Sue Blu Character Workshop

One of the great things about Voicetrax classes and weekend workshops remains the high quality of the teachers who work there. This past weekend, I was lucky enough to nab a slot in a Animation Character Workshop with Susan Blu - someone who, quite literally, has written the book on Voice Acting. (There are others out there, obviously, but it was actually the first book I ever got on VO, and it has become a bit dog-eared over the years.)

I really love all aspects of voice acting, but animated characters are serious fun. (For those of you who read this, but have little exposure to the different disciplines of voice work, I'm talking specifically about television animation - which can include everything from preschool cartoons to primetime, to latenight, over-the-top, pushing the boundries kind of stuff.) It's all high energy, fast paced work with super focused intensity.

Actually, this clip of Charlie Adler gives you a sense of the difference -


Thanks Charlie! But, back to Susan...

It's truly impressive to be a room with someone who can recall a role from 20 years ago and - without missing a beat - bring that character immediately to life. Susan worked with us on deriving characters from very interesting and non-obvious places. She'd be explaining a technique do create a new character and then say, "well, I used this to come up with..." and suddenly, this whole other person appeared in front of us. It was a stunning transformation which happened a few times.

We all got a significant chance to have her direct us on copy, coax us further on characters and share words of her significant experience with us. There's really nothing like working with excellent directors to help you cut through the fluff and get focused. It was certainly a highly talented pool of students, and by the end of the workshop, everyone had raised their game noticeably. Another high quality weekend honing the craft.

An Evening With Billy West

Spent Friday evening down in Sausalito enjoying an interview with Billy West, who was in town at an "Inside the Voice Actor's Studio" event put on by Voicetrax. For the non-voiceover-centric among you, Billy West has voiced a chunk of memorable characters - (references here and here to get you started) such as Ren & Stimpy, several members of the Futurama cast, and currently the Red M&M on their television commercials.

Giving voice to cartoon and animated characters is a big chunk of the siren song which has drawn me to this line of work. The characters of Daws Butler, Mel Blanc and June Foray fired my imagination and became real to me because the actors behind the animation brought such depth to the characters (and the writing and situations were such inventive roller coasters of storytelling).

Billy has continued to bring the commitment to craft forward. It was a rare treat to listen to his rapid patter of reminisces and views. Character work is a tricky combination of physicality, mechanics, commitment and above all - acting. To pull all those things together is a bit of a magician's trick. To consistently do that over a period of time is significant work.

There were a myriad of ideas sown which I'm still considering this morning, inspiration which hopefully will carry my own energy forward a bit, and substantial laughter and love for the craft.

Big thanks to Voicetrax for pulling this together!

Monday Night At the Board

Ended up engineering for Mr. TK this evening. Always a delight! Good students, fun takes and met a number of budding new VO actors.

07-26-10_1818.jpg, originally uploaded by Jim Edgar Voices.

Voicetrax San Francisco Idol Finalists Announced

The finalists for Voicetrax Idol, San Francsico have been announced -

Chris Abell
Ned Clarke
Wes Davis
Roni Gallimore
David Gast
Megan Goldsmith
Dan Greenblatt
Wendy Levy
Rob Sandusky
Philip Adrian Vasquez
Maureen O'Donoghue
Jean Pennington
Liz O'Keefe

Big congratulations to the finalists - they now go on to the final round with individual reads. They are vying for the coveted prize of 6 months of representation with Stars, The Agency, in San Francisco.

It's great to see these folks meet with success - I've worked with almost all of them (some pretty extensively) in classes over the past couple years, and there's nothing like seeing their hard work pay off! You all deserve it - break a leg in the FINALS!

Invitational Character Reality Check - 12/09

A two day seminar at Voicetrax SF with Natanya, focusing on characters, character scripts and how your efforts play in the fields of competitiveness. I've taken a couple of other workshops with her, and as always, Nantanya manages to hone in on the one or two things that your performance needs to really soar. She always provides feedback of the highest caliber.

