Monday the 4th – HOOKED UP! – Mark Ackerman from Awetronics came back over to re-connect all of my components in my entertainment center. If you read the previous week’s Wally’s Week (click here) you know that I bought a new TV for my entertainment center. Later that afternoon I met up with a gal named Hunter who wants to break into voice-over. She’s a good friend of my buddy Ruben Procopio, the talented animator and sculptor. We had a great talk and will be in further contact as her endeavor progresses. I stopped back home to check in on Mark’s progress, and it all was looking good. Not only had Mark reconnected everything, but cleaned all the dusty components as well. The TV was hung, and all the components were in their place. WHEW! That was a major job! But we did it. Then I went to Cartoon Network to do an audition for a new cartoon. It was great seeing my friends at CN again, and particularly my pal Casting Director Carroll Day Kimball! After that I went over to my editor Dennis’ house so we can lock the edit on the “Livin’ On a Prayer” sizzle reel. Sizzle reels are created to be four minutes or under, and designed to be a mini-episode of what a TV episode would be like. We took the short film and cut it into a four minute reel with no extra stuff, only the “sizzle”. It was looking good, but Dennis needed to do some more work on it. The sizzle reel (along with the entire short film and the trailer) will be up on the website by THE END OF THIS WEEK!! Stay tuned!
Tuesday the 5th – FRIENDS AND FUN! My first stop was Long’s Drugs to drop off a CD of photos I wanted enlargements of. Then I went over to Voice Trax West in the afternoon to put a vocal on a snippet of a song for the “Livin’ On a Prayer” sizzle reel. Though my friends Chuck Garric and Lindsay Burne have sold it to Andrew the engineer, it’s still a great place to be. And Andrew’s little doggie Chloe is the sweetest doggie on earth (second only to my Sassie!) so we had a great time. Then I hit the bank to deposit some money, and I went to Bed Bath and Beyond to get a curtain rod. I’m going to hang a small curtain over the first shelf on my new entertainment center. When it’s normally closed, you’ll see nothing but the curtain. But when I want to show a movie I can open the curtain from the middle and open it up to expose the center speaker. Or, the curtain will be thin enough I can just leave it closed. I hope to have smoked glass doors installed in the bottom to hide the components. Smoked glass will still allow the remote’s infrared signals to be read. Though I had a different idea at the last minute. I had recently bought a framed movie poster in the charity auction at the Dark Shadows convention. It was a poster for “House of Dark Shadows” that adorned the wall of “DS” creator Dan Curtis himself! The poster was a bit faded by the fluorescent lights in his office, so I wanted to have UV glass installed in the frame so the poster wouldn’t fade any more. I had gotten it back from the framer and set it by my entertainment center until I found a place to hang it. Then I noticed something. The framed poster was the exact same size as one of the entertainment center doors would be! An idea! What if I made the doors to the entertainment center “movie poster frame doors?” Wherein, the doors would actually be functioning posters for movie posters. I have a decent collection of movie posters, and I could change these posters out every so often to keep the decor fresh. I was really liking this idea. But the movie-poster-frame-doors wouldn’t be translucent enough so the IR signal could be read, so I would have to have an RF remote system installed. RF is radio frequency remote (I have one upstairs and it works great) so before I order the smoked glass doors I’m going to give the movie-poster-frame-door another thought. Hmmm…but I digress. While at Long’s, a well-dressed woman was walking the parking lot with tears in her eyes. I sat in my car and tried to observe her to see what her story was. I cracked my window and overheard her story. Apparently, she didn’t have medical insurance, and she needed a $43 prescription. It was for her husband who has cancer, and though she had gotten a few dollars, it wasn’t anywhere near what she needed. So when I got out of my car I waited for her to approach me, but she was hesitant. But eventually she did. I asked her where her prescription was and she said Long’s Drugs. (I was just there dropping off my photo CD). I took this as a sign that I needed to help her out. I told her that I would buy her prescription but she needed to meet me at Long’s in about a half hour. I was going back to pick up my enlargements anyway, so it was perfect. I would meet her then. She said she would walk over and meet me in the pharmacy of Long’s Drugs. I bought my curtain rod and went to Long’s. But when I got there she was nowhere to be found. I found it hard to believe that her story was phony. She was so convincing with the tears in her eyes, etc. I wanted for about a half hour but no sign of her. I had to get going to a meeting. Hmmm…I wonder what really happened to her. That night I went to the Worship Council meeting at church, and then over to Bob’s Big Boy for our usual Tuesday night meeting with Chuck McCann and company. The enlargements I had made were of Chuck and Wally’s Dollies from the San Diego Comic Con. I wanted him to sign them for my friends, and he did so gladly. What a great time we had!
