The VO Meter… Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. The VO Meter is brought to you by voiceactorwebsites.com, VocalBooth2Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, JMC Demos, and IPDTL.
And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
Hi everyone and welcome to episode 41 of the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. We have a pretty exciting episode this week. We always say that, but sometimes it’s actually true.
We are featuring the reigning keynote address speaker from VO Atlanta, Kay Bess, and we’re really excited to bring you the talk we had with her. But first, before we do that, we’re proud to introduce a brand new segment for the VO Meter. Sean, tell us all about it.
All right, so you guys know the format of the podcast by now. One of the first things we do is our current events. Well, while it’s accurate, we wanted to think of a name for that segment that kind of fit our VO Meter, VU Meter theme.
So we came up with the idea of VO Meter reference levels. You guys should know by now, but one of the first things you do whenever you’re recording a voiceover is you check your levels, right? You set a reference level.
Since we’re kind of checking in with each other each episode to see where we’re at in our VO world, we thought that would be the perfect name for this new segment. So, ladies and gentlemen, may we give to you VO Meter Reference Levels.
We tried booking a vacation rental on one of those other websites. They don’t always tell you everything.
The stars take it to the red carpet.
We are back live from the red carpet. California leads the way for change in America, and so does Kamala Harris.
Rated M for Mature. Claire Redfield.
And who exactly are you?
So, yeah, what hashtag should I use to describe a grown man in a tuxedo wrestling a goat?
And prior to 1933, many of them belonged to a variety of political parties that were now outlawed in Germany.
This is the story of how Q got curly. Quinn was crazy about curls.
Curly fries, curly straws, curly haired dogs.
Hey, J. Michael here. Thanks for listening to the VO Meter podcast.
It’s one of my favorites. If you’re looking for a great demo like the ones you just heard, check out jmcdemos.com for more information.
In addition to what Sean said, the podcast has always been about referencing our own VO careers as well. It’s the tagline we use every time we introduce the episode. So having the voice over reference levels is a way for us to check in with each other and how we’re progressing in this crazy business.
And we’re really excited to announce that from here on out, the VO Meter reference levels will be brought to you by none other than VoiceOver Extra. So thanks to John Florian over at VoiceOver Extra. We’ve talked about them in the past, but as you probably know, they are the voice actor’s daily resource for building voice over success.
They are an online publication that has served the VO community for years, and John has become a really good friend of the show, and we thank him for allowing us to be featured on the publication and as a sponsor on the VO Meter reference levels.
VoiceOver Extra brings you the VO Meter reference levels. Seriously, guys, that’s the best you could come up with? Hey, it’s your show.
So thank you very much for that, John. I’ve talked about this a lot, and if you’ve ever talked to me in person, you know that VoiceOver Extra was very instrumental in my own progress and my own research for becoming a voice talent. I literally spent an entire year reading everything on their website, and it took about that long to get through everything that they offer.
And since then, they’ve added about another year or two’s worth of content. So I highly recommend that resource for any questions you might have regarding studio setup, performance technique, what to look for in a coach, great technology you can use in your business, anything under the sun to help improve your voice over business. So thanks again, John, for being a part of our podcast and for providing this great resource.
So now that we’ve gotten the LoveFest out of the way, what actually is happening in your VO career, Sean?
Well, I just actually wrapped up what’s called a peer-led workout through our GVA membership program. I always feel so good at that because I get to help talent get better at their reads. And it’s funny, I never really thought that I would get so much experience directing other talent, but I feel like it has really helped me or improved in my own performances.
So it’s something that I encourage people to try out if they ever have like an in-person or online workout group. Try giving each other feedback and see if it helps improve their reads and kind of use what you learn from your own coaching to kind of share that with others and see if it helps you really make those concepts more concrete in your own performances. In addition to that, I’ve just been, I just finished my regularly monthly, are you learning project?
Felt really good about that. And actually got another big project from a returning client. It was like an 80 page PowerPoint slide.
Unfortunately, it’s from a foreign client and there, while it was largely translated well, there were a lot of like odd preposition usages or just kind of unnatural native English sounding phrases. So as I reviewed the script, I took pages of notes and kind of gave them what I call translation suggestions. Cause like you don’t want to insult the client by saying this is terribly translated and things like that.
But I did want to kind of emphasize that, hey, I’m part of the team. I want to improve your message. So you’ll have a better response from your audience.
If you ever work with either like say an author or a foreign client whose work might not be or could probably do good with another round of editing, just have to be diplomatic in presenting that to them. And like, hey, here’s some ideas to help make this message a little bit more clear for your desired audience. And hopefully they’ll agree to it.
And that’ll make my performance a lot more easy because then I don’t have to worry about how to make non-conversational, poorly translated English sound conversational. Don’t be afraid to point some of those things out. And like I said, be prepared sometimes for whatever reason the client is like, nope, the script is the script.
Please read it as is. But who knows, if you’re confident and you put your foot down, you might be able to make those changes.
Sometimes you can even charge more for it. I’ve actually worked that into a fee before where it’s a long-term client and I’ve had to do so many corrections on the fly that I said, look, I’ll do this, but I’m gonna charge you for it. And it’s not a huge fee, maybe an extra 25 to $50 per script, but that can add up if you’re doing several projects over the course of a week or month for a client.
Oh, definitely, I definitely think that’s a service that you should have as a bit of an added value if you’re comfortable with that. Like for example, I come from an English education background, so I’m pretty confident in my abilities to edit a script. If you’re not confident though, maybe you have your own editor in mind that you could kind of pass that work to and then include that in your fee as well.
So these are ideas on how you can kind of build that partnership and make yourself even more of an asset to your client.
Yeah, for sure. So anything else cool going on?
So other stuff going on. So we have some more upcoming workouts this week through GVAA. We’ve got one with my good buddy, David Toback on Thursday.
And we’ve got another one with commercial booth director, Steven Reisberg. So Steven is one of my favorite commercial coaches that I’ve worked with. He’s got a lot of great ideas and he’s very much an actor’s director because he came from a very theatrical background and worked with some very close students of Meisner.
He specializes in the Meisner technique, if you’re familiar with that school of acting. But anyways, so if you’re a member with us, you can get those workouts for free as part of your membership. If you’re interested, you can head over to the GVA website and check out our membership levels.
And then check it out. I highly recommend it if you wanna get kind of an affordable, accessible resource for improving your performance. What’s going on in your VO world, Paul?
I’ve had a few cool things happen the last couple of weeks. Right before I left for vacation, which I’m just wrapping up, my first dual point of view romance novel came out.
Cool.
It’s called All I Know, Paradise Beach Book One. It was done with AV. Page, and it’s now available on Audible.
So check that out if you get a chance. I’d love to hear your thoughts on my parts, or both parts, or the book in general. And by all means, go buy it.
So I’m curious, when you do like a dual narration like that, how much are you collaborating with the other narrator?
A lot. In this case, it’s somebody I actually know. So we did a lot of back and forth about what sort of tone to take with the voices, where to place the, you know, as far as the vocal placement for the male, because she was doing the male voices as well.
So it’s one of those where it’s the whole story, as seen from the male character, and then also the whole story is seen from the female character. So the other narrator said, tell me which voice you’re going to use, because I want to try and match that as much as I can. Oh, cool.
Yeah, so that was something that I hadn’t really taken into account. Luckily, my partner took that into account, because I would have just done my normal voice and never given a second thought. But yeah, we tried to match up the male perspective as much as we could, and then me with the female characters as well, because they also appeared in my sections.
And there’s actually an episode where the two… It’s about a couple, and I guess they actually didn’t read the whole book, I just read my parts. But I think they eventually get married, and I had a scene with the two mothers, and my partner said, oh, I’m really glad you told me about that, because now I’ll know where to take the direction with the two mother characters.
