The Importance of Doing

While sitting in church this past Sunday, something occurred to me:  “how” we do something is not nearly as important as actually doing it.

Let me explain…

No matter where you go in the world, one of the most – if not the most – important parts of a Christian mass is what is termed the ‘Celebration of the Eucharist,” or, as most people refer to it, receiving Communion. As part of this ceremony, each member of the congregation takes a piece of bread (or, as Catholics call it, a ‘host’) as a symbol of the bread that Jesus Christ shared with his Apostles on the night before he was arrested, and eats it in remembrance of that Last Supper.

But it’s not so simple, you see.

Breaking bread can get complicated

Some Christian religions, like the Catholic faith, perform this ritual during every mass – whether it’s a regular Sunday morning, a wedding, a funeral, a Holy Day of Obligation…you name it. While some Protestant faiths do the same, many only do it on Sunday, or even just one Sunday each month.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, in fact, only do it once a year, during what they call The Memorial, which is their version of an Easter mass.  Yet, although all congregation members are offered the ceremonial bread, only a very select few actually partake of it.

There are other differences, too. Some churchs serve traditional unleavened bread; others prefer leavened.  Some churches only allow the priest to serve it; others allow ordinary folks designated as ‘lay ministers’ to serve it. While one church may require you to stand, another may have you kneel, while another has you sit.

Some churches are quiet during the ceremony; some play music.

No matter how Christians do it, though, the important thing is…they do it.

What’s keeping you from doing?

So as I sat there in the pew, I began thinking about all the variables we encounter
in our lives, and all the roadblocks we put in front of ourselves. When we fall in love, we wonder if we should tell the other person our feelings. After a date, we wonder whether we should call or text the other person back too soon, or not soon enough. We see a job position available that we’d really like to apply for…but we doubt we’re qualified.

Parents worry they don’t spend enough time with their kids. Actors and voice artists question whether we should audition for a gig. Poets agonize over which adjective is best to describe a mountain.

It feels like we all spend so much time debating with ourselves over whether we should do something, or how we should do something…that we end up never doing.

In fact, as I write this post, it’s 10:16pm EST on Monday night, and the reason it’s so late is because I spent the last two days wondering if I should use this idea as a blog post!

“Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” – author Dan Zadra

I’m not sure why so many of us, myself included, come up with so many reasons to not do something we want to do. Perhaps it’s because of fear of failure. Perhaps it’s the fear of the unknown.

Perhaps it’s because maintaining the status quo is also the path of least resistance.

Whatever the reason, it seems to me that there’s a lot more worrying in this world than there is doing. Granted, if you want to skydive, you can’t just go jump out of a plane. If you want to quit your job to spend more time with family, you need to assess your finances. If you want to be an author, you need to learn how to write.  (Although these days, it seems that requirement is sadly becoming less and less necessary)

But if you’re not doing anything to achieve these goals – why worry or complain about your lack of ever reaching them?

“If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?”  -Śāntideva, Buddhist monk

Bottom line: worrying, debating, and stressing are not doing. The Christian churches don’t worry about whether they should sit during Communion or stand, whether they use unleavened bread like Jesus did or a loaf of regular whole wheat, or whether they should do it daily, weekly, or monthly.

They just do it.

Why don’t you? If you want to have a particular career, don’t just talk about it – do something to get yourself there. Parents, leave the dirty bathroom for another day and go outside and play with your kid. Poets, write the damn line about the stupid mountain and then go back and revise.

If you love someone, tell them! It’s time for all of us to get things done!

I, for one, am going to stop worrying, debating, and analyzing every decision I make. And that’s something I know I can do.

The No-Resolution New Year

(The original title for this post was, “The No-Resolution New Year, or How the Portable People Meter Can Help You Not to Stress Over Your Resolutions.”  But that was a bit wordy.  Read along and it’ll all start to make sense.  Perhaps.)

For two weeks now, I’ve been reading and hearing about everyone’s new year’s resolutions.  Most folks want to lose weight.  Exercise more.  Eat healthy.

