Yes, it’s a Tech Post.
I was making some updates today to the machine, and running along my busy little schedule for the morning and it occurred to me that a huge part of this craft, if you work from your own home studio is the ability to be a good engineer as well as voiceover talent.
In order to deliver a good voiceover performance, you need to have your acting chops tight, breath control, diction, warm up exercises and such, but to capture that sound and be able to deliver to the client a fully professional sounding recording for their purposes, you have to know a thing or two about running a studio.
Stephanie Ciccarelli made a very interesting point yesterday on the Vox Daily blog. She spoke about the need for an amateur tradition in our field. She’s absolutely right. I got thinking about that and how well that goes hand in hand with what I was going to write about today.
Most of us in this business who are working and making a living at it, have a lifetime of experience and training.
I grew up in the Theater. I was acting from a very young age and was heavily involved in the training programs that San Diego had to offer. I did my first voiceover at age 8, (I’m looking for that master reel today as a matter of fact, I had transferred it to Digital a couple years ago, but somehow it got lost in the vastness of an old hard drive.. :0 ) and took classes on Acting, Direction, Script Interpretation, Emoting, Movement, Voice Projection, Actor Interaction, Television Production, Audio Production, Video Editing (and we’re talking a 6 foot rack full of old analog tape gear type editing), Audio editing (another 6 foot rack of analog gear) and so much more. I was involved in the various programs until I had taken every class that they had to offer and had to move on to the Adult classes. I had to get special permission to do so from the Program’s Director, they agreed and at the age of 13, I was in the 18 year old and above Adult classes. Luckily, the Teacher of those programs, in a moment of pure unselfishness, realized it would be a great exercise not only for me to have to stretch a bit, but for her students to be thrown an X factor and make them interact in different types of situations with someone who was younger.
When I got into high school, I was involved in the Drama Department, and was still continuing to take Ballet and Jazz classes as well. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that in addition to the classes I was taking in Balboa Park, I was also being shuttled downtown to take Ballet and Jazz classes at Stage 7 San Diego, and was getting an opportunity to take my discipline up a notch.
Now, Summer time.. in the Summer, I would spend most of my time at Stage 7. They would offer two sessions of a Summer Symposium, which included classes from 8 in the morning until 11 or 12 at night. I would take my first ballet class at 8 in the morning, then take various classes throughout the day and ending with Musical Comedy at night sometimes until Midnight. At the end of each of the month long Sessions, there would be a performance at San Diego City College in their rather large theater. I did this for years.. and I got an opportunity to work with some of the best in the business. I took Musical Comedy from Tanis Michael, one of Bob Fosse's right hand men, Jazz from Barry Bernal, one of the original cast members from Cats and Starlight Express, Modern Classes from Alvin Ailey, etc.. you get my point… I took those opportunities when I had them, and by the time I took a breath, I was through High School and had a rather healthy resume of Acting, Dancing, Musical Theater, Stage Direction, Technical knowledge, Audio and Video production and editing, and all the while I had been a musician in my own very thin personal time to unwind.
I say all that because many of us put a lifetime into what we do, and it’s not to make ourselves better than anyone else, far from it, it’s just the path we chose, and the set of talents and gifts that the big man upstairs gave us to develop. We all work and start at different times in our lives, different paces and take different paths to get to where we want to go.
How does this relate to Voiceover? Well, after my pretty lengthy diatribe, I bring it back to this: Everyone starts somewhere! I was lucky enough to have had come into my life, a long list of people that from the kindness of their hearts, taught me to be who I am today. This was all done as an Amateur Tradition. They took the time to share their knowledge with me while I was open and receptive, not because of the money involved, (Most dancers, and actors at that stage don’t make much and often not enough to survive, far from it.) They did it because they felt the responsibility to share those talents with those coming in the door.
Technical stuff is no different. It can be just as intimidating to sit in front of a machine with bells, whistles, buttons, faders and screens as it is to walk into a class of 40 people in the middle of an open theater floor and have to audition in front of all of them so that the instructor can get an idea of where the skill levels are in the class and who will be good for what..
It’s now our responsibility to help these folks just now getting their feet wet any way we can, and to never forget that however far we go in our careers, we can’t forget to throw a rope back over the wall for someone else to climb up.
Thoughts?
By For Now..
Adam
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