The class started a few weeks ago, actually. We had to send in 5 character scripts in advance, which she went through and evaluated. This was an excellent exercise in itself, as finding good contemporary scripts which both challenge and present you well is an excellent task.

There were three basic "rounds" over the two days. We listened to a couple of everyone's "auditons" and she went through her notes publicly, talking about the good, the bad and the ugly. There were definitely some common themes - pitfalls almost everyone succumbed to. But, I won't go into detail here, as those lessons are probably best learned individually.

After the playback and critiques, we received a couple new scripts from Natanya, got a chance to digest them, and then started diving into the booth. The scripts were very diverse, from contemporary films to television shows and games for very specific viewing audiences. It was an excellent chance to quickly create a character and then gear the presentation for the needs of the script. It also demanded a quick change between the characters, as each person read their second scripts immediately following the first.

The emphasis of the class focused on really taking these performances and making them competitive. The level of the students was quite high - competency was assumed - so it became a matter of specific tweaks. Sometimes it was just finding something different in the performance, other times it was a different choice in the fundamental approach. It was inspiring to see everyone react so quickly to the feedback and hit the mark.

After three rounds of listen/perform, she had us grab a script which had been given to someone else and use that. It was a good opportunity to show off some stuff which hadn't been demonstrated earlier. I think that may have been the most fun round for everybody - Natanya included.

Another superb, high-level character class. Nice.

Ultimate Acting Challenge - 11/09

This one actually took place a couple of weekends back (Saturday eve/Sunday all day), but between the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend and me trying to get my thoughts together, some time has certainly passed.

Fact it, this was also one of the more difficult classes to write about. Mind you, that's a good thing, actually. Just makes it more of a challenge to describe in a meaningful way.

The thing about this class is that the specifics vary significantly with each person in it. It's a bit like that thread in The Matrix about visiting the Oracle. You end up hearing exactly what you needed to hear, and it's different for everyone.

For me, the class created several instances of, for the lack of a better word, consideration. - those times when you have a moment of clarity, you see how things fit, interact and influence one another. Things seem possible. Tenuous threads of confidence seem more tangible.

Those moments didn't necessarily happen during the class. Most have come afterward. Maybe it's just the way I'm wired - that I end up pondering things abstractly before diving back into the technically specific. And voice acting is a doing craft, of course.

Which more or less brings me back to talking about the class. This was my second one with Dean, who had traveled up from LA. It started by a one-on-one meeting with him wherein we told him what we felt we needed to work on. After meeting with everyone in this manner, he talked about some of the common themes we had all mentioned, adding a tremendous amount of perspective to such topics as acting choices, self-directing of auditions, sound quality and more.

Of course, we worked lots of scripts and got stellar feedback. When a student had a specific need, Dean was not hesitant to jump into the booth for private directions. By midday Sunday, everyone was sounding pretty amazing. One of the great things was that the better we sounded, the more excited Dean seemed to get. He really throws himself into the direction and feedback loop, with pretty stellar input.

To wrap things up, he met with everyone individually again, and while I certainly am unable to talk about those interactions, I came away feeling more of a core confidence that's been forged. As always, lots of work to do and things to keep mindful of, but this was really a class that helped to keep the momentum and optimism rolling.

Chris Lastrella

You're never ready to hear news like this. Last night, one quick pass through email before shutting everything down, and all of a sudden, words and small things don't really matter.

Chris Lastrella was killed with three family members in an auto accident on August 28th. There's a memorial page at lastrellasaylor.com, and a news report of the accident here. The nature of the accident makes you shake your head in frustration. Recalls, floormats (!!?), and stuck accelerators. These things never seem right, but this one seems particularly unfair.

I knew Chris through classes at Voicetrax. It was not easy for him, particularly in the beginning. But, rather than complain or get frustrated, Chris would shake his head a little, give his easy smile and try to get just a little bit better. We'd talk a little before or after classes, and he always struck me as one of the most upbeat people - always ready to listen and laugh, genuinely happy with anyone's success.