Some have very ambitious, specific resolutions, such as resolving to publish a book or to make a specific more amount of money each month.  Others are a bit more ambiguous, like trying to be a better person – which is nice, but what does that mean?  Are you only moderately tolerable now?

Believe me, I appreciate why folks make new year’s resolutions…but if you ask me for mine, I’ll tell you I have none.  And it’s not because I don’t think I can’t make improvements in my life, or don’t see the value in setting goals.

I simply don’t see the point in setting a date to start on those goals.

Why wait?

A few years ago, I was talking to some friends about wanting to leave my place of employment and strike out on my own to work for myself as a voiceover artist.  It was autumn, and I recall explaining to them that there were a number of things I would need to do in order to make that change possible.  I would need to build up contacts and clients.  I would need to make sure my finances would be able to handle the initial reduction in pay.  Most importantly, I would need to have the physical tools available to work from home, such as a new computer and editing software, a better quality microphone, and sound dampening equipment to prevent ambient noise and echo in my recordings.

One of my friends suggested it would be a good new year’s resolution to work toward that goal.  I agreed - although I saw no need to wait until the new year to begin setting the plan in motion.  So I began auditioning more, prospecting for clients, and connecting with more people through social media.  I also started buying some new equipment.

I knew my finances were not going to allow me to leave work that following year, but at least I had begun moving forward.

Eventually, I got more gigs, built up a clientele, and this past summer was finally financially able to leave my position as production director for a 5-station radio group and work for myself.  A month later, I began this blog – another item on my to-do list.

And you know what?  The 2010 new year, 2011 new  year, and 2012 new year had nothing to do with any of it.  It was done through sheer determination, and determination is available 365 days a year.

Image courtesy of Music Row

The Portable People Meter

The Portable People Meter (or PPM) is a small device developed by the company Arbitron to measure how often a person listens to different radio stations.  You may have heard of Nielsen ratings for TV?  Well, Arbitron is the radio equivalent of Nielsen, and ratings are very important , because they show how many people are listening to different stations, how often they listen, what times they listen, etc.  Radio and television stations then use this info to sell advertising and set rates.

The way it works is, a random person is equipped with a PPM and it automatically keeps track of which stations he/she listens to throughout each day over several weeks.  (Back in the day, people were asked to keep written diaries, which can obviously be fallible – although some still do use them - so the PPM was a huge breakthrough in radio station monitoring)

Ratings are broken down into ‘Average Quarter-Hours,’ which simply means a minimum of 5 minutes for every 15-minute block, if you divide your clock at :00, :15, :30, and :45 minute increments.  For example, if a listener tuned in at 6:00am and tuned out at 6:07am, that would count as one quarter-hour, because he/she had listened for at least 5 minutes.  If that listener tuned in at 6:10am and tuned out at 6:20am, it would count for TWO quarter-hours (5 minutes in each quarter-hour block).  However, if he/she tuned in at 6:11am and tuned out at 6:19am, that radio station would receive NO quarter-hours, because the 5-minute minimum per quarter-hour had not been met.

“Your point, Matt??  Get to the point!”

Ok, ok.  You see, the PPM blew away a rock-solid radio programming axiom that nearly everyone in radio obeyed.

Before the PPM, radio stations believed that each hour’s first quarter-hour (from :00 – :15) was the most-listened to of all the quarter-hours.  This is because the hand-written radio diaries often had the first quarter-hour listed.  So if that’s what people are writing down, it must be the way it is, right?

Wrong.

With the advent of the PPM, the number-crunchers at Arbitron realized that each quarter-hour was more or less equally listened-to.  People were tuning in to radio stations not at the top of each hour…but whenever they darned well felt like it.

Shocker, I know.

Thing is, it was a shocker to a lot of radio stations, who for decades had deliberately played their hottest songs, or some other type of important, exciting must-tune-in elements, at the top of each hour.  Turned out that that people were writing down the top of the hour on their hand-written diaries not because they were tuning in at the top of the hour, but because it was easier to say “11am” if they happened to tune in at 10:55am (which, you’ll notice, is an all-important quarter-hour!).

