One Voice Confernce 2023
Earlier in August I attended the One Voice Conference in Dallas, Texas. It was the first time I’d been to a voice over conference and I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Everyone I knew who had been to the event in years prior assured me that I was going to have a great time. Well, I’m here to say that they were absolutely correct!
I flew into Dallas on Wednesday. One of my cousin lives in Dallas and I’d arranged to stay a night with him, and then head to the Hyatt Regency DFW the next day. I was to fly from Buffalo to Detroit, and from Detroit on to Dallas. In classic fashion, my plane was delayed in Detroit and I ended up arriving in Dallas about 4 hours later than planned. Luckily my cousin was a champion and had dinner waiting for me when I arrived at his house and to this ravenous traveler, it was the best welcome I could have asked for! At my cousin’s house was also Amos, my “Welcome to Texas” cat ambassador.
The next day I headed to the Hyatt for the first day of the Conference. There was a welcome ceremony and a social mixer, at which I met some amazing new friends and colleagues. The night was capped off with dinner at my first Whataburger experience, which was made even more memorable by the spirit of excitement of the beginning of the conference and finally meeting people I’d only ever seen on the other side of a screen before. My review of Whataburger - I DON’T KNOW! I was so super-psyched to be hanging out with such rad people that I forgot to actually taste my food as I was eating it. Sorry Mark Wahlberg! I’ll do better next time.
The next day was jam-packed with information, meetings, greetings and cheese sandwiches hastily gobbled down between events. One thing I appreciated about the conference was how evenly weighted it was towards all aspects of voice over. There were as many events geared towards character development and video games as there were commercials and eLearning. I originally set out to do an even split, but having a theater background and a love for character work, I think the scales eventually tipped to that side. One of the most memorable events that day was an improv workshop where we worked on spontaneity, staying curious and exploration. This was especially fun for me since it gave me the opportunity to hop into different characters and find character voices for many different types of genres. I always find it interesting to explore characters not even just in reference to cartoons, animation and video game characters, but also the characters involved in doing commercial voice over, corporate voice over, audiobook or any type of voice recording that may not obviously fall under the category of character work.
Another highlight of that day was attending a workshop with Michael Csurics, the founder of Brightskull games. Everyone attending the workshop had a chance to do a character for him, all of them based on the comic book characters. When my turn came I chose to read for Jubilee from The X-Men. My bright and energetic voice was a perfect fit for her high energy and enthusiasm!
The next day was more of the same. Saturday I focused a little more on the technical side of things. I have a home studio and at times I operate not just as a voice actor but as director, engineer, and editor all in one! So I chose to attend a talk on using my digital audio workstation to maximize its usefulness, and also one on how to produce the best audio I can using various post-production techniques. This is especially important when recording an audiobook, for example, when I am expected to produce a finished hour of recording and need to edit out the mistakes, but also to mitigate the mouth noises and make sure the audio is clean and flows well.
And all too soon Sunday arrived and it was the end of the conference. After an emotional final ceremonies and some last-minute hugs, I met my cousin in the lobby and had to bid the One Voice Conference a fond farewell.
I can say without a doubt that as long as I have the means and the time to spare next year that I will absolutely be back and even now I eagerly await seeing all the new friends I met there again. Already I feel like my world of voiceover has expanded exponentially and I’m overjoyed at being able to be part of such a wonderful event. My knowledge and experience with being a voiceover artist grew stronger, and I’m certain that going to the One Voice Conference in Dallas was absolutely the right call.
