I recently completed a voiceover project for the Ordance Survey, the UK’s official mapping agency, and one of the world’s largest producers of maps of all types.

“OS getamap” is their new online map application, which allows users to create their own walking, cycling, and running routes, using OS Explorer, Landranger, satellite and new zoom-maps. Customised routes can also be printed, exported to a GPS device and shared with friends, while important locations (like pubs!) can be added for easy reference.

The new video, which you can see below, shows how the new service works, and can also be seen on the OS getamap website.

The voiceover track was recording by me in my home studio, and supplied as an edited track ready to use. The finished video was produced by Jammy Custard Studios, a creative web agency based in Pontypridd, South Wales. Commenting on the voice track, producer Matt Creed says, “We’re really pleased with the quality and quick turnaround.”

If you’d like to talk about working together with a professional voiceover artist to take your next production to the next level, please do get in touch!

At the moment I’m in the middle of voicing two projects for A+E UK. One is due on air in March and is very technical and very, very voiceover-heavy for each of the hour-long episodes. More about that in a future post. So it was nice to be asked to provide some short programme intros and recaps for a new series that starts on Military History later tonight.

“Top Shot” is a new reality competition show that takes aim at legendary tales of marksmanship. From Annie Oakley to William Tell, Top Shot taps into amazing feats of sharp-shooting, where teams and individuals shoot it out for a $100,000 prize package.

The clue to my involvement is in that last sentence. It’s an American show, and normally we’d revoice the series for a British audience. But this time the presenter is the main programme narrator, and that makes replacing the entire voiceover impossible, save for a minute or two at the top of each programme that sets up the show and recaps the previous week’s story.

So, not too much voice track to do, but a very welcome job for what could have been a quiet January!

• Find out more about Top Shot on the Military History website
• Top Shot starts Friday, 13th January at 9pm on Military History (Sky 531/Virgin Media 236) 

Crikey – where did 2011 go? It would appear that this coming weekend is Christmas, which means that, in time-honoured fashion, the UK will mostly close down for two weeks to eat, drink, be merry, and then get its collective breath back.

For my part I’ve just had the busiest day of the year so far, as clients scramble to get projects in the can before the festivities commence in earnest, but here are my availability and business hours for the next couple of weeks, for those who might need them:

Thursday 22nd – Not available
Friday 23rd – Available!

Saturday 24th to Tuesday 27th – Not available
Wednesday 28th – Available
Thursday 29th – Not available
Friday 30th – Available

I’ll then start back to work as normal on Tuesday, 3rd January 2012.

Wherever you are, and however (and, indeed, whether) you’re celebrating, may I wish you the happiest of Christmases and the most joyful of New Years. I hope to work with you in the year ahead, if not before!

Mike

ISDN and Source-Connect are both studio technologies which enable my clients to work with me live from anywhere in the world and record the audio at their own studio in real time. But what if you don’t have access to a studio and you still want to be able to direct our session?

That’s where a “Phone Patch” comes in. It’s a great way for clients to listen in to a voiceover session via a standard telephone line.

But let’s face it: telephone quality isn’t that great, is it? And what about those long-distance or international call charges?

Fortunately, Skype can come to the rescue with both of these and, despite its occasional glitches, I now believe it’s stable enough for it to not slow down the directing of a voiceover session too much.

To that end, I’ve spent some time today properly patching Skype on my Mac into my mixing desk for the first time, setting it up with its own “clean feed” (or “mix minus”) to ensure that my clients can hear exactly what they should and that the experience is as trouble-free as it can be. That means better listening quality, no weird echoes or howl-round, and gives you another option for directing next time you want to work with me!

Well, I can’t say I blame you. The hours are good, the money’s great and, if you like the sound of your own voice (and let’s face it – who doesn’t?) then what could be better than being paid to talk?! Best of all, you need no formal qualifications, so anyone can do it! All you need is somewhere to record, a bit of kit and a website, before you go right ahead and nail a sign over your door marked “Voiceover Artist – Enquire Within…”

OK, before we get carried away, let me point out to anyone who’s missed where I’m going with this, that I’m actually joking. Well, mostly. The truth is that the hours are good, and based on an hourly rate the money could be seen as amazing, but only if you’re working regularly. £200 ($300) or more per hour is, to most people’s way of looking at it, a pretty good hourly rate – and it certainly compares favourably to minimum wage.

