Today’s episode is a special one because we have an amazing guest who is going to be talking about two relevant topics in instructional design land. The first is Camtasia. It’s the signature video editing tool that instructional designers use and that employers are looking for. We talk all about how to develop your skills with this tool and how to impress potential employers. Our second topic is voice acting. I have seen so many postings about voiceover work lately in the instructional design community and yet I know nothing about this. I didn’t know how people got into this line of work or how they found the opportunities to showcase this skill. Luckily for us, Alex Mitts is an expert in both areas and he shares with us all of his tips. You’ll hear about how a former teacher became an instructional designer and then got into voice acting work for Netflix. It’s a crazy story and I know you are going to get a ton out of this episode.
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Transcript
Luke Hobson 00:00
If you've been listening to the podcast, you know, but I have specific recommendations for each product and service. Many of you have been coming to me saying that you were thinking about transitioning from your current learning platform. And you're looking for a new one. And you're asking, What do you recommend? My recommendation is Eduflow, and I'm going to tell you why, to me, this is the first platform I've used, where I felt like instructional designers had a say, as far as for how it was going to be designed, the focus to me really is on a big learning experience. And I can tell, but the people behind this are passionate about this entire process. Not only that, but it's simple to build on, it's not going to take you all day and night, in order to try to upload your course and to upload all the necessary different types of pieces of content. And best of all, they have a fantastic team to support you. So you're not doing this alone. You don't just have to take my word for it. This platform can be used by both corporate and for higher ed. And you can see that from their past customers like Google and Stanford, go into today's show notes to use my link that's going to save you 10% off of your subscription. And by all means if you have any questions about the platform, please feel free to connect with me. And to let me know I have been using Edu flow now for feels like months at this point in time. So I can definitely answer any questions that you may have. And of course, if it's way over my head, if it's too technical, for some reason, I can make sure to connect you over with the right people to have your questions answered. So be sure to check them out. Tell them I sent you. And now let's start the show. Hello, everyone, and welcome on into your fabulous instructional design podcast. My name is Dr. Luke Hobson. I'm the senior ID and pm at MIT. I also produce quite a bit of content on the internet about instructional design, with courses, a blog, a podcast, a YouTube channel, and I recently wrote an ebook called what I wish I knew before becoming an instructional designer. I create so much instructional design content because I feel that it is my purpose to help you with making the online learning experience incredible for you and for your students. And you can find all my information over at Dr. Luke hobson.com. Today's episode is a special one because we have an amazing guest who is going to be talking about two relevant topics in instructional design land. The first is Camtasia. It's the signature video editing tool that instructional designers use and that employers are looking for. We talk all about how to develop your skills of this tool and how to impress potential employers. Our second topic is voice acting. I have seen so many postings about voiceover work lately in the instructional design community. And yet I know nothing about it. I didn't know how people got into this line of work, or how they found the opportunities to showcase their skill. So luckily for us, Alex Mitts is an expert in both areas, and he shares of us all of his tips, you'll hear about how a former teacher became an instructional designer, and now does voice acting for Netflix. It's a crazy story, and I know you're going to get a ton out of this episode. If you love this episode. By the way, be sure to give the podcast a five star rating on Apple podcasts or wherever you're listening by the time you finish the episode. All right, I won't take up any more time. Here is the one and only Alex Mitts. Alex, welcome to the podcast.
03:46
Hey, thanks for having me.
Luke Hobson 03:48
Absolutely. It sounds so awesome to hear someone else with an even better microphone than me. So this is going to be a fun as you make the face You know, I think so whatever microphone you're using. Sounds fantastic. So this is going to be potentially I think, the highest quality audio podcast to date. I think Wow. I think we're in the running for that one up to this point in time and you're going to be Episode 35. So you know what? I think that's pretty good. You know, honored. Exactly, exactly. So Alex, for the folks at home, can you just please introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit more about who you are and what it is that you do?
04:26
Yeah, my name is Alex Mitts. I live in Bakersfield, California. But I am an instructional designer for higher ed. I also do freelance instructional design and multimedia development on the side and I also do freelance voiceover work on the side.
Luke Hobson 04:41
You sure do and we're gonna be talking about all those things because I have many questions for you. This is just as much I know that folks are going to get a lot of out of this for everything for the podcast content, but I am also completely in the dark with a lot of your expertise. So I'm so curious to learn from you from everything. We're going to be talking about today, but one thing I actually have no idea about Alex is how you fell into the instructional design fields because I feel like every person in our field didn't really assume this is going to become their career. And then magically, you know, it kind of happens. So what's your story? How did you become an instructional designer?
