Ben Stovall

Though a native North American English speaker, I can do a convincing English (British) accent. I also can do characterizations using dialects such as Southern and New Yorker.

I started in voiceover when I was eight years old. Yes, really. But, you wouldn't call it professional back then. You see, my mother worked as a seamstress in an auto plant in Detroit, Michigan. She sewed the interiors of cars on heavy duty, industrial machines and stood in the same place for hours on end on a daily basis. One day, she said to me, "I would love it if I could hear books read to me in my headphones while I work, but I really want to hear my son's beautiful voice, not a stranger's." And so, my journey began, to create recordings for my mother that would take her mind off of her very long and arduous days in the plant. I started off recording into a handheld cassette recorder with on-board microphone. It was most likely horrible—but my mother adored it—and a passion was born in me at a tender age to perform and to perfect my delivery. All these years later, after acting in the theater, to becoming a professional audio/video editor in Los Angeles, I couldn't shake the bug. I have a Film and Video Production degree from Full Sail University and do professional editing work in Los Angeles with Pro Tools and Avid Media Composer. I'm involved with projects from their inception all the way to distribution and have intimate knowledge and experience with media production and delivery. I've acted in Community Theater in Jackson, Michigan and had minor roles in independent films such as "Transit" by Terrence Williams, where I played a college recruiter and worked closely with David Fogg from Flash Film Works on Dave Benullo's "Shadow Man" project. Being surrounded by professionals and delivering professional audio and video on a daily basis gives me a lot of insight as to the needs of clients and the expertise to produce and deliver high quality product that sells. I offer professional production quality, utilizing Sennheiser MKH-416 and Neumann U87 microphones, a Focusrite and Avalon 737SP preamp/channel strip, 16-channel mixer, Avid Media Composer and Pro Tools in an acoustically treated studio environment. In addition, I have a lot of life experiences that help me to achieve the authenticity and believability that is sought when delivering copy. In high school, I was on the David Mackenzie debate team, where I gained a lot of early experience in public speaking, insofar as much as to become the debate league champion for the city of Detroit in 1988. I served in the United States Marine Corps and participated in Desert Storm; I've travelled the world and the seven seas—literally. I spent many years as an Information Technology Analyst which gave me command of hundreds of software programs and hardware configurations. Very helpful when doing studio work, I can tell you!