But permit me to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, if I may? What if you’re only working two hours a week? Or one? Or if you only get one voiceover job a month? Many people who go out and buy microphones, sound editing software and mixing desks will never book a job. I can’t give you empirical evidence of this, of course, but having heard some of the people on some of the voice directory websites, I’d be surprised if I was wrong in my assertion.

If you’re faint of heart (or weak in the head), then I suggest you stop reading at this point, because I’m not going to be Mr Nice Guy for the rest of this post. I’m going to challenge all of your fluffy notions about the ease of getting into this business we call “Voice”.

First up, the failure rate is very high. I’m not trying to scare you, but lots of people never make it. Period. Sorry to disappoint.

There are plenty of people out there who have been told they have a “great voice” or that they “should do voiceovers” (do you recognise yourself in this category?) More often than not, they’re told this by people who haven’t the first clue about it and who know nothing about how the business works. If these people tried to give any other sort of career advice, the person on the receiving end would probably either laugh politely, or politely suggest that they mind their own business. The truth is, we all like to be flattered…

What’s that? You do have a great voice? Seriously? Congratulations – you’ve just qualified to join the competition! But “competition” is the keyword here, and having a nice-sounding voice is only one part of the puzzle. Do you have the talent to back it up?

If you’re reading this because you want to get into voiceovers and you’ve never, so far, recorded anything and played it back to a jury of your peers for them to critique it, then now would be a really good time. Actually, before you play it to anyone else you’re going to want to critique it yourself. Channel your inner Simon Cowell before you go auditioning for anyone else’s Sharon Osbourne… Take a piece of prose (or poetry), a piece of print copy from a magazine, or whatever gets your juices going, and read it aloud into whatever sound recording device you have to hand – the built-in microphone on your laptop or phone, or that old cassette recorder in the cupboard will do just fine for the purposes of this exercise.

What do you hear when you listen back? Are you ready for Prime Time just yet?

How’s the delivery? Does it keep you interested and hold your attention? (If it doesn’t hold yours then the chances of it holding anyone else’s are negligible at this stage.) If it’s not holding your attention then there are plenty of reasons why that might be (which are probably worthy of another post) but the key thing is to recognise that there’s something missing and accept that you’re going to need some sort of training to put it right. You’re going to want to do this before you start buying any fancy kit, and before you begin touting for business, too. After all, you only get one chance to make a first impression, right? The last thing you want to do is approach an agent, a producer or a potential client with anything other than your best foot forward.

Still reading? Phew, that’s a relief. I thought I’d lost you back there when I was laying out the cold, hard facts (most people don’t like that bit).

If you’re going to do this, you need to get serious about it and treat it like you would any other career option. We can’t all be astronauts, or pop singers, after all, so once you’ve practised a little and got some input from others, you’re going to need to be honest about the level of your talent and whether you think you can cut it in the big, wide world. As a marker for comparison, Google something like “British voiceover artist”, or “voiceover artist Los Angeles” or “female voice actor”, or whatever is most appropriate for you, and visit a few people’s websites. Look at the credits and client list to make sure you’ve got someone who’s making a living at it (anyone can have a website, remember?) and then listen to some of their audio samples. There’ll be a gulf in the technical quality compared to your own ad hoc recording (hopefully), but could you seriously imagine yourself delivering copy with the same degree of passion, zest, believability, or whatever other adjectives you can find to ascribe to the talent you’re listening to? Have you got it in you? Is it just waiting to be released? Or are you being unrealistic?

Hard lessons again, I’m afraid. But this post is an exercise in sorting out the wheat from the chaff, and I make no apologies for that. If I can save just one person the (considerable) time and expense of barking up the wrong tree, then I think that’s a good thing, and something that that person might even (reluctantly) thank me for before they move on to find their real inner passion. (I believe unquestioningly that we’ve allgot something we’re really good at, by the way – it’s just sometimes a hard lesson to learn that it’s not necessarily the first thing you thought of.)