05:19
Oh, man. Yeah, that's, that's kind of funny. So like, you know, I ended up getting my teaching credential after a long stint of like waiting tables and tending bar, and I ended up teaching in a rural rural city in California, Lamont, California. And a few years go by, but as I'm a new teacher, people sort of catch wind that I'm tech savvy. So they're like, Oh, do you want to teach this computer elective? And oh, hey, we're getting Chromebooks and iPads in the classroom, do you know how to use these things? You know, because that was the whole, you know, for teachers. That was the whole thing. It's like, Oh, we have all this technology now. It's like, Okay, what do we do with it and administration just gives you a big thumbs up and goes figure it out. And so you know, I was there for when the infrastructure was being built, and like Wi Fi, you know, the bandwidth was limited, and you would get like Internet outages because too many people were, it was nuts. However, you know, I was kind of the person with one eye, leading the blind. And so that led to a lot of really interesting opportunities as a educational technology. And so I took that as a cue to go get my master's in educational technology. And with that, while I was in the master's program, I actually landed the job that I wanted by going to get the Masters like I thought it was gonna go get the masters and then get the job. But the fact that I was enrolled in the Masters got me the job. So in another city, just north of my hometown, a former teacher in my old district, asked, hey, you know, we have this opening for Instructional Technology coach or you know, edtech expert teacher on special assignment, you know, they have a trillion different titles for it. And she kind of gave me the whole Do you know, anybody wink wink, nudge, nudge? And I went, Oh, yeah, Cheryl be good for this Lupita would be good for this, she's like, no dummy, you, you should, you should apply for this job. And so I applied for the job. And I head out to McFarland, California, which the movie is same place. And so I'm out there. And that's kind of what I'm doing for a couple of years. And it's basically instructional design. It's basically higher ed instructional design at the K 12 level, like you solve a lot of tech problems, and show people how to use tools to teach their students better and sort of shore up those weak points in your district. And so I was in love with it, you know, I you know, for the first year, I just was rocking and rolling, I was on cloud nine, couldn't have been happier. And then the second year rolled around, and there was some District Superintendent changes. And then I was able to do my job less and less, like they were starting to do things like reassign me to this for the day, or reassign me to go sub in a classroom for a day. And then I ended up being thrown in it's like, it is an interim vice principal for a couple of months. And it was like, well, I this is not, this is not the job. So I left and I thought, you know, it's like, okay, cool, there's a district in town, so don't have to drive 20 minutes somewhere else that has a really good like sort of forward thinking educational technology, mindset. Maybe I'll get in there, then I'll go back and teach English for however long and sort of break into the sphere of educational technology there and move up and be a decision maker or be go back to that same sort of role in that district. That'd be really cool. And I got there and I realized that the grass looked really green from where I was, and however that was just this past. No, that was 2019 ish. So it was right but it was the school year that COVID happened so it was you know, the August before the March that we all went home. And so I got in and you know, I loved my sight like my teachers were cool. My principal and VP were just amazing. But all sorts of things that your happened that just really soured my teaching experience. And that kind of turned me on to the fact that you know what, as much as I love teaching, and as much as I love communicating knowledge and getting people to do things that they couldn't do before and sharing my expertise via pedagogy,
09:13
maybe k 12 teaching isn't for me because it wasn't the kids it wasn't it wasn't the job when I got to do the job it was all the other stuff it was like district level admin stuff or you know trying to break into that technology sphere It was like super well guarded and you could see them making decisions that you didn't agree with. And you know, and I say it's not the kids but however you know, there is a component of like child management times 34 that really is just draining because you know, you want you cite you think you sign up to teach English and then you basically sign up to be you know, a kid mentor to 34 kids while trying not to mix anyway, that's the long and the short of it is I don't think teaching ended up being for me. And you know, we got hit with a ransomware attack and so that like forced all of our devices off the Wi Fi So I had to use and they gave us like Chromebooks to teach rather than like teacher computers or like letting us use our personal devices and then COVID happened and then we had to do the whole distance learning thing and I'm just like I can't I just can't I just can't I can't do it anymore I gotta figure something out like I'll I'll have you know, maybe something and so then I did the whole research of like, what do you do with a master's in educational technology and I and thank goodness I stumbled upon Massa state his article about like, what teachers do after they decide they don't want to be teachers anymore. And his whole bit was instructional design and how being a classroom teacher allows you to do that kind of thing. And so you know, I've been applying for instructional design positions before I you know, threw my hands up and said, I'm done, you know, for for a while now, I've been getting my feelers out, you know, I applied to the college that I work at now, and I didn't get a call back type of thing and apply to a couple of other places. It just didn't quite pan out. I almost worked for a place in San Francisco. That was really cool, but I wasn't able to move just yet. So it was like okay, what do I do? pandemic distance learning, yada, yada yada. And then all of a sudden I get a phone call. And it's from the college CSU Bakersfield, for those who are listening in California Hey, do you remember applying for this job nine months ago when I do remember applying for this job nine months ago they go Hey, do you want to interview for it? I'm sure I'll interview for this job why not it was like it was like in May to select the school year had like just ended it was like the perfect time to go interview for this job. And so it's like yeah, I'll go interview for that and so you know the backstory being that there's historically always been two and then one guy left and my current partner had been alone for nine months and then the pandemic happened and they're like oh, we should probably fill this position after nine months and so they called me and they go Yeah, let's set up an interview via zoom and so I hop on zoom I present you know how I teach and what I do and talk about my background very much like this. And a couple of days later I get it was a couple days like either a day or two days later I get a phone call they go Yeah, you're the guy I went awesome cool. So you know i your terms coming up and fall like do you need to start in August or like no Monday? I was like, oh, okay, cool. So I call it my principal I'm like, Hey, man, this is happening and he goes Nah, dude, I get it like I knew I wasn't gonna hang on to you for long so thanks for being here. Do your thing your your duties are good just send your resignation letter to so and so at the office and you're you're good to go man. So thanks and I'm like cool, you know, as a parting gift please have the mini fridge I left in my classroom. And so whoever's next got a really kick ass mini fridge it's like it's huge anyway, that's neither here nor there but I jump on and you know everyone's going online and so it's me and my partner just burning through emails and zoom calls and creating trainings and going nuts and so that's kind of how I've broken in and using that and not having to like monger kids you know second to second minute to minute I've used a little bit of that downtime to pick up some other projects so like some freelance multimedia freelance elearning stuff, and you know, really throw myself into the voiceover thing. So it's like, you know, project project project. Breathe. Alright, cool. Let's work on this other thing work on this other thing. Oh, cool. emails are coming back in. And I've been able to do like multimedia stuff for the college and voiceover work for the college. So they're just totally cool with as long as my job gets done, and as long as they get everything they need from me, I kind of get to just do all the things I do. And it's awesome. And I love it. And that's how I got there
Luke Hobson 13:28
is that's kind of like what I do as well do guys pretty much the same thing. As long as you do your stuff like cool. Keep keep on going. It looks good. At the end of the day for everyone if you do well. Yeah, got it. I'll keep doing the thing. Yeah, so I totally understand. You mentioned one part though. That was of course so early in the story, but I just have to ask because I know that some people have had to make this decision. You got the job, but you didn't finish the degree yet. But did you ever have any doubts of like, should I just stop because I already have it and I'll I'll maybe finish it later. Because like some people gets trapped in that that ABCD world and that's what I'm thinking about is that they got the job they're going for the doctorate and then like Hey, I'll just let it fall by the wayside. Maybe I'll finish it and like 90% of the population does Oh, dude.
