Dealing with VO Auditions...

Dealing with the audition?
DON'T!

Actual sign from the early 1900s.

        I like to call this my "advice about love" to the lovelorn. In this case, da harv is cast as the advisor, while you as my vagrant reader will be playing a used-to-be successful voiceover thespian. (I’m assuming it’s politically okay to refer to you all as thespians.)

Disclaimer: Most of the time (every day while writing), I attempt to stay away from the philosophical, usually without success; though being blessed with a bountiful memory, recounting any of the books I’ve read having a philosophical void is without my recollection.

        Like it or not, actors must deal with a subjective art form known as voice acting. For those completely unaware, YES, it is an acting craft. Whoops, that wasn’t philosophy, was it? —da harv lied. Everything actors live with brings a degree of uncertainty. Especially the task of having to audition each and every time in order to find work. We live in a world of the unknown.
        We know we’ve guessed right when someone tells us; they tell us we were right by hiring us as their voiceover choice to do the job. So… in my humble opinion, the only two things we know for sure are: we got the job, and we didn’t get the job. If you thrive on uncertainty, well then, you’re in the right field of endeavor. On a daily basis, your life and time as a voiceover actor comes with a single certainty: AUDITIONING FOR WORK!
        Taking the audition is what it’s all about. Taking the audition is your job, and will remain your job for as long as you choose to pursue your career as a voiceover actor. Journeyman actors rarely book a job without having auditioned for it. Make sure the person who advises you about professional procedures that actors should follow has an in-depth knowledge of our industry.
        Advice from da harv—given to him by his mother back in 1948, after our early arrival in Los Angeles from Brooklyn, New York: "Stay away from 'Bullshit Blvd'."

Harvey Kalmenson

Your toughest VO assigment

Toughest Assignment?
Be Yourself

        The toughest assignment for an actor is to remain natural. As a young director, I was warned by my mentors to try to stay away from asking an actor to be themselves. I was told that many actors haven’t a clue as to who or what they really are. In fact, I was also told that many actors think they know but are under a misguided conception of what their truth really is.
        If you don’t want to discover and practice your own individual truth, your chances of becoming a successful and professional actor will never come to pass. As an aside, while it may not make you happy to discover your truth as a human being, it will definitely give you a tremendous leg up as an actor. Point of fact: Almost all the great actors I’ve met in my travels fall into the category of being human—beings, that is. Imagine that.

        In my travels, it always managed to blow me away when I’ve encountered an actor in an everyday situation. A chance meeting at some sort of function or whatever and I come away from the encounter with the feeling this talent came across as being on the shallow side. Some didn’t have the ability to share their true feelings with me.

        When meeting that same person, in an actor/director environment, I’m oftentimes elated as well as surprised by their total ability, to tell the truth through the eyes of another. That other person that I refer to is the character they happen to be portraying. What they don’t want to give into is the fact that whatever they may think of as playacting is still a way of telling the truth.

        Perhaps one of the greatest actors of all time said it as succinctly as any actor I’ve ever heard when he responded during an interview what his acting method was:

"...Look the other fella in the eye, and tell the truth."

James Cagney

        The truth was always evident in any role portrayed by that actor.

        Many actors who had the opportunity to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock usually were in for a big surprise when they discovered how little direction he offered in the way of acting. One day, when Cary Grant asked Hitchcock for some advice on how to interpret the meaning of a particular scene, Hitchcock responded with: “You’re here because you’re right for it”.

        In his own way, he was telling Cary Grant to be himself. That was the end of the acting direction. Hitchcock sought the truth and that’s what his actors gave him. During another incident involving Mr. Hitchcock, a visitor to the set had the guts or the stupidity to endanger their life when without warning he asked Hitchcock to explain why he wasn’t looking at his actors during a rehearsal of a scene. Mr. Hitchcock’s reply, “I can hear what they look like.”
        That response has become a major part of my professional career. For many years, I have earned my living while listening to actors. Being your audience, and trying to hear the truth with my ears. If you tell me the truth, I will buy from you and allow you to influence my life. Just as a reminder, the Kalmenson Method was derived by means of a close study of the most successful actors in our industry during the course of more years than I desire to call attention to.