You’re still reading. Well done! Made of stronger stuff, eh? So, you’ve got the voice, you feel you have the talent – or the potential to harness and refine it – what next? Well, like I said, the voice is only one part of the puzzle. This is a business, after all, and you’re going to need to treat it like one. Next time I’m going to look at what might stop you (you with the talent and all) from making a living in voiceovers. It’ll be less Boot Camp-y (promise) but I’ll start to get you to think a little about application – and what your goals are, now you’ve decided you’re in…

It’s all go at The History Channel at the moment, and we recently completed some experimental new “Billboard” material to run over the next few weeks. These clips are tied to the hugely popular series, “Swamp People”, and point to next week’s episode, while inviting viewers to check out the extensive collection of programme-related material on the HISTORY website in the meantime.

Here’s one of them…

• History is available on Sky Digital, Virgin Media and on BT Vision, Top Up TV and the Sony PSP 
• For more information about the series, visit www.history.co.uk/swamppeople

I’ll be your friendly announcer this week on The History Channel in the UK. It’s a job I do on a three-week rotation, writing the scripts and voicing the continuity links which appear both before and on the tail ends of the programmes from noon every day, until the early hours of the morning.

This particular week, it’s very much a tale of light and shade, because as well as the regular, fun favourites such as Pawn Stars, Ice Road Truckers and the like, we’re also very much aware of the anniversary of Al Qaeda’s attacks on America, which we’re marking with a special season of programmes in “9/11 Remembered”. Ten years on, HISTORY™ has put together a selection of specials – some new, some worth watching again – which commemorate the event and look at how New York city, and America as a country, have moved on in the intervening decade.

The linchpin of the season is the Emmy award-winning “102 Minutes that Changed America”. In an unprecedented global television event, all of the world’s History Channels will be united in showing the programme at exactly the same moment this coming Sunday, starting at 9:46am New York Time (1:46pm in the UK) which is the exact time it all began. The programme follows and documents the story of September 11th in real time, from the second the first plane hit the first tower, to the moment the second tower collapsed.

• For more information on “9/11 Remembered”, visit the website at history.co.uk
• History is available on Sky Digital, Virgin Media and on-demand on BT Vision, Top Up TV and the Sony PSP 

I recently provided the narration for three half-hour documentaries for AETN All Asia Networks, the home of The History Channel, Bio and CI in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

“Malaysia Revisited”, produced by Malaysia-based Red Communications, delves into the lives of eighteen Malaysians and celebrates the region’s cultural diversity through the realms of food, fashion and architecture.

“In Style” and “Building Greener” have already aired, and “The Rice Way” can be seen this coming week. If you’re in Southeast Asia and would like to catch them, check out the transmission details via the programme page on the History Asia website.

The programme was produced and edited in Kuala Lumpur, with the voiceover recorded by me here in London in my home studio. Working around the time difference between London and Malaysia, we scheduled a morning recording session in London and connected over Skype, which is proving very reliable these days for clients to listen in to the session where ISDN isn’t available or practical.

Writer/producer, Hon Yuen, was in a hurry to get the audio ahead of her online edit, so at the end of the session I did some very basic tidying up of the audio – just to remove any obvious long gaps where we’d been discussing pronunciations and so on, and to keep the file size down – then I packaged everything up and sent it via YouSendIt.com to Kuala Lumpur. The broadcast-quality audio (16-bit/48K WAV) was delivered to the client within the hour. The world is certainly shrinking…

• If you think you’d like to work on a project with me, please do send me an email, call me on the number at the top of the page – or click here to call me on Skype, where I’m “MikeCooperVoiceover”!