14:17
I 100% had those thoughts and there are actually two sides to this story. So number one, I mentioned in that story too that I was an interim vice principal for a while and when I say a while it was like six months with no additional pay, which sucked and so but I kind of got the unofficial wink wink nudge nudge from the person who was going to be the superintendent like Hey, man, like enroll in a program we'll you know, maybe we can get you on as like an intern administrator type of thing you know, like that. And then you know, you do this for six months, we get you in the next year. And that did not happen. Like that was a bold faced lie. So I I enrolled in the program like I enrolled in the administrative program, and this was before it's sectional design was really on the table or you know, a real possibility. So I finished that program so I am now I now have a preliminary administrative credential. Which means if I want to I can go be a vice principal anywhere I want to. However, that is not a thing that I really want to do, it was the thing that I thought I was going to do and that's why I wouldn't got it so that is a cola that was kind of a colossal waste of money. It's a nice it's a nice resume star showing people that I have leadership skills. But that's a really expensive resume star. However, going back to the educational technology masters from what I understand from what my partner told me, he was like yeah, it was down to you and one other guy and he works here at the college and if he if you've ever been privy to a hiring process, if a guy works or if a person works in the company and they're in a position to move, they usually just go with that person in the company but I beat that guy out because I had the masters and he didn't so that's that's the double that's the double edged sword of that story is that preliminary administrative credential is probably not going to do me any good I say probably because I have no idea what life holds like there's so many things in the past like two years that have just taken my life I just don't expect things anymore I just I just write it like the wind so maybe it's a colossal waste of money maybe it'll serve me well but that Master's did serve me well. Not saying that everyone should go get a Master's but if you're on the fence and you're close to finishing, I would urge you to finish just
Luke Hobson 16:34
it makes a lot of sense and Dr. Krakow when he came on the show he basically said exactly what you just said that in an interview situation if you have a candidate a and candidate B if one person has the Masters most likely that's the person is going to every other one out because of that time in school so that's kind of good to know for reinforcing that one. So now I want to dive more into the weeds of instructional design with really something that to me, you are the person when I'm thinking about who is the go to person that I know of for any questions around Camtasia Congratulations, that's you. You become Yeah, that is that
17:13
most flattering thing I have heard in a while that's amazing. That's awesome.
Luke Hobson 17:17
You've you become my guy whenever somebody says I have questions about this I am always admitting I'm like I am not the knowledgeable one here I know other people though who know more than I do. And that's why I'm really glad when you said you come on the show because I you know, this is just something that I have used competitors software, I've dabbled, but in my day to day it's not a part of my typical tasks so it's really not something that I need to really do but there's a lot of people out there right now who are either new to instructional design or their job has changed or as you mentioned a teacher transitioning over into this field and Camtasia is like that hot topic everyone says like how do I use this I know that this is going to be a part of my daily routine so can you just do like a little quick overview as far as for what is Camtasia and what can it actually do?
18:06
Yeah Camtasia is for like just really simply a video editor you know, Allah Final Cut Allah Premiere Pro, but it's really more designed for learning and teaching. So like that's kind of why Camtasia has become the instructional design, you know, shark repellent and the bat utility belt is like it's got all the things in it to make learning easy and it has all the things in it to make a video editor happy in terms of like, Oh, I need this thing because unlike premiere you'd have to like construct it from the ground up. But in Camtasia it's like oh, you need to do this. This is like a function that's just built in conveniently so that's that's what that is. It's a video editor at its source. But for anyone who teaches anyone how to do anything it is what choice chef's gets good.
Luke Hobson 18:55
And you were not wrong because I use Adobe Premiere and After Effects for making my YouTube videos and it took me so long but I've always used Adobe so to me that was like this is a natural fit my have a background in graphic design. I should just go and use Adobe and keep on sticking with Creative Suite and then yeah, I did not realize how hard that was going to be. So that was fun. So then you have figured out you're going to be using Camtasia How did you learn how to use this? What steps do you take to teach yourself?
19:22
Hi Yeah, so that actually goes back to the classroom days when I was an English teacher and Lamont you know, and I kind of became the you know, the the tech guy in my district. I can't remember what I stumbled upon but I was just doing like research like you do you know just about your job. Another one of those things that I assume people do, but I do a lot of it. And so I ended up coming across a concept at the time that was kind of new called the flipped classroom. I was like I don't know what the flipped classroom is. This sounds kind of cool. And, you know, I learned about the idea of like distance learning the flipped classroom. Basically where you send the lecture home for homework, you know, as a video, and then in class, you, the expert get to help students with their projects. I'm like, that sounds awesome. That sounds great, because, you know, showing 30 students at a time how to write an essay on a whiteboard is, is about as thrilling as it sounds. So I was like, You know what, let's do this whole flipped classroom thing. But then, you know, that didn't work out because it's like, well, wait a minute, I'm in a rural community, and not everyone has access to internet at home, or devices. So what do you do? And another concepts like, well, if you can't do the flipped classroom, do the blended classroom. And so the idea being that you basically just blend those two ideas, you record the lecture material, in a video form, you know, sit them all in front of devices with headphones. And so like, if somebody misses something, you say, they can just rewind it, and not disrupt the other 32 kids in your classroom. You know, and or the kids who want to move faster, can move faster, the kids in the middle of that bell curve will move at the rate you think they do. But it sort of clones yourself 32 times and if someone has a question, they can stop and get you without disrupting other kids. And so I was like, Oh, this is awesome. So that's really kind of when I threw myself into it, I'm like, Well, what kind of stuff is out there that I can use, and I just stumbled upon Camtasia on a Google search in 2015 2016. ish. And I bought it, and I did that. And it was mind blowing to see students doing stuff, like I know, that's, you know, for, for non teachers, that's a getting getting kids to write is hard. And so then when I, when I went from, like, maybe a 50% 60% turning rate, you know, when I would, I would just traditionally try and teach kids how to write all at the same time, synchronously to like a 95% completion rate with good results. Because I could like, record the tutorial and edit it as I wanted to, and they could stop and then go do the section of the essay they were doing, and then come back and watch the next part, and then go do the next section. It was really cool. And so that just became my way to practice is I had a, I had a reason to, I had a reason to learn, oh, this is how Camtasia does this. And I could see this fitting into my lesson here, or, oh, there's a really neat feature. And I'll definitely throw this into this type of lesson that I can teach my kids how to do. So that was that was how I started. And I use Camtasia, probably every day since 2015 2016.
