Monday, October 24, 2011

Everything Voiceover

This is my new creation "Everything Voiceover", with this site I plan on sharing information that I've learned to all newcomers and hopefully help people out. This is gonna take a lot of time and effort but the wheels started turning already. Here's the links.

http://everythingvoiceover.blogspot.com/

http://everythingvoiceover.wordpress.com/



Also, My very first Review

Long Long Night

This upcoming week is gonna be kind of tough for me. On the one hand I'm going to leave for vacation to Vegas with a lovely little lady. Secondly, I have auditions. If I do an audition I risk the problem of maybe having to tell someone who hires me that I can't do anything for a week......... what to do. I'm leaning toward not auditioning.......... Ick.

Anywho! Here's the big news! I got a voiceover job. After a drought of about a week and a half, I'm back in business and the pay for this one makes up for the last few week. It's a web design tutorial and I had 20 Pages to do, about 5000 words. It took me the better part of two days to finish and I fully expect a need for a redo here and there but so far it's just great to be back up and running.

I apologize for the lack of blogs but I have big feeling about these next few days, I may not audition but I will be doing great things to take steps in the right direction to becoming a better voiceover artist. Stay tuned!

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

2 Weeks and Nothing to Blog About

Last week was kind of bad for me because the auditions weren't lucrative at all, but I'm keeping my head up and this week is turning out slightly better. First off, getting my headshots on Wednesday which I got a haircut for which I'm kind of not enjoying but I'll deal with it and TODAY, got my business cards, I'll upload a pic. So, other than that, no real huge news, I've been looking into non-union agents and all I really needed was my business cards, now I'll work out the cover letter next and the submission time. I've found that it's really tough to take that next step, you never know whats going to happen. But, times are coming quick and I'm gonna have to make a move soon but, I'm really close. I got some promising auditions today that I may have a good chance of pulling wish me luck!!!!

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Wow oh Wow

Well, I've been pretty damn lazy, a WEEK with no Blogs, well lemme catch yall up. Since that switch to Young Adult with my last post, the Auditions have been cut to almost death. So, I'm not auditioning as much as I used to. On a good note though, last week on Mon, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I received a Voiceover job PER DAY!!!! And many came from those FEW jobs. I'm still getting used to it. It started with Smokeaway Tax Relief, then the Roblar Winery and Vineyard made me the voice for their promo campaign. Lastly, I got the "Crazy On Digital" website promo, which might I add was from a 3 audition day. Not bad.

After that, I got a little lazy, the weekend after that was kinda non existent. I didn't do very much because I felt so productive. However, that HAD to change. And, it started on Saturday. I started reworking ALL of my demos and that means ALL of them. I found that the demos I had were great but were first drafts, I needed to UP the ante, so I redid them and created new ones as well. I now have over 10 demos, they are Commercial, Cartoon, Corporate, Videogame, Children's Book, Audiobook, Nerds, Snobs, Heroes, Villains, and Men In Authority.  I've reworked my website to be DEDICATED to voiceover. My theatre site will be secondary on that. It's time to get to work.

Today and yesterday (monday and Tuesday), I redid my site problems, started submitting to google, I also uploaded HD videos of my demos to Youtube, I now have a Youtube channel.
http://www.youtube.com/user/JustinDTorresVO?feature=mhee

I am in the process of getting a Justindtorres.com email address. I figured I'd use support@justindtorres.com, Justin@justindtorres.com just sounded repetitive. I'm also getting more and more happy with my logo and web page. I may take it all the way. No spending money on website design and logo design, this is pretty fun and simple. I may regret it but my wallet wont.

