|
|
|  Talent BioI was raised in what was a fairly small county in Mississippi just south of the Tennesse state line. I have practically lived in Memphis my whole life. I grew up watching PBS and Saturday morning cartoons. Even as a small child, I was immitating people like Mr. Rogers, asking my mother "Can you could say that? I knew you could." We listened to Disney records like "Treasure Island" and "Winnie the Pooh" (those round, black circles that have been replaced by MP3s). My parents just labeled my impressions as "annoying" but I was in the early stages of developing a marketable skill.
| |
| The first time I heard voice actor Peter Cullen say the words "...VOLTRON! DEFENDER OF THE UNIVERSE!" I knew what I wanted to do one day. Voice acting was always in the back of my mind throughout my childhood. I watched after-school cartoons like Silverhawks, Thundercats, GI JOE, and my favorite Transformers. I got a nice dose of Hanna-Barbara on Saturdays like Scooby-Do, The Flinstones, The Smurfs, and others. My brother Craig began getting me intersted in the actors behind the characters. We began to research who voiced whom. As a 13 year old boy, I knew that Peter Cullen was the voice of Optimus Prime and which characters were Jim Cummings' voice on Disney Afternoons. We were weened on Jim Varney's "Ernest" films as well as Bill Cosby's stand-up on records. In my teen years, I was enthralled Warner Bros. cartoons. I never missed an episode of Tiny Toon's Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky & The Brain, Freakazoid, Batman the Animated Series, and Superman the Animated Series. I was not only able to immitate the characters, but I could tell which characters were voiced by Frank Welker, Rob Paulsen, Jim Cummings, Kevin Conroy, and otherbys. I had an ear for voice actors' work.
After I graduated high school, I went to college through my junior year. I took a break from college, because I met the love of my life Amanda. I fell in love with her on our first date, when our eyes met in a moment that felt like ages... from that moment, I knew that she was going to be my wife one day. I flipped burgers at restaurants and stocked shelves at a warehouse during those days. I proposed in the Memphis Botanical Gardens on a bridge over a pond of coi on Valentine's Day 1999. We were married on June 24, 2000. Over the next 5 years, we had 3 beautiful children. That was a difficult time for us financially. I went from stocking at warehouses to driving a forklift to take care of my family. I worked two full-time forklift jobs during the weekdays and was the shift superviser at a Steak 'n Shake burger place on the weekends. After our third child was born, I lost my job. We were unemployed and on welfare, just barely scraping by. I got a job working as a kitchen manager at Chick-Fil-A that paid fairly well. My wife was bored at home and discovered MySpace. She created me a profile page for the both of us and thought it would be fun! I said, "Social networking?!? That's ridiculous... I give it TWO WEEKS tops." When I first started using MySpace, it would suggest websites based on my interests. A lot of my interests had to do with cartoons and voice acting. I had just recently started putting videos up on YouTube parodying Transformers, as well as doing some sketch comedy and impressions. I noticed a link for a national production studio, so I clicked it and realized that they had a studio there in Memphis! I told my wife about it. I had no idea there was anything like that anywhere near me. It said "Talent Wanted." My wife encouraged me to contact them, but I said "nah," because I figured voice acting was just some unrealistic dream of mine. She told me that the worst thing they could do is say "no" and she was right! So I called them and they told me to go to the studio and audition. "What exactly should I do for my audition?" I asked. He told me to just do as many voices in about one minute that I could do. That was in November of 2007 and our fourth and last child had just been born. I thought since it was close to Christmas, I would read "The Night Before Christmas" with different character voices of mine and some impressions... so that's exactly what I did. This is the recording I did for that first audition. I saw the producer's jaw drop on the other side of the window from inside the recording booth as I was reading. After I finished, he asked if I could schedule a call-back. About two weeks later, we recorded my first demo (all the scripts except for two, I ended up writing myself!) and I signed with them in January of 2008. I started auditioning the last week of January and by the second week of February, I had booked my first session with Texas