        Many of the attributes that the foremost talent has in common became apparent to me. By and large, these weren’t the actors that the general public described or held in esteem as celebrities. These were and are the journeyman actors.
        John Houseman expounded on his credo for success. He advised us to be journeyman actors—to practice and study our craft, to search for a way to grow every day, to be an observer with your eyes and ears, and to find a way to tell someone—anyone—a story that they might believe.

        Nothing we do is in the category of winging it. There is a prescribed method. We practice our scales every day just the same way we’re asking you to practice your scales. Get the basics down. Get ‘em down so cold that ‘ya don’t have to worry about where your fingers are caressing those piano keys. Truth brings an allowance for your forthright entrance to the present, allowing you to become creatively responsive and receptive to the needs of the person (or persons) you’re attempting to influence; and again, it’s all based on the truth.

Harvey Kalmenson

Sound Design & Demo Production

Sound Design & Demo Production

Disclaimer: For professionals only. Should not be attempted at home. You may be in possession of great sound equipment, and have become a very astute self-director— WARNING…DON’T FALL INTO THE COMMON TRAP. Merely being able to control a soundboard doesn’t qualify a person as a VO demo producer. It’s almost the same as switching on a light switch and thinking it qualifies you as a union electrician. During the course of the last forty-five years, I’ve listened to a variety of well-intentioned self-inflicted disasters.

 
        Hopefully, you're hooked up with folks who have been doing sound editing and direction for enough years to have become proficient at their craft. Years and experience go hand in hand. During the course of my career as a sound editor, designer, and director, one word prevails as the single most important factor in producing anything of value: “preparation”.
        Your individual demo could turn out to be the single most important commercial project of your professional life. Your demo is your calling card. Who you are—your truth—is on display! Don’t become impatient. Don’t rush, take a class! We call our's DEMO PREP. Prep is short for preparation. Our goal at Kalmenson & Kalmenson is to prepare you as a professional actor in the highly competitive field of professional voice-over acting! Don’t do it yourself. Very few are occasionally successful as professional demo producers.

“Most self-indulgence smacks of amateurism”

Harvey Kalmenson

        Music and sound effects should never be the star of your demo presentation. The intent is to provide a showcase for your work, not entertainment provided by production values. Here’s where it often becomes confusing for the actor to understand.

        The purpose and importance of music and or sound effects, whether they're natural or manufactured, is for those enhancements to push your voice forward in order to sell the sponsors' product, or provide the salience and importance of our life’s narration. Music or effects must never detract from an actor’s message. The sound designer’s creative goals are established before the actual recording of your demo. Nothing should be taken for granted. While the sound designer must be free to create, they must also have a complete understanding of what you intend to accomplish. Silence can be a marvelous background for an important message. Where that message goes, in order of appearance, on your demo is of equal importance. So let’s etch this in stone.

Music Selection

        Music can help a mood, signal change, create a helpful regional quality, add suspense, while at the same time pushing the voice into a favorable and prominent position.

Sound Effects

        Whether mechanical or human, sound effects provide an assist in getting the message across and can provide a degree of humor without detracting from the actors’ intent. Every word, every sound, and every verbal innuendo is of great importance in order to add or when deleting from your demo.

