Voiceovers

Kim Got Another Job!

Posted on by shredbobted

My wonderful wife woke me up with the news that she got another V. O.  job today. This is the third one, and it comes on the heels of yesterday’s news that she is (finally) going to be paid for the last job she did. I know it’s just a few jobs, but I am really starting to get the feeling that her career is beginning to snowball in a really good way. It also makes her really happy.

It makes me feel good too, because it’s a working demonstration of how chasing your dreams and using the resources that are available to you can result in success. Of course she has talent, and she works really hard at it. Those are the requirements for creative pursuits, along with the number one requirement, which is the enthusiasm to keep on keeping on, in spite of frustrations and the ignorance of the rest of the world.

Kim has gone through what we all do in our creative pursuits, and she’s not just finding success because of dumb luck. She’s finding success because of her dedication, her support group, her skills, and her willingness to put herself out there. It makes me happy for many reasons, because she’s working her way out of the service industry, because she’s using her talents, because she’s achieving her dreams. Last but not least, because she’s demonstrating that the requirements for success I talk about all the time aren’t just hot air.

Great job, Kim! We can all learn from you and be proud of you at the same time!

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My Awesome Wife

Posted on by shredbobted

The Silent and Brave revision: page#96

Kim got her first Voice Over job today. She is finishing up the spot as I write this, has been in contact with the person doing the commercial, and already has a deposit in her Voices.com account.

It was not easy getting to this point. Building the sound booth was hard. Getting the equipment was expensive. I don’t know how many auditions she did, but I do know that sometimes she felt like she would never get there. I don’t know how many times people at work have asked me (as if they believe it would never happen) “Sooo . . . when is she going to finish school and start making money?” Sending her to classes was sometimes a sore spot for me, and I had to learn that her dreams are important to both of us and that it is worth spending my own hard–earned money on them.

In the end, the pride I feel and the happiness I see on her face is worth every bit of angst we felt and trouble we had to go through. Whatever you want to do in life you can accomplish, just like Kim did. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. The lessons we learned have made our relationship stronger, and success proves that we were right to do it. I know this is only the beginning of her V. O. career, and I know that it is the way she’s going to get out of the grind of the service industry and achieve her dreams.

Today is a great day, and I get to feel good about it too, because I helped get her there. So should her Mom and her teachers and her mentor, and everyone else who supported her dreams and helped make them a reality. If you read this, send her congratulations. She is awesome, and the world is going to learn it soon enough.

 

Paralyzed

Posted on by shredbobted

We are working on three things right now.

With Bill I am making the door for Kim’s sound booth. We bought lengths of poplar eight quarters thick, and they sat on the floor in Bill’s garage waiting for us to mill them into a door that we can sink the big double paned window Kim wants and Bill is giving us. The door will be thick and heavy as hell, and will provide much light and much sound deadening. In short, it should be perfect, but after we got the wood Bill was not feeling well and so it just kind of sat there.

Kim is coming to the end of her Voices.com contract, and we don’t have the extra cash to re-up for their website right now. So she has many auditions to do but the fact that she won’t get any more has made her upset enough that she wasn’t even able to work on the ones she has.

I have the rough draft of The Silent and Brave done, but the depression that followed finishing it and the feeling that no one cared froze me in place, so that I haven’t been revising and haven’t sent out my query letters for this two weeks.

Yesterday and today we broke the paralysis. Kim is working hard in her booth. Bill and I cut the wood into the door and fit it together. Today I worked on my novel. It seems like I’m changing every single word of this thing, but that’s how it goes.

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I’m not really sure what the point of this blog is, except that we continue to work for our dreams, and sometimes when it seems hard and like everything is standing in our way we just have to sit down and chip away until the barriers fall and we can hope and dream again.

The Soundbooth

Posted on by shredbobted

This is the soundbooth.

In spite of our deep love for the restaurant industry, my wife and I both want to focus on our careers. Mine is writing, so that’s what this blog is about. My wife is learning the art of the voice over, and when she sent in an audition and was told “I love your work, but the sounds of the dogs howling outside are too much,” we decided that she needed a sound booth.

Oh my goodness. I just realized that I named my blog “Ted’s Desk of 1000 Voices,” and she’s the one doing the voiceovers. We are going to have to have some negotiations.

Back to the soundbooth. Let me just say that there is a lot of information about how to build a soundbooth on the internet. There are a lot of videos on YouTube. I tried to watch them all, and then I realized that each one said something completely different. Use foam. Use cheap foam. Use expensive foam. Foam doesn’t do anything. You have to have foam but it doesn’t actually stop any sound from traveling anywhere. That was just the foam advice. I did not see any videos of foam on fire, but I am assuming that the owners of those videos were too embarrassed to publish them on YouTube.

I settled on a three layered approach. Heavy mass, space, and sound treatment. My guest and good friend Bill M. gave me the benefit of his table saw and his wisdom, and we built that thing you see in the picture there. It still needs a door and three more walls, but it makes my wife sound like an actress. And the beagles? You can still hear them. You can probably hear them in Virginia City.

What does all this have to do with writing, you ask?

I think that in order to write, I need the proper space, just like my wife needs a place to record her voice. It has to be a place where she feels safe, where she can concentrate, and where she knows that her voice will be accurately reproduced.

I order to write, I have to be comfortable in my space. The beagles are a distraction, but nothing like problems at work or fear of the bill collector. Of course dificulty comes with life, but the more I can minimize it the more consistent I can be at my craft. I don’t need a big picture window to look out at the world, or a giant desk carved out of marble. I don’t need to be an ex-pat in Paris, or on the beach in Hawaii. When I write, I just need the kitchen table in The Cosmic Cottage and my imagination.