13291: Is It As Hard As It Looks? Or As Easy As It Looks?

Raw transcript:

I was speaking with a colleague about
audiobooks and movies and television
shows and films and the actual writing
of novels and memoirs and even
non-fiction books about how the end
result, the finished product that the
audience consumes
can make them feel some very odd things
about how much work it took. I want to
explore that in just a second in this
episode of the VO Heroes podcast.
So when we go to the theater and we see
a play, if we’re just an audience
member, we don’t know what’s gone into
the rehearsals and the staging and the
the scene setting, the the creation of
the the stage work itself, the blocking,
the lighting, the uh sound work, um the
acting, the technical requirements. We
don’t know any of that stuff. We see the
final result. Same thing with a book. We
don’t know how many revisions the author
has gone through. We don’t know how much
time they’ve spent giving birth to this
product. Uh for those of you who are my
followers who are authors, you know how
much time you’ve spent on it. And the
audience sometimes has no idea, right?
They may give it short shrift or they
may think it’s a lot more than it
actually was. Um, audiobooks. Another
great thing I remember going to a union
meeting and hearing
the the meeting was about voiceover in
general, not audiobooks in particular.
And people who didn’t work in
audiobooks, had these preconceived
notions about how awful a lift it was,
how heavy an effort it was, uh, that,
you know, because they see the end
result. They see a a 10, 15, 20 hour
book and they think somebody sat there
for 20 hours doing it. No, they actually
spent longer than that, but not all at
once.
You know, it was a series of 20 minute,
40 minute, hour-long sessions with a
nice coffee break in between. Who know
who knows? However they did it, it was
done over time.
And then the other side to that coin is
they look at the end result and they
think to themselves, well, how hard
could this be? Because the crafts
person, the author, the actor, the voice
talent makes it look effortless, makes
it look easy,
and yet they’re acting and writing and
voicing their butts off
to make it look that easy. I’m sure
you’ve experienced that as creative
practitioners where your end result
looks so beautiful, so fluid that it
gives the audience the false impression
that it wasn’t really all that difficult
to do. And we know how difficult it was
to do. I wonder
at what point did you realize [snorts]
either A it’s easier to craft this
because of how it’s crafted than I
thought or B boy people put a lot more
effort into this to make it look easy
than I thought.
Have you had that kind of experience?
Has that been something that’s popped up
for you? Let me know in the comments
below. I’d love to get a discussion
started on the amount of effort that a
final product takes and what the
audience thinks, what you think. You
know, maybe you have uh decided not to
do certain types of things because
you’ve told yourself, “Oh, that’s way
too much work for way too little money
or ah, you know, that’s easy to do. I
don’t need to do I want to do something
more challenging.” you know, really
really these are the assumptions that
you’re all right. Okay. Well, maybe you
could consider something else. I don’t
know. I don’t know. Let me know in the
comments below. I’d like to know what
your thoughts are. Uh do it on
vioheres.com where this episode lives.
If you’re watching on YouTube or some
other channel or if you’re listening uh
in a podcast app, go to viohereroes.com,
find this episode and the link is in the
show notes for any of the episodes that
I do. and let me know your thoughts on
this. While you’re there, you can join
my mailing list. I’d love to have you on
the mailing list. Let you know when
these things uh pop up and other things
that we do. Hit the like button if you
would uh subscribe to the channel. Click
the notification bell to know when the
next episode comes out. I’d love for
that. You can share this as well with
another I’m not looking to give you
work, but if you want to share this with
somebody who maybe has said to
themselves or said to you, “Yeah, I
don’t want to do that because it’s way
too much work or I like a bigger
challenge than that.” You know, maybe
you want to pass this on to them. Grab
the address for this and and forward it
over to them or the email that you may
have gotten on this. I’d love if you’d
do that. That’d be great. 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.

(from YouTube)