Marice Tobias in NYC, day 2

I don’t have any new photographs to add to my post today, but it has been another extremely valuable day of study with Marice. While the specific techniques Marice Tobias teaches are really valuable; I am convinced the key thing about studying with her are the insights she provides that are specific to what is holding you back.

For example, today was the “Promo” day of the Promo/Trailer workshop. I was more nervous about today than I was yesterday. I suppose part of the reason for that is because while I’ve done a couple of “trailers” for every small, independent projects … the world of promo work is much closer to where I live and work. The risk or danger of making a fool of myself while working on trailer copy is pretty small, because I’m not a serious contender in that field. But, I am the promo voice for the History Detectives program and have done other national promo work, so there is a heightened sense of wanting to sound like I know what I’m doing in this area.

Thankfully, I realized pretty early today that I was feeling this anxiety. Just being aware of it helped a great deal in letting go of it, because instead of dwelling on it, I could turn my attention to the actual matters at hand. I also was among the first to volunteer to go into the booth today. That, too, was very helpful because as a result I was able to get past the jitters and concentrate on the copy for the rest of the day.

It seemed like I made a lot of good progress, as the day went along. I continued what started yesterday with learning how to get out of my own way.

Sidebar for those of you still wearing head phones: lose the cans. You can’t believe what a difference it will make in the quality of your reads. If you’re in an ISDN or phone patch session and have to be able to hear the director/producer, leave one ear uncovered. You’ll gain most of the benefit and will still be able to hear the direction just fine. We saw this illustrated more than once again this weekend. Huge improvement essentially every time someone took off the headphones.

The single more valuable thing about taking part in these weekends with Marice is the group dynamic. By the time the weekend is through we’ve bonded together. It’s such a powerful, mind and heart-opening experience. I’m so glad Marice is still doing these events.