Luke Hobson 22:27
Now, what have you done since then? Because I've seen a few of your projects online, and they've been really cool. So like, what are you currently doing right now in 2021, with Camtasia.
22:37
So right now, it's a lot of responding to faculty. So like faculty write me with problems all the time. And usually when they write an email, to me, it's like, it's an email with like, six questions rolled into one email. And so basically unpack it. And what I'll do is like on the administrative side, I'll go into their course and be like, Hey, here's your thing. And then the I could like, highlight it or annotate something, or you know, do like click effects, like, here's where I'm clicking, click ripple effect, so they know exactly where to go, you know, I can slow things down for them. I can crop parts of video, I can blur things out, I'm just going over a features list. But that's kind of what I'm doing is recording tutorials for my faculty to get them to do the things that you need to do to be successful teaching online.
Luke Hobson 23:21
Well, actually, that's a perfect segue into my next question, because I know that for a lot of people right now, when they are interviewing, you can see when you apply to a job and the job posting itself, usually it calls out what tool it is. And sometimes Unfortunately, some job postings list out literally every single tool under the sun. And you're like Why? Like I'm and a lot of them are actually competitors of each other. So which is kind of, you know, it's kind of silly, but for Camtasia specifically, if someone is trying to dive more into there, and they want to build up their chops, what features specifically should they be working on, so that that way when they're in an interview, and they're actually talking about how they use Camtasia? In one of the things that someone's actually looking to hear you mentioned the ripple tool and a few other things, too, like, what, what features are someone actually talked about?
24:07
That's a good question. I don't know if it necessarily boils down to features as much as it does intent. Because you know, like, as instructional designers, like our job is to help knowledge move from one brain to another. And so like, you know, I find that I have features that use over and over again, so like zoom and pan is generally something that I use a lot is like zoom into a thing they need to see and focus on or pan to, like follow the mouse across the screen or like fade from one clip to another. So like those are ones that I use pretty much over and over again. But I think if it were in if it were in an interview process, like that would be the answer I would give I'd be like, you know, I would say you know, features features you can learn like I can, I can read the documentation and learn how the features work, but for as far as intent goes, like this is what this is how I intend to use Camtasia like I use Camtasia not to, you know, because I've used Camtasia to do things like cut together like Fake commercials or, you know, you can record a YouTube video with it type of thing or, you know, fun fact to like, if you do like, if you've ever if you know what a visual novel is you could do like visual novel animations and stuff in Camtasia. And that's something I've done is like a kinetic, kinetic novel sort of thing. And you can do all sorts of cool things like that, with that bundle of features, even though premiere would probably be more suited to do that kind of thing. But like the intent with Camtasia is to use video to teach, especially because that's how a lot of us learn stuff now through like YouTube or Udemy or Coursera. That would be my thing. So to dodge that question, features not so much. But, you know, intent, I think,
Luke Hobson 25:37
I was just gonna say, I think I just figured out an even better way to reword that as you were speaking, I'm like, Yeah, I think there's actually a little bit of a better way to ask that is, let's say, they asked you to present some of your work and you want to literally just like wow them and knock their socks off. Oh, yeah. Well, what would that look like?
25:57
I'd give him a tutorial on something complicated, but like, if I would say person to person pick something you like, then so that's, that's how I got to learn. Camtasia is like, I needed to teach my kids how to write argumentative essays. And you know, I'm an English grad. So I'm into that kind of thing. So it's like, Alright, cool. I'm going to screencast myself going through and planning an essay, and how to outline and doing all that stuff. And you know, back in the day, I didn't have the editing chops I do now. But like, if you can teach somebody something that you're passionate about, with video, and use those features to like, edit a good video, because really, the art is in the editing, like anyone can capture video, that's fine. But like, if you can teach someone how to like, use this formula in Excel. The editing is really what's going to separate you from the trillion other tutorials out there that already exist.
Luke Hobson 26:47
Isn't it funny, too, we teach ourselves with videos all the time, like, I guess we were talking about before even coming on the podcast talking about how like, if I have a problem might as Google something, but I can very much make the argument that if I'm also trying to learn something, I just go on YouTube. And I just watch video after video. And that's, that's how I learned and it's almost like, I wish there was even a better secret or formula for telling people about how to really learn for a tool, but like i mentioned premiere and After Effects and like what do you think I did I I downloaded some templates, I tried to break them and figure out how to put them back together. And then when I couldn't I went on YouTube, and I watched other people do it, and then I tried to do it.
27:26
That's that's the secret, I think is you know, I think you know, because, you know, for me, there's like a hierarchy of like learning via video. And it's like it starts at YouTube, because it's the freest and then it moves up to like paid platforms like Udemy, you know, which occasionally will sell all their courses for 20 bucks. And if that's completely exhausted, maybe go find an expert selling a course. But the real secret that you've hit on is you've got to have something that you're working on, or you've got to have something that you're like invested in because the information is out there, you know, there was a brief stint of time where I thought I was going to be a web developer. And so I wanted to learn like HTML and CSS and JavaScript and you know, I learned HTML, CSS and JavaScript scares the hell out of me so I always stop right there but I can't tell you how many tutorials I've started and stopped. I can't tell you how many tutorials I paid for. But the thing the thing that's different about that is I never had like a project I really wanted to do like I have a friend who went through and did the boot camp and stuff and he is now a web developer but he had like passion projects that he wanted to build and so he took that opportunity to learn how to do the functions and do them and for me it was teaching kids how to write essays and then that became teaching someone how to do this thing or then it became Hey, I have a problem How do I solve it well okay now I have another project I've got to work on I've got to figure out the easiest way to get that knowledge for me to them so I think that's your because you're right information is everywhere you're you're just drilling everyone's just dripping in information so having that thing to like latch on to it really you know then right now I'm doing that with storyline because I'll admit I'm the world's okayest storyline user. And so right now I've started a video series that I've very much kind of shelved because I have like a trillion things happening in my life. But you know, it's me fumbling through how to create like an E learning project. You know, it's like here's my thing that I want to do I want to teach people how to play rock paper scissors using storyline. But I don't know how to do that so let's meet in real time and so my first video is like 10 minutes long and then the next video is going to be sourcing my information and creating like a little document and then after that, it's like right how do I design this thing? So that's Yeah, like that's how I'm gonna learn storyline is I have a reason to and I have a project to work on. So that's, that's my long winded way of saying if you want to learn something, have a reason to do it.