So that was pretty neat. But a lot of collaboration about pronunciations, because there was one female character whose name could have gone two different ways, and in one section, it was pronounced Natalie, and one that was pronounced Natalia. So actually, together, we caught this sort of continuity error in the book.
And my partner was able to go back and talk to the author, who was also the rights holder in this case, and said, listen, which one is it? It was a good thing we did that, because there’s another book that’s coming out that features this character prominently that I think we’re both going to be doing as well. And now we know how to pronounce it, and did it right the first time.
So to answer your question, tons of collaboration, almost every day.
Well, that’s great. That’s really cool, because I know that’s not always the case. Like, I’ve certainly heard works where it could either be an ensemble or a collaboration, where it doesn’t seem like there’s that level of collaboration.
Like, say if it’s a larger publisher and they’re just recording the actors individually. So that’s really cool that you guys can be a lot more proactive in your collaboration.
Yeah, that’s true. In this case, it worked out really well. So another thing I did, again, just before vacation, was record another author doing their audiobook.
And I did this all remotely for the first time, which was really interesting. So…
Yeah, I can imagine.
I recorded here, kind of like I’m doing now with the podcast, and the author was in New York, and we just did it over IPDTL, and recorded the whole book about six hours remotely like that. So the way I did it was basically live booth direct, but remotely. So whenever there’s a mistake, I stopped, rolled back, and did a live punch, stopped for any sort of extraneous noise, and also something that I hadn’t thought of, but I guess the real reason this isn’t done more often is there were some dropouts.
Now, IPDTL is a great product. They’re a sponsor of our show, as everybody knows, but it’s still not a perfect situation, especially for a long-form genre like an audiobook. So there were some pickups that had to be done strictly due to internet dropout on either my end or the author’s end.
So all in all, it was a great experience. The book is done. It’s being uploaded to Audible as we speak, and I really enjoyed the experience.
That’s really cool. Like I said, I mean, that kind of goes into like wearing multiple hats, like practice directing as well as voicing, as well as that added value service, being able to provide your studio to other people. Because very often you’ll find sometimes you’ll be in a situation where there are only so many roles to go around, so you might not be able to act on a project, but you might be able to be the engineer or the director.
So it’s great to have that skill set as well.
Yeah, in this case, from a wallet standpoint, it was nice as well too, because I was the director and charged for studio time, and I also did all the editing and mastering for the book. So it was a nice little week I had there on my way to the beach right before, so it was a nice way to end that. And then the last thing I want to talk about is, while I was at the beach, as we all know the best way to get work is to book a vacation, right?
So I took my equipment with me, more than I usually do, actually. I’ve taken the approach the last couple of years of just not bringing anything with me because I can’t match the sound I have at home. But I thought, you know what, I’m going to bring it just in case because now I have the Vocalboot to Go Vomo that they supplied to me, so I figured I may as well use it, and I brought it with me along with one of my shotgun mics.
And sure enough, that first night, my long-term e-learning client said, we need you to do one piece and we need it this week. And I said, OK, it’s going to sound not as good as it normally does. Are you OK with that?
And they said, yeah, it’s fine. So I did the job, and actually, the first time I used the Vomo for a full job, I was really impressed with the way it sounded. Especially with earbuds, which is what I was using most of the time to edit, it sounded almost as good as the studio.
That’s really cool.
And this was with the ambient noise of the beach, and my kids and my mom and dad also in the background. I asked them to be quiet as much as they could, but you can’t control five people in the house all the time. And it really came out well.
I have to say the VoMo was really performed admirably. So if you have a vacation coming up, and you need a portable solution, I highly recommend the VoMo unit.
Yeah, I’m actually going to put some new videos together on how to use that and kind of comparing it to my more permanent setup with the VoMo, because I know there are some proponents and detractors for portable acoustic solutions, and I mean, they’re not for everybody, and I don’t recommend them as a long-term solution if you can help it, but as an entry-level solution, absolutely, and definitely as a travel one, because that’s what it’s made for. But I was recently recording some e-learning stuff. I was over at my girlfriend’s house, and I was recording her and her mother for my monthly e-learning stuff, because the client will actually ask for non-actors for these things for whatever reason.
And I mean, they had the furnace on in the background, they had television upstairs, and it didn’t get picked up. I was amazed. Granted, I was using a very directional microphone, and we were kind of positioning in a way that it would not interfere, and we did have some closed doors and levels of the house to help with that.
But I was really, really impressed just how little of that ambient noise was picked up. Granted, it’s not a panacea, it’s not a cure-all, it’s not a soundproofing solution, but it will knock a couple decibels down, and all in all, it really does do a good job of attenuating those echoes and reflections and stuff like that. But I definitely would recommend experimenting with the setup before you take it out on the road just to get more familiar with it and get ideal placement, because sometimes, depending on the microphone you’re using, you can get a noticeable bump in the bass frequencies just because you tend to be addressing it more closely.
And so be mindful of that, and you might need to do some EQing to make it sound a little bit more neutral. But all in all, it’s my favorite portable acoustic solution out there, and I can’t wait to get the newest model, because they’ve really kind of taken the feedback from myself and other voice talent on how to make it more durable. I understand they made a new carrying bag for it that allows it to actually be checked in without too much damage or anything like that.
They just made a bunch of incremental improvements that really shows that they listen to feedback that they’re given, and they really try to make each upgrade be very thoughtful and really try to improve the product.
Yeah, I totally agree. Now, one thing I forgot to mention, and realizing how much I crammed at this last week before I went on vacation, but also the end of June, I attended the Hot Genres Workshop with J. Michael Collins in Washington, DC.
So this was all about political and e-learning genres and demos, and we did some live reading, as well as had a background lecture from J. Michael on those two topics independently. So we had e-learning in the morning, had the overview, did some live reading, then lunch, a really nice lunch, as you might expect from J.
Michael Collins at the French restaurant, at the Intercontinental in Washington, right across the street from the White House, no less. And then we had the political background and then live reads in the afternoon. And really cool stuff.
I learned a lot, a lot of things I hadn’t even thought about, and really great people as well. I walked in knowing everybody, which is not uncommon if you know me.
It’s always great.
But it’s always more comfortable when you’re reading with people you already know, at least from social media. I think there was only one person I hadn’t met in person that was Andrew Wareland, but I know him pretty well from social media, too.
And I imagine you had some pseudo-celebrity status with the VO Meter podcast.
A little bit, yeah. There was even some tidbits where J. Michael said, this is not for attribution on your show, young man.
And I will not mention those, of course, to honor his request, but it was okay to talk about being there and how much we learned and how much fun we all had. So thanks to J. Michael Collins.
That was a great experience.
So hopefully without stepping on those guidelines, so just an idea of what Hot Genres is about. That’s a kind of a focus on like e-learning and political voiceover, right?
Well, right now, I think he’s planning, or maybe even in the past, has done other Hot Genres, but right now he’s on a little mini tour in the US doing just those two. So I think he’s in Boston right now and was just in Nashville and Austin and DC. So yeah, he’s going around the country with just those two genres on this little mini American trip.
Well, very cool. And that you just reminded me of some recent training that I got to do recently. A few weeks ago, I did this amazing animation workshop with friend of the podcast, Everett Oliver.
You might know him from his website, myboothdirector.com, where he’s got some affordable coaching and things like that. And it was so cool to see him… I’ve worked with him online before, but it really was a different experience in person, because, dare I say it, he was very animated in his direction.
And, I mean, guy didn’t sit down for like six hours straight. But he really, like, through his direction, and you really got a sense of the energy and the intensity required to bring these larger-than-life characters to life. Because I find that very often when you have people who are coming from, especially like narration or kind of more straight-laced styles of read, they can kind of struggle with the amount of energy required to do an animation delivery.
That was a big lesson for me. And it was also a big lesson because I was playing kind of a very deep-voiced, monstrous character that’s kind of… because I was challenging myself.
So, and it was like, at one point, he’s like ripping doors open. He’s screaming at the top of his lungs. My voice needed about a week to recover after that session.
