Podcast Voice Over And The Brilliant Mind Behind The Voice with Chris Hazzard

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I am going to now introduce my next guest who's waiting in the wings here, and his name may sound a little familiar. His name is Chris Hazard. I'm going to introduce him and I'm going to hand the mic over to my better half, Tracy. But I want to introduce my brother, Chris Hazard. Full disclosure, yes, he is my brother. He's an awesome filmmaker, writer, all sorts of wonderful things in Hollywood, but he is also relevant to the podcast industry because he is a voiceover artist that we use. And actually, after you listen to him and then you listen to Feed, you'd Brand or some other podcasts that we produce, you might recognize his voice because we do hire him as a voiceover artist and I thought it would be great to have someone on whose voice talent and talk about some things from his perspective. He's also a podcast listener, avid podcast listener. So I'm going to promote him to panelist while I hand Tracy the mic and the earphones.

Hey there, Chris.

Hey, how are you doing?

Good. So, hey, welcome to the show. We are doing this all day.

Thank you for having me.

This is my first spot on, although I've popped my head in a couple of times.

Well, welcome as well.

Yeah, really for everyone who doesn't know this, I have known Chris since he was 4 years old, so if he doesn't behave himself, I'll tell stories about him.

There we go.

So, Chris, you are actually our voiceover artist. That's how we got started. That was our first show. We were like, calling up Chris and said, hey, would you do this?

Yeah, absolutely. It was really fun.

Is this the first time you ever did voiceover work?

I had done something for, like, a web series that a friend from film school was doing, and I had done voiceover for a, like, a specific commercial spot that another friend at film school was doing. So I'd done it a little bit, but never sort of for real and for something that was going to be out in the world in any way more than just kind of a classroom setting.

Yeah. Oh, well. Fun. Well, so. And you've enjoyed it, and you've referred us to people who we also hire as voiceover artists.

Yeah, it's been really fun, and it's a cool way to kind of keep tabs on everything that you guys are up to and hear the new podcasts you're working on and that kind of stuff as well.

There you go. Absolutely. But let's talk a little bit about what you do do for a day job.

Yeah, sure. So I'm a screenwriter with my writing partner, Michael Fontana, and we write for TV and film. So right now we're working on a movie for Sony and developing a TV show with Hulu. So different than Voiceover, but sort of in the same sort of world A little bit.

Yeah. You know, it's always been my pleasure to get to read some of your work, and I've always enjoyed that over the years because I'm the writer of the duo here. So, you know, your brother's not quite the reader.

Yeah. Thankfully, our spelling has gotten slightly better than, I think when you first started proofing stuff for us before it went out to the world. Marginally. But, yeah, no, it's always fun to be able to share things and, you know, the same way that I get to watch your guys podcasts and sort of see all that come together. Yeah.

So we're really close family. If you guys don't know. If you guys haven't heard us tell stories about our siblings, which we do on occasion on our shows, but we're really close to Chris and his wife, Lara, and Lara is on our podcast all the time on Product Launch Hazards on my podcast. And so we've had so much fun getting to collaborate together. And this has been kind of the fun part about having a podcast be like, almost like your own little business. Right. So you can do what you want. It's your show.

Yeah. No. Very cool. And it's an interesting way to get to kind of collaborate and work on things together, you know, both, obviously, with us, but with kind of everyone you guys work with.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I love hearing your voice on other shows. I'm like, oh, that's Chris again.

Yeah. I don't even know that I'm aware necessarily of all the shows or commercial spots, because anytime something comes through, I just sort of record it and send it back to you guys and know it'll get out to the world. But, yeah, definitely.

So tell us a little bit about the process of being a voiceover artist. Like, what do you do? Do you think it through? How do you work it through and just how it goes?

Yeah, I mean, in a very sort of nuts and bolts way. I think anytime that you or Alex or Tom or anyone sends me a script that we're going to need to record, the first thing is just kind of like reading through it a couple of times to try and get a sense of how to make it sound either conversational or announcer y or kind of whatever the spot seems to demand. And then always trying to practice it a few times, recording so that I can hear it back and, like, actually get a sense of how it's going to sound in the finished product. And then a lot of times it's just like looking up strange words or names of companies or trying to make sure, just on a very practical level, that you don't totally botch the name of whatever it is I'm promoting or the name of the podcast or something like that.

So, big tip. A lot of times we'll give a little audio clip to Chris. If there's a really hard pronunciation to a name, we make somebody say it on the air and then we send it to Chris when they're announcing them. Because we do a little bit different on wtff, we actually announce who our guest is going to have Chris announce who our guest is going to be pretty regularly.

