Mike’s Late May Update

It’s been a busy month, all told. I’ve been writing furiously for the History Channel (which now prefers to be known simply as “History”). They’ve asked me to become a regular continuity announcer for the channel for the next little while, so I’ll be popping up between programmes there quite a lot for now, and I’m actually on air all week this week (26-31 May).

WhP, in France, asked me to produce some voiceover material for the Renault Academy last week, which I delivered this week. A complex project which involved a lot of editing to produce files which could be split up by an automated process. I learned a lot about the new Mégane Coupé in the process, should anyone ever call on me to do a repair.

Meanwhile, IC Group in Winnipeg, Canada, approached me to voice the British version of some training materials for Brit Insurance.

And tomorrow I’m looking forward to voicing a documentary programme about the preparations for the FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa, with a producer based in (wait for it…) Sydney, Australia!

Never let it be said that I don’t get around…

To renew, or not to renew?

This week I received an email from Steven Lowell in Voice123 Customer Services, asking for my thoughts on their site as a premium subscriber. Here’s what I said:

Hi Steven,

No problem sharing my thoughts. I’m about to come up for renewal, as it happens.

I find the Voice123 system usable and reliable from a technical point of view, but the pages can be extremely slow to load (I have fast broadband and don’t experience these problems with other sites).

This year I’ve made my money back several times over, but I’m still not sure it’s worth me renewing, bearing in mind the inordinate amount of time I spent auditioning to get nothing back the vast majority of the time. I also get a lot of frustrating “You were ranked 1st – 31 other talents received the same rating” kind of responses or “Likely hiring” responses that then go… nowhere.

The system is now sending me higher budgeted jobs as a matter of course (and as it promised) though my experience to date means that replying to SmartCast invitations is now very low on my daily list of priorities, with the majority of my work coming from elsewhere.

So, to renew or not to renew. My jury’s currently out!

Thanks,

Mike

What are your own thoughts on this? I’d love to know what you’re thinking…

Accents for sale(s)

I grew up in Wolverhampton. There, I’ve said it.

If you’re reading this outside the UK, and you don’t know much about the wide variety of accents on offer on this Sceptic Isle, you may not immediately see my point. But anyone from Britain will know that the part of the country where I grew up is famous for its “peculiar” take on the Queen’s English. When it comes to taking liberties, Dick Van Dyke has nothing on the West Midlands. And if you don’t believe me, take a listen to these.

If you’ve heard any of my work, you’ll know that I don’t sound like this anymore. (Actually, my accent was never that strong and my mother, especially, frowned upon use of “dialect words” when I was growing up. Thanks, Mum!) In fact, being one of the lucky few who always knew from a young age that they wanted to be in the media – and realising that that meant using my voice – had an interesting effect on me. No one ever pointed out to me that people who sounded like my Aunty Di (love her to bits) weren’t fronting the local news or extolling the virtues of the local carpet emporia, but I just sort of knew. And over a number of years I just, sort of, trained myself away from the Black Country “twang” that surrounded me at school. I’m sure that if someone were evil enough to conjure up a batch of radio trails I made in Birmingham in 1989 when I started, that we’d all be somewhat amused, but it’s a process, right?

I still have remnants of my Black Country vocal heritage, and these remnants are usually there for all to hear in times of stress or agitation. (By the way, “Black Country” isn’t a racist term, in case you’re wondering. It refers to the thick, black, industrial smog that hung in the air of the region from about the time of the industrial revolution until, well, about half an hour ago, now I come to mention it…) But what that vocal legacy has given me and lent to my delivery is something that makes me sound a bit different: “North of Watford but south of The North”, as one producer described it. I find myself in demand now by those who want a “non-London”, “non-RP” voice which still carries authority but has a bit of warmth. Perhaps the fact that my vowels can’t quite decide which part of the country they prefer, sometimes change mid-sentence and sometimes surprise even me when they come out differently to what I’m expecting, is part of that strange appeal.

The reason I mention all this is that there’s a new bit of research out from the UK’s Central Office of Information. They sound a bit Orwellian, don’t they? But they’re the government’s marketing and communication agency, and they’re the people who made all those nice Public Information Films we used to love to watch before BBC1 closed down. Halcyon days…

This bit of research, which I picked up today from Media Guardian, reveals that “Not all regions like to hear their own accents in ads”. Who’d have thought! Here’s an excerpt from the Media Guardian piece (the full article is here):

“Many people claim to hate the sound of their own voice, but a new government survey suggests the sensation is more unpleasant for some of us than it is for others.

The study… reveals that, while Geordies and Mancunians enjoy listening to their own regional accents in government advertisements, Brummies and Bristolians would rather not be subjected to their own distinctive burr.

The COI, which controls the government’s annual £400m advertising budget, found responses to radio and TV commercials vary widely in different parts of the UK according to the accent they are recorded in.

