Well, I just attended Julie's "Proven Voice-Over Techniques Workshop" this last week end (9/16/07) as well and it was simply awesome. There were just three of us in attendance which meant there was more time for individual coaching by Julie as well as time for basic chitchat time. Great for us, but not necessarily great for her. Even though the group was small, Julie let the workshop go the full length rather than ending early. Again, this meant more time for us students.
Okay, I just have to say that Julie is just a great person and very down to earth. In my search for input and advice from local
VO talent, I was told by a few that they refused to provide any assistance and felt if they helped me I would just end up taking work from them. Not Julie. She is very cool and is willing to offer advice and guidance to anyone without any thought of losing work to them. The workshop is a testimonial to this.
For nearly three years now, I have been trying to track down Julie to attend her workshop. There always seemed to be something in the way or the timing was not right. And, when I heard she had one in my area, I jumped at the opportunity to attend. Boy, am I sure glad I did. This was the best and most well informed and, most importantly, useable workshop that I have attended. I have taken a few workshops in my area,as well as trained with some L.A. based folks (Not Pat's or Bob's though) , and I have to say that Julie's workshop blew them out the door. Not only is her workshop good, the info that she passes on is completely useable especially in this day and age of the internet casting sites.
Since the workshop was unusually small, again only three of us in attendance not counting Julie, we were given even more individual instruction. The great thing about Julie's workshop was as we learned one of Julie's Techniques, she had us read copy and she would provide a line-by-line critique of our reading. For example, she would tell us to try coloring this word, add more inflection here, try a pause there slow or speed our pacing on a particular line. This was just incredibly helpful, especially for me. And, Julie's teaching style has a sort of kind sensei approach with the full intention of helping us improve our
VO technique. She did not trying to throw her techniques at us and then expect us to figure out how to apply them. Instead, she guided us in how we can add each technique, layer by layer, and see for ourselves how these techniques will make our reading more real and marketable. Julie would cover a technique like Coloring Words, then give us an example and then
have us read copy implementing this technique, sometimes as a dialog and others as a monolog . While we read, she would provide input on how we could improve certain parts of the reading. Then she would read the copy her way not telling us that our readings were wrong, but instead she would say something like "this is how I might read the copy", which of course was an incredible read. She then would go the next technique and go through the process again, except we had the previous technique(s) and the newly learned technique to add to our read. By the end of the day we had covered all of the techniques and were using them in our reads. With the techniques that Julie outlines, I feel I now have the tools to move my
VO career in the right direction; forward in to the professional rank and file.
If anyone has not taken Julie's Proven
VO Techniques Workshop, especially if you have not booked work or you are not booking the number of jobs you wish to, I highly recommend tracking Julie down and attending her workshop. And if this is not possible, buy her CD which has most of the material in it, except you don't get that individual live feedback from Julie that I am so honored to have been given. But it would certainly be better than nothing.
Julie you rock!!!
Regards,
Jon Morss