Deadlock part 3 - Remy the Performer

Call me Renaissance Jack, talented actor, singer, audio editor, sound designer and composer. I am an island unto myself, for I can do it all. Even if I probably shouldn’t. While I planned to cover all of these interests in different posts, I quickly realized how much overlap there would be and how much they compliment one another. So, to avoid being too long-winded, Allow this post to set the stage.

My wife calls me dramatic; I call myself theatrical. Potato pototto? I have always loved drama –the acting kind, not the I just got my feelings hurt so I’m going to vent my frustrations to social media kind. There’s something immensely SATISFYING ABOUT embodying a character and bringing them to life in a convincing way – Moreso when it’s a character you have created. It’s playing pretend, but in a socially acceptable adult way. Perhaps it’s a means of temporarily escaping into a character more interesting than us. Maybe it’s a way to exercise feelings and emotions we can’t fully identify. Or maybe it’s just fun to be the bad guy without any true malice or real-world consequences. Whatever the reason, it’s immensely satisfying … when it goes well. The flip side is it is also competitive, hard to get started and for me at least, very difficult to master.

                I don’t know when my love of performing started, but my first memory of it was with my brother. I was twelve, it was summer and I was just about to go into the utter nightmare which was my first disastrous attempt at the eighth grade. My brother had done something bad, but wouldn’t admit it. My mom was not pleased. She knew he was guilty, but he was barely six, and wouldn’t admit it. We tricked him. She told him we were both going to be punished since neither of us would admit it. She’d told me ahead of time, and told me to act like I didn’t know. So I did. Quite convincingly it seemed, because she looked at me and said “Yeah, you should be in Drama.” It was an idea I’d had before this, but this cemented it.

                I spent the whole of high school as a theatre kid, though I was never popular enough even among theatre kids to fall into their classic stereotypes. It had its ups and downs, but let me tell you, there’s nothing like having a teacher condone you staying after school alone to practice a kissing scene with the girl you really liked. No hand blocking the pretend vague not quite brushing of lips for this young couple.  Seventeen-year-oldme was in heaven, despite the scene also calling for her to hit me with a hard binder before said kiss. She was just as passionate about that part; it made the audience wince. I made a lot of great memories in those classes. What I did not receive was much acting opportunity or coaching. We were given a lot of acting exercises, but I don’t recall ever learning how to properly act. It’s like either you had the right stuff or you didn’t. According to the actions of my high school acting instructor, I didn’t. He never said as much, but in both major productions we put on over the years (Get smart and some odd one about mice in a maze) I was assigned the character with the least amount of lines. TO this day I don’t know if it was because I was visually impaired, or if my acting really wasn’t up to the task. Either way it was disheartening, and I think it may be one of the reasons I pursued writing in university instead of acting. In fact, it would be another nine years after high school before I would consider acting again.

                While my visions of being an actor were slowly crumbling under the weight of  inopportunity, I was introduced to radio broadcasting. Everyone seemed to say this is the direction I should go. “You have the voice for it”, they said. I did try. For about four months after high school I hosted a weekly one-hour radio show on our college radio station in which I would play and talk about various metal bands which were not all that well-known in the western world. I had a lot of fun with it, but the commute was long and the reception I received was literally non-existent. In truth, I wasn’t all that good at it. The voice I may have, but the ability to read out loud or talk about stuff off the cuff I did not. And so despite the urging of parents, friends and even several girlfriends, I left that idea behind. In hindsight, I should have looked into it more, if for no other reason than to help me with some of the concepts of sound and voice I would need years later.

                For years I put acting aside to focus on writing and its aforementioned challenges. And then in 2007 I was introduced to Graphicaudio, and it changed my whole concept of what audiobooks could be. This company combines audiobook and audio drama by taking conventional novels and adapting them with professional voice acters, immersive sound and music, while keeping the classic audiobook narration. TO this day, nobody I’ve come across does this better, and it makes reading classic audiobooks feel empty by comparison. After a few years of listening to these productions, I got inspired. I wanted to see if I could make something even close to one of their productions. I hadn’t acted in years, and my only experience with sound design was during the Get Smart play back in high school. Because in consolation for giving me the character with the fewest lines, my instructor had me do the sound design for that production. I had no idea how much work making something resembling Graphicaudio would be, and how much fun I would have.

I started out knowing nothing. I downloaded a copy of Sony Sound Forge, grabbed my Digital recorder I used for taking notes in class and grabbed the first chapter of a novel I was working on. I started narrating, and acting out the voices. I quickly learned the horrible truth: I could not read out loud very well. But thanks to the power of audio editing, I didn’t have to. I read the whole chapter sentence by sentence, cut it all together and  took out the many, many stumbles and false starts.  and by the end, I had a half-decently narrated audio book. I was so excited! I could do it, despite my terrible reading speed.

around the time the narration was complete, I was on the verge of being kicked out of my digital media class. My instructor assumed I couldn’t fulfill the required short film creation component. I was angry, frustrated and disheartened, not least because he made the decision without even talking to me. I also wondered if he was right. He asked me to think about if I really wanted to continue. A few days later, I was attending an event put on by our University’s radio station CHLY. There, I met a lady named Marian who also taught digital media – digital audio in fact. We got to talking and I told her of my conundrum. She suggested I offer to do an audio project instead, and offered to be the one to mark it. I told her I was just in the middle of recording one. I went home filled with a renewed sense of purpose and hope. Now, all I had to do was make this generic narration sound good.

                I knew nothing about making an audio book, let alone something as dramatic and captivating as a Graphicaudio adaptation. Luckily Marian introduced me to Freesound, a website where you could download sound effects. Some are crap, some are great, and all are free. I started layering sounds of a violent stormy sea. I used thunder, choppy waves, rain and wind, and it actually sounded great! From there it was sound after sound: ravens, breaking stone, fire, disembowelment and a wolf. Some I got from freesound, while others I made myself. Needless to say making sound effects with a simple digital recorder meant for note taking did not turn out well. But I faked it until I had a final product.

Finally, I added music. I put songs from game soundtracks which fit thematically, and suddenly I had something truly special. Too bad it wasn’t fully mine, but more on that later. I played around with the various volume levels of each piece in this intricate aural tapestry until you could actually hear my narration and sent it off to Marian.

                I literally got me an A for effort. I was overjoyed. Not only did I actually finish something for once, but I did it well? Unheard of! Looking back, I realize now she was being generous. The end result was great, for a first project with no direction and even less knowledge, but it could never compete with anything someone would want to listen to, let alone pay to listen to. But the experience started me down hours and hours of creativity, cost me far more money than it has brought in and  made me question everything.

                Over the past ten years, I have refined both my voice acting and my sound design. I’ve learned how to mix audio, though I have a long way to go before I reach my lofty expectations. I have gained a vast library of purchased, free and created sound effects and ambiences. It’s hard to listen to that first project now and not cringe at my ignorance. But it’s important to remember that it was my first Attempt, where I knew nothing and had very few resources. These days, I’ve gotten a whole lot better. But is this a worthy use of my time? And if it is, what path should I take? What skills are actually worth investing time – and possibly money in?