Yes, it has been over two years since I published anything new to this blog and over a decade since I did anything with the website. Life! Ya know?

Unapologetically, I’ll skip the catch-up review and just say that there are two things going on right now that motivated me to jump back in:
1) I’ve begun the journey of finally getting paid for talking. Like every kid under 20, I’m officially a voice-actor now!
2) I’m looking to finish up my Level 4 project on my way to becoming a Distinguished Toastmaster.

To facilitate voice-over practice, I chose to produce a Podcast for my Toastmasters project. Both of these goals require me to learn to talk to a microphone, record the talking, and edit the recorded talking until it is pristine. If I wanted to produce my own demos or auditions and maybe even get paid, I was going to need to learn these things eventually. Why not have some fun while practicing?

That’s where it all fell apart. I could bore the world talking about something I’ve already talked about here or try something silly. Movie reviews where I’m obviously mixing up two or more movies. How to fail at 3D printing in 27 easy steps. Wife Hacks – how I learned to say “Yes, dear” and mean it! I couldn’t think of anything that I could actually do for the required 100 minutes. I could just document my voice-over journey as I go but that’s too obvious and wouldn’t be much fun. Then it hit me. . .

Involve the family! I started bouncing ideas off of the fam-fam and learned that the kid wanted to be a part of this journey. This could work! We brainstormed some ideas that were silly, creepy, unnecessary and just plain stupid… and of course we’re doing the stupid one. 🙂

We decided to host a series of reaction videos without video showing off fantastic sights, super-cute animals, magic tricks and illusions, incredible feats of strength, world-record setting stunts & visual how-to instructions … all sight unseen. We had fun mixing intro/outro music and recording our first episode – The World’s Ugliest Animals. I figured it would take all of 5 minutes but I actually learned a good deal doing some research for the episode and it filled out nicely to around 15 minutes and then got longer when I brought in a surprise “guest” at the end. We sat down one night this past week and recorded the entire thing in one take without any reviewing or redoing. We even spontaneously invented a catch-phrase and a sign-off on the fly.

And so, without further review… the proof-of-concept Sight Unseen podcast, starring TMEricles and the Monster-Truck!

Easter Egg: “Mrembo” was the name of the stork we used and she came from Kenya where her name is Swahili for “Beautiful”.

I spent significantly more time in research and editing than we did recording but I’m sure I will cringe at this when I listen to it again in a few years. Perhaps we should have redid some sections but I like the feel of a “live” broadcast so I think I’ll stick with it.

Up next will be creating a better recording “studio” so we can record without the background noise & figuring out a way to correctly balance out the exceptionally loud portions without harming the quiet sections. I’ve much to learn and all the time in the world to learn it. I look forward to seeing you on the next Podcast!