So, yeah. And I think in general, I always try to sort of look up a couple of interviews if it is a guest name or something like that, just to make sure that it's like, you know, that's sort of the most important piece in that moment. So I want to make sure you get that right.

You take care now. How many times, you know, this is the thing that we struggle with, I guess all the time is we get a lot of intros and outros and things like that, and they look really good on paper, but they just don't sound right.

Yeah, a lot of them are just really long. And I feel like when you're writing something, you see, you know, a small paragraph and it's like, okay, that's not too much information. And then when you try to say it, sometimes I'll respond in an email to Alex and just say, like, I'm doing this in takes and you're going to have to splice it all together because there's just no way I can hold, you know, say this whole sentence in one breath. Exactly. Before we start recording. Yeah. And then try to unleash this whole thing. So a lot of it, I think, is sometimes less is more, you know, Especially too, because if it's an outro, most people are going to start to move on when they recognize the podcast is ending. So you really just want to get the kind of mission critical information, you know, where they can follow you or where they can come back to hear more, that kind of thing.

Yeah, absolutely. So, and I know you're a big podcast listener. You and I are both. And this is something that I kind of wanted to chat about. I was thinking about doing a live stream about it, and then I thought I'll just do it on the air today. And then you're the perfect person to do this with. You know, I think there's something about being a consumer of content or a consumer in your industry that makes you better at your job. And I'm sure that you do this with your writing. You watch a lot of movies and you consume a lot of content and read a lot of scripts and books and things. Right. Because it makes you better at what you do.

Yeah. And I think once you start to work on something and really try to create it on your own, be that writing or a podcast or, you know, sort of art, anything, it makes you look at the sort of other work that's out there in a very kind of different way, because then you're not just looking at it as the end product, but also trying to figure out kind of like how the whole thing was assembled. So I feel like you become much more aware of the parts that make up the whole. So on podcasts, like specifically now, I notice much, much more if, you know, volumes are all over the place or like one person is much closer to the mic than another person and that kind of thing. And I think with podcasts specifically, so many people listen to them while doing something else that making sure the audio quality is high is really important. Just because if you're driving your car, there's going to be all the kind of ambient noise from the road and stuff, or if you're on a run and listening to it, there's going to be the world around you and just people listening are going to miss stuff or honestly get frustrated and like stop listening if it varies too much or kind of is all over the place.

Okay, so this is my one that's really big deal. And it goes along with that voiceover you were talking about being too long. It's like if the podcast is too short and the voiceover is too long, then you're going to get. It repeats too much when you're working out for an hour because you go through multiple shows. Right. And I find it so annoying. And because you're working out, you really can't skip it and you just don't do that. So. Oh, it drives me absolutely insane to have long intros on things, which is actually how we invented one of the new things we're launching in October. You don't know this yet, but you're gonna be doing this.

Fantastic. Go on.

Yeah, I got more work for you. But I decided that on product launch hazards because we have a lot of binge listeners, like, that's what they do because they want to consume all the shows and start to learn how to launch a product, how to do all of these things, how to do market research with your wife. Right. You know, like, they want all of that. So what my plan is is to use our dynamic ad mixing system, in which we've now done a new version where you can put intros and outros so bumpers on dynamic yourself. So you don't have to have any editing skills at all.

Right. Like, just let the software do it.

Exactly. Our software does it. So that will launch in October, but I'm using it like an ad so that I can mix on shorter intros after the first couple of shows. So the most recent shows will have a. Will have a longer intro and the very first, like three or four shows will have a longer intro, but all the ones in between will have shorter intros. So once they've aged, because shows will, you know, your newest show comes out, once they've aged a couple of weeks, the shorter intro will get put onto it. And so that's what we're going to do so that you could really go from one show to another and just kind of go with that without having all of those kind of lengthy, annoying.

Well, just making it more sort of bingeable in that way.

Exactly.

I mean, when you look at, like watching something on Netflix, you know, it's the same way that that little skip, like intro or title sequence thing comes up. And it's the same way that those shows, you know, on most streaming services don't have the whole, like, last time on whatever. You know what I mean? Just because the assumption is like, oh, you've probably been watching this for two or three hours, so you're very aware of the past couple of episodes.

Do you want to skip. Yeah, the credits, so.

Yeah, exactly. Then you need to add the feature at some point. Like, are you still listening, you know, or have you fallen asleep? Are you still working out what's going on?

Yeah, exactly. So this is the thing. When you are a consumer of something, these ideas come to you. Right. So that's where I'm binge listening on a podcast while I'm on the treadmill for an hour. And this idea comes to me because I just want to strangle the intro artist. I have to tell them, you know.

