My friend Adam Creighton is facing a tough set of decisions. His way of working through the options was to make a YouTube video, which I found fascinating, so I’m sharing it with you, here.
Adam’s conundrum
Blog
A long and wonderful day
What a wonderful day I’ve had today. Spent most of it in the studio with my friend Rowell Gormon and then visited with Rowell and two other good friends, Donovan Corneetz and Adam Creighton over dinner. Sadly I neglected to bring my camera to document the day (thought about it 60 miles too late) but can’t help at least leaving links and a few thoughts here.
Donovan and Adam are two of the brightest marketing minds I know, so I always learn something valuable when I interact with them. This was my first time to meet Adam in person. Donovan and I have spent many excellent hours together. Some of them in North Carolina where we both live. Some in Los Angeles and Las Vegas at various conventions and seminars. And Rowell is a guy who has forgotten more about acting and voiceover than I’m ever likely to learn.
To top it off, as I drove back to Charlotte in the evening, I was able to listen to a truly fabulous tele-seminar led by Dan O’Day on the subject of getting things done. This was a bonus class added to the month long series of tele-seminars Harlan Hogan and Dan O’Day are holding this month. (The class is closed now.) The focus of this bonus session was on Getting Things Done. This tele-class was so useful and valuable I truly cannot imagine how my time could have been better spent. It was, without a doubt, the most valuable set of things I’ve ever learned from Dan O’Day and given that he’s been part of 13 years of my professional growth and development, that’s saying a lot. If you ever get a chance to hear Dan speak on this subject, don’t missing it. Seriously.
Maybe if Dan gets enough email, he could be persuaded to make the MP3 of this tele-class available for purchase? I don’t know. But, if he does, grab it. Yes, it’s that good. I’m going to listen to the whole thing again tomorrow and since I won’t be driving this time I’ll be able to take notes. There will be lots of them.
Desperate Creativity
My friend Adam Creighton moved from Austin, TX to Durham, NC some months ago. He offers some very candid and pointed insights into how this has affected his acting and voice acting career in a Point of View article published a few days ago on Showfax.
What I think is pretty cool is that The Actors Voice – POV (the point of view site) is overseen by casting director Bonnie Gillespie. I’m not positive, but I think I might have played a small role in helping to introduce Adam to Bonnie a couple of years ago. Regardless, of whether that’s the case or not, I just love seeing how the lives of people I know intersect like this.
Here’s another example, I met Anna Vocino as a result of studying in 2007 with Nancy Wolfson. (Anna and Nancy jointly run the Break Into Voice Over site.) I first connected with Bonnie Gillespie because I responded to one of her superb The Actors Voice columns. She not only responded to my comments, but even linked to this blog from there. So, I was truly delighted when I was at dinner with Nancy, Anna and several of our mutual friends a year ago and discovered during our conversation that Anna and Bonnie are also good friends with one another.
In any case, back to Adam and his column, I think that term “desperate creativity” is spot on. Everyone who works in a creative field knows what it’s like living through a season where things aren’t clicking. No one wants to live there, but once we get through those times we have the benefit of being able to look back and see just how much we learned from the experience. May this be such a time for you, Adam.
Adam’s gaming podcast
My friend Adam Creighton provides a guest podcast on gaming at the Emergent Game Technologies Podcast site.
Something Horrible and the Other Side
My friend Adam Creighton has been walking through a truly shattering experience for the last many weeks. He’s posted an extraordinary audio file on his blog that will be hard for you to hear, but I’m pretty sure you’ll agree it is well worth your time.
And Adam, I will be praying for you and your family.
(edited to fix typo)
Adam’s mighty fine soapbox
Adam Creighton is an actor who lives in Austin, TX. We’ve not yet met in person, though I’m hoping to see him when I travel to Austin in a couple of months. Along with lots of other things, Adam blogs about acting and voice acting in a place he calls Ramblings. I visit Adam’s Ramblings often, because he so frequently has things to say that I need or want to hear.
His post called Networking for actors is a perfect example.
Adam writes about how much time and effort he used to put into networking, and then says…
But then I stopped doing it.
Why?
