New Year, New Batch Of Randomness

I'll start this year's first blog with the phrase we've read on many a commercial over the last week or two: "New Year, New [insert product/lifestyle choice/gym membership here]!" Well, in our case it is - of course - the new website, and what a difference it's made. Of course, we still have the same client base as before of voice over recording studios, corporate clients and telephony companies to name just a few (our voice over work and past experience hasn't changed just because we have a shiny new site) but because we've come to know and work with lots more new clients too, who we've really enjoyed getting to know and, we hope, have enjoyed working with us too.

Without wanting to come across all "we're mad, us" (we're not), we're a fun company, and the old site just didn't really reflect who we are, and how we like to work. While much of our core business is corporate narration and presentation, which we really enjoy and are particularly noted for, one of the things we really enjoy is spending an ISDN session recording radio and television ads, and getting to know clients old and new ‘down the line'.

We particularly enjoy ‘double headed voiceovers' - which are usually ISDN-recorded voice overs of Phil and Ellie chatting in That Voiceover Voice about a new kitchen/conservatory/bathroom which the characters we play so desperately need (I can relate to them SO well). One new client, who had recently stumbled upon us online, emailed the other day to tell us how much he'd enjoyed the session and couldn't wait for the next "batch of randomness". That was a huge compliment... we do take our work extremely seriously - but we also enjoy speaking to you about how YOU are, and we have several clients who we've come to know very well over the years.

The majority of our colleagues in the voice over recording industry sit on their own in little padded rooms for much of the day, and only come out for a bite of lunch or a cuppa, which is why we all sport the good old "studio tan". We like to think that a Sayer Hamilton session makes the day go a little more quickly, and we're proud to say that, in nearly ten years of marriage AND working together, we have never killed each other - or had a domestic down the ISDN line (we leave that until we've finished - our professionalism never fails to impress even us.)

Give us a call - randomness... professionalism... new kitchens (yes please)... it's all part of the service.

Elinor Hamilton

Posted By: Ellie
18 January 2011

A lament from a nerd

I won't forget the first time I ever heard music in stereo. It was the beginning of my love affair with audio. Slowly, I scraped together enough money to buy various bits of kit and assembled my hi-fi. Every spare penny, as they say...

These were the golden days of hi-fi. It was generally agreed that the best speakers in the world were British and that only the Japanese made good cassette decks. But everything else was up for heated debate. We knew all the brands, bought the magazines, and argued for hours about the relative merits of vinyl versus cassette, and valve versus transistor.

Today, many voice over artists (and I'm one of them) will spend hours debating which is the best mike, the best pre-amp, and the best recording software until the cows come home, chasing that last 1% of quality... because we care passionately about what we do. But do we care too much?

At the domestic level, no-one seems very concerned. Sales of component hi-fi are on the floor, and even the more modest music centres have been consigned to the dustbin long ago. How did that happen?

My guess is that we traded quality for portability, a process that began with the Sony Walkman cassette player and continued with mp3 devices. In fairness, the sound from even quite modest mp3 players is really very good, but it surely isn't hi-fi as we used to know it. On the other hand, before the digital revolution, you couldn't take your entire music collection with you on holiday...

In consumer electronics, the quality focus seems to have shifted to television; unless you own a TV the size of a barn door, people think you're a bit weird. Even ten-year-olds can tell you about plasma versus LCD versus LED.

Just don't bother asking them if the speakers are any good... because they won't be.

Recently, I bought a pair of B&W speakers, second hand and plugged them into the audio output of our TV. Although they are ugly big black boxes, intruding into the feminine chic of our living space, the audio experience is stunning - there is so much more detail and depth in the output than I'd realised, particularly in the soundtracks of modern movies. 

Maybe, when screen size and quality reach their limits, and the industry needs a new selling point, hi-fi sound will make a return. So don't write off the hi-fi nerds yet - we're all lurking, biding our time, waiting for the opportunity to bore you to death about Fletcher-Munson curves, Fourier analysis, and why valve amps are still the best.

You have been warned - one day, the Geeks shall inherit the earth, the live and the neutral.

Phil Sayer

Posted By: Phil
21 January 2011

Twitter - a valuable business tool, or maybe just something else to worry about.

When we're not voicing, parenting, keeping the house tidy (well, when I say ‘we', I do of course mean ‘I' when it comes to keeping the house tidy) we're trying to get our heads around Twitter - since our own site was redesigned, we've been signed up, and it's taking a while to get used to. We've been keen Facebookers for a few years now, but set up the Sayer Hamilton page when this site was developed. (Feel free to join us and keep in touch with what we're up to, by the way, but we promise not to update too often - nobody likes a clogged-up News Feed, now, do they?)

I'm still not quite sure if I really ‘get' Twitter yet, and feel like I must be the only voice talent in the industry who isn't updating their feed on a daily basis. I always feel as if I HAVE to say something about the day's work I've just done (or am about to do). Then, I wonder if anyone is remotely interested, or if I sound as if I'm boasting when there's been a nice tasty job on the table. And if there HASN'T been a massive job that day (nobody is that busy all the time... er, are they?) well, what do I say then? Then, I think - well, they DO care; that's why they're following us. Why else would they? And then, I think, I have a house to tidy, children to collect from school, a dead mouse to remove from the office floor which the cat has so charitably brought in for us, and a new conservatory/pair of shoes at crazy discounted prices/club anthem album which I haven't got but I must pretend I need and talk about enthusiastically into a microphone... so when all those jobs are done, I just tweet about them... and hope somebody, somewhere enjoys what they read - almost as much as I hope that people enjoy what they hear.

