Yeah! Vacation!!!

I'm taking a few days off this week. Gonna head out to Colorado before the snow melts.

Is it vacation or unemployment? I mean in a practical sense, taking vacation time is being unemployed for a voice talent.

So you gotta choose your vacation time carefully! You have to second-guess your clients. You have to play the odds: When are your clients most likely to not need you? When is a slow time for your clients...and their clients?

See what I mean?

I used to dread vacation time. It seemed that invariably, after I'd thought it all through, someone would call with a significant job that I was "just perfect for!"

I used to just take the work and run with it. I figured I didn't have the luxury of turning down work.

But through the years I've had the privilege of developing some GREAT relationships with my clients, and when I need to take time off, they are the first to grant me that time and run interference for me with their clients! Ya gotta love that!

It was my wife, Marcia, that convinced me that I needed time off; that WE needed time off. And to be honest, I was more afraid to turn her down than I was of turning a client down!

So now, I've learned that I really do need down time. And while I have some great portable equipment that I could take on the road with me, I seldom do.

Now I just let clients know a week ahead of time that I'll be out of the studio. Usually a week's notice is enough for clients to plan accordingly.

And if a client has a problem with me taking some vacation time, I ask them if they would like to discuss that with my wife. That settles it.

Speaking Spanish Fast

Did a bunch of Spanish voiceovers today.

The Spanish language is such a beautiful language...and fun to speak. Where else do you get to roll your r's and say some of your d's like a th sound? It's just fun!

Where it gets un-fun is when the client doesn't allow for the 25 to 30% additional time it takes to say something translated from English to Spanish!

Let me explain it this way: Most people who speak well in English speak at about 130 to 150 words per minute. Well, when that gets translated to Spanish, because of the syllables in Spanish, that works out to what would be about 190 words per minute. So obviously to keep the copy within a :60 commercial framework YOU HAVE TO TALK FASTER!!!

So today one of my clients asked, "Could you make it sound slower?"

HUH????