A Message to the Aspiring Arab Talents

The voiceover business has been attracting talents lately in the Arab region like never before. People are excited, they want to discover, and the industry seems lucrative to many.
They open the TV or radio, they listen to ads, they get impressed, they notice recurring voices in some ads..they think “wow..I want to be as successful as these voices!”

I totally understand how new voiceover artists think about this because I was in their shoes one day. I thought that success in voiceover business meant to have your work aired on radio or TV. But this is a very shallow definition of success to be honest.
Voiceover as an industry has much broader aspects and includes many genres. If you have been following many of the webinars that have been carried out lately by many of the industry leaders on voiceover, they have all agreed that commercial voiceover resembles 5% of the whole industry in the US market. I understand that the middle eastern market might be different that the US market and yet not as developed as some other markets but if you are going to estimate the percentage of the commercial work in the middle eastern market compared to all other genres, you might estimate it at 30% maybe. I understand that there is no specific reference for me to guess other than the feedback I receive from all other talents, but this might be true to a large extent.

If you want to be in the industry and you want to be there for the long run, you will need to work on other large projects like e-learning, corporate narration, video games, etc. These large projects are what you need to sustain in a business like voiceover as they pay more due to their size and the effort needed to accomplish them. The broadcast work might do you a favor by making your voice known and help your personal brand grow faster but….it is a limited side of the industry.

So again, if you are looking for sustainability, look for bigger and longer projects. Commercial work is cool, but it doesn’t mean success…success is sustainability… or at least it is so for many voiceover artists around the globe who are considering voiceover to be their career.

A Finger Lickin’ Good Experience!

I am happy to announce that I performed the voiceover for the latest KFC campaign in Egypt. And as I usually do, I will try to share my experience with this project to help out all the aspiring voiceover talents out there. so I will assume that I was interviewed by one of these aspiring talents and I will share the experience in the form of Q&A’s.

So how did you land this job?

Well, I’ve landed this job through THE ARABIC VOICE studios in Egypt which is one of the leading voice production and localization agencies in the region. I am already one of the talents in their voice bank and my voice was sent among several other voices while they were casting for the ad and accordingly the client chose me.

Some new talents like me might find it difficult to reach out different studios and casting agencies, so what do you think about that?

Is there anything in life that is not difficult? Just like any job, voiceover needs a huge amount of work and effort and especially in marketing your voice. I knew Ahmed who is the founder of the ARABIC VOICE studios 5 years ago while recording a project for an advertising agency and since then we have worked together in many projects. I always advise young talents to go out and get to know people, seek different opportunities to record in different places and with different sound engineers. This is crucial to gain experience and knowledge and to market yourself as a voice talent. I understand that due to the current circumstances of the Corona Virus pandemic it is not recommended to do so, but you have to keep that in mind once you get to start meeting others more regularly. Off course being present digitally is important but when you are in a specific market, you need to play by its rules. In the Egyptian market in specific, people prefer physical meetings and getting to know everyone in person not just virtually. I get really frustrated when I see aspiring young talents channeling their energies towards mastering their home studios while they need to be out there gaining experience and showing people their skills. I can assure you that working in different studios have benefited me a lot in terms of gaining experience and marketing my voice than trying to master my home recording. So you need to exist digitally and on ground, it is a huge amount of work but it is work at the end that you need to do to be able to compete.

So how was the session tell us more?

Well, the session was directed online through the agency that sent the project to Ahmed, which is one of the biggest agencies globally but through its branch in Dubai.
First they showed us the ad to get the feel of it and what is required, then the creative director explained what needs to be done in terms of the performance since there are different characters in the ad. I performed the guy won the auction and also performed the call for action line at the end of the ad. We gave them different performances according to their direction and I am glad that we were able to give them what they were looking for at the end. What caught my attention is the insistence of the creative director to have the word ” Kentucky” spelled like the Egyptians do and not as it is pronounced in English for example. His explanations was that he needs to give buyers the feeling that this is your Kentucky brand that you buy from every week and it doesn’t look or sound unfamiliar to you, because being unfamiliar is scary and could create a hidden barrier between the brand and the buyer.

Finally, I hope that this short interview has provided the aspiring talents with some insights that would help them in their voiceover journey. Good luck fellow Artists!

