Vox 2013

Those of you who follow me on Twitter ( @bee_productive ) or like my Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/BeeProductive ) will have heard mention of VOX over recent months. VOX is an event that has now happened, and here is my account of it!

My VOX lanyard

Firstly just a quick explanation of what VOX is. VOX is the UK’s conference for all those involved in the voiceover industry. As far as I’m aware it’s the only one there is and so it provides a valuable opportunity for all those who work alone in dark cupboards (called ‘voicing booths’) all year to discover for themselves what this ‘daylight’ thing that people talk about actually is. It also offers the chance for people who talk daily via ISDN, email, twitter and facebook to actually see each other and buy the drinks for people that they’ve been promising to. Coupled with that there are a high number of producers and production companies in attendance, and so a valuable marketing opportunity exists.

The VOX USB pen

A few months ago I was very pleased to be given the opportunity by the organising team  to be one of a number of sponsors of the event by assisting in the production of USB pen drives containing voiceover showreels which were then handed out to the attending production companies at the event. Focus Music supplied the pen drives, the voiceovers who wanted to subscribe to the offer supplied their finished showreel and my job was simply to copy all the audio and contact details supplied to me onto 100 USB pens. In exchange for this I got the Bee Productive logo plastered all over the VOX website and space for an exhibition stand.

My Stand. No-one ate the sweets.

So the day arrived and it was a beautiful sunny April day (I say that as if they’re all like that!). I was there early to set up my stand and hand over the pens. Once I got set up I was essentially there as a participant and so I took advantage of the seminars and discussions that were put on during the day as well as the free coffee and pastries that were sponsored by other delegates. A day of meeting and greeting, chatting, putting faces to names and voices, attending discussions and overdosing on caffeine was topped off by a dinner and entertainment into the night and a fair way into Sunday morning.

Rob pretending to know what he’s talking about, Mel Hampshire pretending to be interested. (Photo by Gina Mellotte)

In a nutshell, that was the event. I think it was a very good day. The venue and facilities were great, the day ran like clockwork (nothing overran without permission!), the room was full of like-minded people with plenty of prospective new business. Personally I would have liked a more in-depth production seminar, but those involved in audio production have many more conferences to go on, so we can’t really begrudge voiceovers having their day.

This was the first time I’ve attended VOX, it won’t be the last.

 

The sound of silence

Sorry folks.. I haven’t written a blog this month. In my defense it’s because I’ve been too busy. But just so you don’t miss me too much I’ll post a blog I wrote for a friend a year ago. He was involved in a project called ‘Pictures of Love’ and asked me (and a number of others) to write a guest blog about a ‘picture of love’. My article is reproduced below and is entitled ‘The Sound of Silence’. The rest of the blogs that were written can be found here.
 
 

Morcambe Bay – Photo by Rob Bee

Sound is something that is very important to me. As a musician and a professional sound engineer I need my ears and make a living out of crafting, shaping and forming aural constructs. Sound is not only a medium of information exchange and communication, it can also be a thing of beauty, balance and comfort. I love the sound of an E major being struck on an electric guitar through a cranked-up valve amp. I love the sound of a robin in full song in the middle of the night because it’s found a street light and it thinks dawn is about to break. I love the glugging sound made when you pour that first glass of wine out of the bottle. I love the silly noises my parents always seem to make between picking up the phone and saying, ‘Hello.’ But there is another sound that I think is very special. It’s impossible to record or photograph because it’s immovable from the places it occurs. It’s the sound of silence.

Very often when I get home from a busy day at work in the recording studio I’ll just sit on the sofa and very deliberately not put the TV or the stereo on. I will sit and enjoy the quiet. It’s about more than just resting my ears, I enjoy the stillness of the empty house and the moments of calm. But as lovely as these times are, the Sound of Silence is greater than that. I have been to many places that are quiet and I’ve worked in studios where the acoustic treatment is so good that sound seems to be sucked away from you into the walls. The Sound of Silence is greater than these things. It’s not like ‘no noise’ it’s like ‘negative noise’. And it’s loud.