Lastly, I started an excel sheet of agents that I plan on sending the info to (long time from now) but I'm getting to know the marketing side of things and I'm gonna make a go of it. I may have to say that very soon, I may have to make large steps. Other than that, just waiting on more jobs, but I think I need to get a strategy to go out and get jobs to come to me, that means agents and cover letters. Whew! Back on the productive train.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Backwards then Forward

I've been a little lazy this weekend, just because I didn't wanna go up against people in voices who had about 88 auditions before me. So, instead I redid my website, YET AGAIN, I'm sure there's a link around here somewhere. Anyways, justindtorres.com , go from there. As of monday, I got hired for "Smoke Away Tax Relief" waiting on the script for it (a little extra money). Other than that I've only done about 13-14 auditions over Monday and Tuesday. The reason for the small amount is that I switched out of the Middle Aged slot and went for solely Young Adult. In the end, I will recieve much less auditions but they will be more for my voice. Something to get used to. if this week goes by without any jobs then I may have to rethink it. It kind of sucks when you finish up auditions and think, " I need more".

Other than that, just waiting on Auditions. Did the smurf job, was amazing fun and they have always been fun to work with. But, today I find myself done with all work by 3pm and trying to figure out what to do to be a better voice. Hmmmmmm.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Busy day

After a day of rest after the long trip home, I got back to work. Did pickups for the nerd presentation for the Chili's and Maggiano's managers AND finished all three Smurfs books. What a day and got it all done quick. After that took a break, then thought to myself, I gotta upgrade my website. And about 3-4 hours later it's done. Tomorrow is another day.

Here it is check it out at http://www.justindtorres.com/voiceover2.htm

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Back from Hotlanta

Well.... I'm back! Just had a 10 day trip to Atlanta to see my only follower. Had an amazing time and many great memories. Good food, good fun, and lovely all around.

Okay, this is about voiceover so what did i DO!? Okay first off when I got to Atlanta, the day after, I got a message from Voices about someone asking if they can hire me for a job they just wanted to discuss stuff. I send out an email with number, email, everything. No response. Ich!

Next up, I get the dreaded email from that theatrical audition saying that they wish they could use me but they can't so I'm out. Argh!

Now the good news, I get a job from Voice123, this is for a corporate presentation/website for managers of Chili's and Maggiano's where I play a NERD stick figure and just basically throw out facts and large explanations that are ridiculiously complicated. Got that done during the week. Just gotta wait on payment and possible pickups.  So far so good. A good chunk of change for the trip.

Lastly, on the LAST day of the trip I get an email from Zuuka.org which I worked with on the Smurfs and Pirate children's book, low and behold, I get offered 3 MORE BOOKS! Gonna work on those tomorrow and get them taken out.

Other than that, I'm gonna be in the Cyrano audio play, Memoirs of Ivanrah video game, and I can't think what else but those are the freebies. So, though I didn't do ANY auditions, I did pickups for a job, Got and Finished a Job, AND Gained a set of three jobs. Plus, a payment went through for an older job. All during my trip. Tomorrow is BACK TO WORK day.

Goal:

1) Finish Smurf Books
2) Finish Cyrano
3) Email regarding pending payments
4) Do Auditions
5) Redo Website to be more like Artist Upgrade
6) KICK ASS!

Friday, September 9, 2011

Tough but good Week

Okay, so here's whats been up!

Tuesday: I had LOTS of auditions, about 20 or some. It was ROUGH, the next day, Wednesday, I had a meeting with Melissa for voiceover training.  But to be honest, I was so tired that entire day. I ended up getting another request from Audiobee saying they needed the audio without my plugins, and I don't really keep the raw audio so I was and AM in a bit of a bind.

Thursday was an interesting day, I thought to myself, okay if people are gonna ask for raw audio, It's time I figure out this situation. Either buy a laptop and hope that it has less noise than my computer, I was really thinking about making an investment. Instead I figured, lets figure out how to make a TRUE soundbooth. I pulled a bunch of clothes out of the closet, kept a few hung up on each side. Tacked up a quilt, hung up sound foam around, put in a light, a music stand and a small makeshift seat and then I got going.

I also did my first webinar with Edge Studio, was pretty informative on the use of ProTools, i have ProTools SE and I installed it to find that it's not really protools just kind of sucky. From now on I'll import through another program and then use my regular editing to send it out. And from now on the RAW AUDIO stays forever. 

