When your brand as a voice actor is as secure as as his was, you can get away with wonderfully inventive demos like this. I don’t have enough fingers to count up the “rules” he broke with this one. But it didn’t matter.
[audio:https://billpryce.com/blog/audio/Lorenzo Music.mp3]I’m reading James A. Michener’s autobiography The World Is My Home. In it he offers tips to would be writers and speaks of how simple luck played a huge role in his success. Just change a few of the skills mentioned and you’ve got great advice for the voice over performer:
The only generalization I can offer is that in an irrational world if a prudent course has been followed, you make yourself eligible to capitalize on luck if it happens to strike. If you have not made yourself eligible, you may never be aware that luck is at hand. By this I mean: learn typing, master math, learn to draft a convincing letter, broaden the mind, and do not evade challenges. Making oneself eligible to seize the breaks if and when they come is the only sensible strategy I know. Be prepared to make full use of any stroke of luck, and even if it never comes, the preparation in itself will be a worthy effort.
Stacey Stahl emailed yesterday the dates and cities of the remaining Marice Tobias workshops for voice over pros this year. See them here.
Marice has a magical way of spotting things that are getting in the way of your most authentic performance as a voice actor. I highly recommend her workshops.
Been thinking about the word “context” this morning. It’s one of the lenses through which we should see the script as we prepare for the job or an audition. It helps us determine choices.
I think language scholar Oscar E. Nybakken has a very useful take on the word “context” for the voice actor:
Context not only casts a play of light and shadow on a word but frequently suggests its primary meaning.
Adding light and shadow to the read is a wonderful thing as long as it serves the story. There’s that “context” thing again.
The merging and melding of media marches on. Now we have video embedded in print ads. What does this mean for the voice actor? It can’t be bad, methinks.