In the last two classes I had with Chris, he'd made huge jumps. He was bringing the brightness of his life into the booth and it was really coming through on his reads. A couple of instructors went out of their way to point out how far he'd advanced - identified the momentum he was finding. He seemed to be finding a great balance, and as always honored it with humility and a quick and ready smile.

Here's to you, Chris. I am sorry that we will not get a chance to read together for a while.

Charlie Adler Weekend

Charlie Adler is pretty much a force of nature wrapped around an immovable object being met by an irresistible force. Repetitively. With extreme dispersion of energy. Visible shock waves. That sort of thing.

Exactly how that plays out has a little to do with how close you are to the blast zone.

There were two opportunities this past weekend. The first was Saturday night, with Charlie speaking at the "Inside the Voice Actor's Studio" event that Voicetrax put together. I'd never met or seen Charlie in the flesh, but various folks had mentioned that the language tends to be, um, visceral and the energy at 11. It was.

He told the tale of how he came to be an actor - the tough years and crap jobs, the breakthroughs - and how he came from stage acting to the world of voice acting. All through the night, it kept coming back to the acting. Not surprisingly, as that's the board that keeps hitting most of us over the head anyway. But, Charlie really distilled the importance of that ideal, and managed to inspire us towards it - all while sharing anecdotes with language that would make a sailor blush. It's been a while since I just stared at someone thinking, "did he just say that?...."

But, it wasn't gratuitous. Well, ok....a few things may have been gratuitous. But, it did underscore the energy which he brings to his craft. And it did manage to give strength to the recurring theme of "get over your damned self and ACT!" Which is always a good lesson.

The next day, in a smaller classroom setting (13 students) I also realized that he's a zen master.

I want to be careful in this description, because it's important to understand what I mean by that. He is not the measured ascetic monk sitting in a mountaintop cave, calmly posing koans that may lead to enlightenment after extensive ponderings by the student. No. He is the powerful figure that whacks you over the head with his walking staff when you are least prepared, causing that moment of blankness - that moment wherein conscious thought ceases and all things are possible.

And you make the jump. You get out of your damned way.

With one exception, the other folks in Sunday's Character Class were voice actors I've gotten to know pretty well. We've all heard one another's work in classes, and know where people tend to operate. Comfort zones, maybe. Or, places where we've had successes and have gained confidence. Charlie had us working totally off the scale in the other direction - finding those places where we didn't easily go. He pretty much grabbed us by the belt and hoisted us up and over those walls and we jumped out into...well, nothing. And suddenly, free-falling didn't seem so bad. In fact, it was pretty danged exhilarating.

It seemed like to the very last person, everyone came out of the booth blinking and realizing that the limits they'd put upon themselves were quite artificial, and had Charlie to thank for it. It was a pretty powerful workshop.

So, thanks again, Charlie!

Voicetrax LA Idol Recap

One of the voice acting maxims is that you often give your best read into the front windshield on the way home. Mine came late last night as the I walked the little dog through silent streets. Just at the end, after thinking about the feedback received and the takes I'd done, a breeze came up from the west and I looked up into it and said,

"Consider...a chair"

Which means nothing by itself, and even less if you don't hear me say it. Written voiceover is about as effective as a mime on the radio. But, as I've written before, you know when you do something right - even if you aren't always able to articulate why.

And it was. I cursed and laughed and shook my head. It was real - the operative word for the day - and more importantly, it was the way I would have said it - to you, to my father, to a good friend - in a way that was not slightly safe or stilted. Just honest. And about 10 hours too late. Ahhh, welll... gotta work on that timing.

This morning, I have to think that eleven other people had encountered much the same moment. Maybe on the way home, maybe last night, maybe as they got ready for the recovery activities of today.

