How The Hell Did I Get Here? The gritty reboot of Brian Wiggins [PODCAST] [VIDEO] {BLOG]
Yep, that’s me. Just a 41 year old guy, working three jobs, attempting to start a new career. You’re probably wondering...how the hell did I get here? And why are you calling this “Misadventures in VO”?
Well, the short version:
Went to college
Graduated from college
Worked for a fraternity
Left fraternity to work as a video editor for a news broadcast
Got disillusioned with the news industry
Quit my job
Met a girl
Moved to Baltimore
Was a professional rock climber
Moved back to Philly
Worked retail
Became a corporate trainer
Married the girl
Position eliminated
Got another job
Position eliminated. Again.
Got a job in the media again
Got good at it
Got thrown under the bus
Worked in staffing
Had my soul burned out by the staffing industry
Became an international sales manager
Position eliminated. Again.
Tried to find work.
Couldn’t find work.
Was going to have to take a pay cut and do a job that wouldn’t bring me joy.
Decided if I was going to take a pay cut, I might as well do something that would bring me joy.
Decided to pursue a dream of doing voice over
Ran at it full bore.
Left a Brian-shaped hole in the wall.
Made a bunch of mistakes.
Decided to take a step back and slow down and do things right.
Rebooted.
And that brings us to about...now.
So, yeah. I went at this voice over thing waaay too fast. And that’s even with every piece of advice that I read or listened to that said that I needed to take it slow. I needed to get coaching. I needed to wait until I was ready.
The thing is...I’m not terribly patient when I take on a new endeavor. I throw myself in. All the way in.
And then...something clicked. Not sure what it was, exactly. No, scratch that. I know exactly what it was.
I was hearing some “crunchiness” in my recordings. I was sure it had something to do with the filters I was running when I was recording, that it was some kind of result of compression or noise reduction. I reached out to a well-known audio professional I had heard on a podcast that offered a service for diagnosing issues with home studios.
Now, a caveat here: I had been building my home studio based on research from the internet and from good ole YouTube University. I knew it would only get me so far. And I also knew that I had reached the end of my ability to do this on my own...I simply didn’t have the knowledge to move forward, and I was aware of this.
So I reached out to the guy. (I won’t name him here, it’s not the point.) And he was...well, I guess dismissive might be a word. A little rude, perhaps? Condescending. Yeah. That’s that word.
Granted, our correspondence was completely over email, so there was no way to know for certain what his tone was meant to be. For all I know, he was being super friendly and sarcastic...but it really didn’t come across that way.
It made me feel very small.
A little note here: as a kid, I was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. That’s defined as "a pattern of angry/irritable mood, argumentative/defiant behavior, or vindictiveness". So basically, I have a general issue with authority.
Also, I really don’t like bullies. And his messages to me felt like bullying.
So, if for no other reason than I wanted to prove this guy wrong, I needed to prove this guy wrong, that I wanted to succeed and prove that I belonged in this industry, I took a step back and replanned my approach.
I got accepted into the Edge Studio program, and started my training. At the advice of Dan Friedman, I redid the sound treatment in my recording booth, a story I will be sharing very soon. Also, I do mention Dan by name here because he has been so helpful, never once has come across as condescending, and quite frankly is the man. You should check out his website, sound4VO.com.
Back to one of the original questions: why misadventures in VO? Well, there are so many people telling their stories, and in general, most folks only share their success. And that’s great...I love hearing that. But, I mean, just look at any social media feed...it’s rare that people share anything but their wins. And, to be frank...it was my wife’s idea. Because she is way smarter than me, and let’s face it, a blog/podcast/vlog about the mistakes I make along the way is probably going to be way more entertaining than me only showing you the good stuff.
And I’m going to show you the good stuff, too. But this is a new career, and I’m going to make a lot of mistakes. Might as well get some content out of that, right?
And to be transparent, getting the coaching I need and paying for the professional demos that are required for me to even think of making a legitimate run at this is expensive. I’m doing some voice over work narrating audio books and auditioning on pay-to-play sites which brings in a few bucks, and I’m working as a line cook at my uncle’s restaurant, and I drive Uber when I can, but that’s all to pretty much pay the bills.
So what I’m hoping is in addition to providing some entertaining content, and in addition to maybe giving some other people who are in a similar situation as me some encouragement, that as a bonus I can generate a few extra bucks to help move me forward on my VO journey. To that end, you will see links for my Pateron and my Ko-Fi pages. You are under no obligation to do anything with that, but if you do, just know that I will be eternally grateful.
If you do not, I will summon my ultimate form from the darkest depths of the twisted city Ryleth and in a calamity that will drive you to the very edges of sanity I will scour this world clean.
...sorry about that. That’s Carl. He may sometimes show up. Don’t worry about him. What he said...that probably won’t happen. Probably.