So, it was very revelatory about how much warm-ups might be required to do that kind of work safely. So, highly recommend if you’re going to pursue some of those, like, screaming video game and animation stuff, that you warm up for 15 minutes, half an hour, an hour, however long you feel is necessary to not hurt yourself.
I’m curious, did he pick scripts for you, or did you pick what you wanted to read?
It was both, because he wanted to see, like, the first two scripts, he wanted to see what we felt comfortable with, and then one that was challenging, a little bit outside of our wheelhouse. So, like I said, my voice is a little bit higher, a little bit younger, so I was doing, like, a much deeper and grittier kind of voice. And then after that, he started picking ones for us.
But it was amazing, like, in these workshops, I’m used to going once or twice, just because of how long it takes to get through 10 participants. We did, like, five rounds of reads. It was amazing.
Yeah, J. Michael worked at the ladder, where he picked all the scripts for us. And I think it’s because he had a familiarity with almost all of us, and maybe even all of us.
I know several people had had demos done by him, so I think he knew our wheelhouses pretty well, so he picked the scripts for us. I was perfectly fine with that. It worked out well.
And something that’s really cool about that is if, because I’ve done a similar workshop before with another coach named Dave Walsh, and he requested that we all send links to our website and our demos so he could get a sense of our sound, and then he picked scripts for us. And isn’t it amazing when you have a script that is custom fit for you, that the performance is almost effortless. It’s so much easier to get to a pleasant, engaging read if you’re like, man, this really speaks to my personality.
Right, and that’s why sometimes doing auditions is so hard, because the same process kind of follows when you’re doing a demo. A good demo producer will get to know you and pick your scripts for the demo the same way. And sometimes it’s hard to replicate that on a live read when you’re self-directing.
So it’s always a challenge we face as voice actors.
I mean, the goal, right, as voice talent is to be able to fake it, pretend that you love every product script that comes in front of you. But as you’re learning, it’s that much easier to get a powerful read if you actually are, like if you like what you’re selling, right?
Yeah, and you feel good about it when you’re able to pull it off too.
Definitely, definitely. Like, yeah, yeah, I don’t suck. Awesome.
I don’t suck as much as I thought I did, yeah.
So just in case you guys are wondering, highly recommend any form of training whenever you can afford it, like in person, online, whatever. Never stop training.
So that pretty much wraps up the VO Meter reference level segment this week. We’ll have our interview with Kay Bess coming up in just a moment, right after our questionable gear purchase.
But before that, a word from one of our loyal sponsors, VocalBooth2Go. VocalBooth2Go’s patented acoustic blankets are an effective alternative to expensive soundproofing, often used by vocal and voiceover professionals, engineers and studios as an affordable soundproofing and absorption solution. We make your environment quieter for less.
So, I’ll start because I’ve done a lot of dumb things and never seems to stop. So, I’m using a new mic.
Hi, I’m Paul Stefano. I’m a gear head. Hi, Paul.
I have a problem, yeah. I’m using a new mic at the moment. I don’t even sound excited about it because I’m such a moron.
I’ve actually had this mic before, and this is the second time. So, this is the Audio Technica BP40. It’s a large diaphragm dynamic, which I didn’t even know existed before I bought it, the first time, about a year ago.
And I picked it up again due to my recent booth reconfiguration that we talked about last episode. I’m looking for something a little less punchy, actually, for long-term narration in audiobooks, something that I can sort of just record at the right levels and forget it without a whole lot of massaging either for clicks or plosives or even compression. And this fits the bill.
It’s got a huge capsule. They say it sounds almost like a condenser, condenser-like feel, and I tend to agree. And I just like the way it sounds, so…
Yeah, it’s not bad. It sounds pretty neutral for a dynamic.
Right.
If you don’t mind, what did that cost?
Let’s see, new, I think it’s about $300. And I got a little bit less than that because I bought it from Guitar Center.
Cool. If you can help it, guys, never buy anything new. At least when it comes to gear.
I generally don’t, especially with Guitar Center, because you can return their used gear, not their new stuff.
The beauty is, is that a lot of people are actually pretty kind to their equipment because they’re trying to sell it and get as much back as they invested. They can pass on the savings to you, right? Recently, I was doing sort of like a studio tour video.
So if you’re curious to check out what I’m using on my YouTube channel, you can check out the Daily VO 2019 Studio Tour. You can see exactly what I use. But anyways, during my research, I was just checking what my interface, the SPO Creon, was going for right now.
New at the time I got it, I think it was going for like $600, and I bought it for about $325, because I found a great deal for it on Reverb. So I double-checked now, and I found a couple of refurbished units for like $200 and $300. It’s amazing.
So this is something, I’ve talked about it before, it’s very similar to something like the Audient ID22, in that it’s got a lot of expansion options. You can have two pairs of monitors hooked up to it. You can put in a channel strip or an external preamp, and bypass the internal preamps, if that’s the direction you want to go.
And it’s got lots of buttons and hardware stuff that is great if you want something a little bit more tactile, rather than just adjusting everything in software. But yeah, like I said, this is more than a 50% off decrease of an item that unfortunately I think is discontinued, but it’s still a very great interface, and I highly recommend it for someone who wants a little bit more, like paying for their buck in like a $200 or $300 interface and something that’s going to last them for several years. But yeah, always be on the lookout for some of those popular interfaces and microphones, because you can probably save several hundred dollars if you’re patient and thorough in your research.
If it’s something we talked about here on the podcast, I’m probably reselling it too, so just go ask me.
Because I’m curious, because I know this isn’t the only mic that you’ve gotten recently, right? Did you already talk about your reacquisition of the 18897s?
No, I don’t think so. That was next on the list. I sound like Huckleberry Hound.
No, I have no other mic to talk about. I bought two. Count them, two.
18897. They’re a shotgun mic, similar vein of the 416, the Sennheiser. A little bit longer, but the sound is very, very similar.
And I’ve got a two-for-one deal. I’m not sure why somebody is selling two of them, but I got two for what you normally would pay for one used on eBay. And the one is the one I took on the road that I was talking about with the use of the VOMO, and the other one I’m using now in the studio.
I’ve, at the moment, retired my 416.
It’s too sensitive.
That’s the deal, man. I’ve gotten to the point. I’ve maxed out, I think, everything I can do in this booth to make it sound proof and deal with all the extraneous sounds I have to deal with.
And even the 416 is a little too sensitive, so I’m not going to use it for the time being.
That’s really important to talk about because shotgun mics are great, but they’re not a panacea. Much like the portable acoustic solutions, they’re not going to solve all of your acoustic and sound proofing issues. They’ll help, but just because the pickup pattern is more narrow than your standard cardioid pattern doesn’t mean that if there’s noise that can still get to that point, it’s going to get picked up.
It might come with its own slew of problems that you have to troubleshoot anyway.
Yeah, absolutely, and that’s exactly what I’m going through. The 416 sounded great, but it was still a little too sensitive. So this AT897 kind of works the same way.
I know our friend Mike Norgaard was a big fan of it when he was first starting out and hadn’t gotten a 416 yet. And I’ve gone back to it. This might be the third time I’ve bought it, actually.
I know, I told you not to get rid of that.
Yeah, I know, it’s not smart, but it gives us something to talk about.
But now, I mean, you got an incredible price for it. Do you mind sharing?
Yeah, the two together were $1.99, which is kind of ridiculous.
If you were buying them both new, that’d be like $500, because now they go for about $249 new. Right. That’s amazing.
So I’m not sure I’ll keep both. I probably won’t, knowing me, but I have one mounted right now that I’m using for short reads. And even then, not all the time, but if I need something where I really want to get up on it and be the voice of God, then I do use a shotgun.
And I do have one other thing I bought, along with the 897 for my recent trip. I bought a new portable interface, which I had not heard of. I know you were aware of it when we talked about it, but I picked up the MXL Mic Mate.
