In A World: The Art and Skill of Voice Acting
Conversations with Molly Miklos & Pepper Binkley, inspirational images and links, Keith Barraclough selected for Lürzer's Archive 200 Best Advertising Photographers 23/24
I had a eureka moment recently while reading The Moth’s How To Tell A Story, a guide to personal narrative storytelling. This quote from the book gets to the heart of The Redhead Project and this newsletter: “Stories are the currency of community.”
So far, the Redhead Project has captured the unique stories of 508 redheads in studio and 50 redheads remotely photographed nationally and abroad. And as The Moth says, “Stories…help people realize they are more alike than different, all while celebrating what is unique to you.” The Redhead Project’s community is a spiral of inspiration, especially for its creators (Keith Barraclough and me!)
I routinely pull from the archive of portraits of redheads Keith has photographed up to ten years ago and think, where are these redheads and what are they up to now?
In this issue, two voice actors among the project’s ranks—Molly Miklos and Pepper Binkley—answer that question.
I’ve never met Molly in person; Keith photographed her in San Francisco for The Redhead Project in 2015 while on location for a client.
Both Molly and Pepper were drawn early to creative fields, and both have flourished in their careers, taking different paths to voice acting. We spoke with each separately on Zoom about their journeys.
To view each edited conversation in its entirety please click Molly Miklos and Pepper Binkley.
It’s not possible to cover voice acting in one conversation or this newsletter. Please follow their sites and social media platforms to learn more and keep up with their layered careers.
The Marvelous Molly Miklos
Picture Midge Maisel answering her creative calling to voice acting while social distancing during a pandemic, researching and googling do-it-yourself audio booths—then MacGuyvering one by herself to fit her apartment’s standard-size closet.
In my mind that’s Molly Miklos, who turned a sliver lining—and a standard-size closet—into something extraordinary under extraordinary circumstances.
An Emmy award-nominated video editor by dawn, Molly made her passion for voice acting a side-business reality in 2021 when she launched Voiceovers By Molly, LLC. Finding herself with extra hours in the day, lots of time online (as we all did) and yearning for a creative outlet, she stumbled upon a voice acting ad on Facebook, reconsidered an early passion for acting that was fostered during her youth performing in school and church plays, and recollected a former audio professor’s mentorship and advice that she had a nice voice and should get into voice acting. She also had seven years of experience on the job as a video editor in a top California broadcasting news market becoming “adept at the ins and outs of voiceover by listening and editing every day,” Molly says. So, she took the leap, found a voice coach, created a commercial demo and an animation and character demo and lined up four agents.
So far she has mostly done narration for corporate videos. But she loves creating character voices. And as a former Boise State University Blue Thunder Marching Band member, she was tickled to be hired by the director of The Gordon Lee Marching Trojan Band from Chickamauga, Georgia to create and lend her Barbie-cheerleader voice for a voiceover intro to their half-time performance titled “Around The World In 8 Minutes”, giving instructions like a flight attendant would give passengers.
And in May she wrapped on her first on-camera acting role in a feature length film, The Perfect Candidate, which will debut in Spring 2024.
Molly is not only a go-getter, charismatic, and extremely organized, she’s also passionate about being a redhead.
Molly talks about how being a redhead has shaped her.
And she is generous with her time supporting other creative projects and causes she’s passionate about.
She contributes articles for the UK site Ginger Parrot , a website that features news about redheaded fashion, music, film, celebrities, TV, and more. She’s written about The Redhead Project twice!
https://gingerparrot.co.uk/2015/08/photography-the-redhead-project/
Molly generously donated to my Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center fundraiser benefitting ovarian cancer in memory of Camille Rogers, the Redhead Project’s 406th redhead photographed in studio. Like Molly, Camille was very proud of being a redhead and being a part of a project that celebrates redheads and their unique stories. Donors of all hair colors and types are invited, in exchange, to capture their personalities in a fun remote photoshoot with Keith Barraclough wherever they are in the world. I’d love to raise 406 donations in tribute to Camille’s inspiring life.
Below are two of the portraits Keith took of Molly for this tribute to Camille.
Molly helped Keith test shoot with the remote photoshoot app CLOS and she served as one of our Webinar panelists when we officially launched Redhead Project Virtual on February 13, 2021. Getting to know Molly and the other redheaded panelists through the months-long development and collaboration was a top 2021 silver lining for me!
Flash forward: Midge Maisel launches her comedy podcast from home.
As for the next episode of The Marvelous Molly Miklos? Keep your ears out and stay tuned to her sites! Subscribe to Molly’s Youtube channel to view fun videos/reels and acting challenges.
