Sunday, January 21, 2007

Speaking voices

Over the years, plenty of people have told me I have a pleasant speaking voice. But as I've watched these tapes, I've heard hours of myself speaking, and I cannot stand hearing my own voice. It really fucking annoys me. Actually, I don't know if it is my voice so much as it is my mannerisms.

It's different when I do voices, though. I don't mind hearing my voice at all if I've been caught on tape creating a voice or mimicking some existing voice.

Someday someone is going to "discover" my vocal creativity and put it to good use.

Aimless

Idea for an opening

Whew! Writing all those pages about my trip kind of wiped me out for a while. I guess I'm going through a bit of blog overload right now.

So I've been watching more of my tapes from the trip, and I think I have figured out a good opening for the trailer (or whatever you want to call the video I plan to post to the web site). It'll start with audio from late November, when I crossed paths with Jeff and Don in Boulder City.

In a restaurant/bar in Boulder City, Jeff asked me to tell the complete story leading up to my arrival in the Pacific time zone, so I did. I should be able to take little bits and pieces of that audio and lay it down on top of the most interesting bits of video footage from Ohio to Utah (because there is nothing interesting about watching some dude talk). While I tell the story, some music might kick in; right now I'm thinking "Ramblin' Man" by the Allman Brothers. Then, after establishing why I'm out west instead of in Ohio, Aimless begins. After this point, I envision stringing together the best moments from my 22 hours of video footage.

This will not be easy. There is just so much good footage from which to pick and choose. Right now I'm still separating the good footage from the bad footage, but soon I'll have to separate the good footage from the good footage that best tells the story. Then I'll probably have to go through it all again a couple times. It's not something you can just sit down and work on for hours at a time, because it drains your brain pretty quickly. You need some recovery time every once in a while. But when you get away from watching the video for a while, it's tough to motivate yourself to start reviewing the tapes again.

I've also spent a lot of time lately trying to touch up the web site a little bit. Visually, that is. Y'know, for having no web design experience or training, I think I've managed to create a pretty nice looking web site. And it'll get better.

Aimless