It’s very similar to the Sentron’s Micport Pro. It almost looks exactly the same, but it’s made by the company MXL, which makes decent mics. It makes things like the 990, and they actually make the Harlan Hogan mic, and he brands it with his name on it.
So it sounds really good, and it does the job. I was happy with it. Really low noise floor, and super portable, only about the size of maybe two chat sticks stacked on top of each other, and works great.
So if you need a portable solution, and you’re looking for something like the Micport Pro or the Shure X2U, this will also fit that bill, and it sounds great.
I first heard about the Micmate several years ago, back when I was doing all of my gear research, and just dreaming and lusting over equipment that I couldn’t afford at the time. But anyways, so recording hacks, this is run by Matt McGlynn, who also does microphoneparts.com, and I believe actually made the… was instrumental in making the RAVO microphone, or the RAVO, or RAVO microphone.
From Roswell Audio.
The one that Jordan Reynolds made?
Yeah, exactly. The one that he collaborated with Jordan Reynolds for. But anyways, they got this great USB interface shootout of the Sentron’s Micport Pro, the MXL Mic Mate, and the Blue Icicle.
And, as I’m sure you found out, the MXL Mic Mate did pretty well in that comparison. So, as long as it’s quiet, got good clean gain, what else can you ask for? So yeah, I actually bought some stuff this month.
One of them was just a little thing that I wanted to use for my mobile rig. It’s from Joby, the guys who make the GorillaPod kind of really modular, adaptable camera stands. And they made a little mobile smartphone rig.
I forget the exact name of it. I think it’s just the Joby GorillaPod smartphone rig or something like that. So this thing can securely hold your smartphone, which as we talked about is a great way to record using Twisted Wave or Audio Evolution Pro or whatever platform you’re on.
And it’s also got these additional arms on the sides. It’s got the adapter for like a camera mount. So my portable interface, the Sentron’s Mixerface, actually has a thread on the back that works with that.
So I can connect it to that, and then I can either have my 416 plugged directly into Mixerface, or I can have it positioned on top of my smartphone because it’s got like a little camera shock mount adapter for that. I don’t have the correct thing to connect my shock mount to it, but eventually I’d like to do that. So it’s a little bit less heavy on that one arm with the Mixerface.
But so that’s been great. So I’ve got this little setup pretty much cable free, and aside from the one USB cable going from Mixerface to my phone, and so it’s like truly portable. It’s kind of more for like a videographer setup, but for our purposes, it works well too.
So that’s the Joby smartphone rig. And then, so one bit of software that I like to use to keep my Mac clean is CleanMyMac. So I’ve been using them since their like second version, and then recently they made an update where not only do they have a lot of great things to kind of get rid of gigabytes worth of unused storage, I’m really terrible about…
I do a lot of videography work, so I’ve got all of these old video files that I don’t necessarily need on my computer and CleanMyMac just cleans them out. But it’s also got these great security features to it now. So it’s got malware protection and virus detection, so I’m just like, sweet, yay, upgrades.
So if you have a Mac and you’re looking for ways to kind of save data and kind of get more life out of it, highly recommend CleanMyMac.
Very cool.
So that will wrap up our questionable gear purchases. We have Kay waiting for us right now, so why don’t we head over to our interview segment.
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Hi, everybody. Our guest today is a versatile voice actress, a passionate podcaster and an inspiring public speaker. Her eclectic resume includes commercial campaigns for Apple, Toyota, Kaiser Permanente, Hidden Valley Ranch and Oster Appliances, promos for CNN and NBC, narration for Discovery, E!
Entertainment and video game characters Persephone Brimstone from Agents of Mayhem and Anna from Lara Croft, Rise of the Tomb Raider. We are very blessed to have with us today the witty, the wise, the deep, the daring Kay Bess. How are you, Kay?
I’m well. I’m so much better now that I heard that intro.
Thank you.
Only when he does it in one take. Very nice, my friend. Thank you, thank you.
So Kay, thanks so much for being here.
My pleasure.
We are so thrilled to have you. Our first question is, tell us a little bit about how you came to be a voice over artist or voice actor.
Well, I started voice over… I came to Los Angeles to… and I’m not from far, just a hundred miles up north.
I was raised in the Santa Barbara area, and so I came to Southern California, to Los Angeles to study acting. So it was really my road into voice over really came by way of acting. That was at the time, that was sort of in the mid-1980s, and voice over was really thought of as an extension of the on-camera acting world in commercials.
So it just felt like it was a nice little extension where a person like me who’s rather introverted could, I could participate in the world of commercial acting without being on camera. So that’s really how it started, and I took a workshop, which was very rare back in those days, and from that workshop I was directed to a class, and that happened to be taught by Tom Pinto, and I took that class, and he thought I had an affinity for it and suggested that I make a demo, which I did under his guidance, and I submitted that demo to three, just three. Isn’t that funny?
I mean, there were many more, but I just picked the top three. Because I didn’t really know what I was doing, yeah. The top three agencies.
And I got a call from the William Morris Agency, from Nina Niesenholtz, who was the head of the department at the time, and they were interested in representing me. So that’s how quickly it happened, and from there, a month later, I got my first job, and I really just kind of rolled from there. And a lot of ups and downs, mind you, but that’s really where it started.
That’s how it started. I came to Los Angeles to study acting. I had a little bit of acting training under my belt, and thought it was a nice, comfortable place for me to be in the extension of the on-camera commercial world.
So that’s how it began.
I love Tom Pinto. I’ve been working with him for the last several months, and just got an email from him this morning with scripts to work on for next week, so love that guy.
Yeah, he’s great. He’s great. And he’s one of the good guys.
He really is. He’s just a great guy.
There are so many of those in VO, yourself included. I mean, we’re blessed to have you today, but there was a lot more of us that were blessed to have you as the keynote speaker at this year’s VO Atlanta Conference. So can you talk a little bit about how you came to be this year’s keynote speaker?
Well, you’d probably have to get inside the mind of Gerald Griffith to figure that out, but…
What I want to is to…
Well, last year, in 2018, Mary Lynn Whistner asked me to participate in the promo section of the conference to teach an X session. And I was thrilled to be able to do that. And I also did a breakout.
I was asked to do a breakout session. And the breakout session I did in 2018 was titled A Woman’s Place is in the Booth. And it kind of resonated, I think, with a lot of women.
And so it was a full breakout session. And my X session sold well. I felt a little…
It’s funny. I felt a little out of place doing a promo X session. Even though I have done promo for 30 years, it’s so different for women.
You know, we’re generally not the voice of networks, you know, a la Townsend Coleman and Steve Mackel and, you know… And Tom. Yeah, Tom Pinto, Reno Romano.
You know, voices that are just attached to the branding of a network. That generally… I can’t even name a female for whom that is true.
I know Anna Vocino did work for ABC for the Thursday Night Lineup, which was a really big deal, you know. But that’s not even the voice of the network. That’s just a voice of one night of a network, you know.
So I felt a little funny, you know, coming in as an expert in promo, even though I do have quite a bit of experience. It’s just a different position that women have in the realm of promo. Anyway, I kind of just got over that, and I realized, you know, you do have experience, and you do have something to teach, and you’ve been asked, and you should do it.
And there I was sort of uncovering the truth that I had all of this information to teach. And so that was a very enlightening thing for me in 2018. And then when I sat with Gerald after the 2018 VO Atlanta, and he asked my opinion of a couple of things, and what would I do to improve, and all those kinds of things.
And I told him that, you know, as I think most of us who have presented feel, it’s such a great conference, and it’s a wonderful place to be. And I also said that I thought that the conference could use an acting track that so much of voice over requires, is really benefited by having some training in acting. Not just video games and animation, but also narration and commercial work.
And those, you know, acting skills can be really useful for those arenas. So I suggested that to him, and then I said, if you want, I would be really happy to head it up for you.
