Last night, Jamie and I had dinner with up-and-coming voice actor DJ Chiles. Loads of fun. Sometimes we got intimidated by the sheer number of voices, dialects, accents, and gags DJ could do on the fly! We talked about all sorts of things, everything from cats to his work of late. He’s part of an improv group and had recently done some voiceovers for a local PBS station. What he can do is just amazing.
We met him and many more voice actors at a Halloween party put on by a lady in the Afterhell cast. At the party, we passed around copies of “Damning Praise” and “Sleepless Days”, two scripts Jamie and I had written for the series. Everyone decided to do an impromptu reader’s theater with “Sleepless Days” where DJ read for a vampire. He gave the role that perfect hint of a Hungarian accent, expertly avoiding camp. Every now and then ever since, he’s sent us an occasional note about doing more.
And of course that came up again over dinner last night. We gave the usual status report and crossing of fingers. Blah, blah, CD sales, seed money, blah, blah, blah, hopehopehope.
We discussed ways to promote the show. Banner exchanges, bugging Fangoria Magazine for a review (I’d link to www.fangoria.com, but the pic on this week’s front page might be too grisly for some–fair warning), online ad space.
Producing new eps, which came into the discussion as well, should be a more streamlined process than before. Having gone through the process once, I know what we can do better and where. We should be able to produce two or three eps for the time and cost it took for the pilot.
All this becomes more pressing as time passes. Any actor involved in the project for a protracted period of time has asked more than once, “When can we make another one?”
Hearing that again last night from DJ has got us wondering. I think we’ve been bitten by the audio bug again. The only question now is what to do about it.