Working the Voice at Don LaFontaine VoiceOver Lab

Tonight I had the privilege of participating in a voice over workshop at SAG Foundation's pretigious Don LaFontaine VoiceOver Lab. It was taught by working voice over actor PAUL PAPE, who was very generous with giving us his time, considering that he's working full-blown on President Obama's re-election campaign ads.

Paul Pape's bio said that he is one of the co-founders of the Don LaFontaine Voice-over Lab.  A 28-year veteran with over 6000 voice-over credits, he currently serves as one of the main voices of President Obama’s Re-Election Campaign. Other recent credits include SONY Electronics, Toyota, Barclay's Bank, Lexus, the Armed Forces Radio Network and Electronic Arts.

He told us that Don was one of his best friends and mentor and that when Don passed away, he thought the best way to pay Don back for his generosity in mentoring him, was to create the lab in his honor to pay it forward. And when he told people what he was doing, voice people donated a lot of money to get it up and running because of the generosity Don had given them in their careers.

Indeed, the mic we used in the recording studio was Don's own mic, donated by his family. 

The workshop focused on commercials, which was good for me as I have no experience with that, and need to learn.  Paul shared his insights on copy analysis and the commercial audition process. But most of all, he had us read copy in the recording studio and then he gave us adjustments and direction and had us do it over again.

From him I learned that we all have to find our own voice or voices and use them, then expand on them.

It was great fun. For the first one, we got to pick our own copy and I picked a 7-11 ad. He'd listen to you do it once and then give you an adjustment and have you try it again. I think he would determine what he thought your voice might be and that's what he gave the adjustment for.

For me, he told me to read it as if I was a bored housewife that didn't care about anything. Apparently everyone loved it and he said I had a dry humor that was very engaging. I guess I did good because he remembered my name and used me as an example later.

For the second one, he had another person choose the ad for you and I wound up doing it first. The guy who chose for me handed me an Amstel Light commercial and the adjustment Paul gave me was to be more sarcastic. But when I left the booth he said it wasn't as successful as the first one and told the guy that he had made an odd choice for me. I asked the lady next to me why she thought he hadn't thought the second one was an odd choice for me, since it was all a learning experience. She said I wasn't the demographic for a beer commercial like that so I wouldn't be brought in for that. It made sense and after that, the people choosing were a lot more careful about choosing something that fit the person more.

He said that he couldn't teach us all he wanted to in just one night and he promised to do a week class once the election campaigns were over.  He was very generous with his time after class and he mentioned again my dry humor and that I should pursue that. I mentioned I'd like to take his week class when available and he said he wanted me in it.

And Mickey gave us copies of our voice files on our jump drives.  How awesome is that?