Oh, don’t ever suggest to head something up for Gerald.
Well, there you go. So he said, great, it’s yours. And so I was really thrilled about that.
And somewhere, maybe a couple of months later, Gerald had sent me an email that he wanted to talk to me about something, and I just assumed he wanted to talk to me about this acting track. And so I said, yeah, you know, I’m on vacation with my family. I’ll get back to you.
I think we finally connected like three or four weeks later. And he had sent me an email in the meantime, and I skimmed it. I was somewhere on a lake in Canada, and I skimmed the email, and it was talking about keynote, keynote, and I thought, oh, he’s going to ask for suggestions for people for keynote speakers.
So I started running through people in my head, and then I got to kind of the end of the email, and I realized that he was asking me if I wanted to. So I was a little stunned, and I immediately called Townsend Coleman, and I said, help. Should I say yes?
What do I do? I’ve never done anything like that before. So Townsend just laughed.
Oh, he laughed. It was very funny. So that’s how I came to…
And I said yes. But I really had… I’ve never done a keynote before.
It’s not something I’ve ever pieced together. I’ve never spoken in such a capacity. The closest thing that I have done to that, I would say, is just doing that breakout session in 2018, where I just spoke a bit about my experience as a woman in voiceover.
So that’s how it came about. That’s kind of a long and twisted story. But that’s how it came to be.
And then I spent probably six months thinking about what I wanted to say and how I would organize it and really letting this organic process take place, of kind of allowing past experiences in my life kind of come to the fore naturally, as I would think about my life and my career. And certain stories would come up. And then I just started to write them down.
And I would try to see what seemed relevant and what seemed that I could connect, stories that I could connect to each other. And it wasn’t until Christmas, Christmas dinner, Christmas dinner, I had some friends over for dinner. And I don’t know how we started talking about it, but that was the time that I remembered the dream I had, which was kind of a focal point of the keynote speech.
And I told the story of that dream, and I realized, oh, wow, I need to tell that story. Because I realized that dream had sort of worked its way through my life for many years, but I never articulated the dream to anyone. So then it really came together in the first couple months of 2019.
Yeah, it was a really interesting experience, really, really challenging. And I felt like I learned a lot, and I learned something new about myself, a capacity that I had that I didn’t really know I had. So it was a great experience, really great experience.
Well, I can say that you inspired everybody in that room with your keynote speech. I was watching from the backstage, as you probably saw, actually running a camera on your face. And I was looking around the room and noticing how everyone was glued to every word you said.
And it’s a testament to how great you are connecting to an audience like that.
Thank you.
Fantastic job. We wanted to ask… We would want you to share the entire story, obviously, for those that weren’t there.
Can you share some of the key takeaways from the story that you think would resonate with the rest of the community?
Sure. The focus of the keynote was kind of a modified phrase that came from something that my father imparted to me all growing up. And it took me a long time to understand what he was telling me.
It’s a confusing phrase, I think, for a young person. But my father, who is a retired American Baptist minister, he used to say to me and to my siblings, whenever we were facing challenges or difficult decision or didn’t know what to do or questions about how to live your life, he would say, trust God and sin bravely. And that was his way of saying that you have to be willing to take risks in your life.
And risk taking means guaranteed failure. It’s just part of the deal, you know, when you leap out and take chances. And I sort of modified that phrase for the keynote to say, trust and be brave.
And I modified it because I know that not everyone shares my particular faith, and I think it’s important to be able to connect and to speak to everyone, no matter their faith or their world view, because I think there’s something to take away from that phrase. So it went from, for me, trust God and sin bravely, to trust and be brave. And I told a couple of stories of the ways in which I stepped out and trusted, and only in hindsight did I realize that I was being brave, but I think that’s the nature of it, right?
All we feel at the moment is scared, and perhaps vulnerable, and like we shouldn’t be doing what we’re doing, but that’s the nature of risk. And so, and I think then we turn around and see, oh, that was really, that was a brave thing to do. And so that was the essence of the keynote, and I think it applies to us in so many ways.
The other piece of the keynote, I would say, is really coming to embrace who we are as individuals, and that that’s what’s required for us to be our authentic selves. And we’re all trying to differentiate from one another in the world of voice over so that we can stand out and people will take notice of us. And the tricky thing, I think, in voice over land is that we’re all so much in a hurry to get our demos done and to get our websites online and to have a brand or a slogan.
And there’s just a tricky piece in there because if we do all those things before we actually know at least a good part of who we are, then our branding and our websites and our demos, they’re going to ring false. There’s just going to be the sound of a pretty voice and pretty pictures on a website, and there’s going to be a disconnect between you and what you deliver. And so the other piece of the keynote was really stepping out to be brave in knowing and declaring who you are.
And that includes things like what you value, what you love, what your shortcomings are, what your fears are. Knowing all those things about yourself is… And being able to accept those things about yourself is really key to being authentic and living boldly so that you can live authentically in the world.
And if you’re in a place like that, then your branding, your voice, the kind of work that you do, it will all gel and you will be a whole. And that, I think, is what will make each of us stand out just by being really who we are. So those are the two takeaways, I think.
Well, speaking of standing out and living bravely, I mean, you yourself, you could just tell by just your manner of speaking that you’re a very confident and brave woman. But even in your earlier interviews, you’ve mentioned that it wasn’t always the case. But as I said in your introduction, you’ve got this amazing eclectic career of commercial and promo and seemingly disparate genres of video games and animation characters.
So how does that risk taking play when you’re trying to… Because as you’ve said in the past, you had this very strong sense of your identity as a commercial actress in doing these kind of straighter laced reads. How did you transition into something that people have all these preconceptions about, like those wild and crazy video game and animation characters?
Yeah. Yeah, boy, that’s a really good question. I think that I was blessed with the particular vocal cords that I have.
I had nothing to do with it. They are, you know, they are what they are. I, you know, I think people who have beautiful sounding voices, that’s just the case.
We can’t really take credit for them, you know. And I think that very early in my career doing commercial work was very safe for me. And I came, you know, my time in college was riddled with anxiety and panic attacks and, you know, all those kinds of things.
And I just never felt safe in the realm of acting at the acting world. So, so critical what you look like, what you look like on camera. How much do you weigh?
You know, all of those, you know, I felt so insecure and not pretty enough and not thin enough and not tall enough and all of those things. And the realm of commercial voice over acting felt like a very safe place for me, where what I had were these, you know, was an ability to read, copy, and a nice sounding voice. And so I think I, I think it just was a safe world for me.
And nobody’s watching me. I was comfortable in front of a microphone because I had been a singer. And so I spent many years being safe in voice over.
I would say the vast majority of my career was all about safety. Then there came a time when, for voice actors who began, you know, before the advent of the internet, that changed everything. That was sort of the perfect storm.
The capacity for people to have home studios, voicebank.net becoming a clearing house, you know, for a copy which changed the relationship you had with your agents and casting directors, and it opened the world, you know, the entire country, and you know, at that time and now the world, you know, to reading all the same copy that used to just go to New York, Chicago, and LA. And so it was really when there was kind of this perfect storm of change in the voiceover landscape that I had been accustomed to for a good 15, 20 years. The bottom felt like it dropped out for me and for a lot of people.
And a lot of people didn’t survive it. You know, a lot of people went on to do other things, and they just stopped doing voiceover. But for me, I realized, you know, I’m very good at…
When rotten things happen, I spend a few days, you know, crying under the covers, and then I re-emerge and I go, Okay, how am I going to make this different? What am I going to do to carry on? And that was one of those things.
And I thought, you know, you came here to be an actor, Kay Bess. That’s why you came here to be a voice actor and do commercial work. You came here to be an actor.
And while all these decades had passed, and many of my friends that I went to college with are all now very successful television actors, and film actors, and Oscar winners, and, you know, all those things, I don’t have the theatrical resume that they do, right? So starting out again on-camera acting would be quite a feat, you know? But I did go back to acting school, and I did take some on-camera audition classes.
And all of those things really benefited the idea that I was going to take my acting skills into the realm of animation and video gaming. And that’s where I chose to kind of merge these two loves of mine, right? Acting and the world that I had already gained a lot of experience in and success in.
And those are the arenas where those two things lined up, you know? And I stepped in a way, you know, I took off proverbially, I took off my headphones and stopped listening to myself. And instead, I started to engage the copy and the characters on the other side of that copy.
And that’s what I think has made me a versatile voice actor, is that, again, I’m aware of the sound of my voice, the thing that, you know, God gave me, and I’m utterly willing to stop listening to it. And I think that’s a really big thing for a lot of voice actors. Even in commercial work and narration work, if we could just stop listening to our own voices and how pretty they are and how good they sound on mic and start engaging in our minds the people we’re talking to, our reads would become very different.
They’d become far more engaged and interesting to listen to. But that’s, I think, the key to versatility, right, is to be able to stop listening to yourself and engage the copy and engage the imaginary characters on the other pages, you know what I mean?
Yeah, and trust that you’re capable of delivering an effective performance.
Yeah, and the performance comes from the engagement of the script and the story and the characters and the person that you’re playing opposite, as opposed to the sound of your voice. And I think we get stuck there. We get stuck with pretty sounding voices.
Oh, absolutely.
Right? I mean, we really do. Yeah, me too, totally.
It takes a lot. And that’s a risk. That’s stepping out and being brave, to trust that if you take your headphones off, that you can do different and better work, that you don’t have to monitor it all the time.
And that’s really where the best work comes from, is when you’re not monitoring it.
Well, continuing the theme of being brave, another way in which you are brave is in launching your podcast. Or maybe not, because clearly with Sean and I, any two of you can do it. But you have an entirely different focus.
Tell us a little bit about The Beehive. When did you start it and why?
Yeah, well, I should say, if anybody listening is familiar with the podcast, I just want to give a big apology because I haven’t recorded a podcast in about a year. But I do have some in the shoot, and I intend to resurrect it, if you will. I’ve just been so swamped in the last year that I haven’t had an opportunity to make that happen.
But as I think most creative things, that totally came out of a dark period in the life of Kay Bess.
I think I was in the middle of this transition from more commercial work into gaming and animation. So there’s always this, like, I’m auditioning like mad, and I’m not really booking much. And all of that is, of course, laying the groundwork for future work.
So I recognize that. It’s super important to keep auditioning and to know that your auditions have value, whether or not you’re booking things at the moment. But it was definitely a period of time where I felt disconnected from my career and from the people that I know and love and voice over that I had gotten to know in Los Angeles over the past few decades.
And so I decided that I wanted to, you know, I really just wanted to connect. I wanted to connect to my friends. It really started there.
And I wanted to also kind of sing the praises of other people, because there are so many great voice actors, both male and female, who, you know, do the lion’s share of the work and nobody knows who they are. And I realized that for many of them, that’s how they like it, that they don’t want to be known, and that’s part of why we do voice over. But it’s also, you know, it’s nice to be recognized.
And so that’s where it came from. And so I just decided I was going to set up my microphone. I had one mic, and I could do kind of a…
I don’t know what you call it. It was like the little figure eight sign on the microphone.
Like see if you could record two people. Bidirectional, yeah.
Bidirectional, yes. So I set that up, and I have this little room that’s attached to the garage that I just turned into a studio, and I just started inviting women over. And I decided that I was going to interview women because women just don’t work as much as men do.
I mean, the lion’s share of the work is still for men. And so, you know, when people have podcasts, and they invite sort of legendary voice actors on with their characters and things, it’s usually men. And that makes sense, of course, because most of the characters are men.
So I just thought, I’m going to interview women. And there are women out there whose voices that you hear all the time, but you just don’t know their names. And so I was kind of all about that.
Like, I want to tell you who these women are. So that’s what I started doing. And, you know, eventually, I want to say maybe five or six episodes in, Townsend Coleman, God bless him, he came in and he was like, yeah, you have to redo your studio, and you have to get each person on mic.
And he loaned me… I have a 416, but he loaned me a 416 for a while so that I could get both voices on their own mic. And he just helped me to set up the room so that it was more conducive to recording.
And he’s a stickler like that, you know? He really loves it. But then he always follows through.
It’s sort of like, well, you know, he doesn’t just say, you should have a better studio. He’s like, and here, I’ll help you, I’ll help that happen, you know? So that was kind of awesome.
Let me, you should be better, Kay. Let me help make you better. So I just love him for that.
I truly do. I really, I just love him to death. And so anyway, so then I started recording, and sure enough, you know, I’m not very good at, you know, at business plans and marketing and, you know, those kinds of things.
It was kind of a slow build to the popularity of the podcast. But, you know, I have a small but mighty following, and they’re all kind of disappointed that I haven’t, you know, released anything in about a year. So I definitely owe, I owe people.
And actually, I’ve recorded, I have about four or five that I recorded well over a year ago, and I’m sure those women are like, wow, you know, did she hate my interview? It never went up, but that’s not the case. They’re all lovely.
I just haven’t gotten to them, to editing them yet. But that’s how that came about, and I do hope to continue, and I’m actually thinking about kind of adding, you know, a little side thing to the podcast and having men on, because they’re just, you know, there’s so many people I would love to interview and who have such wonderful stories to tell, and so I’m thinking about that. Then things got busy, and I just had to let that go to the back burner, largely because I edit everything myself, and I’m very particular about editing, and if I could let go of that, you know, I could put out a lot more, but like, wow, I guess I’m very controlling in that way.
Well, here’s hoping. I’m a big fan, and I love the way you… Thank you.
I love the rapport you have with all the guests. It sounds like you’ve been best friends with everybody for years, which in a lot of cases I think you are, and it comes across in the podcast.
Oh, that’s so sweet, you know? I have to say, like, I love people. I’m really fascinated by everyone’s story, and I think I just love to connect with people one-on-one.
And it’s funny, in fact, that one guest that I had on, Sally Safiotti, that was the first time that I had met her, really. I think I met her at a party once and had a conversation with her over a glass of wine, but that was the first time I’d ever had a long conversation with her. But from that, we became fast friends, and we’ve been friends ever since.
And so, yeah, there are several that I don’t… I’ve known as… They’re my colleagues, but not really close friends.
They’re a couple in the beginning I had my closer friends on because that’s just an easier conversation to have. But I love people, and I love to hear people’s stories. And so, maybe that’s the thing that makes it sound like we’ve been friends forever.
I’m actually and truly interested in people.
Well, it really shows. I know your own, just in your own conversations, in your own kind of personal mantras, very much finding your voice and sharing it with the world. And this is sort of your opportunity to do that for your friends and colleagues.
It’s really wonderful.
Yeah, yeah, thank you. I have loved doing it, so… And it’ll be back.
I was curious, Kate, because you’ve got such a varied career. What were some of your most memorable projects or ones you were particularly proud of?
Well, there was a period of time when I thought, you know, being a commercial voice actor, I’m not going to be remembered. You know, it’s like, how would I want to be eulogized? You know, that sounds like a crazy question, but how would I want to be eulogized by my colleagues?
You know, I mean, I think that’s a… It’s an important question to ask when you’re dreaming about the kind of career that you want, you know? How do you want to be remembered?
What do you want to be remembered for? And I thought, well, nobody’s going to remember the clear blue easy pregnancy test TV commercials that I did in 1996. You know, like, who cares?
No one cares. And it was at that… You know, in answering that question, I thought, you know, I really want to be remembered as being kind and generous.