Wednesday the 6th – MAKE IT WORK! – One of the things on my “to do” list after I got back from Comic Con was to see about my external hard drive. It had been malfunctioning for quite some time, and it wasn’t even doing its regular back-ups. It was time to use it or lose it. So I called over the company Make It Work and Joshua come into diagnose what the problem was. Apparently, after loading a diagnosis program, he found out that the operational abilities of the external drive were faulty. So, he suggested taking a drill to it and destroying it, because it wasn’t much use to me now. That’s what I needed to hear, though it was a costly diagnosis. I made plans to go out and buy a new one the very next day. Come to find out Joshua was a “geek” just like me, and we enjoyed talking about Star Wars, Star Trek, and the new Batman movie, which I have no interest in seeing. (Don’t get me started on THAT!) Suffice to say that I won’t be one of the bazillions of people who buy a ticket. By the time we ended up talking, it was late in the afternoon! Where does the time go when you’re taking about fanboy stuff??!! That night I went to evening church, and it was good to be back after a few weeks of activities that kept me away.
Thursday the 7th – ELVIS ERROR! – My pal and webmaster Scott Sebring and I went to Fry’s Electronics to buy a new 1 Terabyte external hard-drive to back up all my stuff. We also picked up a few other items we needed for my set-up. We also stopped by Yale Labs and picked up a copy of a 35mm film I had transferred to digital. They have a great scanning service over there that will scan your movies, and turn them into digital files. A few years back when I was doing Wally’s Screening Room at the Silent Movie Theatre, I was lucky enough to find a concession stand advertisement called “Snack Canyon.” When “Grease” was released, I must’ve gone to see it about a dozen times. Well, the theatre in Aberdeen, South Dakota would always show the same Chilly Willy cartoon to start, then play this Snack Canyon concession stand ad, and then the feature would start after a brief intermission. I LOVE Snack Canyon, and I couldn’t believe I actually had a copy on 35mm! Well, when the guys at CONvergence in Minneapolis found out I had a copy of it they went nuts. So I had it scanned and transferred in early July and took it to Minneapolis for their film festival. I left the DVD with them, but still had the master on digital tape. So when Scott Sebring tried to dub the tape to a Windows media file, he noticed some drop outs in the tape. Apparently, the tape they used was faulty. So we took it back to Yale and they were happy to re-do it. They even did some more work on color correcting it, so it looks even better! As soon as Scott gets it finished, I’m going to post it here on the site, as well as on You Tube. The copy that’s on You Tube now isn’t very good, and is cut off at the end. But this baby is complete! Stay tuned! So after we ran our errands, we headed back to my house to begin the process of hooking everything up. Scott was busy on my computer, so I went to go get his wife Vickie at the Universal train station. I had tickets that night to the Arclight Sherman Oaks’ screening of the Elvis movie “Viva Las Vegas.” My original companion was unable to make it because work ran long, so I hustled at the last minute to find a replacement. No luck. It was too late a notice. However, my friend Lindsey Dickey said she would go. So we met up and drove to the theater. But I had forgotten that Lindsey’s only 20, and I also forgot that “Viva Las Vegas” was a 21+ screening. Apparently the Arclight thinks it’s a good idea to serve booze during movies. I’m not really sure I understand that whole concept, or why it’s necessary to have booze during a movie (some folks really need their booze I guess) but the fact was that we weren’t getting in. Lindsey was under 21 and we had made the trip for nothing. So I got a refund and we went to Fuddrucker’s for dinner. I really love Fuddrucker’s so it was a real treat. I guess it just wasn’t in the cards for me to see “Viva Las Vegas.” But at least I got a delicious Fuddrucker’s out of it! Lindsey followed me to my local Ford dealer so I could drop my car off for routine maintenance. I leave it there overnight and it’s taken in the first thing in the morning, serviced and then I return to pick it up. It’s called Early Bird Service.
