Newsletter

September 2008 · Newsletter Archive

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”
-H. G. Wells

The Aim to be a ‘Seasoned Journeyman’

I’d like to assume the aim of every talent we work with here at SOUND ADVICE, regardless of media specialty (television, film, stage or voiceover), is to become a seasoned journeyman. In other words, to be a professional through and through—one who never ceases exploring beyond the ‘safe’, the ‘comfort zone’, and forever aims to expand upon their performance abilities. One who intends to go the distance to deliver the best results and behave at the top of their form, often against unusual and often difficult obstacles and even great odds. In short, one who seeks to master their role in this business.

Here’s how Merriam-Webster’s defines this term...
sea·soned
2 a: to treat so as to prepare for use b: to make fit by experience (a seasoned veteran) to become seasoned
jour·ney·man noun
2: an experienced reliable worker, athlete, or performer especially as distinguished from one who is brilliant or colorful (a good journeyman trumpeter -- New Yorker)

We’ll do our best to prepare and make you fit to deliver the goods. Simply make it your aim to be a ‘seasoned journeyman.’ It can be done.

Craftsmen have committed themselves to excellence for generations. Why should today be any different? It doesn’t take much effort to rise above the standard and the run-of-the-mill. It only takes a little effort and commitment to be better than average.

A Defense—and History—of Voice-Over Narration by Sarah Kozloff

In Spike Jonze’s 2002 film Adaptation, the principal character, Charlie Kaufman (Nicholas Cage), goes to a lecture on screenwriting given by popular authority and real-life figure Robert McKee, here impersonated by actor Brian Cox. McKee delivers the standard diatribe against voice-over narration: "And God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That’s flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character." In the movie, no one has the guts to debate this sweeping denunciation—McKee is portrayed as a bully who brooks no questioning of his prescriptions—and yet the movie as a whole, which relies heavily on giving the viewer access to Charlie’s thoughts, works as a slantwise rebuttal. So it has been throughout the history of filmmaking. Many have issued pronouncements against voice-over, and few have murmured in its defense. Yet voice-over narration remains an integral part of moviemaking—so common that we often overlook its contribution and ignore its development.
From the beginning, film aficionados have felt the need to defend cinema as an art and to do so by setting it apart from other media, especially theater and literature. What makes film distinct and special, these theorists argue, is its capacity to convey information nonverbally—through mise- en-scène, editing, camera movement, POV, facial expression or pantomime. As is well known, many intellectuals and filmmakers, including Rudolf Arnheim, Charlie Chaplin, Sergei Eisenstein, and René Clair, argued against the use of synchronous sound when it emerged in the 1920s, seeing in speech the death of film art. Even today, reference books and textbooks repeat ad infinitum that because film is a visual art, speech should never have a leading role; dialogue must always be minimized—kept in its place.
A fallback charge against voice-over narration is that using it is insulting to the audience. Voice- over narration is suspect because it is a means of “telling” rather than “showing.” “Telling” is judged as a mark of laziness and/or condescension. Both of these subtexts are apparent in this quote from Robert McKee’s popular screenwriting manual, Story: “[T]he trend toward using telling narration throughout a film threatens the future of our art.
More and more films by some of the finest directors from Hollywood and Europe indulge in this indolent practice. They saturate the screen with lush photography and lavish production values, then tie images together with a voice droning on the soundtrack, turning the cinema into what was once known as Classic Comic Books . . . That’s fine for children, but it’s not cinema.”
Voice-over narration is no more or less inherently valuable or cinematic than any other element of film. And when this device is well-executed, it opens up inimitable avenues for filmmakers. Voice- over is notoriously useful for efficiently conveying expositional or historical information, for instance. The David McCullough-narrated sequences of Gary Ross’ Seabiscuit (2003) set the horse race in context, explaining its significance to the country as a whole. And filmmakers often use voice-over for important character revelations—to give us direct access to a character’s thoughts, emotions, and consciousness.
Indeed, narration is such a powerful device for deepening characterizations and leading viewers to share a character’s perspective that some film theorists see “the voice” as a counterpoint to “the gaze.” Certainly, narration can be a tool for granting those who historically have been objectified by the camera—e.g., women or minorities—the chance to speak for themselves. Voice-over narration can also add a level of poetry to a movie. Michael Herr’s phrasing in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) is inherently poetic, and Martin Sheen’s soft, bitter delivery makes lines such as, “Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one,” memorable and evocative.
Because voice-over narration automatically creates a double layering of commentary over visual track, it is unparalleled as a mechanism for creating distance and irony. In films such as Badlands (1973) and Raising Arizona (1987), filmmakers use the characters’ benighted comments about their situations to point up their blindness and limitations. Or a third person voice-over can speak with ironic authority about a tribal blind spot, as in The Age of Innocence (1993), when the narrator remarks: “It was widely known in New York, but never acknowledged, that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly that they want to get to it.” Voice-over has the potential to instill a Brechtian self-reflexivity, as when Jean-Luc Godard offers a few clues for late-comers to the movie theater in Band of Outsiders (1964) or when Dede Truitt (Christina Ricci) in Don Roos’ The Opposite of Sex (1998) dismissively talks back to the camera.
And, fundamentally, because voice-over refers to the most traditional of storytelling forms—that of oral storytelling—it reaches out to the audience in a singular way, making the film-going experience feel more “natural,” more intimate. Like “dear reader” references in a novel, or dramatic actors making eye contact with a theater audience, using voice-over narration implies an implicit recognition of the spectator; the device flatters us with its confiding tones or challenges us with its direct appeal.
In Adaptation, the fictional Charlie Kaufman is cowed by Robert McKee’s diatribe, and from that point on in the film, the voice is silent. Fortunately, however, throughout the history of film real-life screenwriters and directors have blithely ignored the many dire, limiting strictures against voice- over narration, and proceeded to make the most of these invisible storytellers.
Sarah Kozloff is the Chair of Film at Vassar College and the author of Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film and Overhearing Film Dialogue. Her article in its entirety can be found on-line at www.criterioncollection.com