Kind and generous with whatever I have. And so that’s how I decided I was going to continue to behave, you know, and be in the world of voiceover. And it was really funny because at some point a few years ago, I went on YouTube to see if I could find…
Because commercials are everywhere on YouTube. Old, you know, old commercials, right? That are just…
Like, people post the weirdest things. And so I went online to see if that clear blue easy TV spot was, you know, if somebody had put it on YouTube. And oh my goodness, there it is.
And it happened to be a TV campaign that was directed by David Lynch.
Really?
And it… Yeah. I didn’t know it at the time.
I had no idea, right? So I just remember thinking, this is a really weird voice over. I mean, the way they directed me was very kind of quiet and very…
And you know, I was sort of the queen of understatement. And so it was completely understated, but even more understated than even I would do. It sounded to me like really boring.
And so I don’t know that I… I don’t remember ever seeing the commercial at the time when it came on. So there it was.
And it’s like the reason that it’s on YouTube is because it was directed by David Lynch. And the woman in the spot, it was the actress who played Laura Palmer on… Oh my gosh, I just completely lost…
Twin Peaks?
I just completely lost the… Yes, on Twin Peaks. Thank you.
Sherrilyn Finn?
Yeah, I think it was Sherrilyn Finn. And so…
Not that I’m a fan or anything.
I just thought that was sort of hilarious. That the one… You have these at the drop of a hat.
You know, so here I am sort of making fun of the fact that no one would remember me for a TV spot. And it happened to have been like probably the most interesting TV spot I’ve ever done in my life, right? So I don’t think that I…
That was not a milestone in terms of my career or something that I think, oh wow, I was really proud of that.
It was just a TV spot.
But just sort of a funny anecdote about how we think of what we do as being so trivial. And then it just turned out to be this really weird piece of sort of David Lynch weird art. Anyway, I would say the things that…
The milestones were the first syndicated package of promos that I got. That was a really, again, just a terrible show called Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. But it was a down payment on a house.
You know? So it was like a… It was a big deal to me.
And also, you know, a female doing a syndicated promo package. That was sort of a big deal. And then really voicing the TV series, The Property Brothers, on HGTV.
I did the first four seasons of that show, and it was probably the best, most fun job I’ve ever had. The production company, Red Arrow Productions, they’re in Knoxville, Tennessee. I just loved the directors there.
You know, they were so lovely, and they were so kind, and they were so much fun to work with. And I did… You know, they trusted me.
They were on the line with me, but they just trusted my sound and what I brought to the show. And I just… It was just my favorite job ever.
Favorite job ever. And then I would say doing Lara Croft, Rise of the Tomb Raider, was a milestone because it was my first real role, you know, like a good, meaty role in a voiceover game. And I actually had replaced the voice.
The person who did the performance capture, they decided that they needed a different voice. And so I replaced her, and I recorded all of… I had to do a lot of recording.
This is unusual. There was much of the artwork that had already been done, and so her phrasing was in the renderings and stuff, in the creation of the character. And so I had to…
It was like I had to do… It was almost like doing looping, you know, for some of the scenes. I had to kind of match her lip flaps and that kind of stuff.
So that was an unusual thing, but it was really, really great. It was really fun. And again, I had a great director, Philip Bach.
It just was wonderful. He just loves actors, and so it was very freeing and liberating, and, you know, he let me go. You know, he let me fly, which was great.
And then doing Persephone Brimstone in Agents of Mayhem was, like, two and a half years of doing that character, and she had sort of a Euro-French accent, you know, and this sort of sophisticated, smarter-than-everyone-in-the-room kind of a person, and maintaining that accent and the character under the direction of Amanda Wyatt, who was, again, wonderful. That was really memorable, because that was a really big role. It was a big role, and to be consistent over that span of time, you know, with that character.
When you’re… When you… All you get are your lines.
You don’t get… You don’t know the story. You know, you don’t know the arc of the story, how it’s going, you know.
So you really have to trust the director, and you build the arc of the character together. You know, so those two video game roles. And then the first animation thing that I did, which I don’t even think I’m allowed to talk about yet, because I don’t think it’s been released.
It’s not… It won’t come out till 2020, I think. But just winning my first animation role, like, you know, I saved my script.
This is really exciting for me, you know, as a person in midlife, you know, to have kind of cracked open a door and gotten my foot in, this is just exciting. But I would say that those are the highlights.
Loads of some great stories.
And I hope there’s, you know, more to come.
Loads of some great stories. And I have to thank you personally for the Property Brothers role, because that’s the first time when I was talking to my wife, where she really sort of got it. Like, I’ve been doing this for several years, and I’ve been to tons of conferences, and I’ll come back and say, oh, I met so-and-so from this video game or so-and-so from this TV show.
And it’s usually like, that’s nice, dear. But when I said that I had met the voice of Property Brothers, then I was a star. So I thank you.
It just validated your career.
Exactly. I appreciate it so much. My pleasure.
I wish I could do it again.
Well, we’ll hope the best for you. So talking about just getting your first animation role and how that happened at the midpoint of your life, what are some things you’re still looking forward to in the future, some of your goals for your VO career?
Well, I hope to continue in animation. I think that that is the most exciting thing to me, and I look forward to being a series regular on something. I just booked my first recurring role on an animated series, but they’re in development, right?
So I don’t think anything that I have done is coming out until 2020. So that’s an interesting thing, right, to do the work and then not be able to talk about it. And then it’s not, you know, it’s two years before things show up.
I really would love to work as part of an ensemble in animation. That I think would be really, really fun. I had a taste of it on something that I booked for Nickelodeon.
My first thing for Nickelodeon. And all of us were in it. And it was just really exciting.
And there I was with, you know, seasoned animation actors that I sort of grew up in voice over with. But they were off on the animation track, and I was off on this commercial track, you know. But we’re on the same roster, you know, that kind of thing.
And here I am, you know, I feel like I rounded this corner, you know, to where I’m sitting in the room with them, and they’ve got the leads and stuff like that, and I just have incidental characters. But that, you know, that was super exciting. And so I really hope for more of that.
That’s what I see in my future. The world of video games, man, that is rough. I feel like a couple of games that I’ve done, I’ve trashed my voice a little bit, and it takes a while to recover from stuff like that, and it has affected my singing.
And so I’m still trying to piece that together about, how do I… Because I love doing them. I really love doing them.
And I think it’s an amazing art form altogether. Like, the creative collaboration to make a video game is astounding. When you talk about, you know, performance capture and, you know, motion capture and all of those things, it’s an extraordinary art form, of which voice thing is just a small part, you know.
And so, I love that collaborative thing. And so, trying to figure out how games fit into that, and do I need to be more particular about the types of games that I audition for. There are some things that are worth losing your voice for, but there are other things that aren’t, you know.
And so, I’m trying to weigh those things right now. And right now, animation is to me the most exciting thing and the most challenging thing, because I have been my whole life sort of the queen of subtlety and understatement. Animation requires a 180 from that.
It requires big, broad choices, highs and lows, really impeccable comedic timing. And so, those are all… I get them.
You know, I get them in my head, but to get them out of my mouth, you know, is the challenge, to be able to do that really consistently. So, you know, I look at auditions that I get, and I go, okay, who am I going to create here? You know, and how is this going to…
How am I going to… What am I going to end up with, you know, on tape, if you will? Can I say tape?
Sure. That’s not tape. You know, you know what I mean.
What’s going to end up in the sound file, right? And that’s the most exciting thing to me. So animation, recurring, series regulars, that’s my dream, that’s my plan.
And if I can say, I’m a member of a theater company in Los Angeles, the Actors Co-op in Hollywood. And I just produced my first show there with the company. Yeah, I was lucky to have been asked to produce an adaptation of Anna Karenina.
And I had a great director, a wonderful design team, a beautiful cast. It was such a great experience really being behind the scenes and seeing how productions are put together. And I even spent time assistant stage managing because our stage manager had an…
We extended, and so our stage manager, who was calling the show, and it was a very light and sound cue, heavy, very heavy show in that regard, a lot of sound cues. So he had another show that he was committed to. So our assistant stage manager took the reins there for a couple of shows.
