The Art of Voice Acting: the art and business of performing for voice over (36 page)
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Authors: James Alburger
The Brave New World of New Media
Understanding and keeping up with trends and new technology is a very important part of working in voiceover. For the past few decades there have been gradual, yet consistent, changes in how digital data is recorded and delivered. Many of these technological advances and how they relate to voiceover work, home studios, and content delivery, are discussed elsewhere in this book. During the past several years, many of these new technologies have found a home in what has become known as social networking and other Internet delivery methods, which in the larger sense are referred to as
new media
.
In order to understand the true potential, and anticipate the future of voiceover work, it is important to have some knowledge of what this New media is, how it works, and how we, as voice actors, can utilize it to our benefit. In this chapter, Joe Klein, an expert on the subject, will discuss New media and provide a glimpse into the future of voiceover work.
www.newmediacreative.com
Joe Klein is truly a veteran producer, director, writer and voiceover artist. For over four decades, Joe has voiced and produced literally thousands of product jingles, pop records, national radio commercials and corporate presentation soundtracks. During the 1970s and ’80s, Joe established a reputation as one of Hollywood’s leading voice directors, receiving multiple Clio and International Broadcast awards, and was widely known for the “bigger than life” sound he achieved. He has also voiced scores of national radio spots, television commercials and network promos. In 2005, Joe launched The Podcast Voice Guys, which quickly became a leading provider of voiceover content for podcasters, video bloggers and new media networks. In 2008, the company was renamed New Media Creative to broaden the scope of the creative enterprise.
So, just what is this new media thing, anyway?
For those in their twenties, New media is more than just a familiar term! It’s most likely the only kind of media that the majority of those in this demographic consume. For those more “old skool” folks, however, the term has often evoked looks of bewilderment over the last few years.
If you are a voiceover artist or other media professional involved in the field, it’s time you got a handle on the brave new world of new media if you’re not already familiar with it, as new media is already pervasive, and is definitely where all media is heading.
The term new media refers primarily to newer forms of media content, which, beginning early in the new millennium, were originally being created by alternative and renegade content creators. Falling under the new media genre now is a rapidly growing new breed of alternative content being produced by mainstream media outlets as well, including repurposed versions of the content that appears on traditional media channels.
New media is an outgrowth of a more functional Internet which, during the first decade of new century, came to be known as
Web 2.0
. Web 2.0 utilizes the latest technologies along with high-speed broadband Internet connections to offer content in new formats and genres not previously available via traditional media delivery channels or even on the Internet before high-speed connections became widespread.
The best examples of early new media content were, at first, online audio “podcasts” (so named back in 2004 as a hybrid term combing the name of the hugely popular Apple iPod
®
name with the word broadcast). Originally referred to as “audio blogs,” podcasts had a relatively humble debut, but then exploded in 2005. The number of podcasts online increased exponentially over several years, with hundreds of thousands of podcasts available by 2007. Differentiating podcasts from traditional media was that podcasts were played on media players installed on computers and on small portable media players that became available in the late ’90s. Podcasts were commonly encoded into the MP3 file format that became popular for music, since this format significantly shrunk the file size of an audio track.
Podcasts were, at first, created and voiced by amateur hobbyists or “wanna-be” performers. They were downloaded directly off the Internet and stored in computers or in portable media players, where they were available to play whenever the listener desired. A technology called “RSS” (real simple syndication), originally developed for text blogs, was modified for audio blogs and allowed people to “subscribe” to podcasts and automatically download each new episode of a podcast series as it was posted online, in the same way that a DVR records new episodes of television shows.
Portable media players played a major role in the success of podcasts, as people could listen to shows whenever and wherever they wanted. Commutes, workouts, exercise routines and long plane flights were, (and still are) perfect times to listen to prerecorded podcasts. The Apple iPod
®
, introduced late in 2001, was largely responsible for making the media player a mainstream device. Originally used to listen to personal music libraries, the number of iPods in use grew rapidly in the first few years after its debut. The iPod was very well suited to downloading and playing podcasts, which were flourishing as the “hot new thing” by 2005. In that same year, the popular iTunes music store, which was the primary service used to manage iPod content, began offering podcasts along with music.