It yourself at the end, you're ready to take over their job.

Yeah. So this is how innovation and invention happens. Right. For us. And I find it's because of being a consumer of something, it really shows you, like, what is it like to be on the other side of the mic? Right. You know, what is it like to be on the earbud side and you start to get a sense of what works and what doesn't. And I think that probably makes you a better voiceover artist that you listen so often. So you know that you want to try to compress that, get it out in one place, breath, you know, do all of that.

Yeah. And just sort of try to have it sound as natural as possible, you know, I mean, different people sometimes will request that they want it to be, you know, really high energy or, you know, much more casual and just like you're a friend introducing another friend, they sort of give you something to work off of. But you do want to try and make it sort of as pleasing and fit the overall feel of whatever the podcast or show is that you're setting up.

Yeah, Yeah, I love that. So tell us a little bit about what you look for in a podcast.

I love all sorts of podcasts. I mean, I listen to several that are just the kind of basic interview, you know, where there's some sort of setup, and then it's two people talking about current events. I listen to a couple like that in entertainment. And then occasionally they'll bring on a special guest, either related to one of the stories they're talking about or just to sort of further dive into a particular topic. And then I also do really enjoy podcasts that have sort of that, like, next level of production value, you know, where it's like intercutting interviews within a professional score and kind of more of almost like a documentary sort of storytelling, except that it's obviously, you know, only audio. I think that some of that can be really fun in a way to, like, get lost into whatever topic you're going down. So I think that the biggest thing for me that I look for is just that the topic is deserving of the length. Like, you can sometimes tell that somebody is trying to hit, like, every Podcast should be an hour. And like, there's just not quite an hour or whatever it is, which at a certain point you just get over it.

I think that sort of programmatic style, like I switch it up all the time and what I like to listen to. So I don't think there's any kind of hard and fast rule that it has to be like this.

Yeah. And I don't think that anyone is necessarily expecting, like, oh, every time I download Podcast X, it's going to be exactly an hour. It's not like how TV is like there's a half hour, an hour or whatever. It's sort of whatever is needed for that particular topic.

So even within the same show, you mean it doesn't have to be exact?

Oh, yeah, exactly. That. Their runtime will vary kind of episode to episode. And some of the podcasts I listen to will also occasionally do, you know, very, very short, like 10 to 15 minute little mini episodes if there's like something big and relevant that has happened in the news. So that can also be interesting as well, where it's very clear that the people creating it are, you know, sort of putting the consumer first, basically saying, like, rather than, oh my gosh, you.

Don'T want to miss that.

Yeah, like, rather than wait and sort of build a whole hour or whatever it is out of this thing, like, let's just get this out quickly so that we can be responding to what's happening kind of in real time.

That's a really good insight, Chris. I mean, I just think that, you know, really, that your show doesn't have to be so programmatic and it doesn't have to be the same every time. And lately I've kind of gotten bored with the interview style, to be honest with you. If I'm not learning something from the interview, if it's just really, it seems like, oh, I've just got another interview on here. It's getting to be a little bit of like, everybody's doing that and yeah.

There'S just a lot of that teach.

Me something, then I'm not as eager to listen to it and I skip them and I go straight for the episodes that are really about education.

Right.

Teaching me something.

Yeah, I think one of the challenges as well of the kind of interview style podcast is just making sure, you know, unless the actual format of your podcast was that I asked effectively the same questions to all sorts of different people who come on, which could maybe work and be interesting. It can sometimes feel like someone is falling into having the same conversation Just with different guests each week. And I just feel like at that point that the likelihood that it is going to be really interesting and captivating is much more hit or miss than you can tell when someone has brought on a specific guest to do kind of a deep dive into whatever that topic is and really try to like get into the meat of the subject, not just kind of surface level, sort of introduction type interview.

So have you been a guest on other people's shows before?

To be honest, I have not. So this is my first.

So here's one of the things about being a guest. It's a big deal to me to research a little bit before I put a guest on the show. Obviously I've known you as a true force, so I don't have to research that much. I know how brilliant you are. And you guys, what you're not getting here because he's being so serious about it, but is that Chris has the coolest sense of humor ever. So it is wicked. And I use that because he's from. He's from Massachusetts. So he's definitely got a wicked sense of humor. But you know, this is the thing is like when you're interviewing someone and they're on multiple shows, sometimes especially the ones who are much more polished, speakerish.

They will have like a spiel.

They have a spiel and they'll say the same thing on everybody's show. And it hurts your show. So you need to dive deeper to make them come out with something original, make them come out with something cool and interesting that they can talk about and do. Because you got to get them out of that spiel. You got to get them out of their sound bites.

