LEADS AND READS - WEEK OF 09/03 thru 09/09

Erik Sheppard

Enjoy your Labor Day everyone, turn your mics off!

Yeah right.

Colin Campbell · Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007, 15:44 (GMT) Post subject:

My mic stays ON all the time.

Happy Labor Day everyone!

Lee Gordon

Deby Cedars · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007, 02:34 (GMT) Post subject:

Here's my labor day audition. I'm feeling really down tonight. Crying or Very sad

Lee Gordon · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007, 02:58 (GMT) Post subject:

Here's my version of the same "Dave" spot.

Deby Cedars · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007, 03:18 (GMT) Post subject:

Not bad Lee. I would say mine was more soft sell then yours. Testimonials are tough. I always want to re word them to sound like something I would actually say

Scott Pollak · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007, 03:19 (GMT) Post subject:

Deby,

I'm not sure what the lead asked for, and I like your voice, but honestly, the audition didn't do it for me. For one thing, as voice professionals, it's up to us to be really sharp about pronunciations. One of the most MIS-pronounced words in our language (besides nuclear) is 'realtor". It's pronounced REAL-tur. Not real-UH-tur. Please don't get too miffed at me, but when I heard you saying it that way it lost a bit for me, but then I'm pretty anal about stuff like that. The other thing was that the read - while not bad - wasn't believeable to me. If you're supposed to be a real person on the other end of the phone, it just sounded like a decent acting job, but not believable.

As always, I hate to be the curmudgeon on these forums, but we can't excel if all we ever hear here is 'Wow! Great! High Five!'.

Lee: More conversational than Deby's, but it still was only at about 80% of the believability scale for me. Good job on the first 'realtors', though, although that phantom 'uh' creeped into the second one!

Folks, crappy phony copy like this is hard to do. It ain't you guys; it's copywriters trying to make a pre-fab script sound spontaneous. It just doesn't happen.

Colin Campbell · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007, 03:36 (GMT) Post subject:

OK... Mr. REAL-TOR... what do you think of this one?

(Couldn't submit the beast, the friggin lead was closed.)

Deby Cedars · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007, 03:38 (GMT) Post subject:

Scott.... I feel that I really needed to memorize this script to do a bang up job on it.

I just couldn't find the motivation!

I'm sure your right about the pronunciation, but on a testimonial I think it's important not to be too polished. So I disagree with you on that. The acting was not spot on I will give you that. "Dave gave us suggestions on how to make our house more sellable. Once we followed his suggestions..." I mean who would talk in such generalities to a good friend on the phone. I really wanted to say, Dave showed us exactly how to paint our house and fix up the yard so that more people would be interested in buying it. And 6 days after we made the improvements IT SOLD.
I'm feeling so down tonight. I think I should just give up and go to bed.

Scott Pollak · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007, 03:40 (GMT) Post subject:

Okay, Mister CAMP-bull.... Wink

do ya really want to know? Huh? Huh???

Really?
Really good. There's still a little bit of 'announcer' there, but I think it's mostly from your voice tone, NOT the delivery. You did a really good job of making it sound pretty darned conversational. So far, of the three posted, you win.

And don't feel badly about not being able to submit it. I never even GOT the lead, and you KNOW that would have been in my wheelhouse (I think).

Deby Cedars · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007, 03:41 (GMT) Post subject:

Colin....I didn't really believe you when you said that corny line....Your one in a million. I didn't even try the long script though. I chose the short script just to avoid it.

Scott Pollak · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007, 03:45 (GMT) Post subject:

Colin Campbell · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007, 03:48 (GMT) Post subject:

From one curmudgeon to another, thanks Scott. I hear those "Thanks Dave" spots here in Columbus all the time. I think he's a sheister (sp.)

Sorry for the attitude. That's what a long weekend of no leads will do to me.

Connie Terwilliger · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007, 04:26 (GMT) Post subject:

I was planning to give those a try since the rate wasn't too bad actually, but it was 100 degrees here today in San Diego and I've had the little AC on in my studio just to find some place away from the heat and I can't record with that on, so I was going to wait until it cooled down a bit to record, but the lead is closed already and it hasn't cooled down a bit! (Now THAT's the way people talk!)

He only wanted 25 auditions?

The thing about asking real people to tell them about their experiences is that they will always (ALWAYS) leave out some important part of the sentence and it is impossible to edit into some semblence of coherency. You hear it all the time, those rising inflections because they go on and on and on and there is no place to edit. And then you have to go back and ask them to say the name of the client so that it can be dropped into the spot (remember the Gold Bond spots?) "I use (it) all the time." The word (it) is replaced with the words "Gold Bond" that was recorded after they finished. "Just say the words "Gold Bond" for me...and we'll drop it in. Yeah, right.

Scott Pollak · Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007, 04:30 (GMT) Post subject: