Slaying Saturdays
A month has flown by since my last blog entry!
In my last post I talked about how I signed up for 6, one-hour long Saturday workshops with Victoria Atkin (and friends!) and I’ve been enjoying each workshop thoroughly! I was wondering how the structure of the hour would go (since I’m use to 3 hour workshops), but soon found out that we record our homework ahead of time and submit to a shared folder. This is different than any workshop or class I’ve yet to take, and throughout each workshop it’s been nice to have my read ready to play so that the instructor for the day can provide feedback and I can even have a chance to change up the read during workshop. Even though the time is short, it feels like all the good information is jammed into every minute and we leave with a ton of good nuggets.
For our first week, we had the amazing animation actress Debra Wilson! My biggest take-away from her was not to forget our X-Factor, which means bringing ourselves and our life experiences to the performance! She was charged up with lots of passion and energy which left me feeling very enthused for the week ahead.
Week 2 was video game acting with Elizabeth Grullón, who played Trilla in Jedi Fallen Order, the video game! I’ve discovered that video games are where I can practice even more, since I’m more of an upbeat voice (think more animation) than a dark, video game tone. She wanted me to practice going way down deep with my feelings when channeling dark characters and going lower in pitch. I’m excited to tackle this and make it one of my skills, as video games are something I want to be in one day!
Between the weeks we had a chance to join Victoria Atkin for her “Mindset and Marketing” workshop, in which we wrote goals for ourselves and practiced visualizing our outcomes for the future. I’m really glad for it, since I’d been feeling a little down about constantly auditioning and not booking anything, which is what typical actors do! :) Hearing from the class and talking it out left me feeling refocused and so happy to be a voice actor!
Onto week 3, with the wonderful and funny Dino Andrade, who voices so many wonderful characters, but most notable Speedy Gonzales in Looney Toons! I picked a really fun high-pitched character for homework and he loved the voice. I did a take in class, but I changed my voice to another style which he also loved. It was great to hear all his great tips and stories.
Week 4 was right up my alley with commercials, and we worked with Stephanie Kerbis for it. I loved her uplifting vibe from the beginning, and I re-read my line with a little more sassiness the second time around and got more in touch with what the script specs wanted. It’s hard to self-direct and know if you’re landing with the copy and connecting with it, which is why doing workshops like this is so great! I have my secret now to letting my “sass” come through more in my reads.
We have two more workshops left. This Saturday is Performance Capture and I find it the most daunting as I’ve never done it before AND never done a self-tape. A self-tape is pretty common for on-screen actors. It’s basically where you film yourself in front of a plain background doing your audition. The homework we got is asking us to memorize our scene and perform all the motions in the script, so I’m nervous and excited to see how it goes and how I do! Acting is always keeping me on my toes!
I did a character coaching session with Garnet, ever closer to the demo! As always, check out my Instagram/Facebook (or “Voiceover Creativity on this website) for fun voiceover challenges and general happenings.
I also got added to the talent section of Voice One’s website! I’m so happy to be listed among many other wonderful actors and grateful to be able to get so much great training from them. Check it out here: https://www.voiceone.com/talent
Looking ahead to great things as always!