No time like the present

I’m explaining all of this to show that it’s irrelevant when to begin improving your life.  The important thing is that you have a vision for that improvement.  And if you don’t have the determination, that’s ok – take some time to find it!  It doesn’t matter if it’s the top of the hour or the beginning of the year – a radio station needs to have good programming every minute of the hour, and you make changes to your life every day of the year.

My wife and I met in September 2007, were engaged that following Christmas, and were married in August 2008, one month before we’d known each other for a year.  While some might say we rushed into things, I say we seized an opportunity.  We knew how we felt about each other, we knew our feelings would not change…so we figured, why wait?  One never knows what might happen tomorrow.  Carpe diem, and all of that!

Whether it’s the top of the hour or the beginning of the year…it’s just a spot on a clock or calendar.  You can make those resolutions whenever you feel like it:  losing weight, making more money, being more tolerable.

And if you do make a resolution that fails or for some reason doesn’t come to fruition…

Today is as good a day as any to start again.

The right way, the wrong way…and the fun way

(And if you’ve served in the Army, you know there’s an ‘Army way,’ as well – but we’ll leave that alone for this post.)

I was taking a walk along a dirt road the other day with my Little Dude – my almost-3-year-old son, who is at the age where he simply HAS to do everything himself.  I had been pushing him in his stroller, but after awhile he wanted to get out and walk.  I took him out, and he immediately wanted to push the stroller.

“My do,” he shouted.  “my do, my do!!!”

“All right, all right, you can do,” I chuckled, and I let him get behind the stroller and start pushing.  He may only be two, but he’s a tall little dude , so pushing the full-size stroller was actually not that difficult a task for him.

Within a few minutes, however, he was in a rut.

He wasn’t mad or anything, I mean he was literally in the rut on the edge of the road, shoving and maneuvering and doing his best to move the stroller forward.  I tried to help him out of the rut and onto the level part of the road, but he kept steering the stroller back into the muddy, stony rut.  I finally took over and pushed the stroller back onto the level part of the road, but he resisted my assistance.

And by ‘resist,’ I mean he screamed.

He then got behind the stroller, and with a loud, “My do!” he was happily back in the rut.

It’s not wrong – it’s fun!

I was just about to try to straighten him out again when it dawned on me:  He knows exactly what he’s doing.  He knew being in the rut wasn’t the easiest way to push the stroller…but it also wasn’t necessarily the wrong way.  He wasn’t just pushing the stroller for the purpose of moving it forward; he was pushing it because it was fun trying to navigate the terrain of rocks, mud, and unlucky tire treads.

For him, he wanted the challenge – he was enjoying the challenge – and this was absolutely the correct way of doing it.

This was the fun way.

It made me wonder how often we adults take the time to do things the fun way.  We all have jobs to do, and yes, we need to do them the right way.  Doing them the wrong way can be deleterious to our careers, our marriages, or our way of life.  But sometimes there is a third way of doing things that we often can’t see because we are so focused on all the other demands of our adult lives.

Try a different way

Last week, I was raking the lawn – and we have a bunch of oak, maple, and cherry trees that drop copious amounts of leaves all over the place.  In one part of the lawn, the layers of leaves were so think you literally could not even see any grass!  But as I raked, I knew my son would love the opportunity to play in them.  So as I made my piles, I made one extra-big pile he could jump in and kick and roll around in…and he was thrilled.

As I hauled the leaves in the other piles away in my wheel-barrow, he played and laughed and had a ball.  Every now and then, I’d rake up the stray leaves to keep his pile looking good, but generally there was not much extra effort on my part.  I could have just done my thing and then gotten mad at him for jumping in the piles of leaves (which he inevitably would have done) – but I instead chose the fun way.  And it not only made his day, it kept me from getting frustrated at him jumping in all my leaf piles!

