Posted by Dale on Dec 30, 2009 in
Uncategorized 2010 will not go down as a banner year. Unless that banner reads:
“Good Riddance, Thanks for Nothing!”
As we all hope for improved wages, better returns, more jobs… heck, A job, it serves us to take a look back and see what we can learn from last year.
For me 2009 wraps up the decade with the understanding that the Voice Over Biz get harder the older you get. And most of that can be attributed to the increasing multitude of complexities that come with the adding of years.
These complexities are endless, unavoidable, and unpredictable. However that doesn’t mean they have to be debilitating.
For me, the loss of income, investments gone wrong, and a little boy on the way (1 month and counting!), could cause fear, anxiety, and bad gas. And it did! But the key is what I do with it.
To make a positive is the only choice I have, cause the negative just feeds negative.
"Always with the Negative Waves"
So as I begin my goals for 2010. ( Always a good idea.) I find myself taking that fear and anxiety and parlaying them into focus, renewed work ethic, and a stronger faith in my past. Meaning I know I’m good at what I do, and the down times are just opportunities to catch up on reading and a litmus that make the up times all that more sweeter.
For me the year was one for introspection and making sure that all the “junk” that happened doesn’t through me off my balance.
So it is with great excitement, feeling as if I’ve found my balance, that I enter this new decade. There will be much work, with no few guarantees. However, I look forward to looking back at the end of 2010.
Here’s to the next decade in the biz.
Tags: actor, business, voice, Voice over advice, voiceover
Posted by Dale on Jul 22, 2009 in
Voice Over The time it took me 30 minutes to say the word Toyota was the worst Brain Sweat I ever head. The word came out wrong once, the twice, and then my Brain starting Sweating, Thinking only about saying the word right, and thus assuring that I never would.
Normally a mess up doing Voice Over, is just that, but on occasion it becomes a monster threatening to send you to the Looney Bin.
Your Brain starts to sweat about not getting it right and you cascade into a down word spiral of self doubt and loathing. You start to think about how dumb you are for not being able to say a stupid word or phrase that a 3 year old could. in my cause “Toyota”
You start to wonder how stupid everyone listening thinks you are. About how stupid you’ll look when your ineptitude makes it onto some famous reel of stupid people. If fact somehow you’re entire life becomes stupid in the wake of your complete failure to say one stupid, dumb, stupid word.
The question is not so much how you got here, but how you get out.
My advice: Do whatever you can!
Namely remember the song from Sesame Street. “Oops I made a mistake that’s all.”
It’s life, it happens, and the only real way you’ll leave a lasting “BAD” impression is to panic and start acting like a weirdo. Make fun of it. Get goofy. Breathe. Think of playing baseball with Kangaroos. Anything to take your mind off of your Brain Sweats.
Oh, and you probably will find that you actually will begin to sweat for real!
I finally did say Toyota right. My secret? I took my Left Shoe off and waved it in the air while I read the copy.
Seriously !
Whatever it takes.
Tags: acting, actor, artist, business, How to act, voice, Voice over advice, voiceover
Posted by Dale on Jun 22, 2009 in
Voice Over Walked into a casting directors office today and had to make sure I was signing in for a voice over audition, and not for Kevin Costner’s roll in The Big Chill 2.
Never get cast as the Dead Man in a movie.
Things are slow, real slow. The office was scary quite, just as work for most is scary quite. The only thing you can do when it gets slow, is to get busy!
The more you think about the slow, the slower it’s gonna get. So get out there and do what you always wished you had the time to do. Do what you’re good at and get better.
Take a class, work on your craft.
One guy I know has dropped his golf handicap by 2 points.
I’m hitting the “To Do” list around the house, and our garden has never looked better. Might even make it to the Ukulele jam session I’ve been meaning to go to.
Never let slow draw attention to itself. It makes you do things like think about getting another job, and that’s almost as bad as thinking about teaching.
Tags: acting, actor, artist, business, Costner, la, Money, voice, voiceover
Posted by Dale on Apr 20, 2009 in
Voice Over When I started out as an actor I read or saw nearly everything I could on how to be an actor. I read Linkleter for voice, Brockett for History, Mamet for how not to act, and Cain for how not to blink. 
For the most part what I learned became part of my collective unconscious, however one piece of advise from some “How to Act” book from some unremembered partially famous actor, has continued to periodically surface in a check reminder.
No matter how good of friends you become with your agent, there will probably be a time when, for business reasons, you’ll have to leave for another agent.
It is a harsh reality that I never thought would apply to me, as my agent at the time was 150 years old, smelled of cigarettes smoked during prohibition, and could never remember who I was.
Only you will know when it’s time to leave and hopefully after much thought and sought advice. As a cartoon on the wall of a casting director reads:
Changing Agents is like changing chairs on the Titanic.
Rash and quick changing of agents in an effort to find the always elusive “Greener Grass.“, will more often then not make you wish you could Wonder Twins Power into the shape of a boomerang and find your way back to your old agent. You can imagine that Humble Pie is a big ole’ slice of bitter.
When it’s the right time and the right reasons, changing agents, no matter how good of friends you’ve become, can be one of the most useful tools you have to further your career.
Just remember
Be Good
Don’t burn a bridge if you don’t have to. Your Old Agent may be your next best New Agent!
Tags: acting, actor, Agent, business, How to act, voiceover
Posted by Dale on Mar 16, 2009 in
Voice Over 
Everybody want to be a Voice Over actor. I mean, it’s easy right?
The Good
You show up to work in your T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. You read a few words that you don’t have to memorize, drink coffee, eat free food, and then about an hour later go home to your fantastic VO pad, pour the Margarita’s and wait for the fat checks to come raining down like candy at a 4th of July Parade.
The Bad
You send out your demo, that cost you 1500 dollars, to potential agents for the 3rd time and for the 3rd time they tell you they have too many people with your voice on the roster. You take class after class, go to audition after audition, and then finally you get a booking… and it’s to be voice #2 for Sun Drop Soda.
It’s your big break! Your part consists of saying “Awesome!” and the commercial is going to run in the SouthEast and Wisconsin. You go home to your one room garden apartment, fire up the hot plate for afternoon Ramen and Beans and wait for your $250 check to arrive 2 months late.
The Ugly
Your Agent calls you in the morning (all good agent calls come in the morning), to tell you , that you just booked “The Voice Of…” You have multiple recording sessions from your new home studio, and you know spend more time on the phone with your agent then your girlfriend/boyfriend.
You buy the car/shoes/house/boat/ski condo on the beach (just cause you can). You pay for dinner… for the table next to you. The sessions just keep coming and the fat checks arrive in your mailbox like pre approved credit cards.
Then one day while watching your 70 inch Waterproof Hovercraft LCD that’s floating above the pool, you see your commercial… except the voice at the end isn’t you… somebody else is “The Voice of…”.
You call your agent, he says they went a different direction/lost the account/is as shocked as you.
It was your only account, the fat checks go anorexic. Your monthly bills rivals the GDP of Guam, but you’re so used to spending like Bradgelina and investing like Madoff that you find yourself sleeping in your friends garage next to his Ferret Farm wishing you could go home to your one room garden apartment, fire up the hot plate for afternoon Ramen and Beans and wait for your $250 check to arrive 2 months late.
Tags: acting, actor, Add new tag, artist, business, la, Money, voice, voiceover
Posted by Dale on Feb 23, 2009 in
Voice Over Rule number 34: The only person who understands the life of a voice over actor, is a voice over actor.
There comes a time in every VO’s life where the only person you can talk about VO is with another VO. And believe me, you will need to talk VO. But, no matter how long you’ve been married, together, around someone, if they don’t VO, then they don’t really know VO.
It’s like being home schooled. You just sit there learning from Mom, and if there’s no outlet with fellow students you become…well…home schooled.
A friend of mine once told me:
“The mind is like a dark alley way. A bad place to be alone.”
So too is the mind of VO actor. You have to make time to sit down over coffee, wine, pudding, whatever, to talk shop.
There’s enough examples of VO actors who don’t find the time to socialize and self therapize. They sit at home and stew over every moment of every read. They think of nothing but VO and tend to spiral down into actor self pity and/or self superiority.
These people tend to part conversations like Moses parting the Red Sea. We all know them and we all avoid them.
Telling your worries, problems, successes to a friend who is, say a Pharmacist, will get you pills not sympathy. (Most likely for treating neurosis.)
The need to vent about lack of auditions, bad agents, bad jobs, no work, is an important part of staying sane, with the most sympathetic ear always being someone who needs to do the same.