]]> http://www.mikecoopervoiceover.com/mike-cooper-voices-malaysia-revisited-for-history-asia/feed/ 0 http://www.mikecoopervoiceover.com/update-streetmuseum-londinium-is-iphone-app-of-the-week/ http://www.mikecoopervoiceover.com/update-streetmuseum-londinium-is-iphone-app-of-the-week/#comments Wed, 17 Aug 2011 19:33:54 +0000 Mike http://www.mikecoopervoiceover.com/?p=441

The recently-released “Streetmuseum Londinium” app, including voiceover by Yours Truly, is now iPhone App of the Week in the UK iTunes Store. For more about the app, click through to read the news story I posted on its release.

The app is a free download from iTunes – click here to get it!

I spent Tuesday morning at London’s Maple Street Studios, having been asked to donate my voice to the VOEastAfrica campaign. Organised through social-media, the aim is to get one hundred voice actors from all over  the world to voice ten audio and video Public Service Announcements (PSAs) for ten recognised aid-agencies fighting the crisis in the Horn of Africa.

Joining the effort in the studio were my friend and fellow Voiceover Artist Trish Bertram; poet and writer Nii Parkes; actress Judith Jacob; Heart London’s Michael Traboulsi, singer-songwriter Bumi Thomas, and voice artists Remie Purtill-Clark, Patrick Lunt, and the organiser, Josef-Israel. Adding their voices to the mix from their home studios via ISDN were my friend, Natalie Cooper, and Rachel Naylor.

The finished radio and video spots will be broadcast across all social media, aid-agency websites, plus radio and TV where possible. The studios, the artists and the backing music for the spots were all provided free of charge.

Here’s one of the radio spots:

World Food Programme PSA – UK Long Edit 1 by VOEastAfrica

• If you’d like to find out more about VOEastAfrica you can visit the Facebook Page or follow @VOEastAfrica on Twitter

Fifteen men, chained together at the ankles, face a month of hard work. Sounds like slavery, but it’s now law. This Saturday night, the Crime & Investigation Network takes a gritty look at Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s prison chain gangs in the American state of Arizona.

Though the chain gang concept was largely gone from American jails by the mid-1950s, prison labour has been reintroduced in recent times, courting controversy and drawing attention from human rights groups.

Arizona’s modern chain gangs, rather than chipping rocks or other non-productive tasks, often do work of economic benefit to a correctional department, though the gangs often work outside in oppressive desert heat.

Narrated by London-based voiceover artist Mike Cooper, CI’s documentary “Chain Gang: Maricopa County” – this Saturday, 6th August at 9pm – shows you the ropes and allows you to make your own mind up.

• Watch CI on Sky 553, CI HD on Sky 555 and CI on Virgin 237
• Click here to set your Sky+ box using Remote Record

London has been a thriving city for over 2,000 years, but if you’ve ever wondered what it looked like on the streets of the capital during Roman times then you may be interested in a new iPhone app that gives you the opportunity to see London as it might have been centuries ago.

HISTORY™ and the Museum of London have joined forces to develop a free new app for the iPhone or iPad, “Streetmuseum Londinium”, which is available to download from the iTunes App Store from today and features the voiceover talents of London voiceover artist, Mike Cooper.

The first Museum of London Streetmuseum app was launched in May 2010, bringing the museum’s extensive art and photographic collections to a wider audience and featuring 200 sites across London where hidden histories of the city dramatically appear. The new app brings to life key Roman sites through augmented reality video, which overlays scenes of Roman London onto the view today as seen through the camera of your iPhone or iPad, and it’s a free download from iTunes.

Of course, augmented reality video is amazing, but sometimes you need a bit of narration to help explain what’s going on, and, as a History Channel announcer and regular documentary narrator, Mike Cooper was a natural choice for the project, adding the voiceover track for some of the key scenes in the app.

So, download the app for free, then have a go at digitally excavating Roman artefacts by blowing, or using your finger to dig and reveal objects including a leather bikini, a foot-shaped lamp, and a hoard of gold coins.

• To download the new app from iTunes, click here
• Click to read more on this story from History or from the Museum of London website

Here’s a short animation I voiced recently for Cisco Systems.

