0031: How This Pro Member’s Journey May Be Different From Yours

well hey there heroes it’s david h
lawrence the 17th
and i just had an opportunity to meet m
newest pro
his name is adam and when i think about
the challenges that voice talent have
performers in general but voice talent
in particular
they likely aren’t the same challenges
that
adam is facing you and i don’t face
the same challenges that he has in
addition to the challenges
of being a performer of choosing a life
that
is rife with rejection and a lot of gee
i wonder how this works kind of stuff
uh i had an opportunity to go through
his tools and his process
as we try to adapt what we teach in vo
heroes
to where he is in life and i want you t
see that
coming up next in this episode of the v
heroes podcast
[Music]
so everybody i want you to meet adam
craig adam is one of my
newest pros and he has some requirement
that are a little bit different from
other people
that are are in the program adam why
don’t you
uh say hello to everybody and then just
give us a real quick summary
of where you are in life and how you go
there sure thing david yeah thanks um s
hi guys uh yeah really looking forward
to working with all of you um yeah the
quick story with me is i was an
able-bodied
26 year old man when i took a shallow
dive in a lake
that left me with a spinal cord injury
um and
the resulting years later i’m now four
years out i am unable to use my hands
for pretty much any functional use
you’re kind of seeing the best way i ca
do with this one right here so
we’re trying to adapt um everything wit
that that
voice over heroes has to offer into
someone who simply
uses a what we call a mouth stick to
interact with their computer
so i have one point of contact that i’m
kind of using
to do all the stuff that you guys get t
do with your fingers yeah
and adam came to me um adam and i have
common friend
in uh my friend julie who is in my trib
with
with uh product launch formula and she
said you know
my nephew has a great voice and he want
to do voice over
and i don’t know if you can help him bu
i’d love it if you could and for
us you know you can hear that adam’s
voice is robust and full
and awesome and he’s going to do great
in terms of the performance side of it
i’m not worried about that at all but i
can tell you i was really concerned
about being able to adapt processes
that frankly i take for granted that i’
using multiple fingers and multiple
hands and my eyes and my ears all at th
same time
and not using my mouth for anything
other than speaking
so what i said to him was i’d be
thrilled to work with you
if we can figure out how to adapt the
processes
so that you can take advantage of what
teach and i’m really happy to say that
we just got finished
with a maybe an hour hour and a half
session
trying to adapt what we do in audacity
with the stair step method with the
editing
and with the mastering process of the
entire recording
process that we teach and we’ve been
pretty successful and we did so
with an ipad with garageband
and with him using the controls
uh with his mouth stick i was
i was pretty damn impressed with how
much progress we made
in that period of time now maybe it’s
only because i’m not exposed to how
resourceful you are
but i can tell you that that was my
biggest concern
and now i don’t have any concern at all
what do you think i
just say here here to that i was i was
going into it kind of blind as well and
not expecting you know kind of plan for
the worst hope for the best
and i think it turned out better than i
honestly could have uh could have
planned for
yeah so what we found out is garageband
has the ability to record separate
tracks just like
audacity does with the stair step we
also found out that we can
group tracks and drag them
from one track to another just like we
do with copy and paste
and you’re seeing that on your screen
right now and then
exporting out of garageband as a wav
file
we’re then going to and this is where w
kind of stopped for today we’re then
going to move to
adam’s hp he’s got a windows device
where he’s going to grab that shared wa
file off of google drive
and move on with the rest of the
mastering process that we already have
in place where i would do it on one
machine
he’s going to do it only because
audacity and levelator because he’s
using windows
audio cupcake isn’t an option but
audacity and level later
is not going to require him to be movin
around regions it’s just going to be
very
uh over dragging and dropping so we’ll
do that in a future episode we’re going
to
we’re going to you know sort of keep yo
apprised of our of our journey
do you have any uh at this point now
that we’ve been through this do you hav
any concerns
about adapting what you’ve been already
learning in the courses
