Boggling

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “mind-boggling” at one time or another. This weekend (as I’m typing this I’ve just moments ago walked through the door back in Charlotte after flying home from New York this evening) has given me a new appreciation for this term. For my mind is well and truly boggled.

I think it will likely be weeks before I entirely get my head around all that I’ve learned. I used my Treo 680 and typed notes as fast as my thumbs would allow (and sometimes faster!) at all of the great coaching, ideas and thoughts Marice Tobias shared. A month ago, when I took my previous workshop with Marice on commercials and narration, I thought I understood mind-boggling, but this weekend has topped that experience.

Today was the promo part of the promo/trailer workshop. We worked on several pieces of copy, taking different approaches to each piece. Each of these approaches helped us understand how best to deliver the copy as ourselves. This is so counter-intuitive. After all, who else can I bring into the studio with me? Just me. My natural human tendency is to want to adapt myself to the copy, rather than finding the best way to present the copy as me.

Here’s one other inescapable conclusion I’ve reached regarding all that I learned, there’s no way to really understand how to put into practice what Marice teaches unless you are able to take the workshops with her. The experience is too tightly woven into the fabric of the entire experience.

One last note to this post before I go collapse for a few hours. With us was Stacey Stahl, owner of In Both Ears. What a fantastic experience it was last night at dinner to sit across from Stacey and learn many valuable insights about how voiceover agents like to be treated and (more importantly) don’t like to be treated by voice talent. Eye-opening and more than a little mind-boggling in its own right.