One of my favorite TV promos is the one currently airing for Fox Saturday Baseball, featuring Joe Buck and Tim McCarver:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlx258D7OJY

Pretty cute.

But if you look closely, you’ll see that not all the characters were together in one place. Stop the video at :07, or take a look at this screenshot:

I guess I’ve watched enough baseball to recognize Buck and McCarver, even from the back.

That ain’t them.

Go a couple seconds later and you’ll see the back shots of the two other actors don’t quite match (although they did  great job mimicking their movements). It should go without saying that the background of Angel’s Stadium is a green screen projection.

Yes, technology is our friend, and we put it to use everyday at ProComm Voices. Here is a recently produced spot featuring Emilie Brown and Dan Friedman, “together” in a car:

ECCU GarageSale Radio

They were recorded together, with a client directing on the phone. Yet Dan was in Asheville while Emilie came to us live from Utah.

Or check out this crowd:

Fred’s Party Supplies Radio

The crowd in that commercial came to us from six different places, recorded separately at different times. And there were no more than two persons recording at each location.

By the way, with all the technological innovations in video, it’s still easier (and more budget-friendly) to successfully pull off illusions on the radio;  note how you were able to stop & inspect the YouTube video.

As a Procomm engineer, it’s fun to help you create the magic that comes from your imagination.

Providing voice overs for eLearning presentations is nothing new for us here at ProComm. Recently though, we had the chance to work with a client on a series of eLearning projects that not only presented a number of unique challenges, they also gave us the opportunity to provide a service that has great social value as well.

Shortly after contacting us, Ah-Ha! Media co-founder Mark Schoder stopped by our studios for a personal visit.  Mark explained that his company develops web-based programs for a variety of human resource issues, ranging from sexual harassment, to diversity, ethics, and violence.  The website/eLearning courses his company creates are tools to help school personnel recognize and deal with the interpersonal issues they face on campus each and every day.  They are also an effective, yet private means for students to learn to deal with the situations that happen inside and outside the classroom through a familiar technology.

The first eLearning component dealing with sexual harassment required nearly 60 voice talent and encompassed almost 6 hours of finished material. James K Flynn provided one of the main narrator roles, with various other ProComm voice talent acting as testimonial voices depicting a variety of difficult, yet true-to-life situations that occur in academic environments each and every day.

One challenge with a project of this magnitude is having a talent roster large enough to accommodate the whopping number of testimonial reads required. Several days of casting and scheduling preceded the voice over sessions, with ProComm engineers Garth Smith, Jeff Pittman, and Bob Peck all working on the recording.

Given the serious nature of the subject matter, the voice talent had to rely heavily on their voice acting skills to ensure the reads sounded honest and believable.  The voice talent also had to be diverse, to mirror a typical college and university population. ProComm delivered on all of these fronts while efficiently managing the hundreds of files used across several different versions. Here are a few sample reads from the program:

Emilie Brown

George Washington III

Chris Porter

Catherine Smith

Bill Munoz

Bill Ballenberg

Gregg Easterbrook

While some of the testimonial pieces feature serious issues and may be uncomfortable to record, the process becomes easier when you remember that the audio could end up helping someone struggling in a real situation.

The beauty of this eLearning project is that the subject matter is common to many types of industries.  After the college and university narratives are finished, Ah-Ha! Media will start translating the content for financial institutions, the travel industry and many other workspaces where interpersonal conflicts can interfere with workplace goals.

“Our company has had great success in recent years providing online training programs, but we never imagined the enhanced learning experiences we’d be able to offer thanks to ProComm. We’re looking forward to relying on the professionalism and expertise of ProComm and the talents of their voice actors as we develop our new Diversity and Discrimination program for the academic community.”

-Mark Schoder, Co-Founder, Ah-Ha! Media