What an amazing weekend it was: just one or two hours’ sleep and global interactions. Sharing news, a recording session, and the opportunity to hook up live with Joe Cipriano’s book launch party – with a simultaneous international side party too boot!
Taking part in the VO Peeps “Living On Air” book launch with Joe Cipriano!
If you didn’t already know, I’m excited, and feel privileged, to have such great friends – in the real, not just “Facebook” sense – around the world, and constantly amazed that technology enables us to keep in close and very real contact with each other. Apart from facilitating some fun and creative opportunities, this also provides inspiration to keep me moving forward.
Back to Saturday, a couple of weeks ago now… starting locally (probably while all in the US were still asleep) I came across this great example of Mehmet Onur’s work for the “YouTube Music Awards”. Don’t worry if you don’t understand Turkish – just enjoy his voice!
It has to be said that although we often do communicate via various messenger apps, I’m very fortunate to be able to easily visit him as when recording he always makes me sound great, and he makes a great coffee!
No trouble with language with the next clip, especially if you speak cat, as this is a wonderful conversation between Lisa Biggs, and a toy cat with Lisa Biggs’ voice – caught live in a toy store which she just happened to visit with Diane Merritt on a road trip to Nashville.
Yes, Lisa and Diane are always purrrrfect, and I just love the synergy they both produce. They’re both a constant reminder to me that you get out of something what you put in to it. In short: they rock! Thanks to Diane for uploading this to YouTube…
Then came a message from my buddy Ted Mcaleer in Seville, Spain, wondering if I was available to record a short dialogue. We hooked up on Skype, recorded our two voices locally, and then he edited them together. A fun little job, and I decided over the coming days to use this to experiment with the animation software Muvizu. I plan to write a separate blog about this in a day or two, but it would be cruel to keep the results from you here, so here it is (this was my first attempt at animation, so forgive that it’s not more polished!)
The big event of the day was to happen several hours later – in fact in the middle of the Turkish night.
VO Peeps, organised by the wonderful Anne Ganguzza, hosted the launch party of Joe Cipriano’s new book, “Living on Air”. As the first honorary international VO Peep I’d love to be more involved with all the wonderful activities and events which Anne organises. With our time zones (for events set in the evening PST) so much in conflict this isn’t always easy, but I was determined to be there to support Joe for the launch. In fact it was a great time hooking up with the live stream on UStream, and given an extra dimension with a separate Google video hangout joined with Ted Mcaleer, Suzanne Roberts, and Mehmet Onur.
As you will have seen from the photo at the top of this post it was like being there in person, and here’s the pre-recorded shout out I sent.
Now was it just me, or does Joe Cipriano look like he’s hanging on my every word in that clip?
Well, in fact we were talking together, and you can see my whole interview with him here, from 2012 - you could say Joe was so good, Mehmet Onur filmed him twice 
Links
Lisa Biggs – The Person Behind the Voice – my 2012 interview with Lisa
Living on Air – Joe Cipriano
Joe Cipriano – The Person Behind the Voice – my 2012 interview with Joe