news | Kevin Powe | Voice Over Artist & Actor

AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS: Out in the wild!

Personally, I think the best kind of project is when you surround yourself with incredibly talented people and hustle as hard as you can in the hope that no one notices that you probably shouldn’t be there, because seriously, THE AMAZING PEOPLE THAT YOU’RE WORKING WITH.

AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS is one of those projects. I talked in my newsletter earlier this year about the experience of recording for the project, but I’m super-amped to be able to tell you that AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS is now available in the App Store for iPad. Here’s why I’m excited:

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GenreCon Wrap-Up

(written Wednesday the 16th)

So here I am at 1AM in the morning writing my wrap-up of GenreCon Oz. It might seem like I’m being fashionably late here, but my GenreCon only ended officially around 1:30 Wednesday morning, and today has been lost to flying home, and trying to shrug off a lingering hangover.

So how was GenreCon? My capsule review is that it was AMAZING. It’s back on again in 2015, and if the Venn diagram of your life connects with writing (or, hell, being a creative) I’d recommend it. It’s put a fire in my belly, and got me thinking real hard about heading to Faffcon, the closest equivalent in the voice over world. It was a blur of passion and connection and meeting old friends and new, and sharing enthusiasm, ideas, and potential ways to play together. And a solid backbone of REALLY GREAT ADVICE. For me, the convention occurred half in the Library proper, and half in the discussions into the wee hours of the morning in bars, or San Churro. It turns out churros are the hook in the cheek to drag anyone into hanging out.

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Thoughts On Being A Good Freelancer

Recently for a project with a regular, well-loved client I needed to subcontract some recording out for a voice type I couldn’t provide myself. The recording was done interstate by a contact I’d provided voice over for in the past, leaving me a step removed from the whole process.

While the client was satisfied with the end result, getting there was long and frustrating. So I wanted to turn the situation on its head, and look at some rules to keep in mind when dealing with clients as a freelancer. I’m by no means perfect with these myself, so this is as much for me as it is for you.

If You Have To Email Me, I’m Not Doing My Job

This is a game I play with client communication normally. While you don’t want to overwhelm the client with the minutiae of a job’s progress, if a client needs to reach out to me to find out what’s happening, I’m not doing my job. If a client has to email me twice to get an answer, I’m really dropping the ball.
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Two Golden Rules For Getting Better

I’ve been revising what rules I have around voice over recently, as part of a mental spring cleaning, and digging at the fundamentals as part of a writing project of sorts.

I was reminded of one of them on Thursday night. I study at the Melbourne Actor’s Lab, and I’m working on a scene at the moment with a great guy who’s an absolute sweetheart and far more talented than I. We got a fairly detailed set of notes this week, and you could see in my scene partner’s body straight away that he took it on the chin as failure. When we got back to our seats, he was quietly shaking his head. “Too many notes”. This brings me to:
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AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS: A rather awesome project

I wanted to take a quick second to tell you about an awesome project that is just about at the end of its Pozible run, and could use a little love getting over the funding line. I’m not involved in the project in any way myself (except as a backer and avid fan) so I can tell you about this completely devoid of an ulterior motive save that I think the project is fantastic, and it would be criminal for it not to go ahead. Particularly with a number of very interesting backer rewards I’ll talk about in a second.
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Violence and Video Games and Whatnot

So I got involved in a debate online recently about violence in video games, in the aftermath of the latest shooting tragedy in the US. The debate itself was over at Paul Strikwerda’s blog. I’d suggest reading the initial post and comments over at Paul’s blog, as I won’t try to reframe Paul’s argument here and risk putting words in his mouth. I did find the debate short and disappointing though, which is why I wanted to take the time to think things through and post a wall of text over here.

First, the caveats: Paul appears to be a great guy, he’s tremendously talented and prodigious in his output. This post isn’t attacking him, but rather picking at some flawed thinking and hand-wringing around a topic I’m rather concerned about. Whether violence in video games and media in general affects us on some deeper level is something I care a lot about. I’ve cheerfully consumed violent media for most of my life, and while I don’t personally believe that media has a harmful effect, or that children are so fogged in their thinking that they can’t separate reality from fantasy, I try to keep an active interest in the other side of the argument. Confirmation bias is something worth striving against.
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Piratey Ring Tones Ahoy! Man The Long Nines!

As promised, I have a Halloween treat for you! I’ve lent my voice to George Hufnagl’s most excellent sound design stylings, and this has created a piratey ringtone for you to download for Halloween.

If you’ve ever wanted being unable to answer the phone to feel like a game of Monkey Island, or if you prefer, a snippet of Pirates of the Caribbean, this may be a step towards that goal.

You can read more about it all at Sounds Like George. Go on, ya landlubber!

(also: it’s worth mentioning that the fantastic art here is courtesy of Mr. Dave “The Booty Hunter” Rigley.

Some Halloween Treats

Just a quick note, while things are MAD around here. I’ve been having an absolute BALL collaborating on a few projects with George Hufnagl, one of those being a neat treat for Halloween which should be ready in the next day or two. You can find a teaser that George has written over at Sounds Like George. Can’t wait for that to go live!

I’ve also done some voice over for a Drama Pod audio drama that should be out on All Hallow’s Eve as well, or thereabouts.

In the meantime, hope things are well with you and yours, and have a truly ghoulish Halloween. It’s my favourite holiday of the year!