Apple's New Final Cut Pro approved by Team Coco

Conan O'Brien's video team has some fun with Apple's latest version of their video editing software, Final Cut Pro.

We use the previous version of FCP and Adobe Premiere at SunSpots. Think we might be holding off for a bit with this upgrade from Apple. We're far from Apple bashers. We use Macs with Protools in our recording studios and Macs everywhere else in the offices in Florida, near Orlando and North Carolina, near Asheville.

Barney visits SunSpots Asheville Studios

Voiceover Actor and Puppeteer Brad Abrell in Asheville

Brad Abrell, who's recently been voicing commercials for Fruity Pebbles as the voice of Barney Rubble, was working from SunSpots Productions ISDN Recording Studios near Asheville, NC today.

Here's Brad voicing as Barney Rubble:

And a sampling of Brad's on-camera work:

You've also seen Brad on Curb Your Enthusiasm and heard his voice in video games SpongeBob Squarepants, Medal of Honor, Law and Order and many others.

SunSpots ISDN Studios

We'd like to thank Brad for using SunSpots Productions for his ISDN studio session. If you're a voice actor visiting Western North Carolina and the Asheville area or if you're vacationing in Central Florida and Orlando doing Disney, Universal, Sea World and the other attractions, we invite you to SunSpots Productions to keep up with your voiceover work.

SunSpots Productions is the #1 licensed voice talent agency and creative audio production facility in the world. We combine professional voiceover talent with extraordinary audio production in all languages. Contact us for your next session at 800.355.SPOTS(7768).

Audio Production Tip

I was watching a local tv commercial the other night featuring two on-camera talent selling cars with a stop watch sound effect ticking away in the background.  It's the commercial equivalent of the vuvuzela. As we all know, a ticking stopwatch means savings people, big savings and the bigger the stopwatch the bigger the savings. Well at least that's the logic in place here. This stop watch has been turned to "11".

Time to invoke a creative audio production tip.

Audio Production #1: Let the voiceover be the voice OVER not the voice UNDER.

Creative audio production can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Please, for safety's sake and your client's happiness contact professional production companies like SunSpots Productions™. You'll be glad you did. (I thought 60 Minutes owned the stop watch in the background franchise anyway.)

Bambi visits SunSpots near Asheville

The wildlife hits just keep on coming. Looks like it's lunchtime in the animal world too. Around noon today a large deer visited SunSpots NC recording studios property near Asheville. We've got a heavy producing apple tree that the deer are beginning to visit every other day. Here's our latest visitor:



Have any wildlife where you work? (Other than that creepy guy with the weird hair at the water cooler.)

And as always if you're searching for professional voice talent, fully produced, supervised and directed recording sessions and creative audio production in most languages please visit SunSpots Productions.

What wild beast will show up next?!

Star Wars Weekends Video

I'm in a postin' mood today. I found this video in the vaults that Zak Miller produced for Disney's Star Wars Weekends. He did all the audio post at SunSpots FL studio. Tom Cassidy voices, but I think they chose James K. Flynn for the final mix. It's a couple years old and ran on tv and I remember seeing one run at a theater at Downtown Disney one night. Just a side note on Downtown Disney; if you love movies and great audio go the AMC theaters there. Enormous, digital screens and amazing audio. Only downside is the pricing.

It takes a moment to load. Crank up your audio for this video. As always, Zak gave the audio a creative smackdown and it sounds great!




Hey Zak, do you remember what effects you used for the mouse ears opening on the tower? Sounds like some old chains being pulled or something.

Tom

Happy Anniversary Google!

Google, no longer just "search engine" Google, is celebrating their 10th anniversary this week. Can you believe it's been 10 years? Can you believe what it was like BEFORE Google hit the web? Can you believe so many of us passed up buying Google stock at $80 a share? lol I did on that one. Thought they wouldn't be around long. OUCH!

What a massive player and global powerhouse they've become. They stuck with their dreams, focused on excellence and became much more than just successful. Their name even became a verb!

I wonder how so many of us would never be found without Google being on the web. A few years ago, after a technically savvy employee left us, we were absolutely lost in Google's results. We were ranking in the 800's or worse.

Through three years of effort we (SunSpots Productions) now show up at least in the Top 20 results in Google's search engine or mostly on their front page. For example search for "voice talent agent", "spanish voice talent", "creative audio production", "voice talent", "audio production", "asheville voice talent", "orlando voice talent" and there we are on the front page or number one out of millions of pages. It was all done while wearing a white hat too! (SEO peeps know what I mean.)

So thank you and congratulations Google! You've inspired and changed our world. I hope the next 10 are full of positive innovations and useful products for us all.