0046: Expand Your Audition Options By Taking Inventory Of Your (Creative) Assets

Raw transcript:

if you’ve got anywhere between i don’t
know 20 minutes to a half an hour maybe
tops
to go through your hard drive with me i
think i’m going to unearth some treasure
for you
and i’m also going to help you realize
just how far you’ve come and just how
much you’ve created and set you up for
the rest of your career going forward
with some new additions some new options
that you are just gonna love all right
let’s do that on this episode of the vo
heroes podcast
[Music]
so i was
conducting
one of our monthly
proconnect live meetings and this is a
meeting that i have with
all of my pros uh once a month
it’s designed not to work on their voice
over skills not to work on performance
but to work on
the other three categories you know i
teach the art of things which is the
performance how to do commercials and so
on but i also teach
three other main categories of work and
that’s the tech
or the science of it
the business of it or the commerce of it
and also the mindset of it
and so we hold
a monthly meeting where everybody can
get together and they can talk about
what they did last month what they did
this month it’s all part of the pro
membership we have questions we have
answers we we toss things back and forth
and we help make everybody’s business
better including mine all the time it’s
just awesome so what happened during
this past month’s meeting
is
one of
my
pros mentioned oh you know i had
forgotten that i know how to do this
little boy’s voice
as she was preparing to do an audition
for an animation uh uh piece
and i said you know that happens all the
time
it really does we create something and
then we lose it somewhere
or we forget about it or it slips our
mind or we get reminded of it when we
see something on television or hear
something on a podcast or on radio or on
the web and it’s like oh yeah yeah yeah
um i have a i have
this character that i do
uh
that is uh basically
my uncle al who was a functional
alcoholic and just a nut job
and i forget about it sometimes i forget
about it sometimes but what i did once
was i did what i’m going to suggest you
do now and that is if you’ve been
following my
suggestions on how to manage your hard
drive with all of the assets that you
create when you do auditions when you do
work keeping them very very carefully
categorized by
client and by content type and so on we
go through all this in the in the pro
series on how to manage clients and
projects but here’s where it really pays
off
what i want you to do is i want you to
take 20 minutes half an hour doesn’t
have to happen all at once can happen
over the course of a few days if you
just take you know a few moments here
and there
go through your clients folder your
clients folder is the top level folder
that we tell you to create for your hard
drive go through your clients folder and
just simply look at
all of the mp3s and if you have to go
down in the hierarchy to get to
your recordings then do so but just look
at them and think to yourself remind
yourself what that job was all about or
what that audition was all about
and whether or not you did any character
work in it
or you did anything
interesting with your voice maybe it
wasn’t a full-blown character maybe you
just got very intimate
or you got very very deep and very you
know rugged who knows what you did or
maybe you got really playful
whatever it is go through those things
and grab an index card in the in the ivy
league method go through those things
or open up a text file on your computer
however you want to take notes and make
notes of all of the individual
characters that you’ve created
now you only have to do this once
to get a real thorough list and then you
can add to that list as time goes on
what i want you to do
is once you do an audition once you do a
job and you come up with a memorable
character
try to remember to add it to the list
you can go through this exercise that
i’m leading you through right now
once a year twice a year whatever you
want to do just to remind yourself
but go through all of them simply all of
them and it may take you a while
depending upon how many auditions
you’ve done and you’ve saved how many
jobs you’ve been booked on that you’ve
saved the the raw audio that you sent in
but once you do that take a look at that
list just put them in the order that you
find them and then
one more step
start to categorize them as
male female older younger
straightforward goofy however you want
to do it whatever works for you this is
one of those things where the categories
matter to you and will make sense to you
but i think you’re going to find some
amazing things first of all you’re going
to find
that you’ve done a lot more character
creation than you ever thought possible
you’re going to come up with dozens and
dozens and dozens if not hundreds of
different approaches some of them will
be very similar oh that’s my georgie
gessel voice hello that’s my droid
or or oh that’s my old man voice
whatever it is whatever it is
create a catalog
by inventorying
your
creations your characters your work
right
we don’t realize sometimes just how many
assets
we have so this process that i’m sharing
with you is actually called
inventorying your assets
then place that list if it’s a text file
or if it’s an index card you know take a
picture of it pop it into a text file
whatever you want to do
and place it in your content uh the the
folder that’s labeled clients right at
the top
even add a zero zero to the the file
name right
character asset zero zero character
assets
and and name it that so that it’s at the
top of the list of your of your uh one
two three four and a through z
folders which are at the second level of
your clients folder and if this is
something that you have no idea what i’m
talking about it’s okay
it’s a pretty common way of
just making sense of all the work that
we do as performers i save everything i
save my audition scripts i save my
audition mp3s
i save all the work i do with my clients
i save all the work that i do with my
pros my students
so
and i show people how to do this but put
this list that you create
at the top of those folders by making
the file name what it is a zero zero at
the beginning of the file name okay
now here’s the thing
you’re going to find out
that you’ve done a lot more work than
you ever thought possible you’ve done a
lot more uh recordings you’ve done a lot
more thought about characters and what’s
going to happen is it’s going to be
fresh in your memory for the next time
you do an audition and the time after
that and the time after that
it’s not going to be oh yeah i wish i
could have remembered that
and every so often if you have a really
interesting audition that you want to
create a character for
open that list up
and go through it
and look to see if there are some
candidates that you can use
to create the character that you’re
going to do now this works an awful lot
for
animation for video games but it also
works for commercials
it also works for audiobooks it works
anywhere that you’re asked to create a
character to remind yourself
of your wisdom and your joy and your
creativity and all the things that
you’ve done
inventory your assets inventory what
you’ve created does this make sense to
you
let me know in the comments below and
also what i’d love for you to do is once
you’ve done this come back to this
this page on vo heroes if that’s where
you’re watching the video that’s why i’d
like you to do it and really let me know
in the comments below what you found
that you didn’t expect to find
it’s it’s awesome what happens when you
actually take the time to just reflect
and review
what you’ve managed to create for all of
the effort
that you put into your career
why not be able to call upon it and use
it
again and again and again in the future
gosh i thought this was going to be a
lot shorter than it was it was good just
go through all the stuff that you’ve
done and find the characters that you’ve
done and write them down that’s that’s
the summon substance of it but i just
get so excited about this because you
just discover this and you go oh this
could be really useful so
if you have any comments you can also
leave those in the comments below if you
have anything any questions you’d like
to ask but but do this as i’m recording
this is toward the end of the year and
that’s why it reminded me of this but
you can really do this anytime you want
the beginning is of seasons the
beginning of the school year
uh the beginnings of sale periods like
the holidays or
summertime et cetera it’s really useful
so i hope it is for you i’m david h
lawrence the 17th i thank you so much
for watching and for listening and i
will see you in the next episode of the
vo heroes podcast
[Music]

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