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Roy Samuelson

You're Invited: the High Wire Act.

Published 4 months ago • 2 min read

You're invited: The High Wire Act

Read on for the house of cards / ceiling fan analogy, and an audio description tip.

For this part, last week I wrote about when a performance starts being trusted.

That's the thing I most want to spend an hour on with you.

The High Wire Act: How Intention Changes Everything at the Mic

Wednesday April 29 | 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern

Free. Live only. No public replay.

​REGISTRATION LINK​

Lately, when people ask how I'm doing, I tell them I feel like I'm building a house of cards while someone keeps turning on the ceiling fan.

The house of cards is the work: deliberate, specific, requiring real dexterity. The ceiling fan is whatever's outside my control that undoes it anyway.

What I keep coming back to isn't when it collapses, cause someone flipped a switch and the gentle air knocks everything down.

It's what happens after.

I start over. But not from zero, because the skill I built the first time is still mine. The rebuild is faster. The hands are steadier.

I shared this analogy with someone, and without hesitation they added I just need a stapler and some duct tape. Bring in tools I haven't used yet.

Oh, yeah, right.

Then (THEN!) someone else asked, why I was using cards at all. Why not actual building blocks?

And then the James Clear question arrived: why am I building anything underneath a ceiling fan? Are there no other tables?

I was sitting with all of that when I turned on the TV earlier this week. The screensaver was Snoopy and Woodstock, carefully building a house of cards. A gentle breeze blew it over. They laughed. And started again.

This same week, I interviewed Dr. Cindy Bennett, a researcher at Google. We talked about what gets lost when synthetic voice replaces human performance. The conversation kept circling back to the same thing: specificity. The thing a human performer brings that a model can approximate but not replicate is the choice behind the sound. The intention that shapes the delivery.

AD Performance Tip:

Audio Description lives in the spaces between dialogue. Your job is trusting the silence around the words, and bringing the words with intent, based on the context.

It’s not surprising that performers who struggle with timing often try to give everything they can with the subtext of how the line should be delivered. And Audio Description performers who land it have learned to say exactly enough, with specific intent.

We'll spend the hour working through how intention shapes delivery, and how the best performances aren't more; not louder or more expressive. They're more specific.

This is a live workshop. The only people who get the recording afterward are members of the AD Playback Lounge. For everyone else, the room is the room.

Whether you're new to Audio Description or have been doing it for years and want to go deeper, there's a place for you here.

Wednesday, 10am Pacific. Free.

​REGISTRATION LINK​

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Bring a coffee. Bring a question you've been carrying, even your deck of cards. Bring whatever version of yourself showed up today.

Roy

600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246
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Roy Samuelson

Crafting clarity, connection & belonging through inclusive storytelling.

Roy Samuelson helps companies turn accessibility into unforgettable storytelling. His newsletter shares sharp insights on inclusive content, the craft of audio description, and how human + AI voice can build trust, clarity, and emotional impact.

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