By 2006, the podcast world was on fire. That same year heralded the launch of the video site
YouTube
. With the phenomenal success and growth of YouTube (and several similar video networks) further bolstered by the introduction of the video iPod late in 2006, video podcasts started to appear, and these, along with endless other genres and categories of videos, would soon become a major component of the new media mix. By the time of publication of this book in 2010, video content is now dominating the new media landscape, with many formerly audio-only programs now including video (even if that is nothing more than a static shot of the show’s host). In fact, online videos became so popular so quickly that the term
viral video
was coined soon after YouTube arrived on the scene, to denote a video that was posted online and spread around the world very quickly, like a virus.
YouTube and other video sites also ushered in the era of “streaming” media content. Up until that time, most podcasts and other audio and video content was downloaded and played at a later time. But, by 2006, broadband Internet connections had been widely adopted and the technology to “stream” audio and video content live had vastly improved. “Streaming” media is not exactly “live” in the sense of terrestrial, cable and satellite-delivered media, but it is close to it. The picture and sound is instantly encoded to digital data as it occurs and is then uploaded to the Internet as thousand of “packets” of digital data on a constant basis. On the receiving end, specialized streaming media players (the most common of which is Adobe’s Flash player, decode the packets of data, “cache” them into the memory of the receiving device and then play the video or audio instantly. All this happens in a manner of seconds, so the streaming media is, in fact, “delayed” slightly, but it is still pretty much “live” and, actually, not that much more delayed than a satellite television broadcast. The primary difference between streaming media and downloaded media is that streaming media is not stored on the receiving device but, rather, decoded and played “on the fly.”
Audio and video production technology continues to improve, becoming more affordable and easier to use. Broadcast-quality, high definition video cameras, for example, once costing thousands of dollars now cost just a few hundred and are as small as the digital still cameras that first became popular over a decade ago.
In fact, digital video cameras are now everywhere and even incorporated into most cell phones. Whether we’re being shot by our friends or observed by the ever-present surveillance lens, more and more of us are ending up “on camera” more than at any other time in history, whether we like it or not. Reality television shows like
America’s Funniest Home Videos
and
Cops
paved the way for this video revolution well over 20 years ago (with both shows still airing). Scores of other reality TV shows have followed and flourished. As of this writing, dozens more are currently produced as online programs only, bypassing traditional media networks to reach ever-growing audiences.
Digital photography and video have evolved from a shutterbug’s hobby to a worldwide obsession. Now, anyone with a digital camera can become a citizen journalist, news photographer or member of the voracious worldwide paparazzi community. The desire of the masses to capture, share and consume video media is at a fever pitch. It’s safe to say that, driven by the presence, power and reach of the Internet, the passion for pictures has reached a level nearing madness, and digital video has become a major component in the new media world.
Audio books, which, in the past, were only available on cassettes and CDs, are now distributed primarily online, where they are downloaded in the same manner as a podcast. The online distribution methodology now being employed to deliver audio books now qualify this genre as yet another one to fall under the new media moniker.
A couple of years back, printed books themselves morphed into what can be considered a form of new media, depending on who you ask. Recently, a new breed of electronic book (e-book) readers hit the market. The most popular is a device called the Kindle, distributed by the online retailer Amazon. These readers have, themselves, become quite popular as a new way to read the printed word. They use an “e-paper” technology to simulate the appearance of a printed page, and connect directly to the Internet to download and display nearly all the popular works of the day.
Further fueling the fire of the red-hot new media scene has been the breathtaking evolution of the new breed of “smart” cell phones, or smart phones. While feature laden phones such as the BlackBerry have been around for several years, Apple’s iPhone
®
turned the smart phone world on its ear in 2007, thrusting the device into the mainstream much like the iPod did for portable media players over half a decade earlier.