Luke Hobson 29:40
Yeah, absolutely. And what I will even piggyback off of for that one, too, is I would tell people what I'm working on. So when they asked me It's my reminder, like oh, yeah, you didn't forget about it, which is ended up how this podcast started told enough people I shared with them the logo ahead of time I told them what I'm going to do and then eventually The messages started to come in of just like, hey, when's the podcast coming out what you're doing. And eventually, all of the, you know, all of the excuses went away. So is this like, Oh no, I have to do this, I have to get the website, I gotta get the domain, I gotta get this apple podcast and figure this out. And that's what it finally is, like, you know, you're gonna do the thing. So, no, that makes sense. So we're talking about YouTube, though, as someone else who also has a YouTube channel, as we've talked about that a little bit. What is your experience been like of making videos on a video platform to teach people about video editing? It's very meta.
30:35
Yeah, it's super meta. Um, I, oh, gosh, I don't even know why. Like I don't even know why I started. You know, only recently have I even put my face on it. You know, like, I've got my face plastered everywhere like LinkedIn, and my website like is my face. But teaching, teaching how to use a video editor on a video platform has been kind of cool. And I've just the way that I've been tackling it is I've been trying to find the things that I liked, like, what do I search out when I look for videos and one of the you know, I'm currently learning how to use Premiere Pro better, you know, I couldn't I can fumble through video, but like, there's a lot of big premieres deep. You know, and that's the thing I tell people like if you need to go beyond Camtasia, like go premiere, but for the reason that I haven't learned premiere is Camtasia does a lot of what I needed to do. But one of my favorite channels that I subscribe to is called Adobe in a minute. And it's like one or two minute tutorials on like, how to do this thing and Adobe Premiere, like how to do letterbox and Adobe Premiere, how to slow a clip down in Adobe Premiere how to do XYZ in Adobe Premiere and like all their videos are like one to three minutes long. And so I thought that's what I like, you know, every time I add a video that's longer than 10 minutes to my watch later listed kind of dreaded, you know, even if the contents really cool. So I'll watch it episodically. So like, I'll do like five minutes here and another five minutes there. But I thought, you know, why not just do like a features thing in Camtasia and show like a practical application in it. And like on all my thumbnails, I'll do like, approximately four minutes, approximately two minutes, because I'm sure there are people out there like being like, yeah, I want to learn this thing. But I don't want to spend 20 minutes doing it. You know, like right now I'm making my way through a four hour free youtube premiere tutorial, I'm about 20 minutes in. And that's taken me forever just to get through that 20 minutes. But you know, I've got time to watch five minutes on how to do a cool thing. So that's Adobe in a minute. But the Camtasia version, that's my, that's my shtick, I think, you know,
Luke Hobson 32:29
US reinforce an idea for me that I actually really need to follow up with is that I keep on thinking about just making instructional design shorts, like five minute clips of an instructional design topic, and then just like, hit it home, you know, and I really should do that. Because if you've seen any, like, I know, you've seen some of mine. And they're long, because they're more exploratory in nature. I'm not trying to put an hour's worth of content into your head about exactly your next steps and what you should be doing, but it's just like, kind of the, the way of sharing, but if I was teaching somebody, I'm not going to make it an hour lecture. I would never do that. It would be my work to dead, you know?
33:07
Yeah, condensed and you know, give them time to like, do other things or perform an activity and but yeah, man, if you if you follow through on that, if as long as you're as long as your minute columns, if they're single digits, I will watch every single one of them because once it rounds the corner on 10 it's like, Alright, that's going into my watch later, and I make it to it. I mean, I get to it like I have, I seriously have like a whole list of watch later instructional design things that are like 40 minutes long, an hour long, and they've been there for months, and I am gonna watch them eventually, but probably not now because if another thing comes along, that's like five minutes. Like I'm gonna watch that
Luke Hobson 33:40
first. Yeah, he is reinforced that point. All right, coming soon. Instructional Design shorts, spider copson. All right, great. Thanks a lot. Alex. You've given me work. Fantastic. Okay. So from going from there, though, the other thing that I really want to talk with you about is that you are a famous voice actor. Clear? shucks, Your voice sounds fantastic. And this is obviously something else that you do. And I know a lot of instructional designers that do this. But I'm not sure how I don't know where this kind of connection came into play. But I always see it on like the Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups of people asking for just voice narration help and they're seeking five people who have voices that sound like you know, XYZ, how did you get into voice acting, I just want to do this.
