Setting The Record Straight
Morning Folks,
I have to be honest… I’m a pretty aggressive guy. As a youngster I always had to exercise self control in situations that tried other people’s patience. I used to … and to some degree still have a very short fuse. But three things worked toward controlling my anger:
1. My father saying … think before you speak… words are far worse than any laceration.
2. The fact that in Kuwait where I grew up they had very little tolerance for vandals and impetuous teens… if you misbehave … they’ll shave all your hair off and possibly put you in jail for a night. Also possibly deport non Kuwaitis (like myself) and the rest of their families to their country of origin.
3. And although this should be the first and most important to me… it was the one I learned last… The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) saying ” Do not be angry… for shaytan (satan) flows in your veins when you are angry ” that’s just part of the tradition (saying) but it was the one that affected me the most.
Age of Innocence
If you follow my blog you’ll know that a few days back I wrote an update about the Voice Over Casting Site Directory Project that I started in April of this year. I was happy that we had reached 136 listings and wanted to share all this info with the rest of the voice over community.
To further promote the Directory to the Voice Over Community I also went and emailed a simple PR email to a few of the more established blogs in the VO community… I won’t mention who but some did actually write a quick post about the directory and helped promote the directory to their readers.
Surprisingly though I received an email from one of the pillars of the VO community telling me that they will not be able to promote my directory because of MY site’s dubious origins… here is an excerpt from that email: more »
Can I feed your Desk Green Sprinkles?
The Answer to that question is … no you may not! go find your own desk and feed it.
Translating from one language to another is a challenging endeavor. I am not particularly good at it which is why I leave such things to the professionals. The other reason I don’t delve into it is because Arabic and English are languages that come from completely different origins… English is germanic in origin… and Arabic is Semetic. English is at best a few hundred years old… where as Arabic (the classical form) has remained the same for more than 1430 years.
The cultures are different. You really don’t realize how much language and the human vernacular is effected by Pop culture. A few years back almost no one but a video gamer would understand the term Woot! or FTW (For the Win). I’ll leave it to you to wiki the definitions though! more »
Directory Update – 136 Voiceover Casting Sites and Counting
Morning Folks,
Quick note to those who might be mariginally interested in our Voiceover Casting Sites Directory… We’ve reached a Whopping 136 casting sites so far.
you can view the VO Directory here:
http://voiceover-casting.com/emporium/directory/
Many thanks to Michelle Summers, Paul Strikwerda and Douglas de Nance for their contributions to the directory.
So far Douglas takes the cake at being the biggest casting site contributor!
The plan today was for me to write an article about translation but when Doug sent me his list of Casting sites I had to go through them, verify them and update the directory … that took about 90 minutes so my window for writing an article is shot 
anyway I guess I’ll have to write something up this weekend.
Taji
Bits And Pieces – Part Deux
Writing a regular blog post isn’t easy work… It can be at times… I mean something could trigger a 1200 word post out of no where. Its all about what happened to me that day or something that was bothering me and then suddenly reached critical mass and had to be written.
Which is why I came up with the Bits and pieces posts which allow me to give you a list of things that I found interesting but I don’t have that much to say about. They might have relevance to the VO industry and might just be things that touched me in my personal life. Either way I’ll try to keep things interesting: more »
Anonymity Vs. Internet Exposure – Striking The Internet Balance
The Facebook Conspiracy
This might be shocking for you to hear but … I’m a big conspiracy theorist (ok I was being sarcastic there).
I don’t come up with the theories but I do believe that often times things are not what they seem. From sudden economy crashes to war mongering across the globe to the rise and fall of our cost of living.
As voiceover artists who work through the internet … I believe that we need to strike a balance between giving out amazing amounts of information to websites like facebook, myspace, linkedin etc.
This came up today because of something my wife said to me about facebook. I despise facebook… honest to God I think facebook might be the single worst thing that has happened to the internet since pop ups and spam.
Why you may ask? more »
Two More Places To Find Work + the Freelance Monster List
Morning People!
