After four weeks of toiling in my dialects and accents workshop, here’s what I’ve discovered: My British accent isn’t too shabby. I did a credible Claude Rains riff for the final exercise. And in Prototypes class last evening, my Hugh Grant takeoff favorably impressed some of my fellow actors, who didn’t even realize that it [...]
Archive for the ‘Workshops’ category
Internationally speaking…
August 14, 2009In the game
August 9, 2009Confession 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 [...]
Studied 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. [...]
Making it do what it do
July 30, 2009If I’ve learned anything in my recent voiceover workouts — and let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that I have — it’s about the essential importance of acting over voice quality. Or, as Sirenetta told our accents and dialects class, “Play the scene, and the voice will follow.” It’s taking a while — [...]
Blimey!
July 24, 2009In an effort to expand my vocal repertoire, I’m taking a four-week seminar on accents and dialects. One might suppose that this aspect of voice acting would come easily to me, given that (a) I’ve lived on three continents, as well as in both Hawaii and the polyglot Bay Area, and (b) I have friends [...]
Who says I’ve got no class?
June 4, 2009The incomparable Shirley, the office manager at Voicetrax, called this morning to review my course schedule for the upcoming term. I managed to score most of the classes that I wanted to take. I’m on the wait list for one course that was rescheduled, but aside from that, I’ll stay pretty busy through early October. [...]
Positive direction
May 22, 2009My four-week workshop on self-directing skills has concluded, and what have I learned? That my self-directing skills need work. Not that that’s a shocker. Actually, I’m proud of the work I did during these four weeks. My script analysis, though still light-years from perfection, is improving. I’m getting better at asking the right questions about [...]
Horatio
May 15, 2009At last evening’s workshop, one of my fellow actors shared an epiphany she’d experienced in a private coaching session earlier in the day. “How would you describe yourself?” the coach had asked her. “Strong,” my colleague replied. “Authoritative. Forceful.” “But you’re not that way at all,” said the coach. “You’re funny. Friendly. Lively. Engaging. And [...]
Actor, direct thyself
April 30, 2009A thought-provoking insight in tonight’s first session of a four-week course in self-directing skills… Approach every script as though you were going to direct another actor’s performance of it. That makes so darned much sense I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself. After all, how many times have I, as a presenter, reiterated [...]
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 [...]