Newer, smaller computers, known as
netbooks
are becoming more widely used and yet another new breed of device, called
tablets
(which have been in the development stage for several years) is poised to take off just as this book goes to press. The introduction of Apple’s latest “gee whiz” product, the iPad
®
, in the spring of 2010 takes media consumption to yet another level, by combining the functionality of a portable media player, book reader, magazine viewer and Internet browser into an a single device that is larger than an iPhone or iPod, but can still be carried around far easier than a laptop or netbook computer, and sports a very long battery life.
With desktop computers, laptops, netbooks and tablet devices, new media can now be consumed by the masses in an even more universally-available manner than traditional radio and television was in past decades.
We’ve discussed how the primary channel of distribution of new media content is the Internet. For all intents and purposes, the Internet is available virtually everywhere now, in both wired and wireless modes, making it the most powerful “transmitter” of data—and media—the world has ever known. The biggest ramification of this is that media is no longer limited to “local” transmission and markets. Anybody can broadcast anything to practically everywhere on the planet!
It’s hardly surprising that network television, cable and satellite TV providers now include a mix of new media content into their programming. But even more interesting is that traditional mainstream media companies are increasingly distributing their own content online, using the Internet, and the latest new media delivery channels, with growing numbers now watching mainstream media on computers of all kinds and smart phones.
There are now several popular mainstream counterparts to YouTube. One of the most popular television sites is called Hulu, which was launched a few years back as a joint venture between NBC Universal and FOX. As of this writing, there are several more television distribution sites and nearly every major broadcast, cable and satellite network is making a growing number of their shows available for viewing online as live, “on demand,” streaming videos in full (or near) broadcast quality.
For the huge legions of home-brewed, renegade new media producers, several services that allow high quality, live streaming of video content are now online. One of the most popular is a service called Ustream, once again, a new technology, not even available a few years ago. Suffice it to say that online video has moved forward by leaps and bounds over the recent years and the improvements show no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
While only a few years ago, new media was limited to “renegade” content creators, citizen journalists and amateur producers, everyone now seems to have jumped on the new media bandwagon. Quite literally, every type of business and industry is now actively employing new media, not just for delivering programming, but for promotion, training, marketing, and a growing number of innovative alternative advertising campaigns.
The world of new media is vast, and just keeps expanding. The line between new media and mainstream content gets thinner and more blurred every day. Soon, new media will
be
the mainstream.
No discussion of new media would be complete without including another element that has become a companion component to the genre over the last few years. This is the phenomenon known as
social networking
.
Concurrent with the unprecedented expansion of new media (and just when it seemed like we had seen just about everything the Internet made possible), another major technological — and social — evolution emerged online with the birth of social networking.
A social network is a place online where people connect with each other and engage in dialogue and an ongoing interchange of thoughts, ideas, photos, videos, music and just about anything and everything else.
Back in 2005, social networking sites, most notably MySpace and, shortly thereafter, Facebook appeared online. These sites offered a whole new way for people to find each other, meet, network, communicate and promote themselves. Social networks are pretty much outgrowths of long-established online communication methods like chat rooms, message boards, forums and even online dating websites. Social networks take the concept of meeting, communicating, networking and the sharing of thoughts, information and media to a degree never practiced before.
Social network sites offer a place to easily post online anything and everything about oneself. Besides all of the usual profile information of a person or organization, photos, videos, and numerous other ways to share information are offered online. Members of a social network become friends with each other and share thoughts and other information by posting it on each other’s pages. Then friends become friends with others, and friends of others and, before long, one can establish a huge network of hundreds, or thousands, of online friends.
These online social networks have become so pervasive over the last few years that the most popular networks and their features have become verbs as well as nouns in every day conversation. Several years ago, we started “Googling” people to find out about them. Now, it’s become commonplace to be told that you’ve been “friended” by someone on Facebook or asked about your MySpace page before anything else.
