Confession time… I kissed a video game, and I liked it. For the past several weeks, I’ve been eagerly anticipating Pat Fraley‘s Game World event in San Francisco. Three reasons: (1) I had a blast working with Pat during a previous event; (2) Pat’s guest coach was Darragh O’Farrell of LucasArts, about whose directing I’ve [...]
Archive for the ‘Celebrity voices’ category
In the game
August 9, 2009Studied prototypical
August 5, 2009Given that I’ve been working so much on character acting of late — I’m three-fourths of the way through a class on dialects, and I just wrapped a workshop on acting for animation and video game projects, with another of the latter coming this weekend — I haven’t been working much in my natural voice. [...]
If it’s free, I’ll take three (hours)
April 24, 2009More often than not, you get what you pay for. This is not one of those stories. The ever-thoughtful folks at Voicetrax are doing a golden favor for their students this month — offering a selection of one-session group lessons on a variety of voiceover subjects, free of charge. When the schedule of free classes [...]
Pat-urday in San Francisco
March 9, 2009Now that I’ve had a moment to rest and recover, here’s the lowdown on last Saturday’s workshop. Pat Fraley titled the event Audition Technique Masters, which probably described everyone in the room other than me. Pat invited agent John Erlendson, principal of San Francisco’s JE Talent, to direct one of the two sessions. Sydney Rainin, [...]
Another Brick in the wall
March 2, 2009For me, a highlight of this past weekend’s WonderCon in San Francisco was meeting one of my VO idols: Scott Brick, perhaps the world’s most honored and respected audiobook narrator. Scott had a booth at the con — how did I miss seeing that in the program? — promoting his self-published series of audiobooks. For [...]
No Oscar love for “That Trailer Guy”
February 25, 2009I’m a mite embarrassed that it took veteran animation writer/director/producer (among the scads of other things he does) Mark Evanier to point this out to me, but now that I’m thinking about it… Isn’t it peculiar that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences failed to include Don LaFontaine in the Oscarcast’s annual “In [...]
Why I want to earn my SAG card
January 25, 2009I want a Screen Actors Guild card… …not for the prestige. …not for the pension and insurance benefits. …not for access to all of the really great VO jobs. …not for scale wages or residuals. …not so that I can cast a ballot during strike votes. …not even for the autographed 8″x10″ glossy of Alan [...]
Bad day for celebrity voices
January 14, 2009Good thing this doesn’t happen often. Both Patrick McGoohan and Ricardo Montalbán passed away today. Although I’ll mostly remember Messrs. McGoohan and Montalbán for their face-acting roles — McGoohan as the title character in Danger Man and The Prisoner; Montalbán as Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island and as Star Trek‘s “Kha-a-a-a-a-a-n!” — both possessed noteworthy [...]
Narration sensation
January 12, 2009Thursday evening was my first session in a four-week course on narration. It’s the beginning of what will be a busy semester for me at Voicetrax. Although I’ve mostly taken acting and character classes to this point, and seem to have an affinity for that sort of thing, narration is more like what I thought [...]
My New Year’s with the guru
January 1, 2009My key tactic for 2009 is to do something every single day of the year that will help advance me toward my voiceover career goals. Some days, that may be as small as reading one good article or blog post, from which I take away valuable information. Other days, I’ll make bigger contributions — attending [...]
