The Callback

August 26, 2008 by louzucaro

Like many voice actors, I do a lot of auditions. Sometimes, you do so many - whether through an online service like voices.com or through an agent - that you sort of have to purge them and you kind of lose track of all of them.

So on the rare occasion that you get a callback for an audition, it stands out. In my experience, callbacks are extremely rare. I think I’ve averaged on a year for the last three years. If you’re not familiar with a callback, it’s when, as the name implies, you’re called back to audition again. This is generally a good thing because it means they liked you enough to bring you back and have you read again.

But whereas the initial audition may have been a zillion people (that may be a slight underexaggeration), the callback might be a dozen people.

Now, I may have a goofy outlook on this, but when I audition for a voiceover job, I do the best audition I can, but I usually don’t get attached to it: I don’t sit around wondering if I’m gonna get the gig or anything like that. But callbacks are tricker. Something about knowing that the producer or casting director liked you enough to invite you back is enough pressure to make it infinitely more nerve-racking than the normal, everyday audition, because now there’s a sense of “Oh, I’m SO close!” In reality, that may or may not be true, but mentally it’s there and hard to ignore.

Which is why, in this case, it’s a bit disappointing that I didn’t get the gig, haha.

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Tech Like Image Metrics’ Emily Project Could Lead to Even More V.O. Work

August 20, 2008 by louzucaro

Check out this post that I put up at my site pause.com about the “Emily Project” from Image Metrics.

Although it certainly conjures up some potentially naughty holodeck scenarios, what’s cool about this as relates to voice work in the real world is that it opens up all sorts of possibilities for voice actors, especially those who can sound like other celebrities.

Extrapolating out this technology’s usefulness to, say, 50 years in the future, it could be used now to build a library of Harrison Ford’s facial expressions and subtleties, for example, which could then be used to create a CG copy of him, which could be used to make lackluster Indiana Jones sequels (ahem) for decades to come. All that would be needed at that point would be a very lucky actor who can perform Ford’s voice well enough to marry to the CGI and, presto, movies with actors who aren’t around anymore or who never even existed.

Even if that never comes to pass, this is still amazing tech.

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Bernie Mac Dies at 50

August 9, 2008 by louzucaro

Bernie Mac died today at the age of 50, from complications arising from pneumonia.

I wouldn’t say I was a huge Bernie Mac fan, but I’d seen his show a few times and thought he was very funny. I also liked what he added to movies like the Oceans films and Transformers. He had a unique style and delivery and, in the world of entertainment, he will be missed.

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Stan Winston Passes Away

June 16, 2008 by louzucaro

Like so many people responsible for what we see on-screen at the movies, Stan Winston wasn’t exactly a household name, although to movie FX fans, he certainly was well-known and, by many, revered.

Stan Winston passed away today after a long battle with multiple myeloma.

He was a special effects and makeup artist who worked on some incredibly notable films, such as both Terminator & Terminator 2, Predator, Jurassic Park and Edward Scissorhands, to name a few.

Winston was also one of the founders of the FX house Digital Domain.

You can read more about Mr. Winston at the following links:
Hollywood Reporter’s article on Winston’s death
Winston’s IMDb page

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Fire at Universal

June 1, 2008 by louzucaro

According to the Hollywood Reporter, a fire broke out at Universal Studios in Burbank, burning through, among other things, Universal’s New York City outdoor set. It’s believed that the fire, fought by 200 firefighters and 2 helicopters, has also damaged or destroyed two other soundstages.

The HR story can be found here:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ie29ff31c80c6e3df68f5c465ee417b07

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Pure Genius

May 26, 2008 by louzucaro

Every once in a while, I have a great idea. This is a great idea. No, make that a brilliant idea!

I’m going to market a spelling an grammar book to spammers!

Every time I get spam, it’s laden with countless spelling and grammatical errors. You know, things like “It is a good for your mail parts!” or “Vinagra for only CAN $62 per one bottles - is cheap okay! And plus bonus Rollex Copy Watch to be yours!”

You’re probably thinking “Duh! Why didn’t I think of that?!”

Yeah, I know, I’ve been there before myself, too.

The Pet Rock. Duh. Those Baby on Board window signs for cars. Duh. The nuclear subselene developed by Raytheon to bore holes in the Earth and Moon and leave an atomic-reactor-heat-glazed solid glass tunnel in its wake. Duh.