Speak the Speak, I pray thee...

Did you know there’s a whole division of voiceover that requires improvisation skills, mic technique and your ability to play well with others? It’s called “looping” or “ADR” work. (ADR stands for ‘automated digital recording’ or ‘automated digital replacement’.) Here are a few terms recently added to the ‘Speak the Speak’ section of “The Sound Advice Encyclopedia” that will explain in greater detail.

looper—A ‘looper’ is a talent who records background group vocal tracks for film and television for crowd scenes such as in restaurants, school hallways, courtrooms, etc.
Loopers are employed through ‘Loop Groups’ that are hired at Union day rates to add crowd or individual ambience to on-camera work. These are very coveted positions because they pay residuals and repeat business can be the equivalent of landing a reoccurring role on sit-com.
Loopers are hired because it’s far easier to control the sound of Extras if they are shot silently and the Loop Group add the desired, appropriate sound in post.
This is also known as ‘walla work’ because prior to digital recording, it was thought group background sounds could simply blend in a wall of mumbles by simply stating, ‘walla, walla, walla’.
Today, ‘loopers’ are recorded in groups of as few as 2 or 3 to as many as twenty to thirty all recorded at actual level. And therefore both recording and improvisational skills are a must.

Loop Groups—‘Loop Groups’ are necessary to add restaurant, classroom, courtroom and general crowd sounds or human ambience to a film or television soundtrack in post-production.
This work is almost exclusively done in Los Angeles. ‘Looping’ can be considered ‘voiceover extra work’ or (even closer to the truth) ‘human foley’ because you’ll watch the scene and record appropriate banter that plays as background. This work pays the full SAG day rate which is considerably better than the paltry rate an on-screen extras earn.
‘Walla’ is done with six or so voice talent in a booth at a recording studio creating vocal ‘atmosphere’ for a court room on “Law and Order” or street ambience on “CSI: Miami”, for example. These tracks are recorded at full conversation volume. The engineer will balance out the necessary level later.
The work requires: you’re well versed in mic technique, you possess some well-tuned improvisational skills and that you play well with others, vocally.
Of course, breaking into a much-coveted ‘Loop Group’ is nothing short of an Act of Congress, apparently, considering there is only a handful of talent required and only a handful of walla groups in operation. The ones that are, land contracts for a dozen or more sitcoms.
Breaking in is much like so many things in life; it often relies heavily on ‘who you know’. So, if you happen to be friends with an established group, the odds fair much better in your favor for employment.
There are a number of Loop Groups in Los Angeles and New York that generally utilize the same rotation of players again and again which is why being asked to join a loop group is so highly sought-after in the profession. It means steady work, including residuals, for film and television. (Nice work if you can get it!)
According to Ann Anderson, veteran Loop Group coordinator, “In any movie or TV show, the background players, called extras, only pretend to talk. That's because actors with scripted lines, or principals, have to be recorded with no ambient noise. In a restaurant, office, street, hospital, battlefield, courtroom, or any scene with extras, their dialogue is added later, in post-production, by a group of improvisational actors called ‘loopers’. It's our job to "sweeten" the dialog track, or to make a scene seem more populated if there are too few people on screen. ‘Loopers’ fill in phone conversations, add hospital or airport pages, "fight grunts," weeping noises, laughter, and bits of dialog. Looping encompasses a wide variety of vocal odd jobs. The operative phrase, sometimes used as a joke is, ‘We'll fix it in post.’ “
‘Walla’ (the origin of that name is not known) is also done for foreign films and animations where replacing the pre-existing foreign language tracks with American speech is necessary. Timing is of the essence here as well, because it takes a special knack to watch the visuals and speak within the given time parameters while maintaining character.
Apparently (now this is the rumor part) once you get into a “loop group”, you’re called in for one of these sessions a few times a month. Financially, that would be equivalent to a nice reoccurring role on a television show. Even better, you can go out to dinner and not be bothered by the paparazzi.
A few well-known Loop groups include: LA Mad Dogs, Barbara Harris’ Loop Group, David Sharp’s Totally looped Group, David Kramer’s Looping Group and Loop Troup to name a few.

