But this isn't about that.
This is about my week in voice acting.
Sucker.
Monday was stupid, angry early.
A booking for Carrabba's from 9 am until the client's final approval but with a hard out at 2 pm*.
Oh. Sorry. 8 am.
This is the kind of voice over I'm not a big fan of: it was a remote, which means I'm in a booth in New York with an engineer (J.D., who was totally awesome) while the producers, directors, audio folks etc. are in another location and only talk to me through a set of headphones. What this means for me is a lot of standing in silence while they talk things over.
Then, once we have a good version of the scripts (a :30 and :15 version), they have to send it off to the client, the people representing Carrabba's.
This is the awful part.
To "send something off" means to, literally, attach a rough version of the VO to an e-mail and send it. In this case, that meant to Florida. After an inordinate amount of time, they get back to the folks in the studio and tell them that they like what they're hearing or that they want something different.
Sadly, the client wanted something different.
Which means back into the booth and start from scratch.
When this new delivery is finished, again, it gets sent to the clients.
Long wait.
Final decision.
The people were all great, but the copy was so bland. This isn't an interesting commercial that people are going to want to hear again, this is something that will make them change the channel and I don't like the boilerplate read that I did.
But, it's the client's money and their choice so, whatever.
Thankfully, they liked what I did the second time around and I go out around one.
Four hours, during which time I was actually recording for, maybe, ten minutes, forty five seconds of which will actually be used.
Behold: the Industry.
After that session, I headed over to an audition that was supposed to have taken place an hour earlier, but, because the session ran long, I missed my slot. I called to see if I could still make it and they said yes. It was at Sound Lounge and with Andy and I'm more than cool with both of them.
It was a lucky thing I made the audition, because I ended up booking the gig...Bud Light.
Another "9 am" session...another open ended "9 am" session.
Such...suffering...
But, it was at Sound Lounge and these guys are always cool. The room was comparatively packed; two people from accounts, two from creative, a producer and the audio engineer. Throw in a keg and...no.
This was a lot more fun than Carrabba's, it always is when the room is full of people.
At one point, Prince was brought up** and it turned out that most everyone there had excellent Prince stories.
The script was more fun than any beer commercial that I've ever heard and, although the client seemed to want something more boilerplate, the creative folks wanted more of a Denis Leary read...which was perfect for me at fake-9 am. At one point, I got to improv some stuff which is always a blast, but, whether or not they use it, I suppose we'll see.
In the end, I had to leave at 2 pm, but we had gotten everything done that we needed.
Sadly, it looks as if the Leary read will not be the one they go with.
Again: the Industry.
The next morning was yet another session at Bang for Speakaboos, which has become my favorite voice over gig ever thanks to Amy Kraft, the executive content producer. We bond over such wonderful geeky stuff...
Thursday's session, while only from 10 am to 12 pm, was full of the most fun and challenging voice work I do these days.
First on the docket, I met the creator of Scrapkins, Brian Yanish, who was working with Speakaboos to get one of his stories animated. My character? Digger.
He'd never been voiced before and I had the honor of doing so. Brian had an idea of what he should sound like and, after I made a bunch of weird noises, we had our Digger.
Did I mention that Digger speaks his own language?
He does.
Example: I had to say "Zoogarrrr!" in several different ways.
After this, which was...just the most silly fun ever...I was handed a more kid-friendly version of Shelly's "Frankenstein"***, for which I did all the voices, the narrator, Dr. Frankenstein and the Monster.
Have I mentioned that I enjoy working with these guys?
Then, with just a bit of time left, I was handed "Night Boy", written by Anne Carter and illustrated, beautifully, by Ninon Pelletier, for which I read the narrator and Night (brother of his sister, Day).
Although we only got halfway through, I'm going back in on Tuesday for three hours to finish that up and do some more, undoubtedly, fun, challenging, creative and wonderful stuff.
Before I do though, there is the matter of Monday...on which I will be recording some internal VO for mono, the ad agency behind the kick ass Target "Everyday Collection" campaign. Turns out that this campaign really took the ad world by storm and now it's been nominated for a bunch of awards. I'm going to be voicing the award submission video and the video that kind of breaks down and explains the campaign to folks.
These guys have also been totally awesome and I'd love to work with them again.
I love how they've taken the ironic glamour and elegance of "Tar-jhey" to such a ridiculous extreme that it's actually become cool and funny.
Have you seen these commercials?
And, on top of all this paid work, I'm just over halfway through recording my second audio book for Phil. As it is a fraction of the size of "The Grind Show", it is going so much faster and less frustratingly and I'm almost enjoying the actual recording.
Hopefully I can get that wrapped up before my honeymoon, because, if I don't...it's really going to eat me up.
I loathe having creative projects not finished when there's nothing stopping me but me.
I never understand that...how some people have ideas and then just write them down in little books until they grow moldy and less pertinent. If you have an idea and are able to carry it out, fucking do it. There is nothing, NOTHING more satisfying than having a thought, writing it down and then creating and releasing it; whether it's glorious or insane or pure shit. It's something you made, something no one has seen before...hopefully.
It also pays to Google your idea first, just in case.
So, yeah.
Eight days before the happiest day of my life and I'm voice acting like a fucking maniac.
Good stuff.
* A "hard out" means that, no matter where we're at, I'm out the door by that time. If you're too nice (like me), sometimes you get taken advantage of.
** Yes, by me, and yes, that counts.
*** Less murder and burning.
1 comment:
In Aussie slang, a digger is a war veteran.
So there's that.
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