Hello, everybody, welcome to a very special edition of The VO Meter Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. I am here with a very special announcement from Everett Oliver at myboothdirector.com. Everett, how are you today?
I’m well.
I am excited to be on your show, so thank you so much for inviting me. Last minute, but this is going to be fun.
This is gonna be great. So for those of you who don’t know, Everett is a legendary booth director that has recently, or maybe not so recently, you tell me, has branched out to have his own consulting business called myboothdirector.com, where you can dial him up and have him direct you as if he were standing right outside your booth for an audition. It’s fantastic.
I’ve used it several times. And I’ll let Everett tell you a little bit more about it and why you should contact him.
Yeah, well, I’ve been booth director for about five years at one of the local talent agencies here in LA. And I have really good connections with actors once I really get to know them. I love to pull performances out of them and help them really, really book those jobs that they feel like, oh, I’m not sure, or they need a little bit of oomph or help just for me to listen and say, okay, you might be missing a little bit of energy.
So I thought, why not me create this, everybody needs some sort of direction when it comes to auditioning for your auditions. So I basically direct you from where I am. I ask that the actors send me a copy of the audition and send me their first pass.
So at least I know where they’re going. And I set it up while I’m on Skype or use Zoom. And then I just really, really connect with you as a performer and get the best performance out of you.
Sometimes I have the actors send me the audition so I can hear it on my end, just so that I can either close the gap here or there or turn up the levels just a little bit louder. Very little, small little glitch, just so that I can edit everything for when I hear it on my end. Because I like for you as the performer to keep everything rolling.
So that way, in my head, I say, okay, send me everything. I can make the cuts really for you and I’ll send you back the final product. So that’s what I do.
Awesome. Talk to me a little bit about your style, because I’ll be honest with you, I was first introduced to you on an interview you did with Chuck and Stacey on VO Buzz Weekly. And to be honest, you kind of terrified me, because everyone was saying how brutally honest you are.
There’s no holds barred. And I think at one point you even said, you’re not happy unless the performer walks away crying.
Well, no, it’s more or less, I travel a lot through the different markets in different regions. And so the style that I have really developed for myself is that I love to know the performer. I need to know whether or not maybe you’re schooling.
I need to know a little bit about maybe your family. You know, little stuff about your family. Not much, you know, your in-laws, who you connect with, who you might have a conflict with.
I’m more or less a person to tap into you. So once I tap into you and I know you, then I can go ahead and pull a performance. My traveling, I can go ahead and sense, oh, which regions is right for you as the performer.
So when I’m going ahead and I’m directing, I’m listening, A, for your acting. I’m listening for, are you that actual character? That or, you know, are you selling that product really well?
Are you very conversational? And that’s how I direct. And then I go into your regions and I go, you might not be right for the region that you are auditioning for.
And I am brutally honest and I really tell the actors, why waste your time? That I know that I live in a number one market, I’m from a number one market, and you’re auditioning on two of the number one markets and you’re just not gonna make the cut. Because I’ve seen and I’ve heard, oh, I’ve worked with tons of actors on both coasts and I can tell and I’m like, mm, you might over enunciate too much.
You might not be right for the California market. You might be right for the New York market because everyone on a certain coast speaks a certain way and I’ve picked that up in my travels. So yeah, so I am really brutally honest, you know, and I tell it like it is.
And I think actors should know. And I’m not mean.
You can say that. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this because I think sometimes that is the impression that comes off when you’re in an interview. When you were on VOBS, it was a similar thing.
I’d already worked with you at that point, so it wasn’t the same. But I gotta tell you, I would have never called you if I hadn’t talked to you or seen you on another interview after that VO Buzz Weekly. But I’m here to tell all of our listeners and viewers that Everett is a sweetheart.
Absolutely, absolutely best at what he does, but will also help you along the way. So even though he’s brutally honest, and you probably should want that as a performer, you don’t wanna waste your time like you were saying. Everett is great to work with and I can’t recommend him enough.
So tell us a little bit about the event you have coming up in DC.
Okay, so I’m gonna be in DC October 14th at, I wanna say Clean Cuts. I’m gonna be teaching an animation workshop. We’re gonna have fun.
I’m gonna give tons and tons of copy. I’m gonna go around, a little bit around the room and I wanna hear people talk. I wanna know a little bit about them.
That’s like my style. So once I get a little bit, know a little bit about them. I’m gonna give them tons of information about the voiceover industry.
It doesn’t matter what levels that you are, beginner, medium, intermediate. You need to know stuff about your markets. You need to know about the agency, how to get agents from different markets.
You just need to know as a performer, the business side of the business, which actors sometimes just forgets about. And then also, I’m just gonna just give you a copy. I’m gonna pull performances out of you.
So it’s gonna be fun. I’m gonna have a lot of energy. I’m gonna be bouncing up and down like I normally do.
I’m looking forward to it. DC is a new market for me, so I haven’t really been to DC since I was about maybe 15. So it’s gonna be a little fun.
Friday night, I’m gonna be at the Tenley Bar and Grill. Is it Bar and Grill? So it’s a meet and greet.
So just come out, you know, tang, get to know me a little bit. I want to get to know you a little bit, just to loosen up the mood a little bit before we actually work one Saturday. So, but it should be fun.
I’m totally looking forward to it. You know, hopefully it won’t be cold. I’m not interested in cold weather.
We’ll see that.
We’re actually in the middle of a heat wave right now. I’m, you know, I’m just outside DC and Baltimore. So it’s going to be 90 degrees most of this week.
Hopefully it’ll cool down a little bit actually by the time you’re here. We’ll see.
Absolutely. Yeah, because we’re not dealing with 80, 90 degrees here in California. So no.
So all of my friends and listeners who are tuning in right now, please come on October 13th to the Tanley Bar, October 14th to Clean Cuts. Get some great work done with Everett and find out what a nice guy he is. Honestly.
And they can register. Right. And you can register on myboothdirector.com or you can email me as well at Everett A.
Oliver at gmail.com. And any information or questions that you have, may have about the session or whether I’d be willing to definitely, you know, email you back. But like I said, it’s going to be lots of fun and lots of information.
And usually people will come out of my workshop, they come out very, very satisfied. It’s very helpful. And they’re able to take their career to the next level.
Big smiles too. I’ve seen your picture from the event in Toronto. Everyone’s smiling ear to ear.
Yes. And yeah, and my clients who have worked with me, they have said, oh my God, if I didn’t book them on one project, they’ve used the stuff that I’ve taught them to something else and they’ve booked. So, and that’s the key issue.
I know that everyone constantly, constantly wants the books, but I want you to learn and raise your bar. I’m going to make you raise your bar and I’m going to stretch you. So if your range is here, I’m going to bring your range down here so that you know you can do those type of characters that you think in your mind that you can’t do.
Well, we’re looking forward to it. Thanks again for being here on the VO Meter and we’ll see you on the 13th, Everett.
See you soon.