Your MUST READ Drag of the Day

This is drag -- and a thorough one at that! -- is brought to you by (who else?) a black woman on Black Tumblr that refused to let some (racist) white girl get it twisted.  Enjoy -- and perhaps learn a little something in the process.

http://thisisqueenesther.tumblr.com/post/131668461756/kida-tiana-cherenoble-kida-tiana-some

Hey! I'm a singing chick! (Really!)

How cute is this?

Some months ago, I started doing voiceover work for the award-winning PBS tv show Peg + Cat. I LOVE voiceover work, especially animation. It's fun to pour everything into my voice.  When it's educational, it's especially gratifying to know that I'll be teaching children how to read thanks to Word World and yes, basic math skills thanks to Peg + Cat.  That kind of blows me away. My friends kids are watching, where ever they are all over the country -- and all over the world, really. My little nephews and cousins are watching. My 3 year old Goddaughters Evia and Avia are watching. Television is a powerful medium. I still love Schoolhouse Rock.

One particular episode is dedicated entirely to Billie Holiday, and is set in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. (As arranger/composer/musician for the series, Emmy award-winning wonder J. Walter Hawkes did brilliant work on this one.) I got to sing -- and talk! -- like Lady Day herself. I remember thinking, what a great way to introduce little tots (and adults) to an iconic jazz vocalist.  There were other moments that I forgot about, voiceover work in other Peg + Cat episodes that came and went that had me singing all kinds of things, and now they pop up inadvertently, like this little blip on Twitter the other day.

I am a work-from-home dad and I have all the Peg + Cat info you need pic.twitter.com/5gFplmzEcK

— Phil Dzikiy (@phildzikiy) September 10, 2015

What's cracking me up is, I think this little chick looks just like me -- if only for the way it's standing at a tilt and putting the flower just so.

Here's the song.



Cute, right?

DIY

if you're an artist, you learn pretty quickly that you are your own business - especially if you're an actor. maintenance and upkeep on all fronts is understood. expansion, vision and growth? now, that's something else. i don't get actors who don't do anything except act. they don't sing, they don't dance, they don't make a pair of pants. nice work if you can get it. most actors can't.

if you want to work steadily, you have to do more than one thing well. voiceover work is just another skill, like singing jingles. how much i work has everything to do with how i handle my business. how strong is my hustle? i'm never sure. it's always been a stick and move situation and like a shark, i can never keep still in this town. but it's stronger than it ever was. and that's something, i suppose. in a way, it's everything.

now that i've included medical narration in my voiceover skills, i've had to seriously think hard about what to charge clients. of course, i asked the internet and needless to say, i got some great answers, most notably from mcm voices voiceover blog's wonderfully concise and well-written entry setting rates in the voiceover business as well as a comprehensive voiceover industry rate card from the edge studio's voice design group. everything is up and off the ground now. i love doing voiceover work!

oh, yeah. i almost forgot. if you want to hear my demos, click here.

i've got the cigar -- sort of...

i went into voiceovers unlimited/aaa voiceovers a few days ago and did the voiceover takes for each minute or so of commercial copy for my voiceover reel. i bounced in and out of the studio listening carefully as dan duckworth edited all six of them together with the music that we’d already chosen for each one, then cut all of it into snippets of mere seconds each and trimmed the excess fat (breathiness, etc) away. fascinating stuff. protools is a little miracle.

by the time he was done, the running time for the whole thing was something like a minute and 10 seconds—because no one has a real attention span and because of the nature of voiceovers, they don’t have to. they can get the gist of it in short order.

when i heard a rough cut of the end result, i was floored. it sounded so good, i could hardly believe it was me.

now i have to wait for the whole thing to be edited and synched and polished and all. that should take something like two weeks. here’s how it goes: they’re going to email it to me and then they’re going to make 12 copies and a master copy for me to pick up. i’ll also get a mailing list, so i can do a postcard mailing to let agents who represent voiceover artists know that i’m available – and that means registering at sendoutcards.com so that i can take care of all of that asap. my goal is to have all of this done – the demo, the mailing to agents, the master copy in my hand – by my birthday on june 30th. with that as a present to myself, anything else is extra.

yay! i’ll be working from home as a voiceover artist in no time!