Wouldn’t You Like To Be A Pepper, Too?
When you meet someone named “Pepper” and you’re of a certain age, you immediately start singing this Dr. Pepper jingle in your head (if not out loud) and want to be a Pepper, too.
When you’re a redhead named Pepper, “you’re allowed to do things that other people aren’t allowed to do,” Pepper says. She lives up to her family-inspired moniker; hear the charming story about how being a redhead named “Pepper” shaped her.
Pepper Binkley is charismatic, so versatile and so talented. And she was so generous to carve out the time as a busy working mom of two to chat with us for this feature and return to the loft studio to take some updated portraits during her work-related New York City trip.
Pepper Binkley “is a performer, writer and director who has worked extensively in film, television, theater, and commercials. As a storyteller, she loves working collaboratively and experimenting with styles and genres,” according to her bio on It's Freezing Out There, the site of a web series Pepper wrote, produced, starred in, and co-directed with Delavaga.
At the time she was photographed by Keith for the Redhead Project in early 2016, she was doing mostly voiceover work. The below photo of Pepper and her infant son, capturing the work-family life balancing act of motherhood, is one of my favorites of our ten-plus year run.
Using and lending her voice has always been important to Pepper. As a drama student at RADA in London voice training was emphasized and she gained valuable experience experimenting with her voice behind a mic. By the time she was attached to a U.S. agency and had been working few years, she knew she had the aptitude for voiceover work and pursued it. Voiceover is tough to break into but her authenticity persistence, and self-confidence paid off. She landed her first voice acting job for a Burger King radio spot; most of her voiceover work has been for commercials ever since. Here’s a spot she did for Pampers: https://www.ispot.tv/ad/bJ_d/pampers-cruisers-360-degree-fit-pampers-cruisers-360-pampers-club-song-by-steppenwolf. And Pepper’s voice in “fair balance” is at the end of this Belsomra commercial: https://www.ispot.tv/ad/7UYo/belsomra-cats-and-dogs
Since we last saw Pepper in New York City seven and a half years ago, she has branched out into more writing, directing, theater and a lot of collaborative filmmaking. She’s also done some regular big budget TV and film. She’s the mom in this sponsored short film: https://www.ispot.tv/ad/tBKp/chick-fil-a-the-spark-a-holiday-short-film.
Since moving to Orcas Island in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two kids during the pandemic, she’s enjoyed directing theater and developing new works, bringing New York playwrights there for new playwrights workshops. She also directed a show last year on Orcas Island called Still Now, written by Katie Bender, starring dancer and actress, Chelsea Sherman, and featuring Kaoru Okamura, a Butoh dancer from Seattle.
Pepper also had the opportunity to teach voiceover virtually through the New College of Florida to a mix of 16 to 18-year-olds, computer programmers interested in making video games and actors. Voiceover continues to be an important part of her career.
Soon after Keith and I spoke to Pepper by Zoom, she returned to the New York City stage to perform at New Ohio Theater's last performance: the experimental theater piece Ultra Left Violence. And Keith had a chance to photograph her again in studio, this time for improvised fun (including a few shots incorporating cheesecloth). Pepper shares her insight into these shots, captioned below each.
Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper, too?
Excerpts from our Conversations
Pepper recommends this funny movie about a vocal coach intent upon doing voiceover work for film trailers. It’s written, directed, co-produced by and starring Lake Bell. The title “In A World” references the phrase Don LaFontaine—dubbed “the King of VoiceOver”— made famous.
Don LaFontaine is included in this link of the top-ten most famous voice actors
Is there a particularly memorable voiceover job you had?
Pepper: her first voiceover job was a Burger King commercial (click link to hear her describe it)
Molly: doing voiceover for a half-time intro to the Gordon Lee Marching Band (click link to hear her describe it) And here to view the half-time performance! (forward to 4:02 to hear Molly’s voiceover):
Name something surprising about voice acting that people may not know.
Pepper:
It's hard for most people to be natural behind a microphone, perhaps the same way it's hard for people to be natural in front of a camera. It always shocks me that for some people, it's hard to get behind a microphone and do what they do, do what we're doing now, to have a conversation and to be conversational with text, even if they can do it in another environment.
There are famous actors who have booked jobs because they're like, oh, let's have X, Y, Z person do this role. And then they get in the room behind a mic and they can’t relax. They have all of this talent in front of a camera or on stage that doesn’t translate behind a mic.
Molly:
People think voiceover is just talking and you have to know the acting side of it. You have to know the inflections and how people want to be perceived, how they want their ad perceived. So there's definitely a lot more to it than you would think.
