Bob Magruder, Magruder Media Associates, Dallas, TX
by Jerry Vigil
Don't ever take your voice for granted. No matter how strong or weak you may feel it is, there is a hungry market out there for talented voices of all kinds. For every agency tape you dub, there was a voice session somewhere, and thousands more for the tapes you never saw. And next week, it all happens again.
As radio producers and Production Directors, you each have a golden opportunity to make the most of your voice. You work every day in a recording studio. You constantly have scripts handed to you. You already have a valuable basic understanding of voice-over work. Many of you already take home a nice piece of change from your free-lance work, but it's pocket change compared to what your potential may be. What many of us lack is the knowledge necessary to begin and sustain a successful voice-over career. We lack guidance and direction, and we lack knowledge of the little tricks of the trade.
This month's interview is with award winning, Dallas based voice talent, Bob Magruder. Since he began his voice-over career, Bob has performed in over fifteen thousand radio and TV commercials, documentaries, and industrial and feature films all over the country, not to mention his appearance in over fifty stage plays, various CBS television series and numerous cable television shows.
Bob also conducts a workshop designed to develop voice talent and teach the things necessary to market yourself and get the work. Read and learn. If you're in a large market where agency production happens every day and haven't seriously pursued voice-over work, you could be weeks away from your first audition. If you're in a smaller market still developing your production and voice skills, take some tips from one of the best and point yourself in the direction of one of the most lucrative opportunities available to you in the future.
R.A.P.: What did you do prior to the voice-over business?
Bob: I started in radio when I was nineteen as a jock in Houston. I took five years out for the Navy, and by the time I got out, I had three little children and a wife. Somebody said, "Kid, the money's in sales and management," so I went into that area. I stayed in sales and management until I was in my early to mid-forties. Like anything else you do for twenty-something years, I guess you just get bored or burnt out with it, so I got out of that. For a while I brokered radio stations, and then I went into the voice business.
R.A.P.: When did you first realize you had a voice that could make you money?
Bob: Probably fifteen years ago. I've always done theatre, and wherever we were, I'd find a little theatre and do stuff for free. It never occurred to me that anyone would ever pay me for it until some agent said, "Let me try." She started rustling up some business and eventually, the income started exceeding the income from the world of the nine to five job. So I started doing this which is vastly more fun. I've been in the voice business ever since.
R.A.P.: In the beginning, did you undergo any special training to polish your voice?
Bob: No. Most voice-over actors come from three areas, either radio as a jock, the theatre, or singing. There are many jingle singers who do very well, people who are used to caressing and breathing some life into a lyric. I don't really know anybody that came from any area other than those three. I don't know what training you would get other than [workshops]. I go to workshops anytime somebody that is a talent I respect, comes through town. The stage is probably the best training area.
R.A.P.: What's the difference between an announcer and a voice-over performer?
Bob: An announcer is generally a one dimensional individual who is a personality. For example, in Dallas, because I know Dallas, take Ron Chapman who is a top guy in this market. Ron Chapman is always Ron Chapman, and he has made the big time because people seem to like Ron Chapman and what he does. He doesn't change with his copy. He's always "Ron Chapman." If you want Ron Chapman to sell your commercial, he's going to sell it as Ron Chapman, the individual. But, in the voice-over business, we are a little of everybody. We are chameleons. We change with our copy. Whatever the copy demands, we become that character.
Being out in the sticks here, we don't do a whole lot of work in New York or LA, so we have to keep track of who the top guys are because we're frequently asked to emulate them. Directors will say, "I foresee a Bill Bryden here or sort of a Mason Adams." One thinks they don't have the budget to hire Adams so they're asking me to do it. And you don't copy the guy, but you know what it is that makes a Mason Adams, or a Bill Bryden, or a Norman Rose, and what makes them sell.
R.A.P.: You have an extensive background in acting. Do you feel this background is really necessary to be highly successful in the voice-over business?
Bob: I've done stage all my life, and I think it is necessary. Voice is very much like film technique. Film technique is about taking it inside yourself, and the voice-over actor does that. For example, one of the fundamentals we play with in my workshops is establishing a premise. Let's say you go into an audition and thirty of the best guys in town are there. You think, "Holy smoke! What can I do different?" Instead of just reading the copy as an announcer, you ask yourself if you can make it more interesting by changing who you are. Instead of a spokesman, would it make it more interesting if I read it as a real person, or as a character, or as an interested onlooker, or as the voice of authority? Then you ask who the audience is. You speak differently to the 18-34 demographic than you do to the 45 and up.