The guy who didn't have that thought or moment after the fact was the winner of the 2009 Voicetrax Idol competition -

Chris Abell

Chris has been in a number of my classes over the past couple years - he actually commutes up from the southland - and he always has done extremely well. It's great to give heartfelt congratulations to such a nice guy and deserving winner.

I have to also mention that Don Porto was declared a close second. It had to be a bit of a tough result, as only one person gets the golden ring of auditions. But, for someone who spent the last 3 weeks dealing with a severe vocal strain, it's pretty much off-the-charts amazing.

And although it wasn't quite at the level of raucous hilarity as the dialogues round, there were certainly several near-spit-takes and a general undercurrent of laughter as we all waited our various turns. It was a wonderful day to hang out with great people. The support of everyone in the finals for everyone else in the finals made realize once again what a great group it is. I'm lucky to be a part of this, and am looking forward to the next step on the path.

Forty Eight Hours

I realize that I'm in "countdown" mode right now.

No. That's not accurate. Not that I'm not in countdown mode, mind you. It's just that the verb realize is imprecise. The clock started ticking as soon as Voicetrax sent the email a few weeks back culling the herd and letting a dozen of us know that we were in the finals for the LA Idol competition.

But, I just finished working on some other stuff, stretched and looked at the clock. Right about 1 o'clock. Which means, that in about 48 hours from now, it'll be all over but the shouting. Of course, hopefully there won' be too much shouting...

Maybe off by an hour or so - it's a bit murky how many rounds there will be for this part. Might finish by 2 or 3 pm. It's funny how you can consider something your so focused upon will be past so quickly.

Which more or less tees up the challenge - finding the skills and focus to make the most of those short slivers of time when you can actually do something about it. When it's going right, you feel like 60 seconds is all the time in the world. And my goal in this thing is just to have it feel right. Focus. Breathe. Have a blast. Just like the first round.

I know that there are 11 other people going through much the same thing right now. And the first round was an incredibly fun day of support and camaraderie. It showed what a great bunch of people I'm lucky to be around these days. Everyone realized that if each of us did our best, that would only help one another.

So, here's to a great day for everyone! Bring it!

Raising the Retail Bar - Thom Pinto 09/09

Two day workshop with Thom Pinto focusing on retail scripts. For some reason, I had written this class down in my calendar, scheduled the weekend appropriately and showed up to find that I was not actually, you know, in the class... Luckily, another student had scratched in the previous week, and so I quickly worked things out with Chuck and Thom so I could attend. First time I'd done that... and better than not showing up for a class you'd paid for.

That having been dealt with, we all hunkered down to the nuts and bolts of the Retail Script. This class was set up to mimic live auditions and sessions, with some other exercises thrown in to keep us loosened up. Essentially, in the first (evening) class, we received a script and read for Thom, who was playing a producer trying to cast the spot. Had some decent spots in that read, though I was briefly kicking myself for not noticing one of Thom's embedded "traps" in the script. I think what frustrated me was that I thought, "hmmmm, that's weird" and then didn't ask about it. Ya gots to trust that inner voice thing....

The next day was "Session Day." Having miraculously booked the job the night before, we were to be working with the same producer in a mock session. These were longer reads for each student, complete with reworking the copy to fit the time slot, working timing, pickups and those things which happen during an actual recording session. Ended up with a good-feeling read, and felt pretty solid and focused during the session.

Retail scripts may not get a lot of respect - they aren't necessarily "high art" and the bad ones are, well, challenges. But, they do represent a core area of work, and this was an excellent class on the path to refining that area.

LA Idol - First Round and Results

Last Saturday was the first round of the Voicetrax LA Idol Competition. As I mentioned in a previous post, these focus upon voice work, rather than singing. There are two editions of this - "LA Idol", in which the winner(s) end(s) up with a week of auditions at the major Los Angeles voiceover talent agency, and "SF Idol", where the winner gets representation with a San Francisco talent agency for 6 months.

As threatened, I did a lot of breathing beforehand. And scripts. And got together with fellow voice actors to work dialogues, which was pretty much the name of the game on Saturday.

