|
|
|
|
Radio And Production
March 2010
March 2010 Highlights
The 20th Annual R.A.P. Awards:
Members Vote This Month!
The Finalists of the 2009 R.A.P. Awards have been chosen!
Now, R.A.P. Members worldwide will vote to see who the winners
are. Click on the R.A.P. CD link above to get a list of the
finalists. If you're a R.A.P. Member, go to the
Awards page to cast your vote!
Production 212:
March Madness
by Dave Foxx
Hello my friends and fellow producers. This month’s column
has absolutely nothing to do with college basketball playoffs.
It’s about the crazy CD that comes with this month’s edition.
This is the most exciting issue of the year for me as it
showcases the best work from the last year of many of you. Ever
since I got my first razor blade encased in plastic all those
many years ago, I always take a lot of pride in being affiliated
with all the other winners of RAP Awards. This month’s CD
promises to be chock full of amazing work that’s funny, sad,
dark, bright and more importantly, effective. The sounds you
hear this month should inspire you to communicate with your
audience with verve and style, keeping radio ahead of all the
other media in effectiveness and cost. So let me begin this
month by saluting everyone who was brave enough to make
submissions. You’ve become leaders of the industry with this
issue, because so many other producers will come back to this CD
over and over again, looking for that inspiration. I’d also like
to thank the judges ahead of time. Having sat in your chair
before, I know it can be difficult to choose sometimes, but in
the end, what you do will make all of us better producers.
Just two questions will be highlighted here this month. I got a
lot of questions from new producers, but they were questions
we’ve dealt with in recent memory, so I simply answered their
emails and brought these two gems to the column this month.
R.A.P. Interview:
Nancy Wolfson, BrainTracksAudio.com, Los Angeles, CA
by Jerry Vigil
Nancy Wolfson is a different kind of voiceover coach. A
graduate of Vassar College with over 15 yrs. experience in
Hollywood’s Entertainment Industry, Nancy was the Voice Over
Department at ARL, a Playmate Wrangler (to be covered in our
next interview with Nancy!), a celebrity talent manager, and
producer of on air promotions for Playboy, FOX, WB/CW, and ABC.
Today she is the Tough Love VO Branding Coach & Demo Producer,
coaching both in-person in LA as well as via phoners for
students worldwide. She’s also the “Go-To Cyber Casting
Director,” facilitating auditions daily for her buyer and talent
agent colleagues. A voiceover agent and promo producer turned
voiceover talent consultant, Nancy warns you about what those
who sign and hire talent reject and shares the secrets of what
they crave. This month’s RAP Interview takes a look at
BrainTracksAudio and examines how Nancy’s extraordinary skill
set and coursework crack the code for beginners and working pros
alike.
Test Drive:
Windows 7 - Ready For Audio?
by Steve Cunningham
Many if not most of us are still running Windows XP, either
Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3. Windows XP is still an
effective and robust operating system, and has the additional
advantage of running on older and slower CPUs. But it has three
distinct disadvantages. Number one -- XP lacks most of the
modern security features contained within Windows 7. For a PC
running Windows XP on the Internet, especially if you’re using
Internet Explorer, it can be a dangerous world out there (see
the sidebar for more). Number two -- I fully expect new versions
of audio software from Sony, Adobe, and others, will want to
take advantage of Windows 7’s 64-bit performance. Number three
-- you have to remember that XP was introduced in 2001, and has
been officially discontinued. The 64-bit version of XP, known as
x64, is no longer supported at all. Microsoft’s Extended Support
of XP SP2 ends this July, and SP3 ends in April 2014. “But
wait,” you say, “We still have Vista, right?” Well yes, we do,
although many of us in the production community simply took a
pass on that operating system. It is probably not necessary here
to re-hash the entire Vista saga. Suffice it to say that Windows
Vista was not the success Microsoft would have liked; for audio
editing most users avoided the upgrade altogether, including me.
Microsoft itself admits that Windows Vista achieved just
slightly more than 10% share of the total Windows market...
hardly a successful release. Microsoft has over the past two
years fixed many of the most egregious problems in updates, and
vendors updated both hardware and software drivers until they
were glitch-free. But most of us have simply stuck with XP, and
waited for Windows 7. The wait ended last fall, and five months
later it may be time to ask the $64 question: is it time to
upgrade to Windows 7?
Feature:
Relationship Status: It’s Not Complicated
by Ed Thompson
I hate to admit, I’m a bit of a Facebook stalker. Ever since
I set up my Facebook page and started finding old friends
online, the first thing I check is their Relationship Status.
Are they married, single, divorced or that very ambiguous “It’s
Complicated”? Funny though, I don’t think there’s anything
complicated about relationships. Then again, I’ve always been an
either/or kind of guy. I’m not much for fence-sitting. I’ve
arrived at a certain truth about the radio business.
Relationships rule.
...And Make
It Real Creative
by Trent Rentsch
I can still recite it from memory…
“One man in each century is given the power to control
time. The man chosen to receive this power is carefully
selected… He must be kind, He must be fair, He MUST BE
BRAVE! YOU have fulfilled these requirements, And we of the
Outer Galaxies designate to you, The Wisdom of Solomon, And
the Strength of Atlas! YOU ARE CAPTAIN 11!!”
So began the daily adventures of my first broadcasting hero.
Radio Hed:
Hope
by Jeffrey Hedquist
What motivates people to act? Once you have identified a
problem that your listener has and that your advertiser solves,
you need to make the solution believable, acceptable, and able
to be accomplished. When you do, you provide hope.
|
|
|