Overall I think I did pretty good. That day I also got a job from an IT company and did that.  So, that was awesome. At night, I checked out the packer game and then did even MORE auditions at night. Here we are on Friday morning, no pulls but a couple considering and finalist positions from Voice123 so we'll see about those.


Now I'm just waiting to see if jobs come up with the next few hours, if not I'm packing it in and off to Atlanta for 10 days, complete with portabooth to do work while I'm there.  I'm also hoping on three auditions that I did for a voice123 to come through that would make my Atlanta trip also a business trip. HEHE Wish me luck!

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Monday and Weekend of FUN

Saturday came and I had a peculiar problem.  No auditions. Ouch, what is a guy with a goal to do. Initially, I sent in about 4 auditions for free projects.
Ended up doing an animation, playing a Gambling Thug. Ended up playing a Sci-Fi Cat Human thing, I think?

After that, it was the weekend, I went to TWO theatrical shows, SHout with my friends Hilary and Ashley Little very funny and great singing. I also went to the Mystery of Irma Vep with DC Scarpelli and Peter Budinger which was amazing as well, I haven't been more entertained than that in a while. Lastly, I went to go see the sneak preview of "Warrior" with Tom Hardy and Nick Nolte, which was ridiculously good. I felt like hollywood finally figured it out. After that came Monday and there wasn't any auditions available, I think I did three. The curse of Memorial day.


Then the productivity STRUCK. I decided to really spearhead working on that character book idea and GUESS what. I got 4 demos for archetypes done. It could be a bit better but the sheer amount of demos I will put up will make it amazing, Here's the link to the page. It hasn't been linked to my site yet so you're pretty much getting a link to the work in progress. Enjoy! Demos up are Heroes, Villains, Men in Authority, and Snobs.


http://justindtorres.com/characterbookentrance.htm

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Back on Track

Yesterday, I did a few auditions but also put a lot of work into making a Portable studio,  I bought some aurelex acoustic foam off of craigs list and a box to put it in and it seems pretty awesome. I even have a makeshift pop filter. So, when I go to Atlanta I will be ready to ROLL!  Other than that, I had to redo the Mission job again, still waiting on word back if everything went well with that. We'll see, but these days are going by quicker and quicker.


ON TO TODAY~!!!!

Okay so no word from Zspace, i think it's officially no GO. But, I'm over it. So, instead of getting a call from them today I woke up to EVEN BETTER NEWS.

1) I WON A VOICEOVER CONTEST

Edge Studio does a weekly contest where you do a side and the award for 1st place is 2 Months of their webinars thats about 150 bucks worth of training. I really thought I did a good job with this mp3 but it wasn't getting votes and I kind of thought, maybe I'm just kidding myself because I literally thought it was the best. The only thing I regret was making the character meaner and shaving some time but I thought it was good. Anyways here the contest.


Director's Notes:
We're casting the voice of Gully the Seagull, for a new Saturday morning cartoon on Discovery Kids. Gully is very interesting: Gully has a huge attitude and is always getting into trouble with other birds at the beach. The other birds would describe Gully as bossy, overly confident and as impatient as they come. But while Gully may be rude, Gully is also fun and knows how to have a good time! Please give us one take of the following script without a slate.
Script Title:
Gully the Seagull
Script:
So, what's it like bein' a seagull, you ask? Well, it's TOUGH, TOUGH I tell ya! Ya gotta be ready to move at a moment's notice... hold on a sec. (quick pause)
WING! Chicken wing! IN-bound!
(Disappointed) Agh.. just missed it. Anyway, like I was sayin' ya gotta be quick, there's lots of competition and these other gulls, I... tell...YOU, they don't give ANY gull a second chance. Hold it...
TATER TOT! I got dibs!

Recording:
Click to hear Justintorres's recording He's not afraid to have fun, and this scored him many points. He incorporated that fun delivery into an established character. However, that character needed more of what was asked for: attitude. As good as this performance was, it did have some repetitiveness that would have been better avoided. For example, the word "tough," which is used twice, sounded much alike in both cases (by the way, the second one sounds clipped.) Technically, a few sounds are cut off (such as the "j" in "just"). This might have been caused by a gate having been set too high and/or overly tight editing.