What's the objective? A lot of hospital spots will use the objective of selling through fear. For example, there's a commercial that says something like, "Having a baby of your own is a very joyous occasion, but for older women, it can be very dangerous; and you'd better do it at our hospital...." They're just out and out selling through fear, so you learn how to put that "uh oh" in your voice. You use a premise to try and make it more interesting or do some-thing that somebody else is not going to do.
R.A.P.: There are many talented people out there making the big bucks without a "ballsy" voice. Is there a fairly large market for people with the "lighter" voices?
Bob: Absolutely. With a few exceptions, most voice-over actors whose incomes exceed a million dollars a year would be laughed at at a local radio station. Their voices just wouldn't qualify to go on the air. If you're blessed with a good voice, that's about forty percent of it; but sixty percent of it is being able to do with it what the copy demands. Most of the big guys have very weak voices. Dick Orkin, who is one of the best, has a very comic voice. It's a big voice, but it's certainly not a radio personality voice. Other examples are Mason Adams and Lloyd Bridges who both do a lot of work.
A lot of the big voices like Charlie Van Dyke and John Wells have a terrific market doing promos for television and radio stations. Van Dyke does the voice work for some thirty TV stations around the country. Wells has at least ten that I know of. They both have this "march of time" type of delivery and a world of potential with that kind of voice.
Good voice-over people who work make six figures. Because the dollars are good, there are a lot of people competing for it; but like most everything else, there's a clique that usually rules every market. That brings to mind another opportunity, and that's phone patch.
Phone patch enables me to be a voice in Wichita, Kansas, in Bethesda, Maryland, and in Atlanta without leaving Dallas. Of course, you have to promote yourself in that city. It works like this. In Dallas, there are probably twenty voices that do it all, and people get tired of those twenty voices. The same is going on in Kansas City, or St. Louis, or Atlanta. If you can promote yourself in that city and get a producer to cast you, he doesn't have to take a plane to your city or fly you in. You simply go to a local studio with his copy which he has faxed you. All the studios now are set up for phone patch which electronically enhances the telephone so he can hear, in almost broadcast quality, what you're doing. He can sit in his easy chair, wherever he is, and direct a session into the engineer's headphones and the voice talent's headphones. You can fax me copy at 4:30 today, and I'll go to a studio and do it with you directing the session by phone patch. Then I'll Fed Express it to you, and you'll have the finished product on your desk by 10:30 the next morning.
This has really opened the world to voice-over people because we can work in other markets and not wear out our own market. Phone patch is now almost the majority of my work.
R.A.P.: Most of our readers are people who have been or are still on the air at a radio station. Is this experience as a disc jockey an advantage or disadvantage to them in the voice-over business?
Bob: It's an advantage, of course, because we try to gather things for our arsenal, and the "announcer" delivery is something you want to have in your arsenal. I have it. Sometimes you're asked to read some high energy retail stuff, and you want to be able to do that. But you need to learn some other things, and most guys on the air can do that. The thing they have to do is give up their voice. That voice doesn't go away, but for people who are trained on the air, that voice is a great crutch, and they're reluctant to give it up. To learn the techniques of voice-over, you've got to forget about voice. If you will forget about it and develop the techniques, then you become the chameleon who can change with the copy.
Where we operate, really, is way up in our throats. I call it a half-voice. It's the voice you use when you pray or when you make love. It's a very intimate thing way up in the top of your throat. Some announcers like to do it out of their chest and project a little more. Again, it's like film technique, and you have to take it inward. Tune in a movie and listen to where the actors are speaking from. They're all talking from their half-voice because that's the first thing they teach you in Film Acting 101.
R.A.P.: In your workshop, you cover several different techniques utilized in radio and television commercials. What are these techniques?
Bob: You must analyze the script and know what the thirty-second playwright had in mind. One of the things you do when analyzing the script is read the last sentence because you've got to know how the story comes out in order to figure out how to get there. Most commercials are formulized as a romance novel or a one act play. There's an attention getter to grab the listener's ear. There's the first mention of the product's name which they want you to say in a way that indicates what kind of a product it is. For example, Trans Am is a very macho thing, so it's pronounced in a very macho voice. On the other hand, Johnson's Baby Powder is a very nice, soft, babyish type product.
The second thing I get into, as I mentioned earlier, is establishing a premise: Who am I? Who's the audience? What's the objective?
