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Monday, March 23, 2015

Chapter 4 - Voice Actors, ASSEMBLE! (...and check out the competition)

About a month after the initial high wore off from being in the audition booth, I finally heard back and was told about an internal Voice Workshop that had two local agents from the KC area coming in to fill us in about working in the industry, and what we could expect to be up against, how to go about doing our self promotion, and a lot of other great information.

When I used to work security, I always held myself to the frame of mind that there are few honest things to get riled up about and stress over in most aspects of modern life. I saw a documentary that covered this study that said that as we evolved as humans, we took the whole flight or fight aspect that probably overtook us in our past when trying to escape predators or perhaps tribal warfare, and applied it to the incredibly mundane concepts of project deadlines, low office supplies, and dealing with the IRS.

In most cases, we are the cause of our own uncertainties and stress points. This is an all too evident barrier that I have fought most ALL of my adult life. Working with the public and consistently reminding myself that there are far worse things in life to worry about than things that won't matter in a month, is paramount to staying sane.

Thankfully, this was not really the case, at least in my mind, for this voice workshop.

It turns out I had nothing to worry about, as those of us that made it into the meeting, evidently were considered good enough to do voice work for the studio. And there were a lot of us. I can't remember who made the comment in the workshop that although we were all colleagues of a sort, we all understood that to get roles we had to be able to outperform and be as available as possible, to be able to work. This was also when I met my first v.o. director Julie Cohen, a powerhouse of a lady with an encouraging personality and a protective tenacity for those she worked with.

We listened to some demos from people in the industry, a few of us did some voice demonstrations, and all too soon, the meeting was over.

It was readily becoming apparent that things I would hear later about how no two voice actors follow the same path into getting selected for roles, was already becoming very obvious in a few ways. For this particular and probably rare instance, I would say a good thirty of us or so could claim a similar start off point, thanks to being part of a company large enough to allow for that. But from here forward, any progress would be all up to us.

- Mario

Next up, Elvish has left the building.

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