But finally I’ve found my “Duh” product. The one that’s gonna really push me headlong into the world of the movers and shakers.

Now…if I can just figure out how to market it to my target audience…

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Daddyhood

May 24, 2008 by louzucaro

Well I’ve been absent from my blog for well over a month now, but with good reason.

I’m the proud daddy of a brand, spankin’ new little boy, and he is just too adorable.

Considering that some 400 zillion books have been written on the subject of babies and parenthood, I’m sure there’s nothing I can say here that hasn’t been said 400 zillion times before, but I’ll say a few things anyway.

Yes, your life changes. Everything has more weight to it. You consider things more. You don’t care about much else other than this perfect little person that you helped create and keeping him happy. And you fall in love instantly.

There seem to be two camps of people…one camp who say that having kids is the greatest thing in the world, and the other who say that your life is over once you have kids.

I feel quite sorry for the second camp. Beyond that, I won’t say anything about them.

Parenthood is, in fact, the greatest thing ever.

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E-MU No More

April 8, 2008 by louzucaro

Well, if you happened to read my blog entry about building a DAW, you know that I have an E-MU sound card, the 1616m, in my audio machine.

Unfortunately, a driver updated in windows update (I think for my Bluetooth kb/mouse) kind of killed my E-MU drivers yesterday. So I went to the E-MU website for tech support only to find no phone number. I eventually got in touch with somebody else at Creative who told me that E-MU has, effectively, been shut down.

This is a real drag since the E-MU products are really nice. Until this other driver nixed my E-MU yesterday, I’d had no trouble with it at all…easy to install, easy to set up and configure, and it works. And sounds good, too.

If you go to their website, you can still download the latest drivers for things, and I was told that they’ll keep working on drivers for a while still, but the division is in fact going away, and no new products will be forthcoming.

You can find them at http://www.emu.com

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Are You Now or Then?

March 28, 2008 by louzucaro

Did you ever wake up feeling strange and wonder if, while you were sleeping, some malicious entity had surrepticiously transported you into some point in the future? If you’re worried that you may be the victim of involuntary time travel, here are some ways you can tell:

1. Rummage through the cupboards looking for drinking glasses. In the future, all glasses are square. This is a dead giveaway.

2. Go up to a cop in an alleyway and strain your voice to ask “What day is it? The date?!” When the cop tells you it’s the 12th of May, a Thursday, grab him and ask “What YEAR?!” (optionally: if you find a hobo in the alley on your way to the cop, you may steal his pants)

3. Look at what people are wearing - if their clothes are shiny and vaguely metallic, look like they’re devoid of seams, and are tight around the neck and throat, you’re either in the future or in the secret underground lair of a megalomaniac.

4. Ask somebody if you can borrow “five spacebucks”. In the future, all things on earth will have outer space counterparts because of humanity’s extensive extra-solar travels. Even if the items are exactly the same, they must be prepended with the word “space”. Spacebucks is just one example. You may instead want to ask somebody who serves the best spaceburgers - this serves the dual purpose of verifying that you’ve traveled through time and also pointing you in the right direction for a tasty meal. If they look at you like you’re crazy and tell you there are no more burgers and point you in the direction of Taco Bell, you are in the future for sure.

5. Go to any major city and see if 1/2 of all the people walking around are robots. If so, you are in the future. If the number of robots seems to be less than 50%, you may be in the future, but you may also be in the present day in Japan. They have the best robots there and they are everywhere, including robot dogs.

6. Find a complete stranger and ask if you can borrow his or her starship. In the future, everybody will have a starship, and they will let you borrow them even if they don’t know you because there will be no more money. Everybody will share everything and nobody will want for anything, even if it’s really expensive, like a starship. If you’re picky, remember that younger people will have cooler-looking starships that go really fast while older people will have bigger, slower, roomier starships that can accomodate a table for playing cards and be tall enough so that you can comfortably wear a hat while piloting.

7. Find a TV and see if there are game shows where the losers are killed on live television. In the future all humans will be barbaric, even though they have everything they want since there’s no more money. The only way to entertain such a society is to kill people for fun. Duh.

8. If you are not on Earth but you’re sure you’re not dead, you are in the future.

9. See if you can create fire from your fingertips or read peoples’ minds or shapeshift. If so, you are likely in the future when everybody has begun to mutate into the next phase of human evolution. If you can steal other peoples’ powers, you are much closer to the next phase of human evolution. but probably people will hate your guts. Being able to put a cherry stem in your mouth and tie it in a knot with your tongue does not count (at least not in reference to the next phase of human evolution).

