Raul Aldana

In 1987, inspired by the exploits of my hero Bruce Springsteen, who five years earlier had released his album “Nebraska” – produced on a 4-track cassette recorder: the famous Tascam 144 – I bought Tascam’s “Porta Two”, which was an improved version of “The Boss” mystical recorder. I started playing around with it and then producing multitrack recordings of some quality from my home. I made music and voiceover demos and, in fact, even made a radio show that way, but I was still far from having producers accept a home recording. They wouldn’t even accept castings recorded in this way.

A short time passed, and we started digitizing. Goodbye, tapes – long live Pro Tools! And we all know how the story went on. Digital technology, which was prohibitively expensive in the beginning, became more democratic, and we started to set up our home studios, and we all became true Alan Parsons. Remote connection with elitist ISDN codecs arrived, but this was superseded by Source Connect and more economical options such as ipDTL, ConnectionOpen and, if not, at least Skype. Long live connectivity! But… what about video synchronization for dubbing? One small problem: latency. During my last year at Disney, I supervised my projects using Blue Jeans, the video conference system, connecting the studio console to the computer to listen to my actors’ performances in real-time, and also supervising the dialogue editing. But the video component was still missing. Latency! That’s when someone told me about a crazy method for recording on the cloud. What? Recording using my browser with a USB microphone? Ha!

The dubbing industry, I’ve said it before, is an industry at odds with itself and reluctant to change.

The dubbing industry, I’ve said it before, is an industry at odds with itself and reluctant to change. After I departed from Disney, I found myself face with that dilemma and my own lack of appetite for change. Then that crazy idea from months before came back to me, now with a job proposal, and I fell in love with the possibility of starting the change by combining innovation and experience. Finally, a platform that allowed us to connect in real-time with the director to record lip-sync projects with quality, and without latency: ZOODubs. I started inviting the best and most avant-garde colleagues I knew, and they initiated the change. ZOODubs represents the democratization of dubbing also, because after meeting some technical requirements and passing some simple tests, the actors get in touch with the best dubbing directors in different languages without having to go through the long period of visiting studios to get a chance to record. Today I record with my best talents regardless of their physical location, opening the doors that previously were not available to actors living outside the big cities where the industry traditionally operates. Of course, there were (and still are) those who do not believe in things like that (such a thing).

Today the dubbing industry is living a historic moment thanks to the amount of content available. In the face of the current pandemic, the industry came to standstill, and content producers and distributors began to focus their attention on dubbing done at a distance. The actors and directors who believed in and developed this option have not stopped working, and today they are recording all day every day. Other content localization companies are trying to develop their own platforms, and that benefits all of us voice talents and invites us to change, giving us options for work in the future and in these times of involuntary isolation. If you want to approach ZOO Digital, follow this link: https://www.zoodigital.com/work-with-zoo/voice-talent

And yes! I still have my “Porta Two” in the glass cabinet where I keep all the gadgets that made me who I am.

 

By: Raul Aldana
Voiceover Artist, Director and Casting Director

Back in the ’90s, we often had to run from one studio to another at opposite ends of the city to get to our next session -quite a feat when you had more than three recording sessions in one day. Happy times! Once, on a morning call, I met a fellow voiceover known for his arrogance and deliberate tardiness. The producer, a nice and very talented man who could, on occasion, be over-zealous in his attention to detail, took his time to decide what he wanted for his commercial. Nevertheless, in the end we were all satisfied. And I ran, like everyone else, to the next session. I just managed to arrive there on time.

The producer for the second session was a brilliant woman who projected great competence whenever she conducted a recording. She was already in the control room, ready to go…but we had to wait for another artist yet to arrive, so she apologized several times to the engineer and I for this delay.

Finally, more than an hour later, the second artist casually sauntered into the studio. Oh, surprise – it was the same artist with whom I had recorded the early morning session! He didn’t notice that I was already there, and on greeting the producer, he began to excuse his delay by bitching about the session we had done together a couple of hours earlier. He complained bitterly that the producer for that session had no idea what he was doing.

The expression on the second producer’s face changed as she listened to these allegations. A tense silence ensued. She settled down on her chair, leant her elbows on the desk, and directed her gaze towards the booth, where I was, to exchange a glance with me. Then, in a dry tone, she replied: “I can see why yesterday when my husband and I were preparing our recordings for today, he warned me not to call you for this project because you had to record for him too.” At that moment, the artist finally realised that I was already there, cringing in embarrassment on his behalf. The magnitude of his screw-up then dawned on him. The producer he had just bitched about was the husband of the producer he had just forced to wait so long! Crash… Bang… Boom…!

The people who hire you as a voice talent, be it directors, producers or creatives, place their trust in you, but they don’t always know what they want in advance. Nor do they have to. They hire you because you are a professional with sufficient talent to interpret what they seek for their project. Yes, it can be frustrating to be in a studio sometimes with ten people who have come to supervise the recording, but contradict each other’s direction and seem only concerned with their laptop and the WIFI password. But they are still your clients, and you are the expert who has to show that they’re not paying you for the 30 seconds that the commercial you are recording lasts for, but for your years of experience and your professional attitude instead.