Harvey Kalmenson

Los Angeles Recap

Los Angeles Today (Well, not anymore.) - Recap -

The year was 1970, and just about every commercial talent agency not only had a complete in-house recording facility, but many of the bigger agencies were able to boast having multiple recording booths to conduct auditions in. In retrospect, it is kind of fun to know that I was able to be a part of beginning something that remained and grew to such proportions.      Agents have come light-years in the way of growth; from nothing in the early 1960s to offices that sometimes represent a couple of thousand commercial actors. From the very first basic recording machine to full-scale digital recording, and cyberspace transmission in a fraction of what we would've never dreamed possible. The industry has changed, and right before our eyes, almost another complete change is upon us all again. I wondered, then, if the agents would become innovative enough to change along with the industry monster they created.       A new monster has arrived! Self-direction and in-home recording studios have become the norm. Talent agents still exist today, but rarely do they have a need to record their talent in-house. Systematically, commercial talent agents became dependent on their actors doing self-direction from their homes.  Personal note: At Kalmenson & Kalmenson, we still often direct the actors with our same hands-on approach, but the actor may be required to have professional equipment to even record their auditions. All of our teachers have been trained in self-direction as part of our educational curriculum for individual success.   Our Voice-Over Industry Today      March 2020: Our country together, en masse, entered the era of COVID-19—a worldwide affectation was with us all! COVID-19 has entered year three. All of our team members have been vaccinated and together, hand-in-hand, we’re proud to say Kalmenson & Kalmenson remains here to stay. “We’re Zoom-ing”. HK

 

Necessary, but not necessarily evil

Agents (Necessary, but not necessarily evil)