34:29
It's a long road. Like it's a really long road. Like I'm still I don't know, depending if you if you want to consider voiceover a thing that you go from zero to 100% on 100% being you know, I'm done and jobs just show up at my door and I don't have to do anything ever again. Because work just falls in my lap. I feel like I'm like 15% and I've been doing this for a couple of years. And so the law the The short answer of how one gets into it is a it's different for me. Buddy, but for my particular path, it was I am an actor like I do stage and I'm currently in a show now, which is why I'm not doing that YouTube series right now is because we're putting up a show soon. But I'm a stage actor and I have been since 2015. Like I kind of got roped into being a stage actor, and then I fell in love with it. And that's just work ever since. But I also have a background in music. So like when I was a, you know, young lad and late High School, early college, I had aspirations of recording indie albums, and touring and sin, uncomfortable bands and playing sweaty shows, and being on indie record labels and stuff. And you know, being that person, but also being like really driven, you realize that either. And you also have bandmates that aren't going to shell out the money. You got to learn to like record stuff, because that's how you get people to listen to your music, especially in the days of MySpace. So I learned how to do all that stuff, like learn how to record and learn how to use audio workstations and such. And so those two things kind of ran parallel. Like I kept putting out music that really didn't do much because I'm a bad self promoter. And I ended up continuing how to continuing being on stage and being in shows and musicals and stuff. And so eventually, someone went, why don't you just voice act? I went, What do you mean? It's like, well, you can be a voice actor, it's you. You have microphones and you backed, just put those two things together. And I went, yeah, but I don't like I don't live in LA. I don't live in Texas, so it's not like I'm gonna get like anime dubs. I don't live in Chicago. So like, that's where a lot of commercials happen. They're like, No, dude, you can have you heard of this thing called the internet, you can you can do it from anywhere. Like, you know, granted, you may not be in a major blockbuster Hollywood thing, if you don't live in LA, but you voice actors like voice act from wherever they are. I was like, Alright, let's give this a shot. And that's, that's what started the journey. And it eventually led to a lot of recording for free, which is bad. But you know, as a new person, you got to cut your teeth somehow to getting on platforms with predatory business practices. But they also gave me a lot of practice, you know, going back to that whole have a reason. I learned that like standards for voiceover really high. You know, you think you know how to record things until you get into voiceover and then, so yeah, it was, it was a long slosh of learning how to do it right. And along, slosh of doing it wrong, until I figured out how to do it right. And then once you started doing it, right, and getting people to coach you to do it, right. And then you start landing jobs. And then those jobs kind of beget more jobs, because it's like, Oh, you did this thing. So we know that you know how to do this, you can work on our thing. And then those two things, then they just are sort of snowballs up. And that's kind of where I'm at now.
Luke Hobson 37:40
That's awesome. And that makes so much sense. The fact that you're also an actor, like talking about the stars aligning, that just makes 100% real nice. That's incredible. So did you with all the expertise that you have and all that experience? Did you have to get over the whole hurdle of the weird first time that you heard your voice and you're like, Oh, that's what I sound like. Do you encounter that?
38:05
Yeah, um, it's funny too, because like, you know, most like commercial voiceover work or just normal people with their normal voices and so like you hear your own voice and it's such a unique thing to you. But when other people hear you're just another dude or another or another lady type of thing and but yeah, like after a while, like initially, it's like, oh, that's what I sound like, huh? Nobody's ever gonna want to pay me to talk on their thing because this sounds like garbage and by this I mean my own voice. But ya know, after enough time of like, recording and then like engineering your own auditions and and sending them off and listening back to them. It just becomes like thing because you know how like in your head you sound different than you sound on like a tape or like you listen yourself like out that's my voice. That kind of goes away after listening. So like now the voice in my head pretty accurately reflects how I actually sound in like headphones. But I think just because I've had enough time to bridge that gap. So the short of it is yeah, it's every everyone goes through that phase where they but it's basically just immersion therapy, where you listen to yourself enough and you go Okay, that's just that's what I sound like.
Luke Hobson 39:09
Pretty much so what I felt with everything for the podcast, too. For the first episode, I was like, Wow, that's really strange. And then after. Okay, but Fun fact, I had to re record the first five episodes of the podcast and because it just didn't sound like me. I was I was overdoing it. That was the thing I was like trying to overcompensate for the fact that it's this like, oh, you're brand new to this podcast world, you don't know what you're doing. So you got to really come in here and try to just wow people with the first couple episodes. And then eventually I'm listening to it. And I was like, yeah, that's not my style in any way, shape, or form. So I'm gonna go back and we're gonna try to it my way and see what happens. And now as you said, it's just a normal thing to hear myself or see myself on YouTube or whatever it is now like, Oh, Okay, I get it. But the first time Yeah, it was super strange. I doubt that it was, by all means. It was absolutely weird. Did you have that same feeling though when you actually heard yourself on something incredibly popular that all your friends I'm sure message you like on Netflix your Yeah, how would that go?
40:12
Okay that's it that's a good question. Yeah so what I heard myself on Netflix that well, on the Netflix YouTube channel like it I'm not on, you know,
Luke Hobson 40:20
Netflix man. Come on.
40:23
Alright, I'll stop downplaying it. So the first time I heard that was really strange, just because it was like, I don't know, it was such a nice like, because you know, it's a it's a video production company that does stuff for Netflix. But if you do stuff for Netflix, you have to be of like high caliber, right? Like, Netflix doesn't just go on like Upwork and go, like, I'm gonna hire this video editor to do this thing for my channel that has millions of subscribers on it. And so hearing it in context with like, music and clips of the things that it pertains to, was sort of surreal, because up to that point I had done like, I had done paid work. And I had done like one really interesting commercial thing that I'm not necessarily proud of, just because like the company is sort of has some conflict around it is like a tech company in China type of thing. And Huawei is the name of the company, by the way, if anyone wants to look it up, but uh, you know, it was like, one of the first things where I was like, Holy moly, like, that's, that's me doing a thing for stuff that people actually watch. Like, I remember like, I got hired at the college and that was sort of the thing is, you know, the one of the IT guys is like, Oh, you do voiceover work calm, like, Yeah, I do voiceover like, do you do anything that I would have seen you in? I'm like, probably not. And that's usually the answer for most voice actors. Like, no, I don't, you know, he's like, Oh, I thought like, it'd be really interesting. You were like, I was the voice of Pikachu or something. And I'm like, that's not the standard thing that voice actors do. But like, this was one of the firt that was one of the first things like that first Netflix bit that was like, Oh, wow. Like, you know, because then you know, when people Oh, have you done anything that I would hear you? And I'm like, Oh, you know, that show away on Netflix. They're like, Yeah, I know that show. I'm like, Yeah, I did some promotional materials for that show. And that's like, that's the first time that I'm like, Yeah, I can say that, like I can, I can say that. I'm in the thing, an official thing about stuff that people watch. I was like, that's cool. So that was that was that was really surreal.