Iron Harvest” – A New Video Game in my Voiceover Portfolio

I have always been into videogaming since I was a young kid and the first device that I have ever owned was a Nintendo Family Computer Console. It had a really cool Ninja Turtles game and of course the super famous Captain Tsubasa. Later I owned a Sega Mega Drive 2 which had the super cool Sonic the hedgehog game with its dazzling colors and exciting sound effects. I think this was a huge leap in the industry as graphics became sharper and sounds became more natural. Then came the revolution of the Playstation 1. The games became more realistic than ever, sounds became real and the graphics were insanely great. I still remember smackdown 2 for example and how you could control every move of the famous wrestlers like the the rock, underdaker and steve Austin. I think since then if I am not mistaken, Voiceover became a crucial part of the gaming to do the different characters and the cinematic scenes inside the game. I still remember the opening scene of Driver2 game on ps1 with the music and the conversations. It was breath taking! Something like Scorsese’s movies!

If you have told me back then that I would take part of this super entertaining industry as a voiceover artist, I wouldn’t have believed you. But today I am proud to announce that I have participated in my second big gaming release which is “Iron Harvest” After my first role in the blockbuster game “Shadow of the Tomb Raider”

My role in the “Shadow of the tomb raider” the Arabic version wasn’t a major one but I consider it to be a milestone in my gaming voiceover career, voicing the character of “Lord Croft” father of Lara Croft in the cinematic scenes of the game.

In Iron Harvest which is a real-time strategy video game developed by King Art Games and published by Deep Silver. released for Windows ,PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, I played the role of Bedouin MG in their newest faction of the game that was added to the Usonia Campaign. Being a bilingual voiceover Artist, I was able to do the voiceover in the Arabic and the English versions of the game. The experience was intense and exciting as I had to interact deliver the feeling of being in a real battle ground all the times. I will leave you now with the trailer of the new update.

Let the Engineer tell you about the latest Engineering University

I barely talk about being a graduate of engineering school, but the fact is I actually graduated and worked as a engineer for a while before becoming a voiceover artist. Those years have definitely left their mark on me. Sometimes positive and sometimes negative but I definitely learned a lot. It always excites me seeing better opportunities for engineers as many of the curriculums were outdated and doesn’t relate to the actual market needs. This time I had the opportunity to lend my voice for El Sweedy University of Technology radio ad. Here is a brief about the University that I think would be a great addition to the Egyptian market.

“SUT- Polytechnic of Egypt is the first polytechnic university in Egypt that offers a four-year Bachelor of Engineering Technology degree through an integrated, hands-on practical education approach, technical training, and industry partnerships. The university currently offers 19 accredited and trusted programs developed in partnership with industry leaders, including Electrical Engineering Technology, Computer Science and Engineering Technology, Network and Cyber Security Technology Program, and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Technology.” Read the full article at Zawya.com. click on the link below.

Reference valU, ElSewedy University of Technology – Polytechnic of Egypt partner to offer affordable tuition financing (zawya.com)

My First Promo Demo is Here!

I AM A VOICE ARTS AWARDS NOMINEEE!!!!!

Sometimes I sing for cash!

Yup…sometimes I do sing for johnny cash..and sometimes I sing for real cash… In my career as a voiceover artist, I was asked to sing a couple of times and I worked as an agent for an ad that required the voice actors to sing. I don’t have a Johnny cash’s voice but singing jingles don’t usually require you to be so, rather than being able to match up with the music or the beat that is being played in the ad.

 

 

Listen to me singing Johnny cash for fun

In this article I would like to share with you one major difference in singing projects based on my very minor experience in this area to get you prepared if you are up to work on a similar project anytime soon.

 

 

 

There is major difference between singing something that is totally new -which means that the music and lyrics are composed from scratch- and signing a song based on an existing song but you are only changing the lyrics to fit the product or the service.

 

 

 

If you are to sing something that is totally new, you will have the chance to sing the way you and the creative director/music composer see fit. You both will have the space to create and you will sing based on what you both feel is best for the product and the created melody. But if you are singing this new song based on a well known song or music, make sure that the way you sing fits the way that this song was originally created. This includes when to start singing and when to end and stretching some words which is usually reflected on the music and accordingly you need to match it in order to stay in tune.

 

 

 

One of the problems that I have encountered as an agent was when a client asked me to let the hired voiceover artists sing a small jingle in a script based on a well know melody of an Egyptian folk song. She didn’t mention then that the music of the original song will accompany their singing. We asked if the client needs the song to be synchronized with the music but she said that they don’t need to. accordingly, they sang based on how they recall the melody but not abiding strictly to the specifics of melody as it was not required. Then for some reason the client decided to add the music to the song, and off course it wasn’t matching well with how the talents sang the song.

 

 

 

The only solution that we had to avoid rerecording was to decrease the volume of the background music to a level that doesn’t cause an interference with how they sang the song, so it gives you the feeling of the melody when they aren’t singing, and doesn’t cause any problems when they are singing.

 

 

 

 

So next time you are up to singing a jingle for an ad that is based on a pre composed song, make sure you are being guided with the original melody to ensure that you are matching up with it..and off course to avoid any rerecording