Commercial talent agents: you will, by necessity, have to be in a working relationship with them. I use the term necessity because, without an agent, the voice-over artist has far less chance of success. Let's begin by understanding what an agent actually is, and then examine the relationship between the actor and their agent. Here’s what Merriam Webster offers as a definition: One that acts or exerts power A means or instrument by which a guiding intelligence achieves a result One who is authorized to act for or in the place of another: (a) representative, emissary, or an official of a government (b) one engaged in undercover activities <espionage> spy A business representative As an aside: I know a few agents that fit the description for all of the above!      New York and Chicago have always been the advertising capitals of this country, and the world for that matter. The very first signs of real growth in advertising came back in the late 1930s and early 1940s when radio began to take hold. Before that, it was the print media that handled the advertisers' desires to get their respective products better known. With the 1950s and the advent of television came the need for more and more actors. Up until that time period, such a thing as a commercial talent agent was non-existent. Actors had theatrical agents representing them. These same theatrical agents displayed little or no interest in the commercial field of representation.      As a matter of fact, at the beginning (the early days of TV), most legitimate actors shared the universal feeling that doing a television commercial was beneath them, prestige-wise. All concerned, excluding the advertising agency producers, underestimated the enormity of an industry that was about to change the face of both the advertising business and the future of just about every kid who had the slightest inkling of becoming an actor. Along with the advent of color, larger screens, and better sound, we were on our way.      The early 1960s brought with it the blossoming of the commercial talent agent. All it took was the magic word: residuals. Seemingly from out of nowhere, agents began popping up all over the place. Many of them came into it because they were ex-actors who had failed. In the early 1960s, you could have staged a pretty good musical comedy with a cast made up of folks who had recently become agents. It was during these very early days that the field of voice-over was actually established.      In the beginning, the main reason for the voice-over was economics. It was easier to add an explanation tag or voice to the substance of the commercial body than to have the on-camera actors act out the motive, or sell. In very short order the production company along with the ad agency creative types latched on to the many benefits being enabled by the use of the human voice. Since the voice-over was part of the postproduction makeup, it enabled the production company to operate at the location of their choice in order to do the filming, while the necessary additional dialogue could be done at a later time.      Since the vast majority of location shots were staged outdoors, the California climate, especially Los Angeles, rapidly secured us as the geographical capital of the commercial production industry.  We had a climate that allowed for more days of outside location work. Coupled with the strength of our Hollywood community of viable talent, it insured an overabundance of actors for the newly formed talent agencies to draw from. The advertising industry had no choice: If they wanted to film commercials without worrying about inclement weather, Los Angeles was the right place for them to be.      And while all this commercial filming was going on, lo and behold, our population was increasing simultaneously. Doubling and then tripling the number of people in our country concurrently had the effect of pouring gasoline on a fire. The more it grew, the more growth potential was uncovered. As new industries were born, so, too, was the need to advertise them. At the same time television displayed its unbelievable prosperity, so did the forgotten giant: radio.      Drive-time radio became an advertisers' dreamland. With two working parents, as opposed to one single breadwinner, the number of automobiles at drive-time hours skyrocketed. Agents, across the board, all took on representing more actors to cover the demand. Many actors were now making a very handsome income by doing radio commercials. While radio rarely afforded the residual benefit of television, it consumed products at a never before experienced volume.      From the beginning, agents began by representing a mere handful of actors and there were just a few actual commercial talent agents in existence compared to today. In today’s marketplace, Los Angeles, alone, has commercial talent agents too numerous to count; the number of agents in Los Angeles has grown into an audacious figure of well over one-hundred companies. That means agents running offices. The number of sub-agents they employ today is incalculable. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.          The union allows for each talent agency to have a company name and to hire sub-agents to work for them. They are all signatories of the Screen Actors Guild, SAG, and the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, AFTRA. And accordingly are restricted from any work done for any production company and or advertising agency who is not a signatory of said guilds. The agents' contract with either of the guilds allows for a maximum of ten percent, as the factor to be used as the maximum percentage when calculating the agent’s remuneration. (It varies.) In other words, these agents are contractually bound to submit or solicit union jobs for their actors. Note: The ten percent figure that is understood and commonly used by most of the industry is also misconstrued as being a state regulation. Each state has its own rules and regulations as to the remuneration an agent or manager may charge as a percentage of the actors' gross. The 10% figure is what is currently the agreement between the guilds and its signatory members' agents. - A Little More History -      In the mid-1960s, one of the owners of a commercial talent agency decided that he was going to become an innovator. The agent purchased a small reel-to-reel tape recorder and a microphone. He then convinced an advertising agency producer that it would save them a great deal of money if they furnished the agent with a script of a current commercial that they were about to put out to audition. The agent explained to the producer that without cost to them, he would have some of his actors come in and read for the role in question and would then get it back to them. Within one year, that agent’s innovation became the standard practice for auditions conducted in Los Angeles. As time went by, the procedure became more and more sophisticated.      It was during the early 1970s that I, da harv, found myself between jobs. An actor had recommended me to a talent agency. The thought of becoming an agent was about as far removed from my life as any offer could be. The owner of the agency was Noel Rubaloff. He was one of the original commercial talent agents in the country. The name of the agency was “Abrams-Rubaloff & Associates”.      They had been formed in the 1960s when Universal Pictures was ordered to divest themselves of either their production company or their talent agency. When Universal opted in favor of remaining a production company, it meant that the actors they represented as agents had to be released. It also meant that their current agents were about to be out of work. One of them caught up in this debacle was Noel Rubaloff.      So there I was, sitting in front of what was then the most successful commercial talent agent in the business. He began by telling me how he had heard all about my skills as a production stage manager, as well as being aware of my teaching and directing credits. He went on to say how he couldn’t pay very much, but if I joined them I would be directing the biggest and most well-known names in the industry. In short, it was some of those well-known names that had complained about the lack of direction given to them when they came into the agency for an in-house audition. It was during my tenure at Abrams-Rubaloff that my innovative techniques as a director became an industry standard.    NOTE:      The Kalmenson Method© was born and developed during my seven years at Abrams-Rubaloff. It was also during this time period that I was on faculty at the University of Southern California, in their college of continuing education. Within three months of joining Noel and his gang, he called me into his office for a meeting. I remember his words: "I don’t know what the hell you're doing, but keep doing it!" He told me that he was planning to move to a larger facility and that if I was up for it; I could proceed to build a full-service recording facility to conduct auditions in.      At the time, that was unheard of. Most agents had a variety of inferior home recording equipment. None had anything resembling state-of-the-art. I was up for the challenge. Within a couple of months, we had moved to a full-blown mansion in the Los Feliz area. It was situated on three large lots. We were the talk of the industry. It was there, in that mansion, in what had been a large wine cellar, that yours truly was made a believer. Noel told me that he had the most impressive stable of actors in the industry, and he wasn’t kidding.      Through our doors marched most of the very same people that I had looked up to as the cream of our industry. I think I directed everybody but “King Kong”. And the way it was going, it wouldn’t have surprised me if one day Noel brought “Kong” in for an audition. Noel was a man of his word. I was told to build and not worry about the budget. That’s exactly what I did. And away we flew. Who knew! “The Shadow” does, or did, or do! - HK

