The story of a coach, an audition and a booking.

Actually, 4 bookings. And counting. It's a funny story, actually. I was working with Nancy Wolfson at braintracksaudio.com over the phone back in December. If you are a vo girl like me and you don't know her, you should. You should start drinking before you work with her - she's a little scary - but suck it up and deal because she's the schizz. We were working on a concept that she teaches that I can't write about here because it's all proprietary and shit... but I will try to talk my way around it. It's all about those pieces of copy that you get that say they want a conversational, non-announcery and absolutely non "selly" tone and then they write things like, "it is the most delicious little pile of fried awesomeness that has ever come down the factory line..." blah, blah, blah. Because those are the conversations I have all the time. This is not an indictment of that kind of writing, it is just the reality of the challenge for those of us on our end. Anyhoo, she has a little techniquey-poo to get you away from your bottle of Zanax.

I was having that day in the booth where my shoulders were up to my ears and my panic about the pending Christmas holiday and my lack of preparation for it was evident in my voice so that every piece of copy that I read suddenly started to sound like I Love Lucy with the Vitameatavegamin.

Nancy is not a girl to let you off the hook - oh no - we began to find every one of my crap default settings and beat them to a bloody pulp. Good times. It was a good session actually - sometimes you have a hard time getting out of your own world and into the world of the copy and whadda ya gonna do? You need techniquey-poo.

It so happens that on that very day, a last minute ASAP audition came through for McDonalds and the entire direction on the copy was, "Don't sell it to me, just talk to me". Sometimes you just have to laugh at the timing of things. Okay, breathe... just talk...not like you just did to your kids...or your husband, dear God...and not like you are selling religion to the Pygmies, just breathe and walk that middle line, like the lady taught you.

Well...long story longer, I booked it. I booked that one and then later I booked 2 more for them and another spot for an HauteLook.com, an on-line shopping site where the client was very concerned with sounding too "selly".

So, there it is. I can now deliver that non-announcery, non-sell but not without energy just not with schmaltzy selly energy on very selly sounding copy through whatever real or imagined crisis my kiddos and the world in general can throw at me. I am not selling Nancy ('cause I don't sell anything directly anymore ;-) but I'm just sayin' - if you want the best, most amazing, most fabulous object in the world, here you go: http://braintracksaudio.com/soundreal.