Similarly, after a visit to the doctor’s office during the summer, we were walking in the parking lot on our way to the car when I noticed a lawn sprinkler in a grassy patch to our right.  I took the little dude’s hand and we went out of our way to walk through it.  And since walking through a sprinkler only once on a hot summer day just wouldn’t do, we had to walk back through it again.  And again.

And again.

By the time we made it to the car, we were approaching ‘drench’ status.  My wife, already at the car, just looked at me and rolled her eyes, knowing that I had had as much fun as my son.

“Professional Fun”

The next time you have a creative project to undertake, think about how you want to approach it; certainly, you want to do it the right way, but examine a more ‘fun’ way, as well.  Whether or not you decide to go forward with the ‘fun’ way, it helps close some brain synapses that may have gone neglected for too long and may provide some unexpected inspiration.

If you are an audio producer with some time on your hands, think about your favourite movie or song or even commercial, and see if you can create something fun out of it – perhaps writing a parody of the song, producing a humourous fake commercial, or re-voicing and re-producing a favourite scene in a movie.

I did, a few years ago, when I had some spare time on my hands.  I re-produced a scene from a certain famous ‘pirate’ movie – with my own music and sound effects - just for kicks:

If you write novels but have always wanted to write a children’s book, sit down and start!  Or if you write children’s books but secretly yearn to write satirical historical erotica, go for it!  It doesn’t matter if it’s any good, the point is that it’s fun – and by doing, you end up learning.

Maybe you’ll learn how to better structure a project you’re already working on.

Maybe you’ll discover a talent you didn’t know you have.

Perhaps you’ll start to learn the intricacies of another craft.

Or, you just might learn that there are some projects and genres you simply aren’t cut out for.

But at least you had fun. 

Finding inspiration, one pie at a time

As you probably know by now, my day job is voiceover work.  As a professional voice talent, I get paid to read radio and TV commercials, narrate videos, and do on-hold telephone messaging and voicemail.  But because I’m the type who likes to help others when I can, I also lend my voice occassionally to student projects.  Because of the nature of these things, there is usually no budget, so the only thing I receive in return is the satisfaction of having helped someone trying to break into the entertainment business and perhaps my name in the credits.

And I’m ok with that!

For most of us, at some point in our lives someone gave us a helping hand to get to where we are now, and I like to be able to ‘pay it forward,’ so to speak.  Earlier this year, I did some voicework for a group of Ringling College of Art and Design (Florida) students working on their final project - an animated short - and it was just completed about a month ago.  I thought this might be a good opportunity to follow up on an earlier post I wrote about what spurs us to do what we do, and how we begin our career journey…as well as to get a glimpse of how computer-animated films are made.

Keep in mind, this was not produced by professional animators; it was created entirely by three film students, Adam Campbell, Elizabeth McMahill, and Uri Lotan, looking for their first big break!

When Elizabeth sent me this final version, I couldn’t believe how professional it looked…and sounded!  She and her partners managed to rope in not only me, but also well-known voice actor D.C. Goode (you may not recognize his name, but you’ve heard his voice – trust me!), among others.

I asked Elizabeth to talk a little about the project, to get her perspective as a student filmmaker:

- What made you decide to get into animation? 
I have always loved art and creating.  I had never really animated or done any film work at all before college, just drawing.  I thought about going into Illustration or some other design field but at the time animation was more of a challenge and a mystery.  I had drawn and painted before, but I had never brought a character to life.  I was drawn to animation because it was new and exciting ground, built upon the same foundations of the other visual arts but taking it in entirely different directions.

- What, exactly, was this project?
This was our graduation thesis – the capstone of our four years at Ringling.  It is a requirement that all students in the computer animation major create a short film.  We spend the second half of our junior year in pre-production on our films and then our entire senior year in full production.  Most films are created entirely by one student but Adam, Uri, and I decided to team up for our film.