Friday the 8th – 8/8/08! – When Joshua from Make It Work was out to my house, I started mentioning that my TV just died. It was 8 years old. I also mentioned that my computer monitor was flickering occasionally and it too was 8 years old. He told me to watch out, because Friday was 8/8/08! A chill ran down my spine! What could this mean? Actually, I wasn’t all that worried about it. I don’t normally buy into that sort of thing, and besides the number 8 is a number of prosperity and good fortune! We’ll see…So far so good. When I got up in the afternoon, I checked my voicemail messages. The guy at Ford called twice because HE COULDN’T FIND MY CAR KEYS! I called them back immediately and tried to figure out what was going on. And the guy who called was at lunch, so I spent hours not knowing what exactly was going on with my car! When I usually drop off my keys, I do it by throwing them through the crack in the door of their repair office. Come to find out, the cleaning crew found them on the floor, and placed them in a box under the counter. When I threw the keys into the office, they had fallen off of the desk and on to the floor. Thank God they didn’t throw them away! I had BOTH pairs of keys in that little envelope because the battery was dead in one of the key fobs and needed to be replaced. By the time the maintenance guy returned from lunch, he phoned me to tell me that they had found my keys and my car would be ready by 5. WHEW! I had planned on going to a screening of “Space Chimps” in the afternoon, but didn’t have a car. So I just relaxed and waited for the time to walk the 2 miles over to the Ford dealer and retrieve my car. After I picked it up, I stopped by Denny’s and got some food, and then headed home. I spent the evening watching the new “Garfield” DVD movie “Garfield’s Fun Fest” on my new TV. It had just been released that week and Scott and I found some copies at Fry’s when we were there. Oh, by the way, when I got my car back from the Ford dealer, the mileage on the odometer read 21,888 miles! WEIRD!!!
Saturday the 9th – BUSY SATURDAY! – I got up early to attend the monthly elder’s meeting at my church. Then I rushed home to let my maids in to clean Planet Wallywood. But until they arrived, I took the opportunity to relax and catch a quick nap on my couch. When they arrived, they started cleaning upstairs, and I slept all through that! In fact, I didn’t wake up until they started vacuuming in my living room. I was tired! That afternoon Karina Michel (she plays Kimba in “Livin’ On a Prayer”) came over to do some ADR (additional dialogue recording) for the “LOAP” trailer. It was good catching up with her. Then I got showered up, changed, and headed down to the Hyatt Century Plaza to participate in a panel discussion at the VOICE seminar. James Alburger and Penny Abshire are pals of mine who put on this seminar for people all over the world who have an interest in getting into the voice-over industry. I was on a panel with 4 other people – actors, producers and agents. It was a spirited discussion that ended waaaay too soon. After the panel was over, I met with some folks from Canada, North Carolina, and other places, who seemed very cool. I invited some of them to come over to Planet Wallywood to have pizza and take the tour. It was a lot of fun, and certainly made the evening more interesting that simply coming back to my house and eating my leftovers from Denny’s. The first group arrived in a group of three. One of the guests was Kara who does voices on some anime shows. The next group was a group of three from Canada. Then another group came over, and there were a few Australians in the group. What a wonderful, cultural experience! In fact, the guy from Australia wanted to see what American Domino’s pizza tasted like! So in the midst of our Planet Wallywood tour, we broke for pizza, Coke and banana popsicles. Then the tour continued. But somebody noticed that it was after midnight, and the VOICE attendees had to be up and at ’em the next morning at 9! So we called it a night. But what a fun evening!
Sunday the 10th – LOAP AUDIO MIXING! – I met with my audio mixer Ernie at Studiopolis Burbank to mix the final audio on the “Livin’ On a Prayer” sizzle reel and trailer. They are two separate entities. The sizzle reel is like a mini-episode in four minutes or less, which has a complete beginning, middle and end. The trailer is a teaser, which doesn’t give anything way, but shows you enough clips to entice you into watching the entire short film. My buddy Brian Cummings, voice-over GIANT (and former South Dakotan) was kind enough to do the voice tracks for me. The minute you hear his voice you recognize him from his previous work, and we’re lucky to have him involved. But there was trouble. Apparently not all of the audio tracks had been transferred over properly by one of the editors. So it took a little extra work to extract those and import them from a previous session. Then Ernie and I had to go over to Studiopolis Studio A and turn the files into something that the computer at Studiopolis Burbank could read. In the process, Ernie jammed his finger and got a sliver underneath his fingernail! EEEEW! So after swinging by his house and having his wife extract the sliver, we met up at Studiopolis Burbank again and continued the session. It was all sounding great and moving well. But we were running short of time. I had to be at evening church for elder duty that night, so I had to get going to get cleaned up. I made it over to evening church on time to be the elder for the 5:30 service, and the 7:00 Spanish service. I stayed for the remainder of the 7:30 service as well. It was a very enjoyable evening. I talked to Ernie and he had continued mixing after I left to get cleaned up for church, and he finished in good time. I’m going to stop by on Monday and check out the mix to sign off on the final product. Then I came home, and grabbed a nap so I could stay up all night doing auditions and watching “Charlie’s Angels: Season 2″ on DVD”
And how was YOUR week??!!
