Hey Reader, A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Film runs at 24 frames per second. So every second of a movie is 24,000 words to choose from, and the Audio Description writer gets to use about nine of them. Nine. And they still come back with something close to poetry. I don't know how they do it. The space we Audio Description performers have is still sometimes like two seconds. Most cues that we read off of that Audio Description script live between two lines of dialogue. The writer...
6 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, I had the best six weeks of my career and I still had to talk myself into getting on the train. That part I don't usually put in writing. Carnegie Hall, where my name was in the Playbill and up on the screen for a film I produced the Audio Description for. San Diego Pride, over 200 floats described live, with Joshua Loya. Three panels at Comic-Con, including one where I coached alongside Scott Brick, TJ Storm and Eric Martin, and one called Comics for the Blind, where a Braille...
13 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, I know a voice actor, call him Marcus (He's not real, but a composite of a few actors I've coached over the years). Great setup: three microphones, four software packages, notebooks full of character voices. He’s also exhausted. Every morning he'd look at it all and think: work on ADR today, oh, or, review the signature voices notes; but wait there's also that demo reel, or reach out to that casting director he keeps meaning to call. He'd do a little of everything and finish...
20 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, I went to a retreat this weekend. The theme was "shifting." To go to this, I stepped back from everything: the invoices, the projects, the calendar, all of it stopped for a weekend. Once I learned the theme, I was thinking about driving stick: clutch down, into neutral, into the next gear. I recognized how this was my life: I've been in one low gear all year, pushing hard, revving past what the engine can hold. Moving for sure, but feeling limited. I've been burning fuel and not...
26 days ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, Most of my life I've been petrified of cold. When I was at summer camp (not the one I'm running this year), the hot water shut off. I stood at the edge of that shower knowing the cold was coming, and my body absolutely refused. I screamed. I shuddered. I barely got through it. A few years ago I decided I wanted to take cold showers on purpose. I wanted to know if I could choose the thing my body resisted. I'd stand at the dial, knowing exactly what was coming, and make myself turn...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, As a kid, I was intimidated by getting into good shape. I thought about the workouts I had to do, and tried practicing on my own, even got a gym membership. I showed up, and everyone knew what they were doing. They were in great shape. I felt unwelcome; new, so far behind I didn't even know where to get started. I hired a trainer many years ago, and I got the form, how to do the exercises, but I felt uneasy at the end of the session, it felt transactional. He knew what he was...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Every time I offer a workshop, something slips through. A typo. A wrong date. I check and recheck and still find it after it goes out. Last week, someone in the coaching Lounge said it plainly: you need support. Someone to be an extra perspective. I've been doing this for 20 years, and I still need someone in the room. I've thought about it in the context of my own career. In the rooms I ended up in, the work I got, the relationships that mattered, none of it came from a demo reel...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Here’s what tends to happen by week four. The math drops away. You stop counting frames and start feeling the scene. You're landing inside the cues instead of chasing them, slowing down without announcing it, getting out of the way when the moment belongs to the picture. That shift comes from doing the work in front of someone who can hear exactly what you’re doing and tell you the truth about it; then doing it again, the same week, while the feedback is still fresh. That’s the...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, Using context and intent is how performers connect with our audience. That's how AD performance, when it works well, feels like it's already inside the story, instead of at a distance. Context is everything available to you before you open your mouth. Intent is what you do with it. Together, they're the difference between words that move and words that sit there. Before I open registration to the public, you get first access. Think of it like a friend saving you a seat before the...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, I've always loved the ocean. The waves, the space, the surprisingly cool air at night. But the first time I drove Pacific Coast Highway, I wasn't ready for the road itself. The bridge that felt hundreds of feet above. Curves pressed tight against the cliffside. A sheer drop sometimes, right at the edge of the lane. I remember it didn't scare me. I could get close to this edge. Really close. And I didn't need to go over. I've been thinking about what it means to know where the edge...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read