We did know that going in, of course. What we didn't know was who would be paired with whom, and what scripts were to be used. Folks assembled and the buzzing of excitement could easily be felt. By the time Juliette posted the order and brought out the script for the first round, we'd already busted one another up a few times.

And that, it certainly seems in retrospect was what made the day so darned great. The camaraderie. The sudden realization that these other people with whom I'd shared classes and practices and horrible first takes and glorious successes with over the last couple years had become friends and peers.

To put it another way, everyone in the group was competent. But, our knowledge of one another made it possible for each to enhance the other and bring out the best in each. It's a moment of grace that only too seldom seems to occur in life. Between takes and scripts, we hung out and joked and laughed and kept one another pretty loose.

And loose, and I'm not sure I've observed before, is very good.

Of course, focused is also a desirable attribute as well. I'd brought some notes from various classes (a lot of them seemed to be from Tom Pinto classes...) and had a hand-written set of thoughts, points and reminders which had occurred to me over the previous few days. Probably things that wouldn't make sense to or even help other people, but those specific things that tended to trip me up or remain forgotten when things got hectic.

My wife also sent me a quick loop of the badgers, which for some odd reason of its simplicity and oddness, always cracks me up. It came through on my phone just as we broke into pairings for the first dialog.

The day felt good. Felt fun and loose.

And it seems to have paid off, because it would seem that as of Thursday, my name was among the qualifiers for the finals. Which had me doing the happy dance at my desk. I may have even busted into a badger dance for a few verses...

The 2009 LA Idol Finalists are:

• Chris Abell
• Jessica Blue
• Ralph Boethling
• Brian Davis
• Cinthia DeGregory
• Jim Edgar
• David Johansson
• Ken Krauss
• Kyle Morton
• Angie Noble
• Don Porto
• Nicki Rapp

Which now means that I need to pull together some thoughts, a strategy and some scripts for the finals. And of course, remember to keep breathing, have fun and stay focused.

And maybe bust out a badger dance move now and again...

Invitational Advanced Workshop with Thom Pinto - 08/09

It's pretty easy to run out of superlatives when talking about Mr. Pinto's classes. On the one hand, it seems not too long ago when I was taking the "Colors" class and feeling a bit, uhhh, challenged and awed to be taking a class from Tom. Now, no semester seems complete without some time under his tutelage. He has the capacity to cut right to the core issue that any student may be dealing with and I always appreciate the energy and focus he brings to a class, not to mention the breadth of knowledge of any and all voice actors who have ever recorded anything. He's a true student of the craft and expects as much from his students.

In broad strokes, this was a four week class focusing on specificities. As such, it's one I could take again and have a number of different things stressed, as my needs at that time would be different than now.

But, there were definitely overarching themes: the need to hit the right note from the first syllable of the first word, the need to understand every script both in terms of its meaning and format, the need to be capable of accurate assessment and self-direction. All that stuff that sounds so easy, yet is never simple in the execution.

One nice aspect to this class was that one week was "cyber" style - forcing the students to submit scripts from home, then respond to his feedback with a second version. Very "real" test of the home studio. I will not recount here the number of weird computer issues which cropped up for me on that night, only say that I had to go next door and apologize to the neighbor for my yelling at the last crash. And I'd much rather have that happen on a class than a job...

Countdown to Idol

It's countdown time - the first round of Voicetrax Idol: LA hits on Saturday, September 12th. Deep breathing and working practice scripts shall ensue for the next dozen days...

For those of you not intimately aware - the Voicetrax Idol events are patterned after some large vocal talent contest which they tell me appears now and again on television. In this case, we're dealing with voice work, rather than singing. There are two editions of this - "LA Idol", in which the winner(s) end(s) up with a week of auditions at the major Los Angeles voiceover talent agency, and "SF Idol", where the winner gets representation with a San Francisco talent agency for 6 months.