We get into how to punch, color, and flow. When you say punch, most people would interpret that as leaning on a word, but there are a dozen ways to punch. You can say the word softer like John Houseman on the spot that says, "They did it the old fashioned way. They EARNED it." He whispered "earned" to punch it. If you just lean on a word to punch it, that might get you through a thirty second spot, but it won't get you through a ten minute industrial narration. It gets too boring if you punch the same way every time.
We get into coloring words and making the copy flow to make it seem like a kid's adventure story. We get into how to whisper, taste, and smile. You use that a lot in food products and in emo-tional material. Emotional material particularly calls for the whisper technique, and I don't mean necessarily whisper. You punch-whisper like John Houseman did on the spot I mentioned, and you do something provocative to a word to indicate taste. If it's humorous material, if you just physically smile, it'll sound like you're smiling.
Making it real is what you do with industrial stuff. We get into practicing how to not manipulate the words, but how to let the words manipulate you. Turn off all manipulation, read the material, and let us know how you feel about it by letting the words make you sad, or happy, or patriotic, or pompous, or whatever the material calls for. Let the words speak to you.
R.A.P.: What are some key elements to a good demo?
Bob: I advise people not to try and entertain. Put the very best thing you have number one, the second best thing you have number two, the third best number three, and so on, counting on the fact that the casting person is not going to sit there and listen to the entire two or three minutes of your demo. Hit them quick with what you do. They'll stay with you as long as they're hearing new, fresh stuff. If you do a lot of things, they'll listen. That's the idea of taking workshops, to develop yourself so you can do a lot of different things, the retail sell, the compassionate stuff, the funny stuff, etc.. They'll listen as long as there's fresh stuff, but when they hear three things in a row that are the same, they'll hit the rewind button and go to something else because they're busy.
People have a notion of what should be on a demo tape, and I think nothing should be on a demo tape except what you do well. A lot of people do character voices. I do character voices, but I montage them last on my tape because that's not the strongest thing I do. The thing that has the most call is the spokesman, and I try to put that stuff first on my tape. But if a guy does character voices and that's stronger than the other stuff, he might as well lead off with the character voices, but not imitations because nobody casts imitations. They cast character voices. Nobody wants Cagney and Stewart and John Wayne anymore.
R.A.P.: Are talent agents necessary?
Bob: Yea, they are. I have a mailing list, which is a very important thing to have. I jealously guard this list and try to keep it up to date because these are my customers. I have eighteen pages with about thirty companies per page, and that's my primary customer list in Texas including Dallas and Houston. All these people, when they want something, they don't call the individual talent. They call the agents and say, "I want a forty year old Albino spokesman" or something. The agents submit people who fit what the casting people want. So you really do have to go through an agent, but they don't promote you. They don't take you around and sell you. I really expect three things from an agent, and I have four agents. I just expect them to submit me for what I qualify, collect my money, and pay me on time. All of the promotion of myself, I do myself. I just did a mailer with Jerry Houston, another voice talent in town, to promote phone patch. We sent out five hundred sort of humorous pamphlets promoting phone patch outside of Dallas, and we've gotten some results on it.
R.A.P.: Jerry Houston used to be a Production Director in Dallas.
Bob: That's right. There's a guy we had to brow beat to get him in the business. At the time, he was a Production Director for KAAM-AM, and he said, "No, no. My bag is production." We finally got him to make a demo tape, and he's well into six figures now.
R.A.P.: What can a person do to make a good impression at an audition?
Bob: Just handle it on a very business-like level. Don't try to act silly. A lot of people do that just out of nervousness. They go to an audition, and they're so bloody nervous they have to hide it by acting silly and telling jokes. These people who are casting voice people are busy. They really just want you in there to do your lines and leave. I would advise just to go and be very pleasant. Just as if you were selling Fuller brushes, smile and shake hands with the person. Hopefully, you will have had time to go over your lines before you get before the caster. Do your lines. Try to get a reading as to whether they liked them, and if you get that you bombed, then ask if you can do it again. If they allow you to, do it again. Then shake hands again, thank them, and leave.
R.A.P.: What other ideas on marketing yourself can you give us aside from the mailing list you mentioned?
Bob: You need some basic tools. You need your demo tape. If you do industrial narration, you need two demo tapes. If you do character voices, three demo tapes. I wouldn't try to put them all on one because when people are casting, they're casting one or the other, not all. Keep your demo tapes up to date and keep them well packaged. You're up against some of the best people in the business, and the packaging is very, very important. I'm told by successful people that your packaging should give an indication of what they can expect when they listen to the tape. I've looked as some packaging by Lorenzo Music, who is a top national talent out of LA, and all of his packaging is Crayola kid stuff and fun, and that's what he does. He's the voice of Garfield the Cat and other "humor" stuff. With all that Crayola fun packaging, you pick it up and automatically your mind is set on the fact that you're going to hear something funny. And you do.