It's kind of a double edge sword but I definitely agree with the critique, I should have put the attitude in and the J is lost. BUT I WON! And here's the recording URL. See if you like it too!

http://justindtorres.com/media/Justin%20D%20Torres%20-%20Gully%20The%20Seagull.mp3


2) A Possible job offer was on the table. The guy asked for redo of the audition which is apparently a NO no is Voices.com so I do it........ And it doesn't go to me....... ARGH! But the guy seemed really cool and he said he put me on his favorite list. So, we'll see. So heres the link to the redo. Enjoy!

http://justindtorres.com/media/JTorres%20Happinness%202.mp3


Other than that, still waiting on a lot of things. I did quite a few voice123 auditions and some voicealliance and voiceover club auditions, just getting out there, we'll see. With the long weekend ahead, the jobs may be down but I think I may just have to try my darndest to win those jobs.

I think I'm getting into a new stage of voiceover. Now the auditions are taking longer, I'm directing myself more and I'm getting better. Time to target.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Whats goin on

AUDITION AUDITION AND AUDITION

Did some work with Melissa Gray yesterday regarding my BeeAudio audition and she helped immensely and it felt really good. I've been averaging about 15 auditions a day.

Today, I was able to get some more work with Spotify, just a one sentence thing. Easy peeezy japaneezy. We'll see how it goes.

Also did work for MB Missions about their work around the world. Two job day, gotta love it. Getting some acceleration.

Tonight, I did the two auditions for BeeAudio, two very cool audio book segments. We shall see, SOON ENOUGH!!!   Pray for me.

As for the Zspace audition, no word yet. Shame I really though I had a good shot at this one. As days go by, the chances lessen.  (Fingers crossed still)




Monday, August 29, 2011

Theatre and What Not

Well, I did the Sunday callback and I read with a few new people and it seemed like I was the only guy kept for a second day. Good sign? Well I haven't received a call yet and it's Monday night (fingers crossed) other than that I've been kind of lagged because we have loudish guests and I don't want to tell them to keep it down BUT I Have finished all my voices.com auditions 2 days in a row, I'd say over 20 maybe 30 auditions plus the 2 voiceover contests.

I'm also getting ready for a voiceover lesson with Melissa tomorrow, gotta relisten to everything figure out if I can go over that narration hump. ARGH!  

Other than that, I went to Company One today to visit Janie Scott (former mentor and muse) and myself and Jose Gonzalez talked to the kids. It was interesting and fun and it made me wanna get out there and perform BUT I'm kinda stuck in a moment but, we'll see. Ahh well. No biggie. Other than that. I've gotta get reinspired and listen to Fraley more, I feel like I'm lagging but I'll be back. Soon enough!



Saturday, August 27, 2011

Figuring It Out

I'm at that point where I can't really remember what exactly happened the last few days. I tried to start up character voices and the first one stumped me for about 3 hours. On the upside, I did do about 20-30 auditions so I'm crossing my fingers about those. All were on voices.com, voice123 is USELESS, maybe I'll lower my intake of auditions and price just to get work. YIK!

I put in for the next Weekend workout for Edgestudio as a cartoon Seagull and I'm proud of it, but I may change it as time goes on. Other than that, I joined ACX and sent my audiobook demo to BeeAudio and had a few emails in between myself and one of the reps there. We shall see. But, it was kind of a test to see if my demo was worthy, maybe it is. (not sure) still gotta work it.

Today was more of a theatre day, had a callback for "Word for Word" with Zspace it went pretty well though I was late (ugh), wanted to kick myself for that, but I did good, going back tomorrow at 1pm to try with other people , good sign? We'll see. 