Its the weekend here in Sunny Cairo and I figured I’d give a few of you the heads up on finding some work through a couple of freelance sites that I know get some low paying but regular work. The term Freelancing originally came from the medieval sport of jousting where those Lancers with no allegiances to any of the Royal and noble houses would hire themselves out to lords with no budget to finance a full time Jousting champion (you’ll have to verify this info… I heard it through someone)
1. Get A Freelancer- http://www.getafreelancer.com/
2. Odesk – http://www.odesk.com/
Allot of you might already be aware of these sites so you guys can skip this posting. more »
Emporium Bits And Pieces
G’morning people! Rise and shine,
I got updates for you … voice over bits and pieces:
1. The Voice Over Directory Project :
http://voiceover-casting.com/emporium/directory/
has broken the 100 link barrier (I think I’m at 115 VO sites right now) also people please don’t get upset if I don’t include your personal voice over sites in there… this is for castings sites… places where voice over artists like you and I can go and register and possibly get jobs. If I was making a directory with people’s names in it I’d put my own site now wouldnt I? If you know of any other voice casting sites that I might have missed… please inform me.
2. Don’t forget to check My 2nd podcast (The Voice for those with Voices)
That’s the post immediately before this one the podcast quality is cleaner and hopefully less metallic
3. The 3rd and 4th part of the podcasts from this post :
Voice Registry Podcast-Tracy Pattin Talks To Top Audio Book Narrator, Scott Brick
are up… here they are
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
4. Don’t forget to Subscribe to Taji’s Voice Emporium by Mail
so you can get alerts by Mail whenever I update my blog. I try not to be too erratic about my post updates but if you want to make sure you don’t miss any of the posts its best that you register here:
Subscribe to Taji’s Voice Emporium
5. Check out the latest edition of Julie Williams’ VoiceOver Insider magazine
Paul Strikwerda of the DoubleDutch blog (who hasn’t forgiven me for the Austin Powers reference just yet) left a comment recently that might be of interest to you… here’s a tidbit:
” A few days ago, I read the latest edition of Julie Williams’ VoiceOver Insider magazine ( http://voice-overs.com/MAY09VOI.pdf). If you’re curious about how much the average voice-over talent makes, it will give you some answers.
Over a quarter of those surveyed make less than $10,000 per year. On the top end of the scale, 8% makes between $100,000 and $200,000 per year and a lucky 2,6% makes more than $200,000 off their vocal chords. A third of all the respondents have been in this business for 10-25 years. Imagine being in the biz for a quarter of a century, and still scrambling to get a gig! ”
you can visit Julie’s site at Http://www.voice-overs.com or check out her latest Voice Over insider magazine at the link Paul wrote above.
6. Don’t forget that you can now reach Taji’s Voice Emporium by typing in WWW.VOICEEMPORIUM.COM (thats two “ee”s)
This is old news but it never hurts to remind the old readers and inform the new readers that you either subscribe to my RSS feed or memorize this nifty URL www.voiceemporium.com. I don’t always talk about voice … but I’ll sure keep you entertained!
____
Thats it for now… Please leave a comment if you have anything to add.
later folks,
taji
A Voice for those with Voices
To listen to Taji’s Podcast of this article
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Good Morning,
I have been thinking about this for a while and a few incidents have made me decide to deal with this subject immediately.
For an industry who’s business it is to speak… we seem to have a problem voicing what bothers us… what unfairness comes our way… and what total ruthlessness some of our industry “Partners” seem to think is acceptable to treat us with.
We are the same way with our peers we are their friends and their siblings in this profession as long as it doesn’t step on our toes or intrudes on our personal space. The Voice over industry is one that is wrought with hardship and uncertainty. You could go a few hours without work…or a few weeks… And for some of us who’s full time job it is to Speak that could be disastrous.
Most of the Voice Over Casting sites we frequent provide free membership for Clients, Directors and Producers… they get a free membership and they can post their jobs instantly.
So where do these voiceover casting sites make their money? A big chunk of it, theoretically, should be from their Voice Over members who join in the hopes that everyday or so they can get emailed a few job listings that will allow them to present themselves to these clients, directors and producers.
Do they make money otherwise? if there are 1000 voice over artists and their membership fees are $250 annually… do they make $250,000 a year… I highly doubt it … You have running costs… office rent… employee salaries you have to maximize your profit!
So lets say they are a glorified agent… instead of having one person you deal with and who calls you whenever their is work that suits your skill-set you have several … and on some sites its automated… so maybe they hire you out and get a finders fee from the client.
I used to work for a freelance Creative Design agency in Toronto called Aquent… Very nice people… and they used to hire me out to advertising agencies as a freelancer … I got paid by Aquent … and the client paid aquent. Is this what is happening here? Not as far as I understand it… I mean the majority of sites boast that you get paid directly by the client… other agencies do in fact act as agents … produlz.com does treat you as an agency and if you do work with them (Brian correct me if I’m wrong here) you get paid by them (produlz).. so they do get a cut of the profits.
