VO Workshop with Mary Mac and Nick Omana!

All day this past Saturday I attended a voiceover workshop taught by Nick Omana and Mary McDonald-Lewis.  You've probably heard Nick's voice on Last Comic Standing or one of a hundred other commercials, promos, or video games like World of Warcraft.  I knew Mary Mac from being the voice of Lady Jaye on the GI JOE cartoon show I used to obsess over when I was a kid, but she's also been Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, Veronica Dean on Archer, and more.  She's also appeared onscreen as Frau Pech in Grimm and is a very successful dialect coach.  So as soon as I saw an announcement for this workshop I jumped at the chance.

From Left: My hairy mug, Mary Mac, our sound engineer Cama, and Nick Omana.

The workshop itself was almost all practical experience, getting tons of time in a professional recording booth over at Rex Production and Post here in Portland.  Our lovely and talented sound engineer, Cama, ran everything from behind the glass allowing Mary and Nick to direct us in a variety of commercial reads; emphasizing relaxed control, strong choices, and what Mary called your "heart voice", or the voice most authentic and truthful to you.  She'd immediately point out when she didn't believe what you were saying, and the little fine tuning and adjustment to get something that sounded great was immensely helpful in learning how to take direction well.

If they read this post, I want to again thank Mary, Nick, Cama, and everyone at Rex Post so much for the opportunity to attend this workshop.  I learned so much and I can't wait to put it into practice.  I'll definitely be keeping all three in mind when I'm ready to do my professional demos!

I think it was Dee Bradley Baker who I heard say that there were three or four stages to being an actor, or becoming a master at anything.  I can't remember exactly what he said, so this is probably horribly misquoted.  However, he said something like the stages are: (1) There's when you're bad but don't know why, (2) there's when you find out how bad you really are, (3) then when you can be good by accident, and finally (4) when you can be consistently good at it.  I think I can reasonably say that I've fully reached stage two after almost two years at this, and I'm making my way toward three.  Today was a big jump toward that end goal of being consistently good.

Check out this little dude guarding the hallway at Rex Post.

In other news, the new home booth has been fantastic so far and I've been auditioning up a storm for pay and for practice on many casting call websites.  I'll be posting the ones I thought were the best along with any casting news I might receive once they've closed.  Most likely it'll be the ones I didn't get, so I don't break any confidentiality with any new project I might get to contribute to.

Stay tuned!