In addition to the demo tape, you need a head shot. People have asked, "Why on earth do I need a head shot if I'm in the voice business?" The reason is that most agents don't know anything about voice. The only inkling they have that you're a voice talent is when you get jobs and are making money for them. Otherwise, they don't really know the voice business. There are very, very few of them who do, in this part of the country anyway. So they will take you according to your head shot. They will look at it and decide that they don't have very many of you in their stable, and so they want you in there. And if you do voice stuff, great.
Most agents still pay most attention to the on-camera or picture people, and a very interesting thing happened recently. The local SAG/AFTRA office raised the dues not long ago, and they took a poll to find out who the top money makers in the local area were so they could do a little PR work in announcing that they were going to raise the dues severely. Of the top thirty volume people in Dallas, twenty-eight of them were "voice only" people. The twenty-ninth guy was Don Meredith who keeps his membership here. Number thirty was the lady who plays Lulabell on Hee Haw and keeps her membership here. There were zero picture people in the top thirty aside from these two. They were all voice people. BUT, agents still look for faces and not voices.
R.A.P.: Are you aware of any "voice only" agents in the Dallas area?
Bob: No, I'm not. There are some on either coast though, and it would be a great idea if we had one here. I think the reason we don't is that they would have to live, if they were voice only, on ten percent; whereas, if they had models and print people, that's thirty percent money. If an agent bills a million dollars of just voice business, their cut is only a hundred thousand. When you start paying the rent and four or five salaries and the FICA and withholding, a hundred thousand doesn't go very far. There's also the limitation of the amount of voice talent outside either coast.
R.A.P.: What is one of the most asked questions in your workshop, and what's your answer?
Bob: Probably how you make money, and how you get started. I spend the last hour of the workshop in an hour called, "The Business of the Business." We try to get into how to get started and how to market yourself. It's very difficult because in New York or LA or Houston or Tyler, Texas, a little clique rules the town, and you just fight like hell to get into that clique because the dollars are big. If you're lucky enough to fight your way in, and people do all the time, then you're king of the mountain, and somebody else is going to have to come after you.
I was once in an awful movie called "The Bermuda Triangle." If you remember it, it had an on-camera narrator narrating stories of some of the things that had happened in the Bermuda Triangle. I met this narrator in a bar one night during the shooting, and he said it was very unusual for him to do a movie because he was primarily a voice guy in LA. He said, "I'm not one of the elite members of the clique. I've always dwelt on the periphery of the really big guys in LA." I said, "Well, if it's not too personal, what can a guy who dwells on the periphery of the big guys expect to make?" He was actually apologetic when he said, "I've never been able to make over two hundred and fifty thousand a year. I just seem to be stuck on that figure." I thought, "Poor baby."
That's how lucrative the business is out there, and that's why big name actors are trying to get into the voice business now. And I say that by way of showing that it's so lucrative that the top people just formulate the clique, and it's tough to fight your way in.
So, knowing that, a novice has to polish his craft, so when he is listened to, he'll be paid attention to. Then he has to have an offense. For your offense you first get all your tools together, your demos, your head shots, etc.. Then, I suggest, you go after the audio studios because these people will probably listen to you. People from out of town will call engineers at audio studios, and, not wanting to go through a day of casting and all of that, they'll usually say, "Why don't you just pick out two or three for me to listen to." If you've made yourself known to the audio engineer, and he likes you and trusts your tape, then he'll recommend you.
The second line of offense is usually the production studios because these people must keep up with different faces, and again, they're looking for faces, not voices; but if you can sell them your face, then you can say, "By the way, I do voice-over work too." Then leave them a tape, and hopefully, they'll listen to it.
The third line of offense, ad agencies, you can just forget because you can't get to them. They're busy people, and they don't want to see you until time to do a casting, and then they'll go through agents. So you spend a lot of time with your agent. If your agent is going to be responsible for selling you, he or she has got to know what you do, and it's amazing, but a lot of people are too timid to get in and show an agent all of the various things they do. Therefore, they miss out on an awful lot of business.
And then you compliment all of that with mailers. When I got started, I tried to do at least one mailer every month to everybody. You send them things like Rolodex cards and tapes, and instead of sending it all at once, you space it out so they can receive something from you often. It works just like the percentage in direct mail. They say the first direct mail piece, no matter how good, does a very small amount of good. Then the first follow-up improves the potential.
