Who was that?.......Hmm, Interesting

Wow…..All I can say is wow. I had a very interesting day today.
I received a call yesterday scheduling me for this audition. Only thing is, this was a voice-over audition for a feature film.

Hmm, my first thought was that maybe this was for some type
of animation thing…Shrek, Happy Feet, Cars, etc. come to mind. They were specifically looking for New Yorkers who spoke Spanish fluently. Hello!

So I go to the audition…and all I can say is AMAZING. I met the casting director and she totally blew me away. She started by complementing me on my headshot, looked at my credits, training and was impressed with my having served in the military. She explained to me that she does ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) Voice Casting for a number of major motion pictures. (I later looked her up on IMDb….she’s literally done hundreds and hundreds of feature films. WOW.)

For those of you who might not know, ADR Voice work is often referred to as “Looping”. It’s the process where you might hear crowds of people talking in the club, people talking in the street, maybe someone screaming in the background, etc. Typically, on
a movie set you’ll hear the term “Quiet on the Set!”….this is in order to hear the dialogue of the main characters. Well, there has to be a point where you add the rest of the voices, etc. that you would hear at that location. ADR Voice Casting is in charge of getting those people, “Looping Groups”, together to make this happen. What’s especially nice is that it’s still a SAG gig where you get a SAG rate, are included in the film credits and most importantly get film residuals. Wow.

Fortunately, I’ve had some experience with looping before. I did a group looping session for Shadowboxer and had a great time. It’s very fun to watch the film in the sound studio and work with the director of the film (in that case it was Lee Daniels) to get things just right. Lot’s of fun and you get paid!

Back to the audition/interview with the casting director. So she asked me about myself and my work ethics, etc. (Most of y’all that know me, know no-one works harder at this thing than I
do. Doesn’t mean I book the most or I’ve gotten my big shot yet…..but I’m still very proud of how hard I work at my career.) She was impressed, talked about expectations she has from the people she works with (professionalism, punctuality, research, etc.) and told me she wanted to work with me on a regular basis as part of her Looping Team. Yay! She tells me at the audition that she wants me to work on the current film she’s doing and that her assistant will call me today and that I should confirm with her immediately. Uh, Yeah!

So we say goodbye and to be honest, something about this person just struck me. Like maybe I just met a long-time friend or something. (Sounds crazy but maybe this was my guardian angel or fairy godmother or something.) I just left the audition smiling and walking on clouds. I get in my car, talk to my mom about it and sure enough, I get a call from her assistant….I’m booked for Monday to work on this film. Yay!

One thing I’ve learned out here is that you can’t take things too HIGH or too LOW. It’s not about taking things for granted….it’s about not getting too wrapped up in case things for some reason or other don’t work out. Still, looking at this situation with the glass half-full: If this works out….who knows, this one little audition/interview could change my life with regular consistent work on a number of feature films. It may not be acting in front of the camera which is my love, my passion……but maybe this will enable me to establish some relationships that might help me get there. As well as, hopefully, being a great source of income to allow me to continue pursuing my acting career. In either case, I’m very happy to see what’s in store for the future and how it may unfold.

I’m not sure that I’m going to post these voice-over gigs if and when I get them, since it’s not like anyone (family, friends, casting directors, agents, etc.) will ever see the work. But I’ll certainly post if anything comes out from working on these sessions. That’s it for now. Please keep me in your prayers.