hello there


Wednesday, February 21, 2007

holy jebus

quite a bit going on. but not much time to get all the stuff out that I want to. soon.

i'm really enjoying the gig at legalzoom.com. there is some stuff that is just beyond my abilities so i'm challenged and learning and that's fun. then there is drudgery cut/paste stuff. which becomes a nice break in the slamming my head against the wall.

i think i will have full on carpal tunnel within a couple of years. my hands are sore when i head home.

speaking of heading home, i ride the subway many days. i have an ironic parking pass for the north hollywood station where i park and ride into hollywood. the trip from noho to ho is 6 minutes. sometimes it takes an hour to get there by car. some days, i have v.o. auditions at cesd, and then it's just hellish. when i got hired, i told lz that i would be late every day, so it's quite like the situation i had at iWin the last couple years; i show up around 10:30 or and work until i'm done. some days i'm out of there at 9.

speaking of voice overs....

since i'm "working for the man", i record many v.o. auditions here at home and send them in via mp3. it's how i booked hyundai and a couple of other spots. i'd rather do them at cesd, but...

occasionally, it's obvious that a copy writer hates their job. so i was having lots o problems doing this one spot tonight and after I did my opening "this is dean cameron..." etc., i started ranting. fortunately, i had the good foresight to not throw it away and i'm going to share it with you, my two readers.

most voice over auditon material has some direction that the writer or ad agency people want you to go for. i usually get either "wry, likeable" or "earnest, likeable". it always says "non-announcery announcer", which is a robot killer because if one only reads for announcer spots, they are then an announcer. I know what they *mean*. One would think that a writer might be able to come up with a better way of expressing their wishes.

This particular writer requested:




What the hell? The copy is your basic copy that would accompany this product, but instead of this person just accepting that he (write me, you sensitive females!!!) is writing copy for a radio spot for something not that cool or exciting, he decides he wants the person to sound like someone on NPR.

It's really funny. It's really, really funny.

But, I got frustrated with the copy and after trying it for or five different ways, i started from scratch and "hilarity ensues".

Hmm.

it's competely raw, but i would actually like to book this gig (i won't because you can hear the hatred in my voice in the audition) and i also don't want any fallout if, by some crazy internet thing (hi, narcisist!) the writer or ad agency should hear it.

early on in the rant, you may wonder "is dean talking to the copy writer or himself? i wonder..."

it makes me wonder...
sure does...

I'm not really that bitter. it's just an affectation. a sort of totemistic symbol thing...

if i was really cool, i wouldn't have plugged in me saying "censored" over the product name. I'm not that cool.

boy do my forearms hurt.

here's the file