Elinor Hamilton

Posted By: Ellie
28 January 2011

Just Ignore Me.

It's an odd thing sometimes, being a voiceover artist. Phil and I are employed because we need to be heard by many different people in many different environments, but sometimes it's NOT being heard that's the important part. I don't mean that literally, of course, but what I do mean is that in some circumstances, it's important to have a voice which doesn't stand out like a sore thumb.

We record commercials for all sorts of clients  - much of the time we play different characters (for evidence of this, all you need to do is to hear our showreels) but the rest of the time, we need to play it as straight as possible. I'm often cast as a young mum, or a friendly announcer - Phil, likewise, frequently plays the "dad" character, or a straight, clear announcer (just wait until you hear those speedy caveats at the end of a commercial - an in-house speciality from both of us. And don't forget, your home is at risk if you set fire to it.) But I digress...

It's fun to record those commercials, because it's nice to get in the studio and record something with our producer colleagues (many of whom have become good friends), and make an ad go from being words on a page to a real life sales pitch heard on the TV or radio all over the world. When we hear the finished product mixed together and broadcast over the airwaves, we still get a buzz from it, even after several years on the job - because that's often the first time we get to hear the finished article, with the sound effects and all the clever stuff put on. Where commercials are concerned, our bit, really, is the easy part.

It's another thing entirely when we're recording voiceovers for corporate or on-hold use, or for public address systems (the train announcements being an obvious example.) A client of ours recently directed us to a number of internet discussion boards for rail enthusiasts (yes, they do exist!) who wax lyrical about the Phil Sayer announcements on the mainline rail network. The vast majority consider him to be far and away the best announcer in the country. The reason for this seems to be that he's clear, well spoken without being posh or condescending, and authoritative without being bossy.  That's harder to achieve than you might think, but we like to transfer this style into much of the work we do. While advertising is a hugely fun part of our business, the corporate market, for us, has boomed over the last few years. If you need a health and safety training module delivered in a clear way, but which never sounds boring, Sayer Hamilton have two voice artists in-house who can do just that. If you need to keep your clients on hold for longer than you'd like, here are two voices who won't grate on them by being overly enthusiastic or affected... that is, unless that's the brief and you WANT it like that!

As voice over artists, we can be as versatile as you like, or as straight as you like. Usually, we can tell what you need just on sight of your script, and sometimes (just sometimes) having a voice artist who sounds like part of the furniture, actually makes you stand out more.

Posted By: Ellie
23 May 2011

Allyson Lee - A Tribute.

Last week, I was devastated to learn that my former Performing Arts tutor, Allyson Lee, had died in Switzerland by assisted suicide. It’s always sad when people who’ve had an astonishing level of influence in your life have passed on – but perhaps even sadder when you know they’ve left their life tragically early, because they had no possible way back to health.

Allyson was an inspirational teacher – a woman who, in the traditional Yorkshire way, took no nonsense from anyone, but was gentle, kind and understanding (though only when completely necessary, mind.) She taught me at Thomas Danby College, Leeds, from 1999 to 2001, and I probably learned more in my two years there than I ever did sitting behind a desk in the various lecture theatres of my university - a place I loathed for its stuffiness and contempt for those of us who wanted to show off on stage more than we wanted to write deathless prose analysing what Ibsen really meant (I didn’t really care). But anyway… One of the key lessons I learned from Allyson was that the superfluous use of props in the theatre can (in certain circumstances) be quite distracting, and one single, carefully selected item can be far more effective than a fancy set with equipment to match.

You may think this has no bearing on my subsequent career as a voiceover artist, but that’s not true. We’re all influenced by the people around us, and my time at Thomas Danby (with Allyson Lee and Ken Reid at the helm) gave me more opportunities to hone my performance and observational skills than any educational establishment I’ve been to before or since. So much so, that I can’t help putting pieces of other people in to my work here and there, which I suppose is what gives me versatility as a voice actor. Learning to create a character without an endless supply of props is one legacy of Allyson’s which lives on in my work on a daily basis. Imagine if I couldn’t get into “posh housewife,” “chavvy teenager,” or – heaven forbid – the “tube lady” character without donning a wig, a costume, and goodness knows how much beastly costume jewellery which would jingle and clink right in front of the mic? One of the skills of this job is being able to walk into the studio and immediately BE whoever’s voice is written on the page, without the need for hours of character development. I might imagine the pen I’m holding is a tennis racquet, or the headphones are a hat… OK, so it might look a bit silly as I sit in our padded room all day talking to myself, but it works for me, and our clients seem happy.

The use of props (or lack of) is something I know would delight Allyson, and it’s particularly evident in the one-man play “An Instinct For Kindness.” Here, Allyson’s ex-husband Chris Larner tells the story of her illness and eventual death at Dignitas, using only his memory and the help of one chair. I was privileged to have seen a preview last week, and it really is the most wonderful piece of theatre I’ve ever seen, as well as being a fitting tribute to Allyson herself. It’s surprisingly funny, illuminating , and deeply moving – if you’re heading to Edinburgh Fringe this year, I’d encourage you to put it on your list (oh, and you can book tickets and read more of Allyson’s story here).

Whatever your views are on assisted suicide, it sparks an important debate; but most importantly, it keeps alive the spark of a remarkable woman whose legacy lives on in my work (and that of many others), in the most compelling piece of theatre. When you have a role to play, sometimes the only props you need are a full heart, a story to tell, and an empty chair. Thank you, Allyson, for teaching me that.

Posted By: Ellie
14 July 2011