I haven’t really posted about this much but I do a podcast semi-regularly. Admittedly, not as regularly as I would like but my co-host and I both work very irregular hours as we are both actors and he’s also a successful Mariachi guitar player too (I’ve heard him play, he’s incredible).
We try to do one or two a month and in those podcast we usually get special guests to come on and tell their story. We’ve had everyone from fight directors through to voice actors, comedians, dramatic actors, writers, comic book authors and so on. Our fanbase is growing slowly and steadily but honestly though, I don’t really do it for the fans, I do it because a have a fire burning in my soul and the only way to keep it under control is to create.
Rufino, my co-host, and I both met over our love of Kevin Smith movies (in fact, one of our guests was Marilyn Ghigliotti who played Veronica in Clerks). We quickly found out we are both sci-fi and comic book fans, although our tastes lie in slightly different directions. He’s an encyclopedia of comic book knowledge and I’m an encyclopedia of tabletop roleplaying. I grew up with a different comic book set than him, as I favoured 2000AD in the UK, whereas he had never heard of it here in the US.
I’m a firm believer that I should always be creating, so the podcast was a great outlet for that creativity. Every episode was unscripted and we found that we had a great energy between us and could just riff off each other perfectly. He is the Ralph to my Kevin, or the Jason to my Kevin, or the Scott to my Kevin, or the… well, you get the picture. In the early days, we used a little mic attached to my iPhone and we would record in my living room and I would mix it down on my old and very decrepit MacBook.
We had a list of what we wanted to talk about back then too but we found after about five episodes that we never got through the list as one subject would lead on, ergonomically, to something else we hadn’t scripted, and off we’d go at a tangent. This meant that the podcasts seemed to flow much better. We’d just riff off each other in the most natural way we could, sometimes with guests, sometimes just the two of us.
We had a few video podcasts too and that is something I really want to do more of. We used Facebook Live and I regret that now as there’s no easy way to archive them for later viewing, without searching the Facebook page. I think we will use YouTube or Twitch or something like that and then we can archive them better within a YouTube account for people to see in future. Something for us to work out I think.
I think that many actors out here in Los Angeles sit at home and wait for the phone to ring, and although I include myself in that to a lesser extent, I at least acknowledge it in myself and try to do something about it whenever I can, hence the podcast and many other things I do daily to keep me focused on my career and inevitable huge success (I’m already successful as I make my living solely through the money I earn through acting, which not a lot of actors can say they do).
Basically, what this post is about is to remind you that if you are in the creative industry, you need to keep creating. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to many of you (I can hear the chorus of “well duh” comments from readers now) but you’d be surprised how many actors I know that do sit on their asses, expecting work to fall into their laps.
Write something, record something, grab a few fellow actors and put on a show, or just script read, improv or do whatever to get your creative juices flowing and to exercise your creative muscles. If you stand still, you fall behind those of us who keep marching forwards.
And I’m marching forwards.
Damien Gerard 