Big Ol' Voiceover Week So Far

All of the classes which I really wanted to take seem to be a bit front-loaded into this semester at Voicetrax. Advanced Character started in January, the Ultimate Road Show two day class hit last weekend, then the first of two February classes which I'd been pretty excited about started last night.

I'd first heard of Sam Pond through a comment that Instructor/Voice Actor Brian Sommer made. We had just worked a script which was thoroughly hilarious, and Brian said, "That was a Sam Pond script - if you ever have a chance to work with him, DO IT!"

As I took more classes and began to see all manner of scripts, a few would stick out because they were irreverent, clever or really managed to find elegant humor. Most of these turned out to be Pond scripts.

If you are around the SF Bay Area, and have heard one of the Lombardi Sports ads in the last few years, that was probably one of his. He was recently the winner of $1 million in advertising on Clear Channel, and came up with some hilariously sparse bits which were just him, trying to figure out what to do with all the ad time he now sat upon.

If you haven't run across his stuff before, head over to PondRadio.com and hit the "Spots" link.

The first session of class had a high velocity of scripts and takes, and by the midpoint, my cheeks were cramping from so much laughing. By the end of class, my ribs were sore. It's the only time (so far) when I've been in the booth on a dialog, and the class was laughing so hard that I started channelling Tim Conway/Harvey Korman from the Carol Brunett Show, when they both got serious giggles and almost imploded.

Just to make it an All-Voice-All-The-Time experience, on Tuesday, I finished up necessary job-stuff early and told folks I was going to work from home in the afternoon. This let me enjoy a late lunch while watching "View from the Bay", which was doing a segment with Voicetrax founder Samantha Paris. Here's a short camphone capture -



If you wander over to the Vew From The Bay site, they seem to maintain archives of show segments for webcast. (Broadcast date was 2/3/09, you may have to root around to find it today). The funny thing was that the first segment was a promotion of the "Go Red!" Heart Disease Awareness Fashion Show. The doctor who appears in that segment - Joanne Dames - is another Voicetrax student and voice actor.

Which pretty much meant only Monday will be non-voice-overy. What a great week!