Luke Hobson 42:26
Yeah, that's absolutely incredible. Because I know when I saw your LinkedIn posts, and you mentioned that, and you shared that clip, I was just like, Hey, I think he made it, you know, like, everything else you've already done has already been fantastic. But to be able to put that on your resume, you know, that's not not a small feat. Not like everyone can say that. So that was cool. Yeah, it's really cool. So you have perfected your way to now getting on to Netflix. So walk it back for me a second. If someone is new, and has aspirations of someday they want to do this as well. How do they practice their skill set? What would you recommend for tips or building up their confidence or routine or you know, anything of the sort?
43:10
There's a, there's a lot of ways to go. The way that worked for me is acting. I mean, in you know, most most established voice actors will tell you, like, learn to act, because it's, you know, because a lot of people like think it's just a reading, and you know, anyone can read. And most people think it's like, oh, I do funny voices. It's like, Yeah, but if you go like listen to commercials and stuff, like how many of those voices are funny voices, most of them are just normal voices. So if I had to give someone a advice is learn to act like jumping in community theater, go take some acting classes, go do some online acting classes, there's all sorts of like zoom workshop acting classes for beginners and stuff. So like, if you're going to get in, that would be the way to go. And just depends on what type of stuff you want to do. Like if you want to go do like animation and video games, there are classes tailored to that stage acting is really good for that because you got to be real big and a stage. If you want to do commercial voiceover work that probably requires some more specific coaching. Just because it's really hard to remain conversational in front of a microphone alone in a booth or like under a blanket type of thing. And so like when you go to read for commercials, and you're brand new, and like if I went and dug up some old like auditions or something, it would be real big and it would sound a lot like this and people don't talk like that and commercials aren't recorded like that. So like next time like a hellofresh commercial comes up or I don't know pick your favorite brand and go find their commercial like pick a beer commercial and go like hey, you know this is beer, we drink beer, we want you to drink beer, Bud Light you know that's that's, that's pretty much how that's how commercials are and getting out of your own head and just being like having a conversation like you and I are having right now is so hard to do by yourself. So yeah, there are places to go. Acting is my number one choice. Go learn to act first because you know even if you don't care about lasch work boots. If you get booked for a work boots job, you got to love work boots. Man, these boots are the dude, these boots are the best boots I have ever bought, or have a little more of a subtle feel like Oh, dude, these boots saved my toes. Like I dropped 6000 pounds. On this work boot ends. Miraculously no toes were broken in being able to convincingly say that to a microphone without another person on the end of it. Hmm, hard. So hard. So
Luke Hobson 45:31
you already coaching Second, you already said Man, I'm gonna go out and buy some new work boots. So yes, there we go. Well, I have to ask you, Alex, because it's going to come up. And if I don't ask it, I know that. You're just going to get bombarded with questions. Can you please describe for us your setup? What's the mic? What do you use what's affordable, this give us a breakdown of your rig because I know people are gonna want to know.
45:58
All right, cool. And this is my this time to get on my soapbox real quick because of all the things you can buy and people do get lost in gear like people go spend ridiculous amounts of money on gear, that just sound okay, because you need a good space in which to record like your microphones really good at picking up sounds, your microphone is better than the human ear at picking the up sounds and recording it and translating it into some sort of digital signal. But if you don't have like a good treated space, it's going to sound gross, probably what my microphone sounds like here right now because it's got like hard walls and stuff. And you hear echoes. And when you clap, you can hear all that, like gross. And commercials aren't recorded like that, or cartoons aren't recorded like that they have like whole rooms for the walls are soft. There's like carpet and foam and acoustic panels and stuff. And so that's number one. So my most important piece of gear, which the listeners at home can see directly behind me is a vocal booth that you can either buy for lots of money or construct for a lot less money. And basically it's just a room within a room and on the inside, it's a lot of squishy things. So that way it will absorb all the reflections and echoes of the room. And so your voice just hits the microphone, and that's all the microphone gets. Um, if you're gonna get into voice acting, start off small, like if you're learning start small, don't go out and spend a bunch of money on you know, gear, because a lot of people say, I'm going to get into voice acting, I'm going to buy this $1,000 microphone and then a couple months later, like I can't do the voice acting thing, because I didn't think about all the marketing you have to do and I didn't think about all the auditions you got to do. And I didn't think about how much time it was actually going to take and then they sell that $1,000 microphone at a $500 loss. So start off with the middle of the road microphone, like you can be competitive. If you have a good treated space for a three to $500 microphone. You can totally do that people people get away with it for less, because their acting is really good. But I do have a very high end microphone, I have the anointment TLM 103, which cost about 12 $100 because I needed it. Yeah, so like when things went remote. Lots of studios want you to have the industry standard microphones and so I went and bought the industry standard microphone and sure enough on auditions are like what do you what microphone? Are you using? are using the 123? Using the 416? What do you use it? So that was one of them. However, there is a $500 microphone that I own that I like better than that. But um, you know, and also to depends on your voice, try out some microphones if you can get them used. But for me, I have the 103 in my booth, it's rather expensive. But you don't need a 12 $100 microphone, I needed it personally. But if you're starting out, you don't need a 12 $100 microphone. And last but not least I use the SSL two plus as my audio interface. Most people use those little red boxes called the Scarlet solos or the Scarlet Focusrite things. Those are pretty good. The SSL two was a step up from that. The Scarlet ones running about 100 200 bucks, the SSL two and the 202 5300 range. And after that your next step up and noticeable quality is going to be $1,000. So don't spend any more than 300 bucks on an interface. Don't spend any less than 100 on an interface because converting that signal is important. So recap. Good vocal booth TLM 103, SSL two plus and Sennheiser HD two weeks from my headphones.