Honestly, speaking as a Casting Director, or even as a Producer, if I found myself recording a lot of group work for a specific show, month after month, and I had success with the same Loop Group, you bet I’d be inclined to keep the product as consistent as possible. I WOULD hire the same group of talent again and again if I could. This falls under the ‘don’t fix it if it’s not broke’ category.
You know something? We may have stumbled onto something here. Maybe this is why all those soundtracks on old television shows on Nick at Nite sound soooo strangely similar week after week. Hmmm. I wonder?

Inc vs. LLC

Often I am asked, “Should I incorporate? Or maybe I should LLC?”
Good question.
Two of our ardent ‘Sound Advicers’ have offered up their personal experience and wisdom, which I impart to you here so you can discern for yourself.

Hey Kate, This is the info I found regarding the difference between Incorporations & LLC's. Here are some links that may be helpful. A link to the bizfilings.com "learning" section, which has tons of info on incorporating all types of businesses:http://www.bizfilings.com/learning

Benefits of the Inc.:http://www.bizfilings.com/learning/benefitsinc.asp

Benefits of the LLC:http://www.bizfilings.com/learning/benefitsllc.asp

Hope this is helpful. : ) –Donna

In a nutshell, as I understand it, an LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) is more expensive (approx $500) at the onset but infinitely more valuable to you in the long run because there’s less maintenance throughout the year with an LLC and less paperwork to set it up.

Incorporating (as an ‘S’ Corp or Sole Corporation or Proprietorship) costs $150 to establish. You can set either up by downloading the paperwork from your local Secretary of State’s site on-line.

According to another notorious ‘Sound Advicer’, Kimberley Reid, “Had I to do it all over again, I would have LLC’d, rather than Inc,” she recently told me.

Additionally, both certainly legitimize your expenses in this business, including workshops, coaching, demo production, promotional mailings, headshots and so forth. Ideally, you should establish your own name as your corporation, such as ‘Joe Talent, LLC’ or ‘Joe Talent, Inc’ to help legitimize your industry expenses and make write-offs easier.

Here’s the thing: if you call yourself ‘Excalibur, Inc’ it may conflict with some unrelated business that may already be in operation and may even link you to some reference you may not want any association with. To add to this, it will be confusing and/or difficult to simply deposit session fees and residuals--payments typically are made out to you in your name. If you find yourself insisting at each job your checks be made out to ‘Lady HOTnTOTS, LLC’, you may find it take repeated attempts to get that billing straight. Why? Because it’s odd and ultimately something of a non sequitur. Besides you may find explaining the origin of your corporate name to the next producer that hires you may prove to be a bit more awkward and confusing than you had initially anticipated.

The links above will allow you access to the info you need to determine for yourself what you feel will work best for you should you choose to go this route.

Back at it!

This time of year, much like the beginning of the year, offers a new start and, usually, far more opportunity after the long, lazy, dog days of summer.
Enjoy the weather while you can. Hope you’re happy to see the Newsletter has returned! Keep us posted on your progress. Come on in for continued coaching. Get your mailings prepped and out there to both the talent agents AND the Ad Agency Creatives! We’re here to help you make yourself known and keep your skills sharp! Best always… - Kate & crew