10. Go to a bookstore. If there isn’t one, you’re in the future. If there is one, see if you can find an atlas. See if there is a city called New New York City. If so, you are in the future, because major cities have to be rebuilt from time to time and the word New is always put upfront, even if it was already there in the first place.

And remember, in the future, time travel will be commonplace, so if you happen to be in the future, chances are you can just go to the nearest time station and get home before dinner. Or breakfast even.

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The Evolution of Storage

March 18, 2008 by louzucaro

Voiceover people love storage. And lots of it. While audio still takes up nowhere near as much disk space as video, it’s still relatively a storage hog in the world of traditional computer data. So at a time when hard drive storage and lots of it is so cheap, and it’s not uncommon to see PCs ship with 1TB (terabyte, or 1,000 GB) of disk space, I figured now would be a good time to take a quick look at the evolution of storage and where it’s going.

The hard drive was invented over 50 years ago, at IBM, in 1956, but they didn’t gain momentum in use with microcomputers until sometime in the ’80s, when the IBM PC/XT began shipping with internal hard drives. You could buy external drives for Apple II computers…they only stored 5MB (yes, megabytes) of data and cost around $2000. Today, you can walk into a Best Buy and get 160GB of storage for under $100. That’s 32,000 times the storage for 1/20 the price.

Most drives today in desktop computers spin at 7,200RPM with capacities up to 1TB. Notebook and laptop drives, which are physically smaller (2.5″ compared with 3.5″ for desktop drives) usually spin at 5,400RPM with capacities up to 250GB. Meanwhile, in servers that use higher-performance SCSI drives, the disks spin at 10,000 or 15,000RPM and generally have capacities up to around 300GB.

But in the last couple of years a new type of storage option has been gaining popularity. This is the SSD or Solid State Drive. These are already available and are devices that act like an ordinary hard drive, only they have no moving parts (hence the name) and can be very fast.

In theory, an SSD isn’t much different than your typical USB memory stick, except that it can have a higher capacity and can be much faster. The highest capacity USB memory sticks go up to about 32GB, which is nothing to sneeze at, but they’re much slower than a hard drive. Meanwhile, some companies have 128GB and even 256GB SSDs - enough to use in a laptop or even a desktop computer - with speeds that can be almost twice as fast as a conventional laptop or desktop hard drive.

But not all SSDs are created equal. I’m sure you’ve seen the barrage of MacBook Air TV commercials. The MacBook Air can be purchased either with a conventional hard drive or with an SSD. But many users are complaining that the SSD version offers no speed improvement or power savings (something an SSD should be able to do since it’s got no moving parts).

What it does have is a much higher price. $1,300 higher than a comparable MacBook Air with a normal hard drive.

And this is the big thing with SSDs. They’re very expensive. Again, while some SSDs use slower memory or architecture, others focus on performance. A company called Memoright has a 128GB SSD that has been tested at being twice the speed of a normal hard drive (see here for a review). But the price is incredibly high: $3,400 for the 128GB SSD.

It’s like the ’80s all over again.

Another company, STEC Inc., has even announced a 512GB SSD with real-world speeds that exceed those of the fastest SCSI drives and use only half the power. Now, if you’re wondering why these companies all sound unfamiliar, don’t worry. There are SSDs by major manufacturers such as Samsung, SanDisk and Lexar, and even Intel, but the bigger companies tend to take a little bit more time to get to market.

As with all new, expensive technology that has mass-market appeal, as time goes on, the prices will continue to drop more and more. Estimates are that within 4 years or so, SSD pricing will be at about $2 / GB, so figure $1,000 for a 512GB drive by that time.

Obviously, SSDs have a tremendous amount of potential in all areas of computer storage, not just DAWs and video production. And it does seem like SSDs are probably going to take over for traditional hard drives at some point: In addition to being able to match hard drives in terms of speed, the capacities will keep growing, and again, prices will keep dropping. And less power usage is always a good thing. But one of the biggest advantages is that SSDs have no moving parts, so their potential for longevity and reliability is much greater than that of the typical hard drive.

I’m really looking forward to using this technology myself. You know, as soon as the pricing gets out of the early ’80s.

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