Thursday, August 25, 2011

Tuesday to Wednesday

Tuesday i had an audition that took ALL day and I had a voiceover training appt with Melissa Gray which was TOUGH and took a LOT out of me, so I kind of took it easy. However at the end of the night I decided to REDO my voiceover website because people were saying it was kind of non-pro. I've always enjoyed a personal side but this isn't gonna cut it if I'm gonna go pro so I redid it. CHECK IT out www.justindtorres.com

Wednesday came up and I still felt a little lazy so in the middle of the day I tossed up 3 auditions. Meh not bad. As the night went on I did 9 MORE AUDITIONS. PLUS, for the Voiceacting alliance club doing fan dubs and anime stuff, I got chosen for 3 characters in a audio play I s'pose (narrator, fargart, and martin), hopefully the full version of the fan dub will be available to play soon. I got that job and literally took a little time and finished the job. Didn't take much time and finished her off.

Also, auditioned for about 6 characters in other anime kind of fan plays. We'll see about that as well. So, there was DEFINITE PRODUCTIVITY. 

Other than that, it's 1:40am now and I'm gonna rest up a little, tomorrow I'll give it another go.... may run out of auditions.


OOOOhhhh and almost forgot the Contests. The Nickelodeon director said this about my weekend workout:
 [Meredith]: Nice read. You get who this guy is. I think you can give Boog a little more ego and swagger, which will push his turns bigger - he takes his Chimp Chomp very seriously.

This was a similiar note to many other Boog's but "You get who this guy is." is a great comment imo.

As for the Seinfeld read, I think i kicked ass but we'll see, the contest is about votes and I have 2. The seinfeld impersonator will prolly beat me as will others, but to impersonate and to get the joke are two different things.





Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Sidestepping Monday!!!

Okay, so today was interesting. I started an audition and I just got so frustrated I had to stop. Then I just sidestepped to work on sound effects ideas that I got from a Pat Fraley CD, surprisingly I'm doing pretty good with those.

My best friend Kevin sent me a few pictures of cartoons that he drew and after tomorrow (voiceover lesson and thevoice audition) I start work on the character side of the site.

I realize that I may be slowing down on my voices.com auditions, however, (only did 3 today) I think that this will help me as well to have a fully flushed out site that has EVERYTHING and I can start working on new accents and new characters.

Just acquired a really good russian accent AND as for sound effect, I can do a pretty great pig, rat, bat, various farm animals, a decent chicken, KRANG from TMNT, a pilot, and a great underwater ME. Next I'll work on all the other animals. My goal is to have a farm portion of my character site where he can walk us around and talk to all the creatures I have.  I have researched some of the agents but I don't wanna get too far ahead of myself, the more I get pumped about that the more I think I'm gonna wanna prematurely send something out.

New 5 DAY GOALS (did almost all of the other ones except backstage (money is money))
1) Do a sound effects portions of the site
2) Do at least one FLUSHED OUT character a DAY and try to post them UP.
3) Figure out how to add a media player to my site ARGH!!
4) Do at least 6 auditions a DAY (lowered because I'm not hitting the mark)
5)  Find MORE voiceover Forums.
6) Learn a few more accents
7) Listen to Billion $ read by Pat fraley for help!!




















Sunday, August 21, 2011

Okay SUnday Laziness

So, sunday started off a little lazy BUT it picked up. I did 2 voiceover contests. 1 for a seinfeld joke like and one for a nickelodeon director or producer or something (fingers crossed that at least they think the quality is good).

After that I did 2 auditions for voices.com because when they come in, you gotta jump on em, I decided to delete the one that said Female script even though they said they wanted both.

After that I went to the Voice Alliance forum and they had a few interesting (im assuming free of charge) jobs for anime, video games, and other stuff. So, just to get myself in the door, I tossed in about 4 auditions there to gain a presence and maybe get to know some cool people.

Tonight, I'm thinking about karaoke for prep for an audition but I may just stay on this cartoon roll. (we'll see) 




Saturday, August 20, 2011

WEBSITE DONE

Finally, it took a few hours of the beginning of my day. But JUSTINDTORRES.COM is up and running with BOTH Theatre and Voiceover sections, there may be an empty button here or there but it is pretty much I'd say 97 percent done.

Gotta get my auditions going. 







