Saturday, July 28, 2012

Technology is: Therfore...uh.. What?

When there are so many technical abilities at the fingertips of so many to be shared so quickly in this day,  the question is not "Do we text or tweet"?  The question is "should we do it at all?"
Case in point... This is an "in-house" self congratulatory animated commercial shamelessly promoting my show at Thalian Hall on September 15, 2012.    
Here it is, I will continue after.

Now think about this from my perspective. Who knows if the time spent putting this together will really motivate someone to buy a ticket. I know it is not John Ivy quality animation, but...here is the amazing thing.  I drew that duck, did the voice, and my iPad animated and converted it into a video cartoon with sound.
As a kid my favorite piece of equipment was the tape recorder. At seven years old my first tape recorder was an Ampex that was as big as a speaker cabinet.  I had that one over a summer because it actually belonged to the school. Over the years I have owned countless recording devices in every format ever invented.  
I spent my childhood doing voices, recording my ventriloquist routines, interviewing people, writing radio shows all on some sort of recording device. But I wanted to do more than I could do with just a simple tape recorder. I wanted to add sound effects, speed it up and slow it down.  I was developing characters and listening to the the sounds I could make. What I wanted was to be the voice of an animated character. But it was beyond my equipment. I wanted my own recording studio at Disney Main Lot. 
So here it is, Sat. July, 28, 2012 and I took my drawing of a duck put it in PhotoSpeak, recorded a few takes and watched the animation instantly. I voiced an animated cartoon in less than an hour. I added scrolling titles and a slug at the end and now here it is on the world wide web stage for anyone to see. 
Perhaps the question "Shall we do it?" was answered when Sir Edmund Hillary said he would climb Mt. Everest "because it is there".  
This is an amazing dimension to live in.
As you were,
Jay

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