- How did you & the team come up with the concept for this project?
We came up with the idea of a western town full of pie citizens late one night for a side project.  We had a day off from school and instead of working on homework we decided to use the time to make a 24 hour film, just for fun (we didn’t even come close to finishing it).  The night we got together to plan out the film for the day ahead one of Adam’s residents had given him a pie.  Somehow that turned into us making a bunch of western themed pie puns and jokes.  Months later, when the time came to pitch ideas for our thesis film we pulled out the pie western and reworked it into a full story.

- Goes to show you never know where the next great idea might come from.  So briefly, what was the process you used to put this all together?

That night of us sitting around making jokes and silly drawings was the real birth of the film.  Later in the production of the film we’d get together every so often like before for gag sessions to brainstorm new lines, events, changes to characters, and other ways to make the film better.  In the concept stage we reworked the story, characters, and camera quite a bit through our team meetings, script, storyboards, and ultimate animatic.  Alongside story we worked on development art for the film, exploring the look of the characters and environment.

- And that was just pre-production, so that was your entire junior year.  What did you do after that?
In our senior year came the actual production of the film.  First was modelling our characters, roughing in our sets, and texturing and rigging our characters for movement.  It was during this time too that we set out to find our voice actors so we could lock down our dialogue before we hit animation.  Then came Layout where we create an edit of our film in 3D from the animatic with rough posing and timing of our characters so we can lock down our cameras.  From layout we entered a period of about eight weeks of animation.  Once animation and our edit was pretty locked down we began working with our sound designers and composer.  At this time we finished up building our sets, texturing them, and planned out our lighting.  The last few months of work on the film were spent in lighting the shots, rendering them out, fixing things, and tying up any loose ends that were still hanging around.

- Wow, what a lot of work for a senior project!  Where do you go now with the film?  Is there a future for this project?
The future of this film is to get it in front of people and seen!  That’s really all there is.  We worked on it, had a great time, and now we’re all working on other things.  We’re just trying to share it with the world right now!

- What is your personal career goal?  What would be your ultimate dream job?
I’m always the worst person to ask about explicit goals or role models, because I don’t have them!  My goal really is to make cool things with great people, to constantly be challenged, learn, grow, and make a living doing it.  I’m excited to see where that takes me.  (ED. NOTE:  Adam is now an intern at Pixar, Uri is apprenticing as an animator at Digital Domain’s new Tradition Studios on their first feature film, and Elizabeth is in LA working as an intern at Syyn Labs.)

I want to thank Elizabeth for taking the time to answer my questions; I find it interesting and inspiring to learn how different people work towards their dreams.  And even though she says she doesn’t have them, Elizabeth’s goal to make ‘cool things’ and be ‘constantly challenged’ are good enough goals for me.

Since I spoke to her, this film short has been accepted to the LA Shorts Fest and will also be shown at Siggraph Asia, a huge computer graphics and technology conference to be held in Singapore.  All I can say is good luck and best wishes to the three of them!

The Boy and the Bushmaster

“It was at that point, I just knew I wanted to be a phlebotomist!”

We all have our dreams.  But how many of us know from whence those dreams came?  How often do we take the time to look back on our life to see what spurred our desire to become a nurse, or a teacher, or a truck driver?

If I asked you to single out the one event in your past that had the most influence on your career path, what would it be?

It’s easy to say, “I’ve always known I wanted to be a hairdresser.”  Or, “Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of working in a meat-packing facility.”   What’s not always so easy is to dig deeply into your memory bank and try to point to one defining moment that set you on your current journey.

Personally, there were several things I experienced as a child that I can point to now as pushing me in the direction of writing, acting, and audio production.  Some of these I touched upon in my very first blog post.  But there is one thing that I always remember as having a lasting effect on both of my career choices (radio production and writing).

The Bushmaster, one of the world’s largest and deadliest snakes.

“Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes??”