The format has a couple rounds of competition, and the goal for me this time around is to get past the first one. This will be my third time in the competition. I did the LA a year ago, and it was a great experience, but I felt more like "pack fodder*" and was a little overwhelmed by the level of the other competitors. Most of the folks who showed up I'd never seen before in my classes, they all seemed to know one another and most of them were represented and working. All good, as they say, and I'm pretty happy with what I did. It was just that the folks who moved on seemed to do just a little more.

The SF Idol this spring was a bad patch. I'd love to claim that aliens possessed my brain, or even that the dingos ate my baby, but the fact is I started out of balance and it went downhill from there. Got clipped at the first cutoff.

The question now is whether I learned from the most recent competition. And the classes. And the privates. And all the reads since then.

Which is why I'm counting down the days. And breathing. And relaxing. It's just that funny balance of pushing yourself a certain direction and then getting out of your own way. I love this kind of stuff the way I love bike racing - the anticipation, the feeling of excitement and dread, the focus that comes when you toe the line.

*bike geek term for folks who fill out the pack in a bike race.

In other news, Voicetrax decided that there was so much interest in the Idol series that they filled another SF Idol for the fall. The first round went off a week or so ago, and the first round winners were announced yesterday.

Here's a big congratulations to all the folks who are moving on:

• Patty Allen
• Vicki Baum
• Nigel Ball
• Annalisa Bastiani
• Alyson Casas
• Lynn Douglas
• Roni Gallimore
• Dan Greenblatt
• Maureen O’Donoghue
• Liz O’Keefe
• Rob Sandusky

I know a number of the first round winners quite well from classes, and it's hard to root for any one of the talented people listed above over anyone else.

Good luck to all in the next round! Bring it and have fun.

Audiotour Intensive - 7/09

This was a four week class, given by new instructor Peter Dunne of Antenna Audio. It is a new class for the Voicetrax catalog, geared at more advanced students. It's assumed that you have some background in narration techniques. There's probably no other voiceover discipline which is as immediate and intimate as audio tours found in museums, heritage sites and galleries. You literally are one-on-one with the listener and join them for an extended period of time.

This was a great class - a rare chance to work with one of the sound designers and directors for the Antenna Audio projects. As such, this class was more "session like" than anything else. Time in the booth came in longer chunks, and the feedback was both subtle and specific. Over the four weeks, Peter brought recent scripts from a variety of museum exhibits and tour sites - some basic, others with the complexities of foreign language pronunciations and finally a few that were less common - true character roles and very "challenging" art. He would usually supply these to us a few days before class, let us read through them and choose a few "stops", then suggest or supply others in class based on our vocal qualities.

It seemed as though everyone caught on to his directing and really raised their game through the class sessions. Peter was a pleasure to read for - the specificity of his feedback and interest in the subject matters came through with every student. I enjoy narration in general, but this was really a very challenging and interesting means of speaking. Great information.

Idol Decompression Session

This is a bit more of an actual "Voicetrax Class Report", something I'd begun posting over on the VTX ning.com page (a feed of which is currently visible on the left top of this page.) But, since they keep threatening to turn that into a Facebook Group, it sounded like it might be time to begin embedding them here (and maybe put a copy on the ning.com page - which looks like it may be a copy/paste task as ning.com doesn't appear to support an RSS feed. Of course, the FB Group pages don't support an inbound RSS feed either... but, I digress...)

Tonight was a low-key pizza & beverage get-together and "I love you guys, but..." beat down for those of us who went through the recent Voicetrax Idol SF competiton - modeled after - yep, you guessed it! - another contest which you may have noticed on television recently. Basically, it was a three round performance competition which ended with the winner getting representation with Stars, The Agency for six months.

The third and final round took place a week ago, and the winners were to be announced live (...after the break).

Before we got to that though, we got to share our experiences, failures and lessons learned with one another. Obviously, there was a "carrot" to chase and everyone wanted to win the prize, but this was above all a class - and as such a grand opportunity to learn how we react under different pressures and audition situations.

