Blog - Randmade

Vox 2017

Scopophobia!

VOX 2017 was gonna be great, meeting with producer pals, many for the first time! No snatched conversations over ISDN, we’d have a whole night to swap stories, chew the fat, put the world to rights… Yay! What joy.

But you see, the thing is, in the last 3 years, I seem to have forgotten how to interact with real life humans.

It didn’t help being so nervous. When Jon introduced me to a producer I know well over ISDN but not visually…I squealed in excitement…like a pig. The roomful of people gasped.

I try to justify my reaction… “I thought you’d be older…I mean , you’re so young! And, and you have hair!… brown hair! You’re so tall!”

Interesting start.

Then I thought of a new strategy! I could buy each of the producers a drink! Yes! Take myself out of the equation for a period.

And that’s when I remember my mum saying that people are mostly interested in themselves, so if you ask lots of questions they’ll come away believing you to be utterly charming even though you’ve hardly said a word! Genius. Thanks Mum.
When I return, I immediately fire off round after round of questions at one of my favourite producers. I’m relentless. As soon as they’re done answering one, I’m on to the next. Eventually after 10 minutes, the poor chap staggered away with fatigue.

It’s a good job Producers are such a lovely breed. They smiled as I insisted on telling each of them what I thought they should look like and why I’d decided to wear flip flops, (I’ve also lost the ability to wear high heels) and how excited I was about my dinner, and were they excited about their dinner? And how nice it was to be out of the house.

Being a VO is great, you get to work on cool projects, wear slippers to work most of the time, have your lunch when you want (‘ bout 10.30?) you get to work with some smashing people and over ISDN, I am pretty sociable! But… does it make you slightly odd!? Yes!!

Yes, it turns out it does! Inevitable really I suppose when you sit on your own, in a dark, windowless room for most of the day, pretending to be a talking crisp.

Note to self… Get out more.

Industry

What is this witchcraft? And who must we burn?

We all saw it. We, the entire voiceover community. We, being the relevant word here, as I suspect a little communal trickle was expelled across the ISDN network.

I’m talking about that YouTube clip, promoting the natty bit of software that takes your recorded voice and, just by typing in some new words, can tweak what you said. You know, the ‘photoshop for audio’.

What is this witchcraft? And who must we burn?

I’ve always smugly assumed voiceovering to be immune to the tide of automation. And now, here’s the first inkling of a future where machines might just be able to make a decent fist of reading out-loud.

OK. So before we all go get real jobs, in reality, the software needs at least a couple of hours of a real person speaking in order to work, and it’s only successful when you amend short phrases. But even this is a little bit terrifying. Let’s be honest, we rely on those fudge-ups, script amends and re-voices. That shit pays the interest on our mortgages!

The software also raises a more troubling question of recorded audio being used in nefarious ways. In the video clip, they tellingly demonstrate the software by altering the unremarkable words, “I kissed my wife,” to the more problematic, “I kissed Jordan,” to the delight of the audience.

But, just think… from now on, you may not be able to trust that people in the public eye have actually said what you heard them say. I can think of a couple of politicians who would love to play that game.

I read recently that some scientists are estimating that a third of jobs currently performed by human beings will be done by robots within the next 10 years.

Imagine that. An army of fastidious C3P0s, sent down the Job Centre to find work. Soon you’ll be sitting across from one in your office. You’ll make a quiet, offhand remark like, “Geoff’s put on a bit of timber ‘asn’t he?” Only to be confronted with, “Protocol violation! personal remark! Infringement of statute 7: 19A . Your offence has been logged and circulated…. and… you’re hardly rocking a six pack yourself.”
10 years?!
10 F-ing years?

Mmmm. Probably ought to start paying off that mortgage.

Uncategorized

I know how the world will end!

(If you hate spoilers look away now)

Last Thursday I was holed up for several hours in a small windowless cell reading out-loud the diverse and various ways our planet will cease to exist.

Yeah I have the dubious pleasure of voicing not one but two documentary series about the end of the world currently. So, being as I’m an authority on the subject now, I can tell you that one of the most likely causes of our demise will be our own self-eradication. Odds are, we will either F-up the planet so irrevocably by speeding up climate change to the extent we can’t adapt quickly enough to the resulting extreme conditions… or we’ll just cut to the chase and nuke the shit out of everything that moves. Whooohoooo.

Oh and just in case you want to know, it turns out the best you can hope for in a modern nuclear attack is to be hit at close range. What you don’t want is to be a few hundred miles away. Nope. That sucks a lot worse. That’s just years of horror-defining suffering, starvation and poisoning.

(There’s nothing like brooding on the apocalypse for making you feel jazzed!)

And so, inevitably, on the way home afterwards, bearing heavily all my new knowledge, I began to have terrifying thoughts. What if it’s no coincidence that there seem to be a sudden plethora of Armageddon-based documentaries being rolled out at the moment? What if TV-Land knows something we don’t, has recognised that the danger of annihilation is imminent, and is broadcasting various End of Days scenarios to prepare us?

I didn’t sleep very well that night.

But morning brought a ray of sunshine, and with it a change of perspective. I began to imagine Trump and Jong Un, at home one night, sitting down, in their respective Lay Z Boy armchairs, perhaps with a glass of Tizer. (I like to think of Jong Un being a Tizer drinker) They turn on the TV, and just happen to come across one of these doomsday documentaries.

At first, they’re imbued with a warm feeling of power. They smile to themselves in the knowledge that they are members of an exclusive group of elite beings who hold the fate of the planet in their tiny, childlike hands. But it’s not long before their grins fade, and their mouths begin to hang open, revealing a mush of half chewed chilli Doritos in the pouch of their lower jaw, as they watch what happens when a bomb one hundred times more powerful than the one which vaporised Hiroshima, rips open a hole in the Earth. They watch North America howl with the screams of ten million innocent souls… witness the entire Korean peninsula and a good swathe of China light up with an unholy fire. And I let myself hope… that their doubts take root, and that they think, perhaps this current war of words ought to be a little better considered… Maybe not tweeted in a fit of pique…. Probably filtered through advisors.

And just maybe it’s not so farfetched to believe that. Documentaries really can be vehicles for change. Blackfish, Supersize Me, The Thin Blue Line, An Inconvenient Truth. They all played their part in actual social and political change. So why not “Doomsday – 10 Ways the World Will End”!?

And thus, with that monologue playing in my head, I manage to come full circle, and convince myself that all’s well in the world.

Family Life

Oh Katie, what have we done to our children?

They’re growing up in a house where it’s normal to go down into the cellar, squeeze into a tiny, darkened room, and talk to yourself, sometimes for hours at a time.

How can this end well? Yesterday our eldest Theo said, maybe he’d be a voice over when he’s older. Katie and I looked at each other as though he’d just told us he’d found Jesus, and by the way had killed someone, and was pregnant. We fell over each other trying to put him off. It only occurred to me later what an odd reaction that was. Why did we bring out lines like, “Well… it’s not an easy option you know!” or “But I thought you liked science?” or “have you thought about plumbing. You can never find a decent plumber!”

(I should probably mention he’s 11 years old, by the way.)

But then I think… maybe it’s inevitable.

When the kids belt out spontaneous songs in the back of the car, or memorise entire ‘Amazing World of Gumball’ episodes and perform them in the lounge, or film themselves acting out comic kung fu movies, I shake my head and wonder why they’re not out playing football, or climbing trees.

But then moments later Katie and I are talking to each other in scouse accents throughout dinner, or reciting Shakespeare spontaneously in theatrical voices to amuse ourselves, or performing karaoke late into the night, with full Beyonce strutting and camp hand gestures.