Basic Training Is Over

- 10 - Basic Training Is Over

Okay, it’s completed. What’s completed? What do I do now? Who do I do it with? Who do I do it to? When I do it, how do I know what I should be doing? How come I’m so confused?      Those questions are similar to the questions that many of the troops ask upon completion of basic training; four of the most intensive months of your life. You’re supposed to be a soldier. Anyway, that’s what they told you. The problem was, is, and will always remain: until they shoot at you with live ammunition, you haven’t really been tested. There weren’t any penalties. During basic training, if you fail, all you have to do is get up and walk away.       Ah, but now what’s happened is that you find yourself trying to be part of and a participant in the real game; the fabulous and competitive world of voice acting. Voiceovers. Sure, you’ve learned what they are. You’ve learned how the game is played. And you’ve also learned that your success is measured by how much money you might earn. Well... maybe yes, and maybe no.      Here is a quick word of advice—the words of the late and great John Houseman: “Don’t measure your success! Don’t allow others to measure your success. Don’t strive for stardom. Be a journeyman actor. Your job is to work at your craft each and every day of your life.” Mr. Houseman's words have, by now, been echoed all over the world. Echoed is not synonymous with success. Practice is!      Get the audition. Get as many as possible. Read, read, and read, damn it. If it’s printed, then you read it. Out loud and with honesty. Honesty and verve. Complete passion, and a total lack thereof. It’s the same old story. If you can deliver either with conviction, you’re on the way. If you care, feel and show it.       And now for a simple drill. I’d like each of you to spend the next moment or two searching your memory bank for a reflection of one of the following: a place in time when you were either totally comfortable in a situation, or totally at peace, emotionally. Or a time when you were completely uncomfortable and ill at ease with yourself. When you have this moment clearly in your mind’s eye, share that moment in a one-minute capsulation. Tell it as a story worth telling. Your goal.... total honesty. The payoff? You’re one step closer to success, whatever that looks like.

"I don't mind helping people as long as they don't get in my way while I'm doing it." - HK

The Adlib

Chapter 9 The Adlib

In the world of voiceover, adlib is considered to be anything that wasn’t previously prepared and not included in the original script; many refer to it, incorrectly, as an improvisation. Improvisation is when the words, notes, or meter, are not scripted at all, whether they be words, music, or both. IMPORTANT NOTES      Make no mistake…the very best ad-libbers and improvisation actors in all of our voiceover world are good readers. In any given language, the correct pronunciation is an absolute must. What your voice sounds like is usually not the determining factor in selecting which actor gets the job, unless a particular timber is specified on the casting call, whether it be words, song, age, or dialect. In other words, practice your scales. Be a comfortable reader before you think you're proficient enough to venture forth as a professional ad-libber.      There are so many actors that are nothing more than laughable because they think all that is required in order to adlib is to say something that hasn’t been scripted. The more experience an actor has, the better they will become at the art of improvisation as well. It all boils down to the same thing: If you don’t practice your craft, you’re just kidding yourself. Practice won’t ever make you perfect. What it will help you to become is a working actor. Blemishes are in. They make you human. Human and real is what sells products.      So here’s the bottom line: Improvisation is great, but it absolutely must be part and parcel of your honest to God, drop-dead signature. If you’re to be a clown… ask yourself what kind of a clown am I? Adlibs can be upscale, or blue-collar. They can be sarcastically off the cuff. The key, again, is your personal signature. - HK -

No names necessary. Disclaimer: Many, by the nature of what da harv has spent the better part of his life participating in as his life’s profession, have indiscriminately made note of a most glaring fact, he, da harv, happens to be a world-class name-dropper. To all those out there who have portrayed me as such, I take this opportunity to drink a hefty toast to your envy.