to your situation and your challenges
you know after today
it quelled most of what i was worried
about um you know i think
the fact that we just got to work with
the equipment the way we did and we had
we had some good breaks that i think
are gonna essentially i was worried
about speed i was always want to be abl
to keep up with the same
with the same pace that you guys were
doing with the stair step method
and i think we’re i think we’ve really
knocked all the stuff i was worried
about out of the park
yeah so what we’re gonna do is sort of
track this
this is sort of the first steps does
this work can we make it
you know and i’m not trying to shoehorn
adam’s
tools into my process i’m willing to
figure out what to do to adapt it but i
the end what
we’re both committed to doing and i’ve
talked to adam about this off the air
what we’re both committed to doing is
creating a version of the
workflow that somebody who’s in adam’s
position can take advantage of
and do so with a mouth stick with
adaptive and assistive
technology and in this case
we we really want to thank the state of
wisconsin
for their support because they’ve been
just you know they’re that’s one of the
resources that you have
and i don’t i don’t know if most states
have
the kind of cooperative awesome uh
agency like their their situation
because they they’ve just been
a joy for me to work with just getting
set up with you
and i don’t know what your situation ha
been like with them but if they
if they weren’t there if you didn’t hav
those resources if you didn’t have
uh your fiance there to help you out
like you’ve got it’s like the perfect
storm of being able to move forward wit
this process
absolutely yeah so in the end what we
want to do is then lay out this entire
workflow so that it
tracks what it would and again
again one of my fears is saying
something stupid and wrong
so if able bodied or or
i i don’t know what the actual phrase i
and in two years it might be something
different
exactly but i’m just trying to make a
differentiation between someone who’s
got your challenges and someone who
doesn’t
but what i’m trying to do is create
parallels so that it doesn’t matter
and you can take advantage of this and
you can
what did you say uh you know there’s a
team there’s a dream what was what was
it
ever you know it’s teamwork makes the
dream work right teamwork makes the
dream work
yep i don’t want anybody to be held bac
by their
challenges i don’t want anybody to be
held back by their particular situation
and to think that you can take where yo
are right now in life and still pursue
voice work
in a way that approaches the speed
that somebody who is able-bodied is abl
to do
the process once they’re familiar with
it the workflow i’m just really thrille
about and so
our goal in the end is to memorialize
the process that we’re exploring right
now
and then add that to
the vo heroes course and my goal is to
have adam be
a part of our team and being sort of
the adaptive technology guru of what
we’re doing
and bring this to other people who have
the same or similar challenges to what
you have so that’s my
that’s my plan that’s what we’ve talked
about um
but i got to tell you i’m really excite
by what we did um
and i’m looking forward to working for
with you again in the future on the nex
steps on this
i’m very much looking forward to it too
david cool if you guys have questions i
you have
uh anything you want to say just scroll
down below this uh
this video or if you’re listening in th
audio and you said
hey wait i can’t see any of the things
that you were talking about you were
showing
go to voheros.com look for this
particular episode of the podcast
and look at the video and you’ll see
adam’s screen his ipad with
uh with the ios version of garageband o
it you’ll see him grouping
regions on a track and dragging them up
to the other track
and we’re going to refine that process
so that it actually
works with the stair step method the
recording end of things and so on
so leave us a comment ask a question if
you have it uh adam is now
a part of the pro community and so he
will be
hopefully soon we haven’t gotten there
yet just yet but in the
in the community answering questions an
being a part and being
a a contributor there so i’m really
excited about starting this journey wit
you adam and i appreciate you coming on
and and being a little bit public about
this because
you know i was i was concerned that you
might want to keep this a little privat
and that would be fine but i’m thrilled
that you’ve said
no let’s share this with everybody yeah
i’m glad to be breaking this ground wit
you too it’s exciting
awesome all right cool i’m david h
lawrence 17. thank you so much for
watching and for listening
and we will see you in the next episode.