Take a walk in the countryside and you will hear a great variety of sounds – whether you’re hearing the crashing of waves on the beach, the wind rustling through the leaves in the woods or the babbling brooks in the valleys there are myriad sounds to be heard that calm the soul. But at other times we hear the sound of silence. It’s the sound the snow makes as you stand by yourself and listen to it fall; the world holding it’s breath as awaits it’s transformation. It’s a powerful thing. It compels you to listen to it as it screams at you about it’s depth and richness. I find it sometimes in the Morecambe Bay Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty when conditions are perfect. It is a silence so complete that the occasional cry of a curlew or oystercatcher doesn’t puncture it; it enforces it and makes it stronger. It demands respect; and you obey lest you break the magic.

The Sound of Silence is the sound of space. It’s the sound of timeout. It’s like a mirror. It’s a rare thing, it’s valuable and it’s bizarre. It’s not that something’s missing – like a TV on mute – it’s that something is very definitely there and choosing to be noiseless.

The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, “Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.”  I couldn’t disagree more.

To Bee or not to Bee..

So here we are with the first proper blog entry. So I thought I’d write a little bit about the beginning of Bee Productive.

The first step was to do my research, not into whether there was a gap in the market that I could fill, but at a more basic level, whether I really wanted to be self employed. New skills need to be learned, and amongst them finance and tax aren’t subjects which excite me, and so I had to start really from square one and figure out not whether I was capable of the maths involved – my maths is pretty good – but whether I would be sufficiently interested in completing the necessary tasks involved in keeping a business afloat or whether I’d be better off remaining an employee and actually working full time on audio for a living. I had to look at the implications on house and car insurances and other normal household expenses and see if starting my own business was financially viable.

Having decided to take the plunge the next stage was to take a look at possible markets and find a niche – or niches – that I can fill. This for any business is an ongoing process. The search for customers is a permanent task, but at the beginning of any business has to be the forming of an idea of what your products or services are and who you can sell them to. Step 3 is figuring out how to get your message to the ears of those you think will want to buy your services. Advertising is an expensive business, and whereas you can’t afford not to do it – especially as a start-up – you lack the capital to scream your company from the rooftops.

These kind of things were new considerations for me as a new company, but there are plenty of books and websites dedicated to getting new businesses over these hurdles. What I think there is less focus on is the changes in lifestyle that inevitably come with the change in employment status.

There is a rhythm to being employed. You have set working hours (to a greater or lesser degree) you have a (metaphorical) in tray and out tray. You have a commute, you have colleagues. For the newly self employed these things are missing. The freedom from a boss brings about a liberation from the shackles of the working week, but they also bring a freedom to fail. At the very beginning you have no rod at your back and no customers, so an extra 5 minutes… 10 minutes… 15 minutes in bed on a morning won’t hurt, and that TV won’t watch itself! There’s a lot to do, and a good proportion of setting up will be things that you’re not primarily interested in doing, you just have to do them if you want the mechanics of your business to function. The temptation is to not bother, to concentrate on the bits you want to do. To run your own business is to be disciplined. Your freedom needs protecting and nurturing and you need to attend to every aspect of your business at least until you’re at a point where you’re successful enough to take on an employee to do the bits you don’t want to do. And what about those out-of-hours calls from customers and potential customers? Can you/Should you/Dare you turn your phone off? To run your own business is – in many ways – to be even more shackled than you were as an employee.

If you work by yourself from home it’s possible to not have a single human interaction all day. Sometimes that sounds like heaven, but can you put up with it for days on end? A commute to and from the office brings a clear delineation between work time and home time; but what about when you work from home? How do you make that separation? How about meeting your clients? Do you want to bring them into your family’s space? If not where do you meet them? These kind of questions will work themselves out over time but at the beginning they can be as much of a struggle as the bits people write about.

Starting your own business is always a gamble, it promises you nothing but hard work.  but watching it grow is as great a reward as the increased finances your growing business will bring you.

Welcome

Welcome to the new blog page. I hope over time you will find something here to interest you. I just thought I’d write a quick intro here to let you know what you might find here over time.

My intention is to write something here at least once a month, aiming to publish on the first. What I write may be varied, it could be something related to some work I’ve been doing (subject to client confidentiality of course), or technical tips and opinions regarding some aspect of audio and audio production. IT may be nothing to do with either, I might from time to time use this page as an opportunity to rant about something or whatever else takes my fancy. If you have any requests for any topics you want to see here drop me a line and I’ll give it some thought.

Whatever gets published here I hope you find it entertaining and informative and it keeps you coming back.