The film is designed to encourage new subscribers to a bi-weekly blog called “Open Minds” that’s written by Cisco’s Inclusion and Diversity Director. I love the look and feel of this piece. For anyone a) British, and b) old enough to remember, it’s vaguely reminiscent of the style of animation used in various children’s series years ago. Have a look and you’ll see what I mean…

The voice track was recorded in my home studio and matched to the animation by the producers at Blue Goose here in London. I hope you enjoy it!

I recently completed a voiceover for the UK-based charity, “FareShare“. The video slideshow, conceived by London producer Rino Pucci, is online now and you can see it below.

FareShare has been in operation since 2004 and is at the centre of two of the most urgent issues that face the UK: food poverty and food waste. This short film, entitled “The Best-Before Day”, shows how food which is about to go past its sell-by date can still be an invaluable resource for people in need, whether they are homeless, the elderly, children, or other groups suffering from food poverty. Every day an average of 29,000 people benefit from the service FareShare provides.

• To contact Mike Cooper about providing voiceover services for your project, call the number at the top of the page or use the Contact Form

I recently voiced half a television series for History. How does this happen, you may ask? Well, in this case, the first half had already been voiced by an actor, who then landed a plum job in a West End play and wasn’t able to narrate the remaining episodes. So, I got to play the hero and he got to tread the boards – everyone’s a winner…

UFO - caught on camera

The series in question is the second season of History’s “UFO Hunters”, which is now showing on Sunday nights on History and History HD.

UFO Hunters follows the team of Bill Birnes, Kevin Cook and Pat Uskert, as they investigate UFO cases around the world. The team’s access to UFO evidence is unparalleled—and their expertise allows them to quickly identify bogus claims of UFOs. Together, they use eyewitness accounts, scientific experimentation, documents recently released through the Freedom of Information Act, and footage that has never been seen before on television, to piece together compelling—and sometimes chilling—evidence of UFO phenomena.

This season their investigations take them across North America and Europe including Tinley Park, Illinois; Kokomo, Indiana; Aurora, Texas; a fresh look at Roswell, New Mexico; and others—spanning the years from 1897 to 2008. My episodes begin airing from this Sunday, 19th June at 9pm, starting with “Lost UFO Files”, in which the team delves into the University of Arizona archives to review the notes of late UFO investigator James E. McDonald, bringing to light research and evidence that has lain dormant since McDonald’s death in 1971.

• Hear Mike Cooper’s voiceover narration for season 2 of “UFO Hunters” on History & History HD on Sundays at 9pm (or check the Sky TV Guide for repeat showings)
• History is on Sky 529 & 530(+1), Sky HD 545, Virgin 234 & 235(+1)

Here’s a short promotional video I voiced recently for BP Solar. The voiceover track was recorded in my home studio by ISDN to my agents, The Voiceover Gallery, in Manchester, with the client listening in by phone.

You can also see this video, and others, on my YouTube channel.

I spent a rather full-on couple of weeks in April working on the latest season of the Crime & Investigation Network’s “Gangland” strand. Eighteen new episodes needed a British narration track adding, and a relentless schedule meant they all needed to have the new voiceover recorded in a two-week period to be ready for its first outing, which started this week.

“Documentary reversioning”, as this process is called, is one of my favourite types of voiceover work. As you may already know from my previous posts, it involves a producer reworking the original script for a new market – in this case, the UK – and a British voiceover artist re-recording the original narration track.

The series began showing on CI last weekend. Not for the faint-of-heart, it earns its 11pm slot by virtue of a gritty, no-holds barred portrayal of life on the streets with some of America’s most infamous gangs, including the Latin Kings, the Love Murdering Gangsters and the Hell’s Angels – each battling it out to defend their turf, and very much making up the rules for themselves as they go along.

Some of the locations might surprise you, too. Though big cities like San Francisco, Detroit and Chicago certainly feature, so do more desirable destinations, such as Colorado Springs; Anchorage, Alaska and Charlotte, North Carolina.

It all makes for rather disturbing, but compelling viewing. Check it out at 11pm each Saturday night on CI and CI HD (check the Sky TV Guide for repeat showings).

