Hello and Happy…Mid-June? Is that right? Where the hell did the rest of 2014 go?
To continue the celebaration of “June is Audio Book Month”, this week I’m giving away one free download of the audiobook “The Science of Battlestar Galactica” by Patrick Di Justo and Kevin Grazier. All you have to do is comment on this blog entry. The first one to comment wins! BTW you need to have an Audible or Amazon account to download the audiobook. Good luck!
If you recall, I got a strange phone call recently from a supposed potential client. The one I got a few days later was even stranger!
So last week the phone rings and this time it’s a lady. Like the previous caller, she didn’t introduce herself or tell me the name of the company she works for. She says she found me on a casting website and wanted to know how much I charge for doing some work with a British accent. I said I’d need more information before I could give her an accurate quote and asked her what the genre & usage of the project is. She said it would be a phone call. I asked her if it’s a Message-On-Hold and she said no it would be a conversation. I asked if it’s an educational project of some kind and she said no I would be on the phone live with other people.
After asking some more clarifying questions, it turns out that she wants me to pretend to be a British professor talking to real parents and tell them how well their daughter is doing at school. Yes, you heard me right.
I asked of that was legal and she in turn asked me if I was willing to lie. I said absolutely not and she said that was what she needed to know and hung up.
I talked to my lawyer and explained what happened. He said I made the right choice in not participating in this scheme. He said that the lying part wasn’t illegal, but it’s the intent of the phone call that made it questionable. If this was just a friend of the student who was looking for a grownup to lie about her grades it would be shady, but legal. However, if this was a scheme to get money from the parents for use other than paying tuition while the kid is doing whatever in New York (the call came from a number in New York), then it would be fraud. Either way, I wanted no part of it!
TIP OF THE WEEK: Here’s the thing that really cheeses me off about both phone calls. Each of them was hoping I would share their ethics (bottom-feeder and liar, respectively), and since I don’t, I’m of no use to them. That means there are enough voice talents out there who will work on the cheap and/or lie to perpetuate these types of behavior.
That makes me a sad panda.
It also makes me wonder: if I got those same phone calls when I was still struggling, would I have taken the “lying” job? Would you?
It also gives me hope. Hope in knowing that you can be ethical in the voiceover industry and still succeed. That you don’t have to work for the lowest bidder or participate in potential fraud to ply your trade.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
Good character is like good soup; it’s made at home. Herm Edwards
STUFF!: For those of you who aren’t aware; I’m a HUGE NBA fan. My favorite team is the New York Knicks and boy have they been hard to root for over the past ten years. As we speak they have no cap space (which means they can’t sign free agents) and they have no draft picks (which means they can’t get new players from college or abroad). They have behaved themselves into an untenable position. The San Antonio Spurs, who is my favorite Western Conference team, just won their fifth NBA Championship in the last 15 years. They have behaved themselves into becoming one of the all-time great basketball franchises. It’s amazing where behavior can take you, ay?
From Tom Dheere’s apartment, this is Tom Dheere: GKN News…