Julie Williams Proven Voice-Over Techniques Workshop Review

[CK]

Julie Williams Proven Voice-Over Techniques Workshop Review

I had the pleasure of attending Julie Williams’s workshop this past weekend. With only three of us, Julie graciously opened her home, making it a more intimate, personal experience.

Julie teaches how to develop your own navigator, to stay in the moment and add depth to your reads. With a 1-2-3 approach. covering how to refine your skills and develop your voice, creating a new demo or improving on an existing one, and the fine art of marketing yourself, Julie walked us through each step with plenty of individual attention.

Julie teaches one technique at a time and each step builds upon the next. Starting out with coloring words, an effective way to enable your listener to “see” what your saying instead of just hearing the words, she moves to proper techniques of inflections, pausing, using half voice and pacing in a natural and spontaneous rhythm. Julie had my attention the entire time and her methods enriched my reads every step of the way.

Her procedures work. Plain and simple.

And of course that all important…Practice. Julie stresses the importance of practice, especially as a new talent and explains that a musician doesn’t become great taking lessons but during the time between lessons…practicing.

Thank you, Julie... for the tools!…. to practice with.

Cheryl Kay

[Julie Williams]

On Septmeber 16th, I held the smallest workshop ever in my career! I had three attendees. I decided not to cancel the workshop because I didn't want to disappoint those who really wanted to attend! In attendance was Rebecca Sommers, Cheryl Kay, and John Morss.

However, if you've taken my Proven Voice-Over Techniques LIVE workshop in the past, you may post your review on that here, as well!

Thanks for your feedback!
Julie

[Sameera]

Thanks to you guys, and everybody else who sent me an e-mail about the workshop. You've all given me great quotes for the review that will be in the next V-ZINE. Hope you all enjoy it!!

[Jon Morss]

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

[kellicasey]

During the summer, I had the opportunity to do a weekend workshop with Julie and Pat...what a combo!!! I highly recommend both of these workshops for new talent and seasoned talent alike! Practicing your art on a daily basis is necessary as most of us know, but listening and learning from other talents that have more experience is also a must!!!Over the last few weeks, I've acquired two new and great national gigs and forsee many others to come, but I know that I couldn't have done this without some of the "proven techniques" that I learned to implement!!! It has been a whirlwind of activity and as well as I was doing before, the workshops have given me more confidence in my ability to 'bring it'!!! Thanks so much for your guidance and expertise!! Pat and Julie are the best!
Blessings!
Kelli Casey
"Pick The RED One!!"
kelli@kellicasey.com