FINISHED START OF WEBSITE

Okay here it is

www.justindtorres.com

Theatre side hasn't been created BUT the voiceover side has the demo reel links in it and some good stuff as well. Definitely did some great stuff today

GOALS UPDATE

1) Make a Website in the style of a voiceover artist who has similiar qualities to me. (I did mine kind of like Jef Canter, a good friend of mine, a lot of the other voiceover artist websites kinda seemed a little low key and simple, I wanted some love in it and Jef put a lot of love in his.)
2) Figure out who the agents are in MY AREA. (GONNA WORK THIS HARD TOMORROW)
3) Start a Linkln account. (DONE)
4) Join Backstage.com  (NOT YET)
5) Audition at least 8 times a day AND post them up here so the embarassment of my abilities will force me to get better. (Did 7 Today and Yesterday can do better)
6) Focus on THREE specific voiceover genres to work on.
7) Get onto as many Voiceover forums as possible.  (DONE)






Friday, August 19, 2011

Website On The Way

Just made a pretty quick and fun website, gonna go through the night just trying to publish it up.  Wow! That didn't take as long as i though it would.

I went to godaddy.com and i now have  JUSTINDTORRES.COM, sweet, I think I had the .net last time. But this is pretty awesome, I'll post up asap and prolly do a few auditions before I go to bed. PRODUCTIVITY is GREAT!!!!  I'm thinking about having the main home of the site be only for justindtorres.com and it'll give choices of Theatre, Film, Voiceover, maybe the blog and other stuff.

I'll separate out the voiceover because I wanna make full use out of the name, it would be different if I only got justindtorresvoice or something.  We shall see.!!!!!

First Day Out

Okay, so today I started with a Frost Knight audition, it was really fun and I've started really trying to direct myself and make sure that I give it a second go or third go if needed.  It's a mindset I have to get used to.

So, I said earlier that I'd post my auditions, well the problem is I cant do that here I have to find an embed audio site BUT if I make a website, that could be a place to put my audition links. So, I guess I have to get to work on that.

Today and last night, I made a point to join Voiceover forums and learn what I can from them, I have twitter, linkin, and various forum profiles. Still have a long way to go. Right now it's 830, I did about 7 auditions, I'm going to start doing research into website of  video game voice overs and see what they are like.

Also, I recently ditched the BR-8 setup and just popped a M-audio pre as per Pat Fraleys CD, It's a hell of a lot easier and cheaper.  I feel renewed. I'm gonna try and get on that website so I can make a true marketing start. 






Linked In Account DONE

Twitter Account Done

Thursday, August 18, 2011

First Up My Demos

These are my demo's that I recently posted up on Voice123 and Voices.com. First off, I don't know if they are good or bad. I THINK they sound good but I'm no professional and I've listened to others and they seem to be different, so mine may be done wrong. I've asked my friend Kevin to listen to it, I'll see if anyone else wants to look at it.

Cartoon Video Game Character Demo

Normal Guy Next Door Demo

Children's Book Demo

Corporate, Promo, Website, Voicemail Demo




The Goal

I'm an actor who recently finished up a year long tour with Peter Pan 360, I played Bill Jukes/ Skylights. It was the most fun I've ever had as person, but all good things must come to an end and I have the means and the opportunity to make a change. Don't get me wrong I love theatre. I've got a callback for a word for word audition with Zspace coming up next Saturday. But, the fact is I want to become a voiceover artist.

I've had some success with Voice123.com and Voices.com getting a few jobs here and there but I never did any of that with a goal in mind. I just wanted extra money. I think now is the time. I recently purchased all the books of Patrick Fraley  (http://patfraley.com/) who is a genius. I started up lessons with Melissa Gray again and I'm ready to get started.

GOALS over the next 5 DAYS:

1) Make a Website in the style of a voiceover artist who has similiar qualities to me.
2) Figure out who the agents are in MY AREA.
3) Start a Linkln account.
4) Join Backstage.com
5) Audition at least 8 times a day AND post them up here so the embarassment of my abilities will force me to get better.
6) Focus on THREE specific voiceover genres to work on.
7) Get onto as many Voiceover forums as possible.