How hard is it to talk to yourself?
Pepper:
Whether you are in an intimate space, or a studio with machinery, you always have an audience, you’re always speaking to someone. It requires focus, presence, and ability to distill all of your work into one space which is audio.
Molly :
I think of all the acting realms, voice acting is the most difficult because when you're acting in theater, you have the audience to react to; when you're acting on a film set, you have the other person to interact with; whereas here in my home audio booth, I'm in this dark hole. So yes, I do have photos of my best friend. I have Studio Ghibli drawings and animations that I like for my animation to get me in a silly head space. And I have different words on the wall to be bright, energetic, and what are you here to do? And so I have all these ideas and I can look and pause and reset and be like, okay, I need a conversational read. Here's Ana, my best friend. And I'm going to say, okay, hey Ana, how's it going today? And I can go into it and have that headspace of who am I talking to.
It is definitely is more of an imagination thing when it comes to voice acting and then just being still, being physical with your body if you need to make a move —whatever you need to do to get into that space to do it, and you can look off this way or this way, or just close your eyes even. So it’s all in your head, and you have to imagine the scenario that you're in.
How do you approach each role?
Molly: (we also asked her about research preparation ahead for narration voiceover for corporate videos)
Absolutely. Anytime I get an audition, I look up the company, make sure that I'm pronouncing the company name, even going as far as to listening to past videos that have been completed by the company to see if there's a certain tone or a certain way that they approached their ads or whatever they're needing voiceover for. So yes, there's definitely research. I look through each line of the script and wonder what the emphasis will be on certain words, what the story they're creating is what's happened before the voiceover and know who I'm talking to. So there's a lot that goes into making sure that you know what you're talking about for this certain audition or project.
Pepper:
It depends on what the job is.
If you have a body of work behind you, or you've been doing a kind of work for a long time [like commercials as I've been doing]. I'm just confident in my skillset at this point. And if I come in with the confidence of my skillset, then I can apply it to what I'm doing as long as I'm present and available. I probably did more prep early on in my career, but it's hard to do for voiceover. And maybe it's the same with photography, you know, again, you prep your instrument and then you come into the room.
I can hear myself and I can make adjustments to my work by giving myself notes, but someone else who's listening to you will always give you more variety. And some voice talent does one thing, but I think I said before, I'm an actor. I started off as an actor first, and I really thrive with direction and I'm very comfortable making very different choices with text, but I thrive under direction
If you work it too much ahead of time, it can be hard to be flexible. I get familiar with it and then let it be. I make sure I’m vocally ready for the day.
What’s your advice to someone interested in voice acting and what personality traits best suit the work?
Pepper:
If it is something you’re interested in then take some classes and pursue it as a passion. But don’t necessarily put all your eggs in one basket and think this is going to be your livelihood. It’s very hard to make a living doing voiceover work. Luck, talent, opportunity, preparation, all these things have to line up in order for you to get that first job. Take classes, learn how to edit your own work, download Audacity or learn to use Garage Band, recored yourself and get a decent mic set. Tutorials exist now so you can practice in your own home.
Molly:
You have to be on your game with everything that voiceover is. You have to know the technical side with all the audio equipment, how to make your room sound good. And then continually take acting classes and knowing the trends in the industry, right now it's a more natural read and you have to know how to do the natural read in order to land gigs and auditions. It is definitely a lot harder than I thought it would be.
It’s running your own business nowadays. So you need to know how to be a businessperson. You need to know how to network with people and be open to sharing feedback and getting feedback. And the rejection of course is hard, but you need to be able to take that and then exchange it into something for yourself. You need to be imaginative as well, when you are in the booth [recording] by yourself.
Inspirational Portraits of Other Redheads Photographed For The Redhead Project
I asked Molly and Pepper to pick some portraits of other redheads that inspire/ resonate and share their insight.
Molly’s Picks:
Pepper’s Picks:
Hot Off The Press
Keith took the author photo for this new book co-authored by Heather Dune Macadam and Simon Worrall: Star Crossed: A True Romeo and Juliet Story in Hitler’s Paris.
A journalist and weekly columnist for National Geographic, Simon was photographed for The Redhead Project in 2015.
Keith Barraclough selected for Lürzer's Archive
200 Best Advertising Photographers Worldwide 23/24
These three images from The Redhead Project were selected by a panel of international judges for inclusion in this prestigious issue. Keith is honored that his work on The Redhead Project has been recognized. Thank you Claudia Coffman for your editorial guidance!
Thanks for reading. If you have any feature or content suggestions for future issues, I’d love to hear from you.
See you back here on October 15th!
Kate