Absolutely. And I think that sometimes a way to do that that I've seen in the podcast I listen to and some of the ones that you guys produce, is that having someone on for a very specific purpose, you know that like either something is happening in the news or happening in your industry that you cover or another story that you started on the previous one and now are kind of going deeper into really kind of limiting the scope of what someone is there to talk about can sometimes be very helpful because they haven't done that on every other podcast. So then it's going to be a kind of natural way to non obtrusively sort of like force them to get a little bit different and think outside the box of sort of.

Exactly. And I also, I also don't allow prepared questions. So if a guest requires prepared questions, we don't let them on the show. Like, I'm kind of rude about it, but I would never preview questions with anyone when I was writing an ink article either. I feel like that's, you know, then somebody is sitting there coaching them, and then it definitely comes across like an advertisement.

Also, at that point, it's not like a conversation. It's someone trying to, like, figure out what is the best way to answer this question in a way that's going to either push their own brand or make them sound a certain way, you know, as opposed to kind of getting into the heart of whatever you're hoping to talk about.

Exactly.

It's much harder to, like, find an interesting tangent if someone has prepared an answer to each thing, you know, so that none of it is eating off of each other.

Yeah, definitely. Although I have an exception to that. So I did a podcast pretty recently. The best podcast interview questions or something like that are structuring the best podcast interview questions. That's the name of the show. And one of my exceptions to that. There's a couple of podcasters who do this. They do like the Flash 5 at the end or like they ask five quick questions. Because I can tell you so often, so many guests will come on the show and never have heard your show before, which is shame on them. But it happens. Yeah, they never listened or they never listened all the way through. So if you do something like that towards the end, you don't want them to look like.

And you don't want to have that. Especially if you don't edit your show or you're doing a live stream on it. You don't want to make them look bad. So, like, that's the only exception to giving them questions that I have.

Or that's also more just like way.

Out in left field.

Yeah. In that circumstance, you're almost more just making sure they're aware of the format of like, you know, we're going to have a wide range of conversation. But then at the end we always add ask people these five things, you know, or it's the equivalent to if you're asking someone for sort of a recommendation or to give a shout out to an organization or a product or, you know, something cool that they want or. Exactly. You're going to get a better answer. In that case, if they've had a moment to think of like, oh, what is a book I should recommend to everyone? Or what is, you know, a show? Or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. So that's the only exception to the prepared question rule that I have.

That's a good Exception. I think it's a good exception.

Yeah, I do. It's one of our most popular episodes and it's pretty recent. It's only a couple months old and it's probably like exceeded all of the other listens combined.

Oh, wow.

So, yeah, so it's obviously something that podcasters are struggling with, is asking good questions and I'm wondering what your thoughts are on this, but sometimes I get them that where they're asking weird questions just to try to be different or does that work for you? Or as a listener, does that kind of like go. No, not necessarily.

I mean, I think sort of the only scenario where something just totally out of left field works is if that is an organic kind of part of the gimmick of the show. You know, if this is like a thing where like the five questions at the end, they do one or two kind of really oddball questions that would maybe make sense, I guess, But I think it's almost always more interesting to have a topic that the interviewer is really trying to get to the heart of. So rather than trying to know every single thing about this person's business or their life or how they got to where they are in, you know, 40 minutes. Yeah, it's picking a section of it and, you know, really trying to dive in. It's almost the equivalent a lot of times when you see a biopic. So like a movie about someone's life, the ones that try to cover their entire life are often sort of not the best ones just because it's sort of rare that someone's entire life has the natural movements. You're going to want, you know, an exciting hour and a half or two hour movie to have. And oftentimes it's much more sort of focus on a period in their life or this one big thing they were trying to do or overcome, you know, but you're not taking them literally from birth to the grave just because a lot of stuff happens in people's lives that is interesting and a lot of uninteresting, just sort of normal life stuff also happens.

That's why one of my least favorite questions is like, oh, so tell me how you got started. Like, I don't love that question because it's too open ended. And then some of them will tell you their entire life story and you'll be like, let's get to the point of which you started 3D printing or whatever the thing might be.

Right.

So I'm always really specific, specific and narrow in how I asked that question.

Yeah. And Honestly, I think sort of more specific questions about how someone got started or got to where they are can honestly just be more helpful. I went to NYU and I'm on a mentor group for new students that have moved to LA and are sort of starting to get into the entertainment industry. And one of the things we try to do is make sure that both the mentors and just other panelists and guests that come in talk about how they got to where they are. But in the sort of really focusing on the first year or first year and a half, you know, like, what were the internships you had that then led to that assistant job, and who did you meet at that assistant job that helped you? Because oftentimes when someone has reached a level that they're, you know, a VP or an EVP somewhere and sort of have really moved up them, telling the story of how they got there is like, well, I was an executive at this place, then I jumped over to this place, and then now I'm at my job.

