Mitchell Deutsch,
Cross X Street
2023, 5 minutes
What was supposed to be a three- week project to start my personal portfolio soon developed into a much more ambitious three month one. While I had intended to finish the entire project by Christmas Break, when the holiday week came around, I had only finished my last revision of the script after a final critique session with Anakin, a tutor at ReelWorks Brooklyn, and my Video Production teacher, Ms. Leo.

Around this time Ms. Leo notified me of an Alumni awarding creative arts scholarship to students at my school. I submitted my script and a page long synopsis of my film and was awarded $100, which I put towards hiring a voice actor. I had initially planned on voicing the script myself, using the borrowed Sennheiser shotgun microphone from my school. However with a check in my pocket, and a script I felt proud of, I figured it made sense to elevate the project by hiring a voice.

I found denvervoiceactor’s page five minutes into scrolling through Fiverr’s search engine, and although it felt like an immediate fit, I didn’t want to be hasty. Of course, after hours of scrolling and dozens of pages I still felt as though Malcolm's relaxed, deep voice would allow me to create the meditative atmosphere that I sought while still matching the abrasive nature of my shots with his gritty undertone. I sent him my script and he replied with a first take. My first experience with actor direction, if you can even call it that, consisted of a long paragraph where I made an awkward effort to direct his voice in the chat box before immediately following up with short voice clips where I pretended my voice was anywhere near as cool and tried to example pacing. As awkward as my descriptions may have been, they worked, because after three versions, it felt like I had achieved something close to what I set out for.