air-food….

Voice acting can be a bit like listening to peter pan and tinkerbell arguing about the lost boys eating air-food….

Some sweetness at first (as I book a new job), followed by slowly rising angst, then all-out terror about not having the right skill set to do this thing, then tiny maddening screams inside my head (god, why did I take this monster?…. GAH!). 

Here comes the growing fear of flying high…. I watch in horror as pixie dust get sprayed all over my best microphone (maybe that was this morning’s coffee)…… wait…. peter pan?  tinkerbell?

Get a grip, dude….. it’s a half-page script, laid-back read, no music bed, non-union, full buyout, not due for another month, with no re-writes expected….. and the client wants to pre-pay in full direct to my PayPal account…. just needs my EIN.

Jeez, I really do need to get something in my stomach….. besides air-food…..

find me at about.me/deanmarks

losses….

all pet owners know how hard it can be to help a furry loved one pass on…..  we had to do that yesterday for a very special cat who brought us so much joy for 14 years…. there’s a hole in our hearts bigger than the universe…. we look forward to seeing him again some time…..

find me at about.me/deanmarks

ie….

is microsoft yankin’ our chain, or what? 

they spend decades of development hours and burn gigantic amounts on r&d to get a computing public accustomed to working on the web in a certain way, now they’re getting all wishy-washy on their browser product….. WTF?? 

work with adobe to fix this current problem or write a entirely new browser…. like that will ever happen.

granted, ie is probably unfixable and will remain that way despite whatever effort’s made to maintain it, but who in mr gates’ playpen is not paying attention?

with a world-wide base of users out there using ie and its associated suite of plug-ins on multiple versions of the windows operting system, it might be time to stop wishing the bad guys would go away and do something real about the mess that’s been created.

hey, bill…. get a grip… there are matrix-like, red-eyed techno-monsters out there poised to consume the internet world many now live in every second of every day…… a little help over here, please?

find me at about.me/deanmarks

faces….

a writer’s block kind of day….not wholly uninspired, just in a writer’s time-out…. bright sun, cool temps, and a quiet shopping mall…. the walk continues……

find me at about.me/deanmarks

up….

sherpas don’t want to climb everest….. so?  shows a great deal of intelligence on their part despite their loss of revenue….

let’s see:  live a long life surrounded by your family and a warm fire, or die a cold, horrible death and leave your family penniless…

yeah, I’d say they’re a fairly sane lot…. it’s the spoiled rich kids they serve who need an intellectual cat scan…. sherpas say the mountain told them not to climb, and they listened….

if a crew of rich kids with a stack of corporate money would just go up in better conditions with a huge trash compactor, take all their  toxic rich-kid trash off the mountain, the world would be a much better for it….

the local population would be happy…. and the mountain would smile once again…. it’s owed to them.

find me at about.me/deanmarks

scenery….

a rearview mirror show life’s light as it exists behind us    …. at 186,000 mps, is it truly real-time, or are we looking into an image of the future?

26.2….

best of luck to everyone running in the 118th boston marathon…. this improper bostonian always knew we were all boston strong….

signals…

recently lost my cellphone…. around the same day, a dentist removed one of my teeth…. pain is roughly equal in both cases…. can’t talk easily in either…. love my dentist, hate my phone…. so hashtag this, dude…. but who really is the ‘smart’ one?

two days…..

friday night – we jumped in with both feet, on blind faith, knowing but not knowing what the weekend would present… then it was gone.

monday morning – we’re back to work…. two days behind us…. with people wanting to know what you did, but really just making polite conversation.

if you really, really care, ask….. if not, leave it alone…. your phone’s ringing anyway.

acting out….

an ‘actor’ and a ‘voice actor’…. the very thin line is blurred and very subtle.  in fact, they’re close to being same thing…. almost. 

those wonderful artists who choose tv or stage acting usually have a clear advantage…. the audience can see them.  they can use all parts of their body (within reason or censorship), facial expressions, their position on stage, camera angle, and a host of other devices not available to an ‘off-stage/screen’ voice actor.

example:  there’s a slew of different ways a stage actor can say “eff you” and deliver a powerful punch in the gut, or conversely, a light smack on the cheek.  they can say it without saying a word…. body language… facial expression…. intensity of the moment.  it’s all visual icing on the cake.

the voice actor has his/her voice…. that’s it.  oh, and a microphone….. that’s really it.  well, they may be working alongside other voice actors in the same studio, but what does the audience see?  nada.  zilch.  not a damn thing.  there could be talking monkeys in the studio for all the audience knows.

the voice actor has to get it right the first time, much like a stage actor…. but the stage actor generally has a wider window for rehearsing lines in solo mode, and then with the rest of the cast in ensemble. 

surprisingly, many stage actors are frightened to death of the thought of doing voiceover work.  Interesting, because I find it so much easier to be shielded from the audience by my microphone…. and right now, I’m rather terrified of being on stage in front of a live audience, and I know that would be a great place for me to be to improve my voiceover career.

in life, everything runs full circle…. voice artist, stage artist…. no difference.