Check out my first rough song in Ableton Live! I’m trying to learn how to use the software (with help from Justin Lassen) so I’m doing different cover songs to help me learn the features. This track is far from perfect and I wish you could see my screen better but, hey, it’s my first one=)
Like with anything worth learning, this is a skill that will take some time to actually get good at. I’ll try to post more songs as my skills improve. Let me know if you have any requests! They’re just cover songs after all.
Over the years of living in Los Angeles pursuing acting, I’ve had managers, agents, life coaches and teachers. Lots of them. For right now, where I’m at and what I’m working on, I’ve narrowed it down to Dallas Traverse to seek career/acting advice from.
Her latest blog entry in particular, about what it means to be a working actor, is so spot on.
My day job is voice over work and I approach it as a business owner. It’s still acting though, and there is no reason why the same approach can’t work for me with on-camera acting.
Anyway, her entry was something I could personally relate to, for voice over work at least. On March 1st, this year, 3 out of my 4 on-going clients had contracts that were ending. It was nothing personal and my work was great, but the contracts (which all ranged in length) coincidentally ended or the work was completed at the same time. My big mistake was seeing it coming, and still not doing anything about it until March 1st.
When I had those on-going clients, I’d still have down-time. Sometimes I’d have a day or two where I had no work to do. I could have been planting seeds all over the place. Doing marketing and emails and phone calls to prepare myself for the dry spell. But I didn’t. I goofed off. Which was fun but paying for it sure wasn’t.
So then, when most of my clients dropped out and I had to dig deep back into the auditioning game, I was shocked at how long it took to get the momentum going again! The slowness in finding more contracts could have been from a lot of contributing factors; gas had just spiked, I’ve now noticed going back through my records that I’m slow every year at that time and….I didn’t keep working. The work that Dallas is talking about, that an actor, or any business owner must do to keep the work coming. The “beating the pavement” work. It’s totally part of our job description and it’s supposed to fill up the rest of the work week outside of when we’re not on set or in the studio. It took everything out of me to get that ‘momentum’ wheel back turning again because if you don’t crank it a little every day, it stops. And, just like with physics, stuff that’s in motion tends to stay in motion. Stuff that’s not, doesn’t.
It’s taken me so long and SO the hard way to finally understand this. Now, when I get a job (VO I mean), I try to make it a rule to audition for 1-3 more jobs BEFORE I sit down to do the gig that I currently have. Doesn’t have to be an audition either. It can be an email, a phone call, a mailing or whatever else I can come up with.
I suppose you don’t have to fill in the down time with that work but, if you don’t (or at least when I don’t), you don’t progress, you just survive. Incorporating all of this into on-camera acting is now the real challenge for me. Thankfully, Dallas is a huge help with this.
This job has been so fun already and I’m just getting started! The Geobeats Vimeo Page has the rest of the videos they’ve done so far. I love the video and pictures of the architecture in Seoul, Dubai and Beijing. Too bad I didn’t have to go to each of these places to tell you about their top 5 or 10 attractions;)
I’m trying to save up to buy my first real car. Like a reliable one where all I worry about is the car payment. In the meantime, we got a Schwinn electric scooter that, I must say, does almost everything a car can do for me.
It can go on the subway, you don’t need to pay for licensing or registration on it and I haven’t needed gas in ages. You just plug it in to the wall! And our neighbor modified the engine to make it go fast enough where it’s not just a toy, it’s actually useful. I’ve been getting around lately with nothing that’s gas combustible and it makes me wonder if I even want a car until I can buy a reasonable electric one.
The next thing I’m buying in my life is a nice laundry machine. I teach exercise so the laundry can pile up fast but, when it does it’s hard to transport everything to the stupid laundry mat. With Dis’ help, between the bike and the scooter, were were “Makin it Happen” today.
I’m so excited to announce that I was recently hired by Geobeats. They are a really cool company based in Boston who is hiring me for voice over + editing as well as a little on camera hosting. And, get this, for the most part I’m talking about travel! I love this stuff. There isn’t anything I would rather talk about. Their editing team is working on my first assignment but here is one of the samples from my first assignment.
This is the neighbor kiddo that lives across the hall. She called me three times today to come over and play Beakiez=)
Tazhae was copying everything that I say while she was playing a game of Beakiez. So I decide to toy with her and say funny things that she has to repeat. Then you see the camera get planted in front of her when she’s not paying attention. Watch what she does when she figures out she’s being videotaped! Just adorable.
I haven’t been posting much this summer. First I traveled, then I had visitors in town and then I replaced my computer, which took a while to migrate and stuff. Now I’m going back through old footage of stuff I shot with my Mino HD and can’t hold back from posting some of it.
Trey and I went to Griffith Park to relax and play music and this super annoying car alarm kept going off. Finally we decided to stop fighting it and played a song in the key and time signature of the alarm=)