Steakhouse. I found out that they had liked me after listening to my "cowboy" demo (which I had written)... I hadn't even auditioned for it! I recorded for 3 tv spots and 2 radio spots for my very first gig. That's when I decided to create manof1000voices.com (a little haughty so I changed it). I treated VO as a part-time job aside from my "real" job. | | The next month I booked my first trailer for a videogame called Spectrobes: Origins. It was the first gig I had gotten from auditioning. It was to be the premiere trailer for the game showing at the E3 Convention. Since then, I have working on some amazing projects but have never gone a month without booking something. I spent what little free time I had practicing and listening to voiceover coaches and any other help I could find on-line. There is a wealth of knowledge about the industry out there! I continued to audition and book jobs while doing YouTube videos as sort of a hobby. I had watched a lot of Transformers parodies on-line, but I'd never heard a good Peter Cullen impression. Then somebody directed me to "The Rude Awakening of Optimus Prime." I don't recommend it for children, but it became an internet sensation. It pointed out all the plot holes in the old cartoon... the stuff all of us were thinking but brushed them off because it was a kids' show. I contacted the guy who created it and asked if he would allow me to create a prequel to his video. He was completely on-board, and I made my first big YouTube hit ANOTHER Rude Awakening of Optimus Prime. I gradually became known as the internet version of Peter Cullen and everybody wanted me to voice Optimus Prime for them. That was around the time that the Geico commercial with Don LaFontaine came out and I finally saw the man behind the "IN A WORLD" voice you heard during movie trailers. I was fascinated with what I called "the movie men" who narrated trailers and promos. I learned about Don more from my brother Craig who directed me towards Pablo Francisco's "Little Tortilla Boy" sketch. I began doing the movie trailer voice from there and researched other "movie men." I found out about Hal Douglas, Tom Kane, Nick Tate, Ashton Smith, Ben Patrick Johnson, Percy Rodrigez, and many others, including two of my all-time favorite voice actors Peter Cullen and Jim Cummings. I started doing all different kinds of trailer reads on my own and did a few for YouTube. I got asked to do the trailer voice just as much as the Optimus Prime voice. So I decided to do a tribute to movie trailer announcers called "The Movie Men Tribute."
I uploaded this video in the summer of '09 and in February of '10, I got an e-mail from someone asking me to read for a movie trailer. I didn't think much about it because I get asked to do movie trailer voices for people on YouTube and other media outlets all the time. I told him to send me a script and I would get to it as soon as I could. When I got the scripts, they were entitled "Beastly", "Extraordinary Measures," "The Last Station" and "Nine." It suddenly hit me - "these are REAL movies!!!" I finished on two out of four of them and got a check in the mail from them the next month! I found out that they had found me because they had seen my "Movie Men Tribute" video on YouTube! Out of NO where, I'm an OFFICIAL "movie man!" The co-owner of the production company contacted me personally and asked if I would consider allowing him to manage my movie trailer/promo career and I have been doing trailers ever since. I also picked up agents at Abrams Artists Agency and I'm booking gigs and doing auditions FULL-time now as well as having made PARTNER on YouTube so I get "paid to play." | |
|
I hope that I have made my parents proud but especially I hope that I have made my beautiful wife Amanda proud of me. She believed in me and encouraged me to pursue my dream career. She also pushed me to return to school and I now have a degree from Iowa Central... it's NEVER too late! I am learning more and more about the industry every single day and I strive to constantly re-invent myself and create a successful brand. I've still got a long-term goal of being not only a voiceover artist for movie trailers and promos but to voice a recurring character in an animated series. I was hired to manage a start-up animation company called Stategic Animation, so not only do I get to voice cartoon characters, but I get to write, storyboard, and edit the scripts as well! I am also the character designer. This job gives me a chance to create the characters that I've had in my head for years. I want to create characters that the next generation of cartoon-lovers will be immitating, just like I did when I was a kid.
Voice Actors, Celebrities, & Me
| |
|
|