My last post was too long ago, and in it, I bemoaned broken hardware. But my Ortho Surgeon friend fixed my microphone, and I was back at recording two weeks ago, not knowing more troubles were on the horizon.
While I was away at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference I allowed my IT Dept. (husband) to make a full backup of my machine, install the newest iOS, and schedule a trip to the Mac store. All this despite my fear that the learning curve of software updates would decrease my productivity or that I might be without a computer for work that needed to get done.
Regularly scheduled maintenance is no one’s favorite phrase, but one of my ports died (the one I use for my USB mic), and the screen was being jittery in a way that made me glad I don’t have migraines or epilepsy. Then the machine crashed in the middle of a recording session.
I had hoped that the update might fix several annoying issues. It didn’t. And neither did a trip to the Mac Store. Well, I have other USB ports.
So last night I got ready to record, and plugged in my mic, and went to pull up the last chapter I had been recording when the Mac crashed suddenly in the middle…
Gone. All Gone. The recording work I did during my last session was kaput. Not on the drive, not on the backups.
Setbacks like this are the hallmark of amateur productions, and I’m disheartened that even after decades of careful checking and re-checking and personal procedures and checklists to prevent exactly this…I am still fallible. Fallibility SUCKS.
So, let’s move on from the fact that I am going to need to clear my schedule and double-down on recording time this week to make my deadlines, and instead focus on those tips I got from Kathy Garver.
Tip # 1 – gestures!
In my session after the microphone got fixed, but before the Mac crashed for no apparent reason, I was LOVING the gestures! They were really helping me to ZOOM through dialog keeping the voices clear. Now let’s hope that having chosen specific hand movements for each character, notated them in my narrator doc, and practiced them for several chapters…re-creating them will be easy as eating pie. (Which I won’t do because I’d like to lose a few pounds before gaining them back on the cruise ship this summer).
Tip # 2 – warmups!
This is one I had already been doing, but in my haste, Kathy caught me starting to record prior to physical warmups. I do do this…almost all the time…but she reminded me that just a few minutes of working out the kinks, the clanks, and the clicks helps energise a performer and help them be ready to bring the BODY to bear on the voice work.
For me personally, this is especially true of my chin and jaw. I hold a lot of tension in my jaw, talker that I am. Making a list of movements and never starting work without completing them is the sign of a “professional.” There are no shortcuts when it comes to physicality.
Join me for Tip # 3 next week, plus more stuff I learned at the conference this week.
What do you think?