Open up conversation with a trusted VO friend and save yourself the therapist fee.
Tags: acting, actor, artist, business, therapy, voice, voiceover
Posted by Dale on Feb 9, 2009 in
Voice Over I’ve been a professional Voice Over Actor/Artist for the last 10 plus years. I spent the first few years perfecting my VO chops, literally, in one of the greatest cities on the planet, Chicago. A place, but for the 6 months of blue skin tinting winter, and 3 months of armpit sweat summer, could quite possibly be, in my biased mind, the most wonderful place to live in this place we call Earth.
It was in Chicago that I learned that, for my voice, the closer the microphone the better. How to talk across the mic to avoid plosives (Popping syllables from letters like P.), and that my job description is to Show up, Be a good person, Do my job as quick and professionally as possible, then Leave.
Chicago was also the place where I realized that Voice Over was a business.
I was hooked on the life of an Actor from the first moment I stepped on stage to deliver my lines as a white 16 year old pretending to be Japanese in “Teahouse of the August Moon” If Brando could do it why not my suburban soccer playing self? The only way I can describe how I felt the first time the audience laughed, is that it’s like the first time you catch a wave when surfing. It grabs you somewhere deep in your belly and connects you like a Lego to something that is far bigger then yourself and it triggers your brain to start thinking about how it can connect more legos, and if there is truly anything else worthwhile, except connecting Legos.
Living in South Austin, Texas, and then Stuart Dybek’s ever changing Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, I felt my self growing as an artist, learning technique, and overall getting closer and closer to my inner artistic Lego connecting soul surfer. During that time I was also learning that this whole living thing tended to cost money. To others my 375 dollar a month apartment was a steal, to me a ridiculous obligation with no real return. Then there was the hard truth that Peanut Butter and Tortillas cost more when you don’t have roommates who buy them. What’s more all those acting classes cost as much as rent. Turns out my life as a budding artist had a direct reverse correlation with my income. I looked around at my brilliant artists friends and realized, They Don’t Make Money! Any Money! And Neither Do I!
It hit me, there is the Art of an Actor and there is the Business of the Actor and with out the Business, for the most part, the Art is Art for Arts sake. Conversely the Business without the Art is akin to a salesman without a product. It is, as in almost everything, all about the balance of the two in relationship to the specific artist.
With that I set out to educate myself. Earning a degree in Business from The College of Borders, a Marketing degree from Barnes and Nobel University, and, due to lack of interest and the prerequisite math, failed to finish a Finance degree from Amazon U.
After learning in my 5th year of College that you could test out of classes by reading the books and taking a test, receiving A credit for 3 units by studying for two days, I realized that learning on one’s own simply meant having the will and a book on how to. Add to that the amazing resources on the Internet and truly it is all there for the learning.
I’m still learning and unfortunately what I’m learning is that the learning can never stop. A business that ignores changing trends finds itself irrelevant. If Starbucks, McDonalds, and Coke can lose their way, (New Coke anyone?), so too can the Artist refusing to change, to reinvent their business plan, and learn about the prevailing trends.
Just a few years ago a headshot in color was a sign of someone who didn’t know what they were doing. Now color is a norm, and oft preferred.
Voice Over, like all Art, is a business, and as a business it is ever changing.
Just like a business, have a plan, research the market place, have a great product, be a good person and then leave.
Tags: acting, actor, artist, business, la, over, voice, voiceover
Posted by Dale on Feb 4, 2009 in
Voice Over At a friends college graduation party, her mother asked my what I was going to do with my life. I told her , “Be an Actor.” She smiled at me and said, “Yes, Yes, I know you’re going to be an Actor, but what about when you want to have a family? What do you want to do then?” “Be an Actor.” “ Alright it’s great you want to be an actor, but when that doesn’t work, what then?” My eyebrows furrowed in misunderstanding, had she not heard me the first and second time? So like Peter on the shores of Galilee, I answered a third time. “Be an Actor.” Exasperated at her perceived refusal of me to understand her question, she changed tactics. “Well what is success?” Having never given though to that question before, I answered immediately, as if I’d been waiting my whole life to answer it. “ Making a living doing what I love.”
That is now what I do.
Tags: acting, actor, Add new tag, artist, business, la, over, voice, voiceover