Residents of some regions, including Tyneside and Manchester, prefer to listen to government warnings about the dangers of drink driving or smoking cigarettes when they feature actors speaking in the local vernacular. Others, including those who live in the West Midlands and Bristol, are more likely to sit up and take notice when they are made using “received pronunciation”, the COI study claims.”

When they mention “Brummies”, they mean people from Birmingham, just down the road from Wolverhampton. To the outsider we’re close enough bedfellows to be confused, though to natives that’s tantamount to confusing a Lancastrian and a Yorkshireman. Brummies actually call people from Wolverhampton “Yam-yams”. This is because the Black Country bastardisation of “You are” becomes “Yow (as in ‘cow’) am”, and thus “yowm” and, conversationally, “yam”. (Yes, it’s that strong a dialect. Can you see why it’s not good for voiceover?)

Then again, in today’s climate it looks like you can go too far. A couple of my voiceover friends, who speak with the kind of beautiful English tones that I can only aspire to, are sometimes finding themselves “too posh” for today’s market. And interestingly, having recently been making calls to commercial producers, I had one producer from the North East say to me that “it’s a good job you don’t sound like you’re from London, even if you live there. Our listeners don’t tend to trust them…” Last year I blogged about a report in the Daily Telegraph that claimed “cockney voices are the UK’s most hated regional accents”. Balance is the key, it seems.

Last year I auditioned for a radio ad which asked for a West Midlands accent. I wrestled with whether to pitch, having wrestled for so long with breaking away from it. I wasn’t sure if I could still carry it off (the last thing I wanted to do was sound like an insulting “fake” – these are troubled waters enough) and in fact, before I submitted the take, I played it down the phone to my parents for a second opinion. To my surprise (and somewhat to my relief) my mother told me it sounded like a “high end” West Midlands accent and both she and my father thought it was close enough to pass muster. To my astonishment, the producer agreed with them, and for a short while I was on the radio in my old stomping ground, reminding the West Midlands that it might be drinking itself to death and that it probably ought to do something about it.

But that’s the only time I’ve been asked to do it, aside from for comic effect, which says a lot. Looks like my eight-year old self was wiser than I’d imagined…

A weekend in the country

I spent last weekend with a couple of hundred other voiceover artists at the annual Vox conference in Warwickshire. It was my second Vox, but travelling with me were two good friends and “Vox Virgins”, Trish Bertram and David Vickery. Between them, they’ve been making a living at voiceovers for longer than I’ve been alive, but neither had ever been before.

It soon dawns on anyone who goes to a lot of conferences that Vox isn’t really a conference in the strictest sense. It’s actually more about catching up with mates you never see anymore and networking in a gentle fashion. (Anyone who goes into full-on sell mode – as some do – stands out like a sore thumb, and immediately meets with universal disdain.)

Mostly though, it’s about the drinking, which starts pretty much the moment everyone turns up. By half-way through the “Speed Networking” event at 4pm there were advanced signs of inebriation – mostly on the part of producers (caught light rabbits in the headlights, bless ’em) as eager VOs touted themselves shamelessly in sixty seconds. The Awards ceremony, however, revealed that there was far more to these guys’ artistry than drinking, with some excellent audio on show that made me realise just how creative some of our creatives are.

As well as reacquainting myself with some of the nice folks I met last year, I finally met up with several people I’d only ever spoken to online, including Bob Kingsley and Philip Banks, who turned up with two Americans in tow who’d landed just that morning especially for the occasion. I’m not sure that either Bob Souer or D B Cooper knew entirely what to make of it, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves nonetheless.

Unfortunately, I seemed to be coming down with something the moment we got off the train, and it got worse as the afternoon went on, until – irony of ironies – I lost my voice. That’s right, I lost my voice at a Voiceovers’ conference. You couldn’t make it up, could you? By halfway through dinner I was running a fever, and not long after that I took myself off to bed for a restless sleep.

The party, of course, went on without me. On Sunday morning I was regaled with tales of a certain Voiceover Man doing hilarious things with one of my friend Trish’s Manolo Blahniks, and one or two other stories I probably shouldn’t retell here.

Last year I foolishly turned up to Vox in the middle of a non-drinking period (it wasn’t a lot of fun on that basis) and this year had to retire hurt, so I’m hoping that Vox 2010 is going to be third time lucky! All the same, I came away with a neat little pile of business cards from interested producers, all of whom are on my list of people to contact this week. Despite my ill-timed collapse, I reckon I came out ahead, so I’m happy.

Mike’s week on the mike (4 – 10 May)

Another short week with a bank holiday on the front (I could get used to these).

The highlight of this last week was going into BBC Radio 7 to put together a couple of sequences for their Comedy Catchup, which goes out on a Sunday afternoon and again on a Sunday night. This week’s has been and gone, but if you tune in – or listen online – this coming Sunday, 17th May, you’ll be able to hear me between 1pm and 5pm, and again between 1 and 5am that night, linking everything together.

And the History Channel have asked me to join their continuity team for a while, so I’ll be on air there for the time being on a three-weekly rotation.