General

Released just a few days ago is a pointed video about the life of an actor called Skipper Dan. (Embedding is disabled on this one so to see it you’ll need to click through on the link.)

With my thanks to Kat Keesling for posting the link to this video on Facebook, I thought this video by Andy Lopata was the clearest explanation of how to use Twitter that I’ve seen.

If you like this video by Andy, you might also want to check out his blog.

When I’m really honest with myself I know that one of my great weaknesses as a voice actor is that I tend to stick pretty close to my comfort zone. Now, there’s a strong argument in favor of this plan. After all, the things that I do best are the things I’m most likely to book. And if I don’t work, well, it’s not a pretty picture. The same is true for you, no matter where you are with your own business. I don’t need to spell out all the details.

But, if we stick too close to our comfort zone to much of the time, we start to get, that’s right, comfortable. You know what another word for comfortable is? At least for those of us who are preformers of one kind or another? Boring. You know how much work boring books? Exactly.

So, a couple of days ago I had one of those moments that jolted me awake to the fact that I must work outside my comfort zone more often. I’d received an audition from my agents in Portland, In Both Ears. The audition had 2 male characters, one a sort of archtypical announcer guy and the other one of the fast-talking “disclaimer” guys. While I can talk quickly enough, I tend to stay away from the disclaimer stuff because, you guessed it, it’s not in my comfort zone. The announcer thing, while I don’t do a ton of that kind of thing any more, was familiar. So I sent in an audition for only the announcer guy.

Fortunately for me, the client liked what I sent enough to ask my agent to have me read for the disclaimer part. I say fortunately because once I’d sent along the audtion for that part too, it was only about 3 hours later In Both Ears called to say that I’d booked … the disclaimer guy.

So, what’s it going to be? Stick in the comfort zone all the time and grown more and more boring with each passing month? Or, step out of the comfort zone and find a way to be interesting again? Maybe even find a way to be more interesting when working in the comfort zone?

As you’ll see, the Bob in question isn’t me. But it’s a very funny video that I ran across thanks to the SunSpots blog and my friend Jane Ingalls.

Terry Daniel and I have a mutual agent in Atlanta, Julie Martin, who has asked for our help because a family member is missing. Terry has posted a video on YouTube with the details.

David Goldberg of Edge Studio offers some excellent thoughts about voice actors and their marketing in an article published at VoiceOverXtra today.(My thanks to my friend Mike Cooper for tweeting the link.)

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My friend Craig Crumpton posted an interesting piece about the changing tides in the casting of animated films. My thanks to another friend, Kat Keesling, for re-tweeting Kyle Hebert‘s original about the post, thus bringing it to my attention.

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