Jim L'Allier

Voice Description

My voice is pleasant, professionally trained, warm and mellow, conversational, and with bass overtones. It can also be gentle and grandfatherly, and it has no regional accent.

COMMERCIAL-PROMO VOICE

This middle-age male voice has a quality that also imparts an “executive” or “scientific” tone giving it an overall effect of communicating competency, authority, trust, and professional vocal image without sounding stuffy. These qualities make my voice well suited for scientific, educational, and documentary narrations, as well as commercials in health care, customer service, along with products or services that require a voice that ranges from authoritative to intimate.

BUSINESS VOICE

This authoritative/conversational quality is also appropriate for use in business training videos, web-based instruction, and narrations of high-level PowerPoint presentations for national sales meetings, boards of directors meetings, and key marketing/sales presentations.

TV/BROADCAST VOICE

For anyone seeking to present a professional image this voice is also suitable for network and affiliate broadcast work. This category could include logos for TV, radio, podcasts, educational documentaries, promos, intros, outros, as well as recorded “on hold” telephone messages for businesses.

TRAILER VOICE

The “dark” edge of my voice can range from forceful-male to menacing, which makes it appropriate for some military promos to dramatic work in mystery, action, and horror genres in both TV and film as well as their respective trailers.

Voice Genders and "Ages" I Can Perform

• Middle Age Male
• Senior Male

Language(s) of Which I Am a Native Speaker:

• English - North American

I Offer my Services for these Recording Purposes

• Commercials
• Promos
• IVR, voicemail, phone systems, and on-hold messages
• Training, business presentations, sales, and web sites
• Documentaries
• TV shows and movies
• Movie and game trailers
• Podcasts

Jobs I Am Willing to Take (Union-wise)

• Non-Union Jobs

• Jobs for AFTRA (US) signatories

• Jobs for SAG (US) signatories

My Union Affiliations and Memberships

None

My Recording and Delivery Capabilities

• I will go to any designated studio in my area
• I have Phone Patch in my studio
• I can record and then deliver the audio files via Email
• I can record and then upload the audio files via FTP
• I can record and then deliver the files by regular mail

Pre-, Post- and Production Services I Offer

• I offer copywriting services
• I can deliver edited and finished voice tracks
• I offer radio ad production services
• I have a music library and can add music to any project
• I can add special effects to any project

My Home Base

Chicago, Illinois, United States

Accents, Impersonations, Characters and Dialects

U.S. English with neutral accent (midwest). This is a natural conversational voice and not a forced announcer type.

My Voice Experience

I started in the training industry in the mid-1980s as an instructional designer and a video script and copy writer. Most of the focus at that time was in the production of interactive video discs, and what was then called computer assisted instruction. This was the very early days of what was to become web-based delivery of training or eLearning.

Eventually, I advanced in my career to producing training video for the health-care and pharmaceutical industries from Boston to Berlin. Next, I became an executive (VP of product development) of a large training operation in Chicago—focused on video and web-based training in the information technology space. Our facility was one of the largest video production houses in the Chicago area. We eventually shifted our delivery method from stand-alone video tape to streaming video over the web.

During all of this time I did voice communications to our field and clients, along with narrating a number of promotional DVDs and CD ROMs. In effect, I became the voice for the company and was marketed as such. Because of this high profile my company refined my voice by sending me to a special voice school in Los Angeles.

My Training

Private voice training in Los Angeles
Private VO coaching sessions with Michael Minetree of Minewurx Studio
Ph.D. in Instructional Design, University of Minnesota
BA in English, emphasis in creative and expository writing

My Studio Equipment

Sound controlled environment
Mogami Neglex 2534 cables used throughout recording chain
Microphone: Neumann U87, Sennheiser 416, and MXL2003
Mackie Mixer with XDR2 preamps
Sony MDR-7509HD Professional Headphones
HP Desktop with M-Audio 2469 Professional Audio Card and Adobe Audition 3.0
Script Werx
1TB HP MediaVault for sound files
Frontier Tranzport wireless DAW controller in recording booth
Gentner DH22 Hybrid for voice directing via telephone
FTP delivery over T1

Additional Skills

My entire career has been devoted to the delivery of training through various media: film, video, live instruction, and computer. As a result, I have a high degree of familiarity of the production process in each and understand their business aspects (sales, marketing, and management).

I have a working knowledge of almost all aspects of the information technology industry, and have built and maintain my own network server. My audio studio is integrated into this environment. I also have a passion for photography and the creative processing of the digital image—which is also integrated into my network server.

Payment Methods Accepted

• PayPal
• Personal checks, cashier's checks, or money orders in my local currency

Online Payments Via PayPal

Contact Information

To contact Jim L'Allier by email or phone, please click here.