Once upon a time…on a hot summer Friday afternoon, Adam Morgan and his eldest Son James sat on their balcony looking over a heat hazed Adelaide city.
“Hey Dad, you know you can put your voice over reel on the internet?” said James.
“On the what?” replied Adam.
“Jeez Dad, it’s 1998! The internet. If we get a website, companies anywhere can listen to your voice. They’ll email you a script and we can record and send their voice-overs back to them on disc. Banks even pay straight into accounts overseas now – it’s not just cheques any more.”
So with that, James and Adam booted up their Gateway Solo 2100 (the iMac was still in development, to be released later that year) and the seeds of Adam Morgan’s Voice Overs On The Net were sewn (back then, domain names were who you were and your job, making them lengthy).
Within days, soundproof foam, leads and mic stands filled their apartment hallway, and fellow actors and IT boffins settled into the living room (and the now famous balcony) to design the unleashing of their talent and skill on the rest of the world.
“I’ll never forget the ‘ding’ of that first email.” says Adam today. “It was from SunTrust Racing in America. They wanted my narration on a DVD of motor racing footage, to promote investment in their team. We did the job and produced the audio on the same day. My nerves jangled as I mailed the CD to them. We weren’t sure if the CD would last the journey. It did and the client was over the moon.”
Instead of celebrating, the VOOTN team got busy recording voice overs featuring Adam, Coni & Bob Vale at first, for clients like Telstra, The Big Media Group in Belgium, The Outback Steakhouse restaurant chain in the US, and Hilton Hotels in Europe. More Australian clients came on board too, and VOOTN’s voices grew into the hundreds.
Today, VOOTN actors hail from all corners of the globe, and thanks to the vision James and Adam set to build the business alongside technological advances, clients come from all over the world too.