And then I decided I was just going to assistant stage manager backstage. And I loved that experience so much because I got to see how much actors are supported by the backstage crew, and how necessary everyone is to a successful production. And it was an amazing experience, and I loved it.
I loved it so much. I didn’t start out loving it. The first month, I was like, yeah, I’m never going to do this again.
But by the end of it, I grew to love it. I loved the experience. And I was just cast in a show that opens May 10th.
It’s a production of a play called The Christians by Lucas Naeth. I think it’s how you pronounce his last name. And the last time…
Well, the only time it was in Los Angeles was at the Mark Taper Forum in 2015. So this is the first production of it in the Los Angeles area since then. And it was a critical success.
And the playwright is kind of on a run right now with some other stuff that he’s doing. But I’m super excited to be on stage again. And I think all of that, both working as a producer and then being back on stage…
And I haven’t been on stage since 1984. You all can do the math, but it’s a lot of years. And so again, it’s a challenge to me.
And I’m afraid. And I’m stepping out and being brave, you know? And it all matters, you know, in the realm of what we create as voice actors.
It’s really all the same. It’s all… All of that is risk taking.
And so the more you do it in other areas of your life, the more comfortable you get doing it in the booth, you know? The bigger the choices that you make are, especially with animation and gaming, right? It’s like you gotta make big, bold choices.
So all of that matters. So I also hope to continue to work on stage and in other areas of acting, all of which will just bolster my confidence in the booth. So there you go.
Thank you so much. I mean, Kay, it has truly been a pleasure. I mean, I’m sure you’re tired of people telling you how inspiring you are, but it’s true.
I mean, you’re an example of confidence in finding your… Yeah, I’m gonna lay it on thick just to warn you. But your confidence, your openness to growth and willingness to adapt to new challenges, it truly is inspiring.
And it has been a pleasure and an honor to have you with us today.
Thank you so much. I do want to say, you know, I think it’s really important to know this about me. Here I am, 57 years old, and I do have a measure of confidence, and I do have a measure of understanding.
But that’s now, and I just want to encourage anybody who’s starting out, that I didn’t start out with this much confidence. I started out with a lot of trepidation. And again, just reminding you that I came out of being somebody who has panic attacks and is scared to step on stage or to do a bold character.
So I spent 20, 23, 24 years being afraid to audition for something in animation. I turned everything down. I turned everything down.
I passed on everything. So I think small moves into the darkness is how it happens. You just take small moves into your fear, right?
And pretty soon, you’re taking bigger and bigger steps, and you realize you’re kind of now standing in the light, that you’re not afraid anymore, because you’re still here. You’ve survived it. You’ve survived the risk.
So I just… I know that on Facebook and in interviews and everywhere, we all show our best, most successful selves. But there’s still…
there has been and there still is struggle, you know, in all of it. But I think I… I think you’re right in that I have at least gotten to this point where I feel like, okay, you know, what is there to lose?
You know, I… I’m just going to do it. And if I suck, I suck.
Oh, well. And then there will be the next audition, and maybe that one will be better, you know. And I send off stuff all the time that isn’t up to par, you know, not because I am not trying, but I realize this is not a fit for me.
I did my best, you know, but I’m not going to book it because it’s not me. So I just want to make sure that people know that it’s the accumulation of experience and the accumulation of taking tiny little steps into the things that I have been afraid of that have made it possible for me to take bigger steps. And so, you know, so anyway, I just want to clarify that.
But it’s important that…
Thank you very much for that.
But it’s important that even though you’ve reached this part of your career where you’re comfortable, you’re not taking it anything for granted. And that comes across in the way you’re so gracious to everybody and are just a delight to talk to. So once again, we thank you for coming on and being just such a great guest and really fast friends, like you said, with some of your guests on The Beehive.
We haven’t known each other that long, but I feel like we have for a long time.
Yeah, yeah, I totally get that too. Thank you. I really appreciate it.
And I appreciate the opportunity and you guys letting me tell a part of my story. I do appreciate it.
Our pleasure. So lastly, where can people… Where can they hear your voice on any recent projects that you’d like to share?
Or how can they get a hold of you? If they’d like to hire you for a project or even as a coach?
You can find me at kaybess.com. I do a little bit of coaching. My coaching page is not…
It’s not a public page, because it’s not primarily what I do, but I do… I definitely do a bit of coaching for sure. So if you’re interested in that, you can always send me an email, and then I will send you a link to my coaching page about what that’s all about.
But you can find me there. You can contact me from there. The email on my website goes directly into my inbox, so that’s a very surefire and accurate way to get a hold of me.
And then, what can you hear me on? It’s funny, most of the work that I’ve done of late won’t be released for a while. And so I don’t know where…
I think… I hear rumor that you can still find me on the Property Brothers on seasons one through four, because it just sort of lives forever out there, wherever that show is.
I found the Clear Blue Easy ad, by the way. It’s still out there. While you were talking, I looked it up.
And it’s terrible. I mean, it’s terrible, isn’t it? I listen to that voice and I go, oh, wow, what an awful voice over.
But I guess it’s just what was going on at the time. But yeah, it’s funny. I mentioned in my keynote, having done my very first promo with Don LaFontaine, and I have…
Somewhere I have that promo. And I just… I’m so bad.
It’s like… Because I truly… I had no idea what a promo was.
They were perfectly happy with it. But I just listen to it and I go, oh, wow, I just had no idea what I was doing. Don, of course, he sounds like Don, and he’s fabulous.
But I just sound so young and inexperienced. It’s kind of hilarious. Yeah, so there are all kinds of clips on my website, in truth, that my demos are there.
Which, you know, all of that stuff is work that I have done. And then I’ve also got links to YouTube stuff where you can hear clips of the video games that I have been in, stuff like that. So my website, kaybess.com, is really kind of…
That’s where you can hear stuff. And then sometime in 2020, things will be popping up on Netflix.
How many times has this happened to you? You’re listening to the radio when this commercial comes on.
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And this guy starts talking.
Not unlike myself.
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Because you like to have fun.
Well, thanks so much to Kay. That was amazing. I was inspired by her at VO Atlanta, as much of the room was, I think.
I could see as I was looking around, everyone focused intently on her as she was giving her wonderful speech. And especially at the wrap up on the morning after, on the last day on Sunday, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I really feel blessed to have Kay on the podcast. I mean, she was so, like I said, has just learned so much from her personal experience.
And I feel like what resonated with me is that she’s just got such a, like such a confidence in her personality and in her performance. And she really encouraged others to find that confidence within yourself, even if you’re not getting a lot of feedback from the world, you know? So like, just being patient and persistent, and then being open to opportunities when they present themselves.
So being confident and being like, yes, I deserve this opportunity. And then just attacking it with that confidence and giving 100% of yourself to it.
And to still push forward even when you don’t feel like you’re progressing. I think the biggest thing that struck me about the talk was that how she didn’t always feel confident. And most of us feel that way.
We talked about in the last episode of Posture Syndrome, we all have this feeling of not feeling like we’re moving forward. And as long as you keep looking for new opportunities, be open to them, they will eventually come.
Absolutely. So thanks again Kay for being a guest on our podcast. It truly was a pleasure to have you.
So that pretty much wraps up this episode of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Thanks again to Kay Bess for being on the show. Coming up, we’ll have a great interview with Karin Gilfrey and Jamie Muffet, who are the co-founders and hosts of the VOcation conference in New York. Coming up in September, where we will be featured as a podcast partner.
So really excited about that.
As you might have noticed the play on words VOcation, vocation, this conference is a little bit more focused on the marketing and business aspect. So I’m really excited to see what Jamie and Karin come up with for the itinerary for that conference.
Yeah, and I’m excited to be presenting there as well. So we’ll see how that goes.
Awesome. And that pretty much wraps up this episode. So thank you guys for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
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