Luke Hobson 49:14
Fantastic man, I just learned something new. I will be sure to put all those links in the show notes below, by the way, folks, so you cool, Google all those things. I wants to try to figure them out. Well, Alex, the final question that I have for you, which you've touched upon a little bit, but just to really hit everything home, someone is dedicated, they have the equipment, they really want to go down this road, where can they find opportunities? I've seen them posted on Facebook and a bit and obviously we know about Fiverr Upwork and all the different things but is that where you go or what where do you find the opportunities?
49:49
That's a good question. I'll say a couple of things. Fiverr and Upwork are great places to get started but they're not great places that you want to stay just because people are looking for something quick and cheap and your base Shorter cooking, your voiceover. If you want opportunities, it's sort of depends on the types of opportunities you want. Because in voiceover, you have a couple of different arms. If you want to do like character animation work. If you really want to go big time, you've got to live close to where the big stuff happens. Like you know, for example, I'm never gonna go big time animation work. Not to say that it can't happen remotely, but odds are, you know, when things when people hopefully get vaccinated or you know, things go back to some semblance of normalcy studios are gonna open back up, and LA is still going to be a medium machine. If you want to do anime dubbing, you're probably going to want to move to Texas. But you know, there are all sorts of like indie game developers out there or independent animators and you know, media is not just television anymore. So like, if you were gonna do that type of stuff I'm getting in a community of those people helps and I find that Twitter is the most prevalent place to find opportunities for like, indie animation, or indie video games and you can use those things under your under your tool belt, to then kind of broker yourself into an agency that will give you big stuff even if you live remotely like the lady who cut my demo and she is very near and dear to my heart named Melissa Medina is signed to a an agency that is primarily based in LA but she's like in Minnesota, or she was I think she just moved. But she remote records like video games and animations and she dubs for like shows on Netflix that were once in a different language, but are now in English from her home. So you know, the thing is, is that it is going more remote. But if you're looking to like land at Disney flick, you got to live in LA. But that's not to say that you couldn't make a fantastic living as a voice actor from wherever you are. So longer, you know, is a long bit of exposition to answer this question. Twitter's a great place to start, find some discord servers, or some Facebook groups that you can go talk to other voice actors about because we support each other. Like if there's a you know, if there's a role or an audition that like maybe I'm not good for, I will gladly pass it along to someone I know who would be good for it. So find those communities online. Twitter is a great place Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, if you're doing commercial work, that's kind of a different beast. There's this concept called pay to play sites. And there are two sites that are very prevalent voices.com in voice 123 Yeah. And then you have to pay a yearly membership to get access to auditions for some rather large things. There's a little bit of conflict around those in the voice acting community, but it's sort of a necessary evil. They're basically like an automated agent, because the way an agent works is they sign you, they send you auditions, if you book something they take 20% these websites do the same thing. They give you access to you oodles of auditions for commercial stuff, that's where I got my Netflix thing. But they also they take a yearly subscription fee from you. And they will also take a percentage of the job you book, which is kind of icky to think about. But if you're a voice actor looking to build a body of work, that is the place you go to do it because agencies won't book you unless you are bookable and how do you book things if you don't have the opportunity to book these pay to play sites are sort of the halfway point and that's how I've gotten signed on to my agencies who send me auditions for big things like I recently audition for like video game that's like a triple A video game that's being like you know translated to English type of thing. You know, I got my Netflix doing through voices I've gotten like IBM work through voices a couple of like mobile games through voices calm you know, a lot of those big like resume shining stars to get me into those like the next level agencies happen through those pay to play sites. However, for those listening at home, make sure you're ready because they will gladly take your $500 for the year whether you're ready or not. So like if you've got a bad space if your acting isn't quite good enough you paid $500 to join something that you're not ready for. So be aware talk to other voice actors so the first place I'd go join a community of other voice actors and let them tell you that you're either ready to go or that you suck and you need to go short this thing
Luke Hobson 54:17
Oh, I love it. Well thank you Alex for coming on. This has been awesome. I learned plenty I'm sure all the folks at home are going to be you know, taking down and scribbling notes and going through everything so we got a lot out of this episode. So where else can folks go to learn more about you and your channels and everything else that you do? Oh yeah.
54:35
Let's see. I'm very active on LinkedIn. fairly active on YouTube but like to get to those places you can go to Mittstech.com that's where all my like instructional design multimedia things live, or if you're wanting to go learn more about like what I do for voiceover, it's just Alexmittsvo.com.
Luke Hobson 54:54
Wonderful. Well, hey, man, thanks so much for coming on the show again, really appreciate it. Thanks, dude. And happy to be here. Thank you, Alex, for once again, coming on the show. It was so insightful. And I know but I learned quite a bit, I had zero clue about any of those websites that Alex mentioned. So it's really interesting to hear about where you can go for voice acting work, and even the groups on Facebook, Twitter, discord, and a few other things as well, too, had no idea about the community behind this. But that also does make a lot of sense with what we know about the instructional design community. Be sure to check out all of Alex's links that are down below in the show notes too, with his website, LinkedIn, his YouTube channel and everything else that he mentioned. I also want to give a special thank you to you the listeners at home who have purchased the new e book and I've been sharing pictures online of the cover art, your favorite chapters and everything else. For all of you who are still waiting on the physical copies of the book, I am working on it. It's taking longer than I thought, but it's okay, I want to make sure that it's done right. So hopefully by the next podcast episode is going to be ready. Either way, you can stay up to date with my notifications by signing up for the email list over at Dr. Luke hobson.com or by joining our Facebook group called instructional design Institute community. You can also find the ebook at the instructional design book.com. Last but not least, folks give this podcast a five star rating wherever you are listening, those ratings really do help out. If you've noticed lately, that our podcasts when you search instructional design in Apple, it keeps on popping up as one of the top recommendations which is awesome. And it's all because of you and you rating Michelle, and sharing it with other people. So thank you so much for being a listener of the show, and for doing all of those things. As always folks, stay nerdy out there. I'll talk to you next time.