I don’t really care if they get a cut of the profits as long as the work is coming… right? Voices.com has their escrow service which I generally prefer not to use. That’s a personal preference… I don’t suggest that you don’t use it. But I am sure that with their nickel and diming through the escrow system they can pull a superman 3 situation (yeah remember when Richard Pryor was a hacker and stole all those nickels and dimes of paychecks) with enough paychecks … you can possibly make a few thousand here and there.
Why do I want to know how the casting sites get paid? Why does it matter how they make their money?
If you haven’t guessed by now then let me be clear about it… If the majority of their income comes from the voice over artists who are members of their sites…
THEN WHY DO THEY TREAT US LIKE WE DON’T MATTER? LIKE WE ARE BENEATH THEM?
you see how I wrote that in caps? Thats because I said it with such anger that there is no other way to show my discontent without making that sentence bold and a few font sizes more than the rest of this article.
It’s almost like the situation with Governments… they call government employees public servants.. in other words Servants of the public. If they are servants of the public then why do they treat the public like garbage? You see it at the DMV or with the IRS or with many of the police… Servants of the public yet they take it as their God given right to step on your face.
This blog is about the Voice over industry… usually it is… I go on tangents…but the relevance of that is this… if I am the voice over casting site’s client and the person who posts the job listings is the client as well (directors and producers) then why are we treated like the lesser of the two?
Is it because there are so many of us VO talents and so little of the clients? Is it because most of the money is with them?
Maybe my frustrations are because I had to drive to the Canadian embassy today in downtown cairo… Maybe it that I just remembered when a feldgling Voice Over artist came to me upset at the treatment from some of the veteren voice over artists.
Seriously… Grow up! If we don’t stand together to help our own.. then we will forever be divided.
There is an arab saying…. If a person doesn’t treat his family well… then there is no Good in him.
Don’t be that guy.
that goes for producers, casting agencies.. and vo actors.
Taji
Taji’s Voice Over Directory Project
Greetings and Salutations,
As a voice over artist… one of the things that I think is necessary for us as an industry is that we help each other. We don’t do that… we think we are by talking about how we should avoid getting colds or suggestions of what hot beverages will sooth our voice… or bribing our sound engineering crew into liking us with donuts and cookies.
But the fact of the matter is that as much as we want to help our fellow VO artists… we still want to horde what treasures we have found so that we may have an edge on the competition.
Peter O’Connell said in his recent free ebook “The Voice Over Entrance Exam” on page 43:
“There really is no competition in voice over as actors are only ever competing for the subjective ear of the producer doing the hiring. He or she decides how talented any voice talent is based only on that producer’s opinion that day; since no voice talent can control that, I believe we work in a business pretty much void of competition.”
Think about that… we are in a business devoid of Competition… yet we have workshops designed by some of the biggest and most influential voice over coaches that are designed to give you the competative edge over other voice over artists by giving you Voice Over Resources that the other VO talent don’t have.
Which means that the idea that we are not in a business that harbors competition is wishful thinking. more »
Adding Spice To Your Life: Introduction to the Athaan
Good Morning Folks,
Yesterday was an interesting day for me…. I took my wife and baby girl (she’s 16 months old) to the park. There aren’t that many parks here… Not like Canada… My wife grew up in Vancouver so Cairo is practically a desert in comparison.
So the Park we went to is called Azhar park (here is their website) We went there initially to have late lunch early dinner at the Lakeside Cafe Its an artificial lake…. actually more like an oversized pond compared to Lake Ontario. Anyway I was looking around and I saw a bunch of tourists who were sitting there kinda of taking it all in.
I’ve lived in Egypt for many years so other than Luxor and Aswan … I’ve pretty much seen most of the sites and cultural elements that are popular to tourists.
But something did strike me. I know alot more about those tourists culture than they can possibly know about mine… if they did they would be called orientalists… I’m a dual culture kid… I grew up knowing both… I am an arab but I can think using two mentalities.
And then as I was laying on the grass (as much as I wanted to run around with my daughter… I couldn’t due to a back related injury that I thought was due to a 6 hour audio editing session that I had a few days back) I heard something that is a staple of my culture and thought… I think this would be an excellent introduction to my friends and readers of my blog to introduce them to my culture. more »
