Staying in Shape While Sitting on Your Butt

As a voice over artist and editor, I sit on my back side.  A lot.  I go home, and after spending some time with the fam, I jump back on the computer and do voice over work.   It would be easy to never leave my desk, and never see the sun.  I've got two kitchens within 15 seconds of my edit bay by day, and of course another one at home. Now that I'm slightly over 40... ok, closer to 50, it wouldn't take much for me to turn into a gelatinous mass of goo.

But I don't want to turn into a whale, feel lethargic, and die of diabetes shortly after they cut my feet off.  So I had to find a way to stay in shape, something to motivate me.

Unfortunately, for me, I'm kind of an extremist.  Running or working out to "stay in shape" doesn't motivate me - at all. I had to find something extreme-ish to make it fun. So, in the past, I've run a bunch of 5k's and 3 marathons. Marathons are fun. If you haven't tried one, perhaps you should. They really make you appreciate the little things in life - like sitting.

I actually like the gym, and for a while my goal was to get massive and strong.  I got sorta strong - was finally able to bench 325 - but in the process, I got fat.  And hurt my shoulder.  So I decided to go the other way - get as lean as possible for a fragile old man.  I started in November, 2010.  I had been going to the gym 4-5 days per week. But I began going 6 days per week, and doing both cardio and weights every time.

In the beginning of February, when I was in the middle of my new plan, I came across a tranformation contest at bodybuilding.com - so I signed up for that for extra motivation.  I became even more dedicated with my diet.  I'd spend about 1.5 hours per day, 6 days per week in the gym.  And for me, it was fun, motivating, invigorating.  My energy level went up.  After a pretty traumatic 2010, my happiness also went up.  I was excited about life again.

Now that I've finished the contest and have seen the progress I've made, I want to keep going. So for me, this works.  Being in shape effects every area of your life positively.  Life just matters more.

My plan WON'T work for most people - its too much.  Most people find the gym boring. Hey, I'd rather do motocross every day, but that's just not practical in the Los Angeles area.

My advice to YOU, voice over guys, editors, and other butt sitters, is to find what you LIKE to do - walk, run, bike, racquet ball, soccer, tennis, gym, WHATEVER it is that you can do forever, and start doing that, at least 3x per week.  DON'T start some program that you hate, and that you'll quit as soon as the 3 month program is up.  And holy cow dude, put down the bloody Big Mac and bring something healthy from home.

Incidentally, to "reward" myself today, I ate what I wanted:  4 tacos at El Pollo loco, an entire box of Reeces Pieces, and nearly a full bag of mana from heaven, AKA Mint Milanos.  I wanted to throw up after each one of those binges today.

I'm looking forward to getting back on the wagon tomorrow.  A side benefit of eating healthy 95% of the time is that you REALLY appreciate food.  My treat?  A bananan, with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, sprinkled with chocolate protein powder.  Oh baby.



African Cats TV Spot

If you get the chance, go see African Cats.  Beautifully shot film.  Here's a spot for which I narrated the intro and out.

Final Cut Pro X

Oh baby.  Yesterday, Apple debuted Final Cut Pro X - the first complete revamp since the app was released in 2011.  In addition to voiceover, I'm also an editor, and I'm on Final Cut Pro all day every day.  I even clean up most of my auditions in Final Cut, because I'm faster with it than I am with Sound Track Pro and Pro Tools, the two audio apps I use.

Here's what it looks like:


I'll skip the fluff and get to the highlights:



•  Runs in 64 bit and can use all of your RAM and all of your cores.  Holy cow.

•  New interface!  I've been SOOOO bored of the old one.

•  Improved media management.

•  Background rendering!  Supposedly, you can keep working while its rendering and the system won't slow down.

•  Auditioning - try out an edit without messing up your timeline.

•  Mix and match formats.  Baby.

•  Image stabilization, media detection, people detection and shot detection on ingest. Sounds iMovie-ish - but if it works, people detection could be huge!  It takes me two days to do a full break down of a movie (ie, find and label every time Jack Sparrow appears in a shot in Pirates 4).

•  Add keywords to clips instead of subclipping to organize.

•  Keep working while importing!

•  Auto color correction and color matching.

•  Magnetic Timeline - audio/video stays in sync.

•  Automatic audio clean up.  I have my doubts... but anxious to try it.

• Inline precision editing - you can see handles.

•  Auto syncing waveforms.

•  Localized adjustments - choose one thing to tweak in a shot.

•  $299!  Holy crap that's inexpensive.

I will likely buy it the day it comes out.  I'm giddy as a school girl.

Which Mic is Right for YOU?

It may not be the one you think.  Just ran across this article which gives some great advice!

http://www.procommvoices.com/wordpress/choosing-a-voice-over-microphone/comment-page-1#comment-5762

Getting Into Voiceover?

This might be a place to start:  Terri Apple, one of the top female voice talents in the industry released another book last month and from what I've seen, it looks great. After I read it, I'll give you a review.


Voiceovers: Everything You Need to Know About How to Make Money With Your Voice






60 Milliseconds of Face Time

A few years ago, I appeared on national TV for a fraction of a second.  Can you spot me?

This commercial makes it clear why my face was never again seen on the public airwaves...

Trevor on TV

Exciting Blogger Updates!

Maybe its because I'm a tech nerd, but I got all giddy n such when I saw some fresh blogger news.

Dynamic Views! 

This lets your readers see your site in 5 NEW different views.  Here is the "Snapshot" view:


How do you do it?  Just add  "/view" to the end of the blog URL - Try it out!

http://www.trevorjonesvo.blogspot.com/view

The requirements are these:

1.  It must be a public blog.
2.  Feeds must be fully enabled (Settings/Site feed tab)
3.  You haven't disabled dynamic views in settings - its on by default.

I've found that you want to use Firefox if you're on a mac - was pretty glitchy in Safari.

Here's a link for more info:

http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1227173

Trevor