MySpace gained popularity as more than just a place to meet other people. Since the overwhelming majority of its users are young, MySpace quickly established itself as a very effective place to market the artistic endeavors of young people, specifically musicians, bands and other creative artists. A band without a page on MySpace became a rarity and not having a page was simply unheard of, with good reason, as thousands of groups have successfully used the social network to launch successful careers.
Following in the footsteps of MySpace, Facebook has emerged over the last few years as the true dominant player in the social network space, with hundreds of millions of users. People of all ages and backgrounds are now using Facebook to find long lost friends, make new ones, find mates, share information or media, network and market themselves or their businesses.
Other more business-oriented social networks have also emerged, the most popular being LinkedIn, and are also being widely used as practical tools for business networking. Of course there are hundreds of social networks, large and small, now online, with scores more coming and going.
Like new media content, the most popular social networks are now available on the iPhone (and other smart phones) and the iPad, and most have their own applications to access and use the network from anywhere these devices can access a signal. The ever-increasing power and functionality of phones is the biggest reason for the phenomenal growth of social networks, as people now use them to “stay in touch” with their social and business contacts anywhere and everywhere. In fact, smart phones are well on their way to replacing computers and even other portable media devices for many tasks and uses like social networking.
In 2006, social networking merged with blogging (the original “new media” of the text-based world) and instant text messaging in a new service called Twitter. Twitter quickly emerged as yet another very successful social network, and the very nature of its service created yet another new category of online communication, now often referred to as
micro-blogging.
The Twitter service is unique, in that it only allows messages of up to 140 characters to be posted. Twitter is like a huge public chat room or message board accessible to everyone, and the 140 character limit served to put an interesting spin on the dialogue that takes place there. It allows people to send and receive text messages from dozens, hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously through its own type of social network. Twitter now has over a hundred million subscribers, many of whom post endless tweets about anything and everything they may be doing or thinking at any moment. It’s not all meaningless chatter, however. Many use Twitter to inform others about social or business gatherings and use the service to stay abreast of what is happening in their own social or professional circles.
Like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, Twitter’s growth was as exponential as it was phenomenal. After humble beginnings in 2006 as an experiment by a group of employees of a podcasting service, by late in 2008, millions were using Twitter to “tweet” others. Celebrities started to jump on the Twitter bandwagon that same year to communicate with their fans. Currently some celebrities claim to have millions of “followers” and are using Twitter to communicate with their fans, viewers, listeners or readers.
Hundreds of worldwide and local news organizations are now using Twitter to push out news headlines and, in the process, drive traffic to their primary websites and media outlets. Over the last couple of years prior to this writing, thousands of companies began using Twitter to communicate with their customers on a real-time basis, gathering feedback, fielding complaints and dealing with customer concerns in an effort to promote customer relations and good will. Other business and entrepreneurs of all kinds, including voice actors, are also using Twitter to promote their enterprises and make announcements. To help manage the endless flow of dialogue streamed by Twitter, there are now scores of tools available to organize your “tweeps” (fellow Twitter users) and make following, sending and receiving tweets more dynamic and interactive than Twitter’s own online interface. You can find them by searching for “Twitter tools” online.
In addition to all the social networks, sites, and services, a growing number of aggregators and support services are springing up. With one of the most popular being Friendfeed, there are now dozens of enterprises with sites that help users navigate, maneuver and manipulate the tangled web of social networks. Like the tools available to enhance the Twitter experience, these services coordinate and consolidate myriad other services out there, by automatically posting one’s blog headlines to Twitter, tweets to Facebook, pictures and videos to Flickr and YouTube and so on, for all the social network services one belongs to. Keeping up with these aggregators can be even more of a daunting chore than using the social networks !
While social networking itself doesn’t truly fit into the new media category per se, it is most definitely intertwined with it. Social networks now include infinite amounts of new media flowing within their structures. They are ripe with links to viral video and other sites that contain new media content. The long and short of it is that social networking relies heavily on new media, and new media’s growth and success is due, in a large part, to social networks.