Hey Reader,

When I was a kid I was complaining to a friend about all the homework I had. He'd watched me avoid it for weeks. He didn't say anything. He handed me a coin with four letters stamped on it. T U I T.

I put it in my pocket. Didn't get it.

It didn't stop the cramming. Four hours in one night on work I could have done ten minutes at a time across two weeks. Four hours I could have spent with my friends.

What made it heavy was believing every item on that list had to get done. Every one. Do you know that feeling, where you're carrying a list that isn't the actual reality?

A few days later I got it. A round TUIT.

Terrible dad pun. But that was it. I needed to get around to it. I’ve carried it for decades.

The other night I was in the studio recording. Nope, I was trying to record. Things kept breaking. Restarts. Clicks weren’t working. Screens were hiding the mouse arrow. Access passwords were mistyped. The microphone was routed to the speaker (still can’t figure that one out, but definitely it was something I did, but then fixed). During it all, the clock kept going. Somewhere in there I heard the sound I was making, a low angry grunt, the kind a video game character makes mid-fight. I heard myself make a noise like an angry Marge Simpson.

But I caught it. Let air into my lungs. Exhaled a but more fully. Yeah the gear was still not working, and the time was still gone, and neither of those was changing because I was mad about it. So while I waited, I started prepping the read the way I prep any read.

Then I remembered I'd already built this. Where did I put it?

The session ended late. I got home and went through my own folders, past things I hadn't opened in a long time, and found work I'd made and offered and never told anyone about. Including me. I'd forgotten it existed.

Made it. Launched nothing. Forgot.

This thing I made came out of a mistake from a long time ago. I miscommunicated, my fault, and a four hour coaching session fell through after I'd already prepped for it. So I sat down with the empty afternoon, and took the prep to build the thing I wish someone had handed me when I started in Audio Description performance.

Four videos, seventy minutes, four handouts.

Intention, cue by cue. How you bring the words to life, so the read doesn't come out like a book report, or like those horrible automatic default setting sounds, where nothing ever changes and everything only stays smooth and conversational.

How to stop over-performing, how to not go flat.

Timing when the cue has nowhere to go, which is what I wrote about last week.

And what holding a read across several hundred cues actually asks of you. I’ll tell you it's closer to what animation character actors do than most people expect. That consistency is what builds trust.

It's what I come back to when I catch myself at the mic on autopilot. Autopilot in Audio Description performance is always worth disrupting.

Here's what this video course is for: so the facility you’re working for gets a pro who delivers on time and keeps their brand at a high level. They know you don’t need hand holding.

It's been sitting at $97 and I've mentioned it to almost nobody. That's the pattern. Making the thing costs me less than saying I made it, so I make another thing.

This is me saying it.

Not everything on my list is going to get done. That one is finally OK with me. I still have my round T U I T.

If you've ever finished an AD read knowing it was competent and nothing more, this is the work that changes that.

​The High Wire Act: four videos, four handouts, $97.

Roy

P.S. There's a scene from Pulp Fiction on my site with the Audio Description stripped out, and the script sitting right under the video. Four minutes, no signup, no software. If you want to hear what your timing is actually doing, try it.

The High Wire Act Series