I don't have too much to share about the later parts of the competition as I got spat out the back with a dozen others in the first round. This actually led to some good lessons and realizations, but I don't really have the time or energy right now to delve into those. Let's just say that it was a good kick in the pants reminder to focus, execute and trust the teachings which have been shared with us. I took my frustration with not advancing and focused it into the prep for my demo.

It was interesting tonight to hear how many other people encountered a lot of the same difficulties. Nerves seemed to be universally shared thread, for example.

We also got to listen to everyone's Round 1 auditons. As Sam mentioned, no one was stellar and the folks who advanced seemed to be the ones who made the least errors.

She may have termed it a little more directly, now that I think about it.

The listening helped to remind us how easy it is to sound the same - hit the same notes and fall into the same types of traps. We did not listen into the second round auditions, but by then the first round jitters seemed to begin leaving those who had made the cut and Sam said that the quality of work definitely improved. By the last round, the reads from the six finalists created significant discussion among the judges at Stars and they gave strong accolades to all who made it that far.

I guess this would be the "after the break" part I mentioned earlier.

There was a final "Selection" to be made, of course, and none other than Mark Middleton nabbed the first place. I've had a lot of classes with Mark, and it's great to see his talents and energy pay off.
Ralph Boethling took second place. He also received word tonight that he had been signed by Stars for representation. Another frequent classmate who just always "brings it."
Louise Theron took third place. I've only bumped into her rather recently in classes, but she has done very nice work.

Congratulations to everyone!

Demo Day

Monday was the first actual, really-truly "Red Letter" day on my calendar. Back in early April, I'd had a private session with Samantha, and she felt that it was time to set a date to record my Commercial Demo. When I wrote down the scheduled session on the calendar, I actually rummaged around and found a nice bold red Sharpie, boxed the day in right and proper and put "DEMO SESSION" in big, block letters. (I even did the same on the month of May, as it fell on Monday, June 1st. Like I was going to forget it or something... I am such a geek.)

It deserved something, and a little graphic energy around the day did seem appropriate. But, thinking about that now, I can't recall ever doing that before.

Of course, the actual session was important, but there was a bit of work beforehand. She had me submit a significant number of scripts a couple weeks before the recording. This meant that I had to go through my files, and received some excellent scripts from fellow voice-actors and teachers, then analyze those things which seemed to best demonstrate my range in commercial copy and decide how each script fit into the scheme of things. As I mentioned earlier, it was a highly iterative process.

But, that work paid off, and we came up with a good number of diverse scripts. All I had to do was be brilliant...

Well... yes and no.

I mean, yes, I had to do them as well as I could.

On the other hand, it wasn't going to take some miraculous act of divine intervention for me to get them right. That sounds abruptly pompous, so let me explain slightly.

In most classes I've taken, scripts get chosen for various reasons. Sometimes, that reason is specifically to cause us to fail. When you have a dozen people at roughly the experience level, and all of them miss the same thing in the copy, I have to assume that we were supposed to miss it, so it could be pointed out clearly, so we would learn and recognize it in the future. Learning by failure.

The Demo Session on the other hand was nothing like that. I had my dozen scripts. We'd pulled out the parts we wanted to use. We had definite attitudes and situations which I was to portray. This was not a time in which anything was going to be a surprise or be designed to trip me up. It was time to show what I've learned.

I'd scheduled a Private Session with N. the Thursday before, where I read through three of the scripts we'd chosen for the Demo. He knew I had the recording session coming up, but hadn't been part of the script selection process. We were working on a couple of other things first. Then, I read through the scripts-for-demo set. After I read the first one, he said, "I know you have a demo session coming up, but if you haven't thought about using that script, you really ought to consider it." Talk about a confidence-builder...

I was also trying not to go through them too many times, as it was important to keep my reads fresh. I spent some time refining what my approach would be - all the good acting choices about what had just happened, who I was talking to, etc. But, I only read through them once or twice more before the session. Enough to know where I was going with them, but not enough to "overwork" anything.