R.A.P.: What's the secret to landing that big national spot?
Bob: Pray a lot. Light candles. You know, it's just dumb luck. It really is. I have gone up for a national that really suits what I do best and just psyched myself up and nailed the audition and didn't even get a call back. Other times, I've gone out when I'm tired, read a youth market spot for which I'm not suitable, and they call and say, "Hey, you got it! It's a Pepsi!" Why?! You just never know, but the thing is, every time you get a national that plays all markets or a lot of markets, especially if it goes beyond thirteen weeks, you can just count on every national making you twenty thou-sand that year. So you get four, five, six of those a year, and you don't have to do much more. But you do have to be very, very lucky. There's no secret except to make people like you. You're a salesperson, and I guess you keep your Fuller Brush case full and up to date, and you smile at people and make them like you.
R.A.P.: When you listen to Dallas radio, what one thing do you most hear voice talent doing wrong?
Bob: I hear the directors doing wrong things. You have to assume the voice guy or girl is doing what they're told. You go to your ad agency, and in many cases -- the only exceptions being let's say the top four agencies here in Dallas --your director is almost an entry level position at the ad agency. That's not the way it should be, but in many cases, that's the way it is. These people really don't understand what voice people do or can do. It never occurs to them that a voice person can do two things. They're thinking in terms of announcers. So many times the voice talent is either under or over directed. It's the directors who are weak in many cases, not the voice people. The voice people, for the most part, just do what they're told.
R.A.P.: Is there much money in the voice business in the small and medium markets?
Bob: No, not really. In Texas, you have to come to Houston or Dallas. There is some business in Austin, but it's at a pretty reduced rate. In Austin and San Antonio, if you get to where you're really crankin' out the business there, then you come to Dallas and Houston where you can make some money. And you have to work in all those cities. I have agents in Austin, Houston, Dallas, and Little Rock, Arkansas. The Little Rock person covers the Memphis/Nashville area. You can't stay in just one city, or you'll limit your horizons.
R.A.P.: How much can someone who is only moderately successful expect to make in their early years?
Bob: If you're moderately successful, if you're not doing another job and you're concentrating only on the voice-over work, easily fifty to sixty thousand. If you crack the clique, you're in six figures. There are five hundred plus members of the SAG/AFTRA union in Dallas, and it would be nice to think that they're all making good dough, but they're not. There are about twenty or twenty-five people in town making good money. But, in LA, there's probably five thousand making the money. Then again, there's probably five hundred thousand members of SAG/AFTRA. The ratios hold up the same no matter what city you're in.
R.A.P.: Do you make your workshop available to people outside the Texas area?
Bob: Oh, sure.
R.A.P.: How often do you do the workshop?
Bob: I do about four a year in Dallas and about three a year in Houston, sometimes one in Austin. There's a lady named Maurice Tobias who comes through twice a year, and I always take her workshop. People have said, "Gosh, you're so experienced. Can you really learn anything?" I pay a hundred and fifty bucks for her workshop, and if I learn two things I think, "Good Lord, a hundred fifty bucks! That's what you get for one radio spot!" If I learn two things that make me better, it's worth ten times that much money, and I always manage to learn some things from Tobias' class.
My next workshop will be sometime in the summer through the agent, Elite Dallas. I never know exactly when. When people call me, I just save their names, and when I get five or six names, I call the agent and say, "Schedule something within the next month." I only take ten to a workshop. It gets too boring for the students otherwise. Most of the workshop consists of the students reading. It's not so much them listening to me, and there's an element of boredom there when you have to sit and listen to nine other people read before you get to hear yourself.
R.A.P.: What have you done on national TV or radio that our readers can watch and listen for?
Bob: One of the things I was very proud of was the "Lone Star" series on PBS. It was an eight hour mini-series on Texas that won some awards. I narrated that, but I don't know if it's still on. I also did something called "The Desert War: A Rock-umentary" for some cable operator a couple of weeks ago. I don't know where it's going to play, but I play a Ted Knight character reporting on the Desert War, and they followed the entire war through the eyes of this anchor team. They had a very sensible female anchor, then this very pompous, blustery Ted Knight type character. Then they would tie it into a rock video. It's going to be a two hour thing on cable, but I don't know where.
As far as national radio, I did jillions of the old "Aim High Air Force" things. There's BC Headache powders. I'm still doing Long John Silver voice-over on TV. I did some Subaru national TV voice-over. If they ever hear the Bob Larson mini-series, wherever that is, that's me.