Because I honestly didn’t like how good I was at networking. I got into situations and saw people doing the networking thing, and they weren’t sincere. They were looking at opportunities for themselves, and didn’t give a damn about the people they were meeting. They were superficial. They were exploiters. They were users.
I so didn’t want to be them.
So, Adam did what most of us do. He over corrected. More recently, though he’s started networking again…but with a difference…
Here’s how it works for me.
I meet someone, and we talk. I find out what they do, what they’d like to do, and what makes their day worthwhile. And I talk about what I do, what I’d like to do, and what makes my day worthwhile. And we figure out if we’ve got stuff we want to do together that makes our days worthwhile together.
That’s right, kids, we have a conversation.
And then, independent of whether we can do something together, I try to keep that person in mind when opportunities come up for them, even if there’s no benefit to me.
I encourage you to read the entire post, but leave you with this final quote…
The net-net is I think networking — really effective networking — shouldn’t be exploitative “what can you do for me” usury. It should be relationship building. It should be mutually beneficial. And when it’s not mutually beneficial, it should be beneficial for the other person.
If everyone had that mentality, what kind of cool world would this be?
Very, Adam. Very.
Make your own
Something I’ve noticed in posts at the voiceover blogs written by my friends Adam Creighton and Tom Dheere among others is the idea that if you’re working on your voiceover, voice acting or just acting career, and your not booking a lot of work “right now”, don’t sit around moaning about your lack of work, do something. Make your own work.
For example, Tom’s working on film projects (for one of which, Project: T.E.R.R.A., I even got to provide some voiceover bits) and Adam has created this brief, but interesting animation that he’s posted on YouTube.
Adam not only did the stop motion animation, but also wrote the script and provided all 4 voices. Nice work, Adam. And Tom, you’re doing some really interesting stuff too. Good for you. You guys are doing it.
The lessons are there…you just have to watch for them
My friend Adam Creighton has written some thoughtful comments about watching someone obviously struggling with something significant, while at the same time, giving everything he had to the moment.
I encourage you to take a moment and read. I think you’ll be glad you did.
The secret sauce for your career
There is a secret sauce recipe in this post at Adam Creighton’s blog that, if you follow these directions, will have a startlingly beneficial effect on your voiceover career.
Now, keep in mind that Adam is writing from the point of view of an actor pursuing on-camera work as well as voiceover work. In the case of someone (like me) who only does voiceover work, the comments about a headshot don’t really apply. But, preparing a personal “thank you” card for each of your auditions…brilliant. Having your own business cards? Pretty obvious, don’t you think? (Note to self: get the business cards done!)
The key point, about expressing gratitude for the opportunities you receive…is vitally important. I thought this was the best bit of the whole post…
I’ve heard people say, “I didn’t send a card, because I sucked at the audition.”
Get over yourself! Send a thank you card, and acknowledge the person for taking out of their day to spend with you. You’re sucking didn’t make their sacrifice any less.
A simple expression of gratitude. You’ll see. It will make a world-changing difference in your life.
What if it’s not perfect?
I have no idea how many of us there are, but a significant percentage of the population is made up of perfectionists. Some of us are easy to spot because just about everything around us is always just so. Others not so much. We’re the frustrated perfectionists, with too little time, energy, ambition or something to make things “just so” all the time; and frustrated because, regardless of reality, that’s what we want. I live in the second of those scenarios, pretty much full-time. Just come look at my desk, sometime. On second thought, don’t. Some things are better left as mysteries.
So, I’m fascinated by Adam Creighton’s post ” Foiled, every step of the way …” both because of what it reveals about his own perfectionism and how he is gaining some needed health in this area. Good for you, Adam. And much continued to success to you.
(edited to fix typo)
You never know who might see
Adam Creighton is a talented actor both on camera and as a voiceover talent. His blog post Toy Job resume lies is a classic illustration of why it’s never a good idea to boast about something you didn’t really do…especially in your efforts to find voiceover or other acting work.
Excellent thoughts about voiceover work
With my thanks to Karen Commins (for linking to an excellent article on her blog), you’ll find some tremendously valuable thoughts posted on Adam Creighton’s voiceover blog about the work of acting, including voice acting.
I’ve added Adam’s Ramblings blog to my list of voiceover blogs in my attempt to compile as complete a list as possible of voiceover blogs.