OK, technically, it was a story about a bushmaster snake, but the reptile was the star and the title character – so I’m more than happy to give it all the credit it deserves or wants.  When the longest viper in the Western Hemisphere demands its Evian, you jump up and get it.  Allow me to explain…

My Introduction to Theatre of the Mind:

It was the mid-’70′s, and my father, who had grown up during the Golden Age of Radio and was a big fan of classic shows like “Lux Radio Theater” and “The Lone Ranger,” purchased a record collection featuring all sorts of these programs.  There were comedies, dramas, even some musical-variety productions.  And he couldn’t wait to play them for me.

I had my reservations.

Only 10-years-old or so at the time but already quite familiar with this thing called a ‘television,’ I couldn’t imagine how anyone could just sit and listen to a bunch of people ‘talk’ while acting out a story.  There were no pictures!  No TV screen!  No visuals of any kind, except a flat, black vinyl disc spinning around and around and around, lulling oneself into a near-hypnosis…how could anyone call that entertainment??  My father assured me I’d enjoy them; however, I was pretty confident that he had no idea what he was talking about.  This was going to be boring.

As you’ve probably guessed, it turned out I loved them.  I was amazed at how much my imagination filled in the “visual gaps” that came from not seeing the pictures!  I wasn’t consciously aware this was happening, of course - I was simply enjoying the stories and voices and sound effects.  It really was enormously different from anything I had experienced.  But it was nothing compared to the experience that scared – and scarred – me for life.

Click the graphic for more info on “Shipment of Mute Fate” as well as the complete audio drama!

The Boy and the Bushmaster

One of the programs on this record collection was an episode of CBS Radio’s “Escape” anthology series.  With its big, bold musical introduction using “Night on Bald Mountain” and the voices of legends like William Conrad and Paul Frees, it was a show that demanded to be listened to.  This particularly tense episode was titled “Shipment of Mute Fate,” and was about a Bushmaster snake (genus name, Lachesis, refers to The Three Fates of Greek mythology – get it, “Mute Fate?”) that gets loose on a cargo ship headed from Venezuela to New York City.

The entire action is confined to this ship; the main cast of characters consists of not much more than the captain, the sailor who brought the snake onboard, and the snake itself, along with some crew members and one other important person (sorry, can’t say who – potential spoiler!)  So as far as radio dramas go, this was pretty basic as far as production values.  But after just one listen, I couldn’t stop.

I played it again.  And again.  And again and again and again.  I have no idea how many times I picked up the needle and dropped it back to the beginning of the track (also known as “hitting repeat,” for you younger readers), but it made such an impression on me and created such vivid imagery in my mind that I became literally scared to death that reptiles – snakes, alligators, take your pick – were going to mysteriously materialize under my bed and attack me as soon as I climbed in.  None of this “they’re going to get me while I’m sleeping” business…I knew they were ready to go as soon as my foot was off the floor and under the covers.  Consequently, I slept with those covers over my head for years.  I got so used to sleeping that way, as a matter of fact, that I was still covering my entire head when I got married, even though the threat of spontaneous croc attacks was fairly minimal on the 2nd-floor of our St. Albans, Vermont apartment.

So as I think about this experience, it’s no wonder that, consciously or subconsciously, I eventually got into acting, especially voice-acting.  I started reading more.  I started writing stories.  I started writing and recording my own little radio dramas, complete with my own sound effects!  And to this day I am still creating stories, whether they are poems, commercials, or picture books.

And, I’m happy to report, my home is currently reptile-free and I’m sleeping comfortably.

Have you remembered that one defining moment yet? 

Don’t just go with the first thing that pops into your head, either.  Spend some time ruminating on it.  Perhaps, in doing so, you’ll learn something about yourself, your past, or even your loved ones.  After all, they obviously like you for some reason…even if you don’t know what that reason is.  And once you have that event in your mind, think about how your life might be different now if something else had occurred instead.  You may find an answer you’ve been searching for.  You may find an answer to a question you didn’t even know had been asked.

You may also discover something about your character – why you like certain things, why you behave the way you do, why you always do that certain ‘thing’ when you get nervous.

And if you’re a writer, you may even discover a NEW character!  How cool would that be?