Brought a bunch of other scripts along and warmed up on them beforehand. Right on time, Sam fetched me and we headed over to the main studio. Chuck ran the board and we dove right in.

And it was fun. I lost all sense of time - would've believed it if someone said it took 20 minutes or 5 hours. Even though I had to head into work for the afternoon, I was buzzing and happy all day. Even had trouble falling asleep that night.

Good, good stuff. Which, hopefully, I should be sharing with you soon...

Catalog Daze

This is one of the most fun and aggravating times of the year - new catalog from Voicetrax time. Aggravating because time and funding have finite limits. I mean, you want to dive right in and sign up for everything with a line of dots on it. But, after making swooning wookie noises when you add that little pile of numbers up, you have to prioritize a bit.

You pull this class back because it's probably not going to help you now. That session gets dropped down the list because it's an awful lot like one you just finished, and it's going to start next month (or at least pretty dang soon) anyway. And another gets culled because in a glimmer of confidence, you think you're pretty solid on that area right now. And you want to leave a little "air" in the schedule for a private or two...

But, then you drift into the catalog itself, and you think about working with Sam Pond again, or getting a chance to have a class with Charlie Adler, and you find yourself seriously geeking out over voice acting daydreams (or technically, as I should really be in bed, "night dreams").

Then you turn back a page or two and read the mentions of people you know who are getting work. They're good people who just knock it out of the park when you've heard them. They're people you've had classes with. And you think, "man, I want to be in that section of the catalog - the place where they list the jobs and callbacks and successes..."

And you dream a little more. Realize you've stayed up a bit later than planned. Remember that the other night, you actually had a dream that you were in the booth.

Invitational Direct Thyself - 5/09

Normally after any good class, I'm pretty tired. After an all day "weekend" session, I'm even more wrung out. There's something about a full day of active listening, trying to "pre-guess" the teacher's analysis, recalibrating your impression versus the teacher's, analyzing your own script beforehand, the tiny little step of executing the performance you plan while, then trying to recognize the things that didn't go well while acknowledging that which did...

Last Saturday after this class, I pretty much just crawled on the couch and lay there for an hour and a half. I was seriously worked.

And don't get me wrong - this was probably one of the most beneficial classes I've had. But, it was a pummeler.

Ralph gave a great description in his post, so I won't duplicate that here. I will only add that performing "Undah Da Lights!" with no playback is a seriously good excercise, so I would expect to see Sam adding it here and there.

I'd also like to say,
"Hi, I'm Jim, and I'm addicted to playback."

Listening versus Hearing. Knowing versus Thinking. About a half dozen little corrections to end bad habits and set things up better. This was a high-value class.

Scene Study with Frank Coppola - 04/09

This was a four week course (April 2009) specifically focusing on acting techniques. In other words, no booth time at all - and you had to perform "on stage" for the class and Frank. We performed monologues which we were expected to memorize for the first class meeting and then hone over the four weeks, as well as dialogues with another class member for later sessions. Although we were not required to memorize the dialogue, the less reading we could do seemed to benefit everyone's performance.

I liked this course a great deal. I've also taken Frank's "Simply Acting 1" and "S.A.2", and always appreciate the presence he brings to class. There seemed to be no wasted time during the classes - he actually tightened this up from a six week version (and honestly, a six-week version would've been even better - just started feeling like I was firing on more than half cylinders by the fourth night). As I recall him saying in the first course, "you need to go to the things you fear." For most of us who seem drawn to being in a dark, silent room behind the mic, actually memorizing lines and then bringing them to life in real time may not be a place of fear, but it certainly is a place of reasonable uneasiness.

For me, "acting" has historically been something I watched and enjoyed. Now that voiceover has such a hold on my life, this class was very helpful in both recognizing and then refining the techniques of presentation. Good stuff and I'll always take another class with Frank.