• Watch CI on Sky 553/Virgin Media 237, and CI HD on Sky 555
• Click here to find “Gangland” in the Sky TV Guide and set up Remote Record or get a Reminder Email

It’s the world’s most famous fizzy drink, served up 1.7 billion times a day to consumers in over 200 countries across the globe. But how did it all start? What is involved in making sure the drink tastes just right, regardless of where in the world you buy it? And how is it produced on such a massive scale?

The latest programme in National Geographic’s “Megafactories” goes inside Coca-Cola’s factories and bottling plants to find out, in a show premiering in the UK this week and narrated by London-based, British Voiceover Artist, Mike Cooper.

Known elsewhere as “Ultimate Factories”, “Megafactories” – which is now in its sixth season – airs in the USA, South America, Canada and Asia. But when programmes like this are brought to Europe, the original voice track is often replaced with a British voiceover, in a process known in the business as “reversioning”. Reversioning involves a local producer painstakingly working through the existing script, changing the phraseology and idiom of the original to something more familiar to viewers in the programme’s new market. Weights and measures are usually converted too, from Standard American units like pounds, feet and inches, into the Metric System. Reversioning is a great example of how changing an element like the voiceover track can give a production a new lease of life and make it more relevant to viewers who might not have formed the same connection with the original version.

• “Megafactories: Coca-Cola” premieres on the National Geographic Channel and Nat Geo HD this Wednesday, 18th May at 9pm, with repeat showings in the days that follow
• To contact Mike Cooper about working on your own production, please use the Contact form, or call the number at the top of the page.

The Cost Sector Catering Awards 2011 take place tonight at London’s Hilton Metropole hotel. Organised by Dewberry Redpoint, publishers of Cost Sector Catering Magazine, this prestigious annual ceremony is the highlight of the food service and catering calendar, offering the people who work in the food business the chance to be judged by their peers and to win industry-wide recognition as the best.

The event will be hosted by Helen Lederer, who in addition to being well known as an actress, comedian and writer, is also familiar to readers of the Sunday Express Magazine as their wine critic.

And providing the “Voice of God” for tonight’s event will be London-based British Voiceover Artist, Mike Cooper, whose duties will include welcoming participants and winners to the stage, and providing the audio “glue” that makes these kind of audience-focused events flow so smoothly.

To win one of the coveted award categories is a stand-out event in anyone’s working life, something that fully recognises an outstanding contribution to the industry. It is the highest acknowledgement of merit that can be bestowed from within the food service industry.

• To contact Mike about helping with the hosting of your own event, please use the Contact form or call the number at the top of the page

If you like big boys’ toys – the sort that come on very big, very chunky wheels – then the latest release from Essex-based Second Sight Productions should be right up your, erm, street…

Second Sight have raided the archives of industrial equipment manufacturers like Massey Ferguson, International Harvester and Ford, and have just released a new DVD showcasing some of these firms’ most successful construction equipment, and the innovations which enabled them to build sturdy foundations and cement their position among the world leaders in construction machinery manufacture. From early 44 & 55 wheeled loaders shifting rock in England and timber in the forests of Australia, to MF’s industrial tractors, fitted with an outstanding range of newly-available attachments, it’s all here for fans of the genre.

And, admittedly “niche” though that genre may first appear, Second Sight have been doing this for some time with other, equally esoteric archive films, bringing them to audiences who can’t find this stuff anywhere else with a surprising degree of success. Weighing in at a hefty 81 minutes, you certainly get your money’s worth with part one of the Collection, with other releases planned for later in the year.

If you’ll forgive the obvious pun, here’s the, erm, trailer…

The voice track for the programme was produced in my home studio and sent to the producer within the hour. Fans can be very particular about the details, but having an expert on a the line using my “phone patch” meant that he could listen in to the voiceover session and make sure those technical aspects of the script came out sounding just right.

• If you’d like to talk to me about adding a professional voice track to your own documentary or industrial film, drop me a line using the Contact form, or call me on the number at the top of the page.