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AUDIOBOOKS Prepare A 'Performance Dialogue' To Schmooze With Publishers April 30, 2012  By Paul RubenProducer, Director, Casting Professional & Teacher
Tribeca Audio If the sole priority of each narrator attending APAC - the Audio Publishers Association Conference this June 4 - isn’t to secure employment, it would be interesting to know what is. Given that you’ll likely find yourself assuming the schmooze position when encountering potential employers, a question that arises is, How do you truly
distinguish yourself vocally? What could potential employers possibly hear from
you that hasn’t been proffered in a hundred iterations a thousand times before?
FYI, in a wholly unsolicited email Aunt Mary assured me, "I will be there schmoozing the socks and nylons off publishers with my hot new demo that’s gonna blow the author’s words off the book!” SAY WHAT? To be sure, a substantial resume featuring award-winning work for major publishers couldn’t hurt. It’s fair to say, too, that given economic reality, a facile, prepared narrator is an attribute worth emphasizing. That said, what’s special about you? My bet would be that because most narrators are actors or have a performance background, they’d like to assert that their ability and passion to tell stories not only distinguishes them, but actually means something to the listener. The problem is, employers are ahead of you: they get the enthusiasm and they recognize that the person in front of them isn’t about to discredit their skill. So, as a narrator seeking to pique a potential employer’s curiosity, what to do? You can always follow AM’s lead: "I’ll be squeezing their cheeks with my pointy nails screaming, hire me, till they either nod yes or pass out.” A BETTER IDEA ... Or how about an equally unique, albeit more nuanced sell, one that proposes to directly link your abilities to the listener’s storytelling experience by ‘particularizing’ them through a performance lens. Let me explain by first suggesting that, in my opinion, though audiobook employers value great narrators, many may not possess the performance vocabulary to sustain a conversation about acting, much less storytelling. Hopefully, they will find a dialogue that seeks to tangibly clarify what you do fascinating, different. Arresting? I’m getting carried away. PUBLISHER AS YOUR LISTENER In contemplating how to initiate your performance schmooze, don’t think of potential employers as publishers or producers, but rather, listeners. As a listener, consider:
"Ya know, in
fiction and non-fiction, my job-one is to emotionally connect you to the author’s
story so that we are both engaged in the narrative’s action as if it were
happening right now.” I wishfully see the employer taken aback, thoughtful, contemplative: Ooooh, yeah, that’s like,
so cool. Tell me more.
Well, assuming he hasn’t been yanked away by a long lost colleague, why not add, as if momentarily propelled by an inspirational gust, "In fiction, imagine
locating each character’s point of view, feeling it, as if you were inside
their head? When that occurs, I’ve succeeded as a storyteller. I’ve connected
you to the text, emotionally. "Oh, and in non-fiction, I expect you to feel connected to the author’s passion, her point of view, because it’s as if I’m that passionate author, you can believe that.” AND YOU CONCLUDE WITH ... I envision - inching wondrously toward ‘best case scenario’ - the potential employer’s tantalized visage as he reconsiders audi books through your performance lens, thinking to himself, yeah, this is totally awesome. He’s primed for the bottom line: what distinguishes the storyteller from Aunt Mary, who is lurking behind him, fingernails battle ready? "By the way, I’m the author’s
emotional conduit. I connect the feeling embedded in every single word of the
narrative to you. Actors call that feeling subtext. "Oh, hey, happy to unpack
the jargon during cocktail hour. Anyway, I know you gotta bounce, but,
remember, connecting emotionally is how I keep you in the garage finishing the
last CD when you should have been in the kitchen chopping the salad, right.”
YOUR PERFORMANCE DIALOGUE It’s never easy to schmooze a potential employer. Few people enjoy selling, even fewer can tolerate selling themselves. That said, it may be fair to argue that attempting to create a performance dialogue with an employer – one that particularizes the narrator’s responsibility to the listener - might introduce a new and meaningful lens through which the employer can regard the narrator’s relationship to the listener. Yes, the proof is in the storytelling. Ultimately, potential employers must be impressed by the narrator’s work. But I imagine them thinking sometime later, Wow,
I had
this conversation with a narrator who really gets his craft, knows what
he’s
talking about. Yeah, really interesting. Oh, I’ll remember the
conversation. And if I hire him it's because he connected me to that
book, end of story! BTW: I’ll be hosting a panel discussion at APAC: Casting the Voice. ABOUT PAUL ... Paul Ruben has produced and directed numerous
award-winning audiobooks for every major publisher since 1987. His many
Audie Awards include work for It’s Not About the Bike, Raymond and Hannah, The World is Flat, A Slight Trick of the Mind. He also received the 2003 Grammy (Best Spoken Word Album) for Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and the 2009 Grammy for Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox. He has directed regional and summer theatre productions, contributed features on audiobook narration to Audiofile
magazine, and was elected to the Audio Publishers Association Board of
Directors in 2005. Based in New York City and casting and directing many
first time narrators - some of whom have become outstanding and
award-winning working narrators - he also teaches audiobook narrator
workshops through his company, Tribeca Audio.
Email: paul@tribecaaudio.com
Web: www.tribecaaudio.com
Audio Publishers Association Conference (APAC): www.audiopub.org/events-apac-agenda_2012.asp |
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You always write from the heart. A lovely tutorial. So many actors think that the way to get a producer's attn is to shove a CD demo and business card in his/her face ... even when the producer obviously has no place to put it.