See more progress on: Finish my voiceover demo

getting out of the house

with a nice cushy loveseat, cable/internet and guitars, and lots of voiceover work/auditions online, it's hard to get out of the house these days -- and with a piano teacher on the first floor, it's even harder to leave the building. i know when i wake up that if i don't leave my place before noon, i won't leave at all. for some strange reason, there's always something to do here. practicing the piano can take all afternoon.

on a good day, there's no freelancing. i'll hit the gym and go to work, making art. i know i'm making progress because the guitar is getting easier, the piano is starting to make more sense, i'm writing better songs and i'm getting leaner and stronger. i'm going to give myself until the end of the summer to hit pay dirt: a better left hand with my piano playing, a better right hand with my guitar playing, 50 new songs and a perfect fit in those corseted jeans i just bought last weekend.

in the meantime, talk about getting out of the house: i've got a gig with jc hopkins' biggish band tonight in prospect park tonight and then there's miona's birthday party in soho. tomorrow, there's chris' birthday party at a spot on indian row in the lower east side and then an art opening in billyburg. and of course, there's a picnic with the dreamland orchestra on governor's island on sunday afternoon for a jazz age lawn party: everyone on the swing scene decked out in vintage clothing from the 20s, a vintage fashion show/swimsuit contest, cars on display, a DJ and a parquet floor for dancing, and more.

okay, maybe i am getting out of the house. but don't let the busy weekend fool you -- i'm definitely hibernating.

work from home

great news! dan duckworth (of voiceovers unlimited) and i have selected music for the voiceover demo and i've finally finished my vocal takes. in about two weeks, everything will be edited together and i'll get 12 copies on CD and a master copy, as well as a list of voiceover agents. i'm going to do a mailing as soon as its downloaded onto voice123.com. they can't hire me if they don't know that i exist.

my goal is to be able to do voiceover work comfortably from home -- although lately it's hard to audition because of all the construction in the building, but i think that's subsiding. or maybe they've moved to another floor.

this is my workspace:



i want a medical narration voiceover demo, too -- but i think i'll push for that by or before the end of the summer.

the problem with most actors -- most artists, actually -- is that they're so caught up in making art that they don't treat what they do like a business. it's not about waiting for the phone to ring. it's about getting out there and doing it whether the phone rings or not.

the thing that i love about voiceovers unlimited is that they didn't just make me a demo -- they showed me how to market myself, and gave me the contacts and the tools to pull it off. there were marketing workshops, one-on-one coaching, introductions to casting agents. you name it. they even suggest a system for losing weight, if that's what you need. working with them has really opened my eyes to a lot of what i should be doing for myself every day. it's been a great experience.

i actually love doing voiceovers and i'm so relieved that i've developed another stream of income. it's low stress, takes a minimal amount of time to pull off and it's fun. union jobs can pay as much as on camera work, easily.

all of this -- the commercial demo, the mailing and and everything inbetween -- should be up and off the ground by or before my birthday. i love giving myself birthday presents. this is a good one.

i'm versatile

every once in awhile, a voiceover gig would fall into may lap and i'd tell myself that i would make a demo and start my voiceover business for real. and then i'd forget about it until some other voiceover gig came out of nowhere and i'd go, wow, i really have to get it together and make a demo. and then i'd go back to whatever i was doing before. back and forth i went. you'd think i would have learned my lesson from the voiceover work i did in lackawanna blues, but no. it took a year of residual checks from that oh so happy afternoon in the recording studio with george and most of the cast of caroline or change that made me think, am i nuts or what? and then another gig fell in my lap: a musician who'd seen me with jc hopkins' biggish band found me via j walter hawkes for a PBS children's cartoon called Word World that had me playing "elephant" and singing a little song called "bit by bit" about putting words together. sooooooo cute. i was in and out in less than an hour and the check was lovely. and it was fun! hm, i thought. wouldn't it be great if i could do this all the time?

i'd been getting newsletters every month from dan and carol duckworth at AAA Voiceover Casting/Voiceovers Unlimited for God knows how long, so when their "january jumpstart" came around this year, i jumped on it. their total package is more like total immersion. they don't just help you put together a demo, they show you how to run your business, for real: classes to develop and maintain your skills, regular mailings to business contacts, seminars to teach you how to market yourself, workshops and one one one sessions to hone in on your weaknesses and strengthen them. everything is so goal-oriented. and i'm a compulsive list-maker, so that's going some, for me to say that. i loved the way dan kept referring to everyone as the president of our respective companies.

once i realized that recording at home to audition and take voiceover work via your laptop, garageband and a mic was the wave of the future, i thought, hm -- wouldn't it be great if i didn't have to leave the house to go to work? then again -- wouldn't it be even better if i could do this voiceover business anywhere?

dan said it in our first marketing seminar, but i've always known it to be true: most actors just call themselves actors. they don't know how to treat acting like a business. they don't know how to hustle, how to make it rain, how to generate work for themselves whether the phone rings or not. they don't know how to market themselves. here's a perfect example of what i mean: most actors don't do mailings regularly -- that means a postcard with updates every month, to keep everyone up on the latest things you've done, after you've sent a headshot and a letter of introduction. it goes without saying that you having all the talent in the world doesn't mean anything if the casting agent in question with the perfect gig for you has no idea that you even exist.

i have one friend in particular who is convinced that the postage to spend on such things is a waste of money. whatever.

all i know is, i'm versatile. and i'm pretty sure that's a part of what can keep the residual checks rolling in. whaddya know: i'm only a few weeks into this total package and i just found out today that an in-house corporate gig just landed on my head. nutty.