place Because I think we could have had a film career, you know and so we Focused exclusively on the recording thing, but we did these these big tours. Yeah with costumes and props and yeah special effects You know, so we we we did bring a certain visual Excitement and engagement to our audiences But we did one cable special called weirdly cool for pbs And you know, you know, we're gonna say wait, I know you've done. Yeah, I gotta find it. I gotta find it It really wasn't that satisfying Because you know, it's a different art. Yeah, it's a different art and procter and bergman We did a special also for pbs Which I think was a little more successful in the world of procter and bergman with various skits and things that we That they brought to life, but it's a different medium. Yeah, and and I think that the fire sign Well, you know still should be best known for our audio creations And for the power of the movies in your mind And that's the way I remember it and there and there's still deeply ingrained in there. So I appreciate phil. Thanks so much for coming on our show again Thanks to see you again. Alrighty We'll be right back to wrap things up right after this Your dynamic voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead Now there's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer that place is voiceover extra dot com Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level Stay in touch with market trends coaching products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls Voiceover extra has hundreds of articles free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed Learn from the most respected talents coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information on topics like Audio books auditioning casting home studio setup and equipment marketing performance techniques and much more It's time to hit your one stop daily resource for voiceover success Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voiceover audition It's all here at voiceover extra dot com. That's voice over x t r a dot com And we are back to say goodbye. Hello. I must be going. I came to see I cannot stay I must be going and glad I came up just the same. I must be going. It's such a song a dance, man Anyway, um next week on this very show Dave crevasse is coming all the way from las vegas. He'll be actually here. He's heading down 15 Going through the cahon pass down the 210 Awesome the 134 onto the 101 I've become such a californian and he will be joining us here live in the studio We'll talk about his you better drive your ssr. Yeah, because that car belongs here. Yeah, it really does That's gonna be a lot of fun. We're looking forward to having Dave here. Uh, who are our donors of the week I went through and found a bunch of names. I'm pretty much all of these we know, which is great. Um, tracy h reynolds, eric aragoni philips appear sarah borges uncle roy oakelson brian roush graham spicer andrew kaufman check degolia joseph harrison christie bernes And cam cornelius the voiceover dude, dude. I got his t-shirt My favorite black t-shirt. Yeah, steve. Nation is retiring. Yeah, did you ever meet steve? I've not met him, but you've told me all about it. Maybe this is an opportunity to meet you should crash come down dg entertainment I'll give you the information please we're out. There's gonna be a party for him. I shouldn't say we I've been invited by Steve, but there's a little party for him. He's gonna be retiring and steve. Nation is special to me Because he is the fellow who introduced me to don lafontaine. Yeah, and uh, he was an engineer at wood holly And now dg entertainment for many years and all the top brass voice actors Walked through came into steve studio Including don so if it wasn't for steve, I would never met don. Thank you steve and uh, You know congratulations on retirement. He's moving off to hawaii Jay that sucks. You know, of course, he lives in l'alani estate. No, he's he's going to be in kawaii But uh, it's congratulations steve. Thank you man. Alrighty, you know, george and I Fix your home studios. We plan your home studios. We design your home studios Even if it's in your closet, we know how to make it happen for you So if you want to work with george, who's fabulous at this, where do they go? You can stumble on over to georgethetech.com and then if you like a different flavor head over to homevoiceoverstudio.com and uh, we both will listen to your audio samples and uh, We'll tell you if it's working or not. Mm-hmm getting a lot of those lately Get you dialed. Yes, and you've got a podcast. Yep that geeky one. We do the pro audio suite I've got a bunch of great co-hosts on that andrew peters and darin robertson from australia And source elements own robert marshal X four of us get to geek out and then there's some great interviews with some pretty well known Voice actors and musicians. So it's a great show. Tune in for that one. Uh, we need to thank, of course, uh, Jack de gollia for doing the show notes. The show notes are fabulous when you watch the show Uh in repeat on youtube or on facebook. It's note for note. Yeah, they are time stamps Yeah, like if you see something you read and you want to see that you click the time and boom It goes right there on youtube. You can see it right away Right and you can get them right up above me here on our home page here at vobs.tv Which is almost ready to be relaunched That can taste it. It's almost ready. Uh, we're here alive every monday night 6 p.m If you're in the greater los angeles area We'd love to have you be in our studio like maxine and michael orenstein A friend of mine from buffalo who is also in los angeles Fuller out man. We went to the same synagogue know a lot of the same people Absolutely Uh, so he's here tonight and um If you'd like to be here write to us at the guys at vobs.tv We'd love to have you here in our studio Uh, hey show us your booths Yeah, no your booths We usually have like somebody else's booth, but no no, we've just got the swaying palm trees here And uh, we'd like if you've got a great home studio Take it in Landscape Not portrait and send it to us at the guys at vobs.tv and uh, we will We'll feature your booth on our show Uh, let's see here. We need to thank our amazing sponsors harlan hogan's voiceover essentials voiceover extra source elements Veo to go go voice actor websites.com and j michael collins demos All right Well, we need to thank marsy for letting us be out here in the garage Which is awfully kind of her our producer kathryn courage and for getting us great guests Like phil proctor jack daniel on chat room duty tonight. Hand over your heart. Yes jack daniel And our floor producer technical director and all-round nice gal Sumer lino for dealing with our incredibly Patient. Yes. Sumer lino. Yes jack to goalie again for the show notes and lee pennies simply for being lee pennie. Come visit us lee Would you please and uh, so that's gonna do it for us? You know, we know this is not an easy business But there's so many fun people in it like phil proctor Who who can tell us all the great secrets to how to do it better? And of course technically We're here to help you out. So tune in every monday night. I'm dan Leonard and i'm george widdom And this is voiceover body shop or vio bs Have a great week everybody