It's like a resume.

Yeah, exactly. Which is, you know, potentially interesting as far as context to who you are. But if you're 22 and just out of school and trying to figure out, like, do I take this job in a mailroom or do I go work for this company that's like, on the fringe of the industry or whatever it is, it can be really helpful to hear that someone had an internship in a totally unrelated field. But then, like, that, introduce them to more people and they can start to see how everyone's path really, in any career to where they want to get to oftentimes is sort of weird and you can only connect the dots, like in retrospect, you know. But if you were planning like the sort of picture perfect way to get there, you would not have chosen the path you ended up going on. So it can be helpful, I think, to learn the specificity or kind of the stuff that people might normally think is almost like not exciting enough or sort of not worth covering, that can kind of be the meat. And what's so great about a podcast is that it's a forum where you can get into sort of smaller, more niche stuff like that. Because for your audience, that may be.

Right on, and you can always have them on again. If this is true, you could have a bunch of.

Nothing is stopping you, right?

Nothing's stopping you from having them on again to talk more. We did that a couple of times because it was just so full of knowledge that you just can't compact it into one show. And you're like, let's come back and talk specifically about this and I'll have you back on. And there I go, I'm hitting mics. This is my thing. Right. With my hands.

Yeah. I think that's something that happens on podcasts all the time, is that they'll realize in the midst of a conversation, oh, there's a lot more here.

There's a lot more.

We need to have you back to talk about this thing, which is also exciting because then as a listener, if you enjoyed that one, it's like, oh, good, I got to look out in two weeks or three weeks or whatever it is when that guest I really love comes back.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, that's the thing is, like, when I'm on the earbud side of the mic here and I go, why didn't you ask that? You, like, left it hanging there? There was like, that's what I want to know. That's a shame. You do want to do that. So if you find that opportunity and there's not time because you're at the 40th minute and you're going, yeah, this is going to be a really long show. If I dive into that, then go ahead and invite them back. Like, that's such a good point, Chris. Really appreciate that.

Yeah. I also think it's an opportunity there that you can then, depending on, you know, the sort of timeline of your podcast, you could even reach out to viewers of like, you know, we are going to have the visitor from this episode back. Is there anything that you wish I had covered or that you want to know more about? And it allows sort of more of an opportunity for engagement, I think.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The thing I want to talk to you about, you mentioned mentorship, and you are more than just a mentor to other NYU grads. You're a mentor to young teens who are. And I mean, are they middle school to high school or what?

Yes. I volunteer with a program called Young Storytellers, which is basically where it's mostly people in the entertainment industry, but really from anything. You volunteer for one lunch break a week for nine weeks, and you're paired up at a local school and you go in and help fifth graders write a five page screenplay. That's anything they want. You're basically like a glorified secretary. You know, you teach them the format and then they sort of dictate the story and you type it up for them. And then at the final class, they bring in professional actors who perform all 10 of the screenplays as a stage play, basically, in front of their entire school. So these, you know, fifth graders get to see all their classmates watch this thing that it's very clear that they wrote, and we introduce them, and there's a big red carpet that they walk down and make, like, a really big deal about them telling their stories. But it's just a great organization that is also a really fun way to remind you, like, oh, this is why people do the job, you know, that I'm doing that. It's like, this is when I started wanting it when I was a kid and just loved movies and tv. That's a good way to sort of connect and not be.

Sort of nurture the voice, right? Nurture your voice. Nurture what you have to say early on, no matter how you say it. Right?

Yeah. The stories that fifth graders will want to tell are amazing and just so much fun. And it can be really just sort of great to be around kids trying to tell their stories where they've not yet sort of been told or figured out for themselves that there are, like, rules or certain things that shouldn't happen or anything like that. It's much more kind of freewheeling and whatever they're excited about, but that leads to a lot of really, really fun productions. Yeah.

Well, I'm so proud of you for all that you've been doing and all that you've done, and we really appreciate all you've done for helping us grow our business, being that foundational voice of feed your brand and WTFF as the starting place. So thank you so much and thanks for coming on today, Chris. Really appreciate it.

Yeah, no, this has been super fun. Thank you for having me. Okay, you've reached the end of another episode of Podcast Peeps with Tom Hazard, Tracy Hazard, and Scott Carson to become an exclusive member of the podcast Peeps Mastermind. Go to podcastpeeps.com and apply today. Catch us next time to get a peek into our mind, share with the top podcasters in the industry.