When someone approaches me to offer their services while criticizing someone else, they are automatically disqualifying themselves. Do not speak ill of anyone. Don’t knock the work of others in front of anyone. Be on time. Let your work speak for you!

Your behaviour with a client can determine whether they’ll consider you for their next project or recommend you to other clients. When someone approaches me to offer their services while criticizing someone else, they are automatically disqualifying themselves. Do not speak ill of anyone. Don’t knock the work of others in front of anyone. Be on time. Let your work speak for you!

By the way, the two producers are still married, and I still record for both of them more than 20 years after that infamous incident. Every time we meet, they laugh when they remember that artist and his embarrassing act of professional suicide.

 

By: Raul Aldana
Voiceover Artist, Director and Casting Director

Being able to make a living out of what you love is one of the highest privileges anyone can have. When you love your job, it ceases to be a job: it’s a pleasure. However, when people ask me what’s the worst job I’ve ever had (which is not the same thing as the worst job I’ve ever done!), I answer without hesitation that it was the 8-10 a.m. announcer shift at 99.3 FM in Mexico City. That was pure torture!!! Mexico’s tequila effect had spread around the world, and the wonderfully irreverent radio show I hosted for years with great success came off the air because the network decided to deal with the financial crisis by changing the station’s format and theme. So, the owners and executives thought it convenient to recruit me to help boost the infamous “Digital 99”, a station they had recently purchased. It was like leaving the best private school to get into the worst and most mediocre public school. My loyalty and gratitude to mentors and employers made me endure the lack of leadership and the immaturity of the bullies that controlled the station for five months. At that point, I announced – to general amazement- that I was leaving in thirty days. I never turned back – I was never late, I never missed a show, I even boosted my ratings, and I fulfilled all my obligations! 

Today I celebrate the times I’ve stumbled throughout my career because they have taught me that the worst job of all is one where we do not give ourselves the chance to perform to our highest potential or the job that we accept without really wanting to. Increasing specialization in the voice business means that sometimes we are typecast into a single type of projects or characters either by our customers, our agents or by our own fears

In Europe and Latin America, actors and broadcasters do not specialize in a single field; we do dubbing, commercials, storytelling, video games, radio and live events. Boldness allows us to discover new talents within ourselves! That doesn’t mean we’re experts in everything, but it’s one of the challenges our profession poses to us. The market is increasingly competitive worldwide, and we must face it with versatility and professionalism. Preparation is the best cover letter. Be available, be punctual, respect everyone’s work, watch and learn, engage and perform. Tackle every job you do with the same excitement and commitment you displayed the first time. That’s the best job you can ever have!

Our profession always takes us by the hand with technology and its evolution. My generation has seen bricks turn into smartphones; smiles into emojis, mass media into personal media, rock stars into YouTubers and YouTubers into rock stars, bullies into presidents and the internet and its prodigal children – the social networks – into true oracles. In that revolution, or rather that intoxicating “techno-market-sociological” binge, social networks have gradually brought us closer to those from whom we thought we were distant. We saturate our space with “friends” and “followers”, and we are at the mercy of their acceptance in a passive-aggressive relationship in an environment that makes us feel we are celebrities; “… they entangle us in an eternal swirl of the self and lead us to the self-promotion of our own notions”, as the great philosopher Byung-Chul Han says. 

 “Wounds are the flipside of selfies…,” says Byung-Chul Han, “… selfie addiction has nothing to do with a healthy love of self. It is nothing but the parading of a narcissistic self that has been left alone.” 

When I have the opportunity to be in personal contact with followers, classmates or my students. The competition in our trade has become ferocious, and that has made us reach to industry leaders. We go to conferences, we support each other, and we are creating a community. That is the positive side of the free interconnection of social networks. “Building a support network can be a tool to increase confidence to shine,” says the mega-talented Camila Peroni, who does not hesitate to offer help to her colleagues. Unfortunately, the networks caught many colleagues in an overflowing ego utopia, and we see them acting as teenagers on Spring Break. They obsessively publish selfies, sacrifice real friendships for the sake of a few “likes” and seem to float in the clouds like true redeemers.

One question they ask me is, Are you on Instagram? In various voice conferences, I have heard and learned the importance of being connected and up to date on social networks, and I know that we all use them as a strategy to boost our careers. But I worry that in these events there’s no advice to new talents to be prepared, to never stop studying and to remember that there is always something to learn to improve our performance in front of the microphone or on stage. As the craziest and best of my teachers said: “… it takes the same effort to get a job whether you’re well prepared or poorly prepared”. The difference, I think, is that the preparation will give us more resilience. There are no shortcuts, and there are many obstacles. This is what we must teach the new generations.

If you are starting your career, study and, if you already do, study some more. Instant web information is not necessarily knowledge. Learn different acting techniques, attend seminars and workshops, read, vocalize, listen to others and listen to yourself, ask your peers for help and pay it back by helping others. Never stop learning. Success, money, fame and survivability are the outcome of doing our job well.