Not Just Another Voice Over Guy

The First Rule of Underbelly, Don't Talk About Underbelly.

2011-07-18T19:22:00.000-07:00

Second Rule of Underbelly is hang on to your hat. 1920's gangsters of Darlinghurts. Slashing each other with cut throat razors and punching nine colours of felt out of each other, over pennies and prozzies and rum. Not that I can say that anything like that has anything to do with Underbelly the TV series. I wouldn't, I can say it's happening that's all. It's happening all right. In the Razorhurst nights of Darling it hurts. Into lanes crammed with sailors and troublemakers from the suburbs and the country, smashing themselves into the illegal alcohol and cocaine fuelled throb of the seedy sex racketeers, smokey, dimlit streets. Good old Darlo love. Speakeasys in Sydney were everywhere, the only way to have a drink after the six o'clock swill was hosed on to the street. Sawdust and piss and blood and spew. Nice place for a drink and a night out. Might get slashed too, very exciting. The trend that became the Razor craze sent thousands of customers to St Vincents hospital and left many with the prestigious mark of the tribe. Boastful tough fronted drunkards leered and blustered at each other, and if they were stupid enough, they might pull a Razor and wake up cut, bruised and hung over. Soon all will be revealed in Underbelly RAZOR on channel Nine in Australia

Who is the president?

2011-05-22T23:15:00.000-07:00

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

2010-08-02T02:05:00.000-07:00

Exploitation and the South Pacific Peso.

Jurassic Age Conditions proposed on Terra Nova

US Studio FOX is looking at producing its latest 13 x 1 hour television series Terra Nova in Australia. The large budget series, to be produced for the US FOX Network, is a Steven Spielberg production and features characters travelling back in time to the days of the dinosaurs.

Unfortunately, the dinosaurs aren’t the only thing from the Jurassic period about this show.

Usually, a US TV show being produced in Australia would be produced on Equity’s Offshore TV Agreement. This Agreement has rates of pay and residual payments based on the rates of pay under the US Screen Actors Guild (SAG) agreement. Most recently the Steven Spielberg produced mini-series for HBO The Pacific was produced on this agreement.

FOX has produced a number of shows in Australia under these agreements including The Thin Red Line.

In initial discussions FOX’s Australian representatives indicated that Australian performers would be contracted on an agreement based on the agreement for The Pacific.
But on Friday last week FOX has came up with a different proposal.

So what is the proposal?

The proposal undercuts the usual Offshore TV Agreement in almost every respect. In fact, the proposal put by FOX is not just worse than the Offshore TV Agreement you would usually work on for an Offshore TV series, it is worse than you would work on for a lower budget Australian TV Series or Serial (such as Neighbours or Packed to the Rafters)

What rates of pay are they proposing?

The usual minimum rates of pay for an Offshore TV series under Equity’s Offshore TV Agreement are currently $809 per day-the same as under the SAG agreement. Fox is proposing that instead of these rates the rates of pay for an Australian TV program (such as Home and Away) should apply. That minimum is currently $214. The proposal amounts to a cut in the minimum rate of 75%.

What about residuals and repeat fees?

FOX is proposing that performers would see no repeat or residual fees for the first 5 years of exploitation of the production. It would be a 5 year buyout.

The first 5 years of any production will be the years in which it generates the highest amount of revenue. Of course, revenue is generated after 5 years but, after all, how many people buy a DVD more than 5 years after a show has been on TV?

This arrangement is worse than Neighbours or Underbelly or any similar Australian TV show in which Australian performers can and do share in financial returns on productions from the outset and in some cases very significantly so.

After the first 5 years the residuals proposed by FOX would be both worse than the usual arrangements for Australian TV shows and worse than the usual arrangements under Equity’s Offshore TV Agreement.

It should be noted that on The Pacific Equity is already chasing the distributor for payment of residuals fees.

What about other conditions?

Not only are these cuts above sought but a host of other changes to conditions have been sought including:

·                     Night penalty would only apply to work between 2am and 6am. Usual night penalties are payable after 8pm;
·                     Overtime arrangements are changed so that double time will only apply from the 13th hour not the 11th as in the current agreement;
·                     Travel arrangements undermined.

If the proposal were successful what impact would this have on other Offshore TV and Film productions?

If US Studios see that Australian performers are prepared to work on these arrangements then no US Studio will ever again come to Australia and respect the terms of engagement under which Australian performers have been engaged on these productions to date.

Equity alone distributes in excess of $8 million a year to its members in offshore production residual fees. All this income for performers would be lost.

If the proposal were successful what impact would this have on Australian productions?

If Australian producers see that Australian performers are prepared to work without residual payments for the first 5 years of exploitation on a US production then, London to a brick, someone will try it on here.

It would be most unfortunate that, only a few years after Australian performers secured residuals on feature film through industrial action, that the clock was turned back. In recent years Equity has been able to secure SAG like residuals on some Australian films (including Fury Road, Legend of the Guardians, Mao’s Last Dancer and Red Dog) and we are in the middle of our negotiation for the film agreement seeking an enhancement in the residual deal generally. All this progress would be put in peril.

How will US performers be engaged?

US performers will be contracted on the standard US contract with all the protections of their minimum rate of pay and residuals which the producer is seeking to remove from the Australian performers.

Are the proposals lawful?

Our assessment is that the proposals, on their face, offer an arrangement which would be less than bare minimum required by law. In addition, we are taking advice as to whether the proposal may constitute a breach of the Fair Work Act and the Racial Discrimination Act in that is discriminates against one class of performers, Australian, based on their national origin.

We are prepared to do whatever it takes to stand up for the rights of Australian performers.

The Age of Surplus

2009-09-10T00:12:00.000-07:00

We are now in the age of surplus. We have too much of everything really, there's piles of stuff everywhere. If we never made another table, chair or guitar we would never run out of these things. That's not all. We have squadrons of items just lining the sidewalks on clean up day in my neighbourhood. Favourites of the past, cast aside, seemingly worthless, only to be gathered up by mini van driving seagulls, diving on your old chest of drawers like a hot chip. Flogging it on E-Bay for twelve bucks. Go capitalism!

Same seems true of stuff we watch. Rehash after rehash adorns our screens. New money for old jam as we plow the twentieth century for it's forgotten public domain IP or the glowing embers of glimmering childrens programming of days gone by. Jungle Jim will return. Gilligan's Island will be back. Fritz & Felix the Cat haven't been done for a while either. Maybe they could duke it out to the death like Alien VS Predator.

So what's new and truly fresh? Cyberspace. The initial frontier of the externalization of our minds eye. You can have it all in Cyberspace, baby. You can be taller. You can create an Avatar with super powers and no problems. It is the ultimate escape machine. Another world within a world. A world of words and secret codes. A land of text and violence. Virtual sex and rugs and rock 'n' roll. You can have it all online. We'll deliver if you pay postage.

The light box celebration of the short attention span. A never ending realm of meaningless distraction. Isn't it fabulous? If we could just get the fucker to pay we could all give up our day jobs. Play World of Warcraft or Space Invaders for a living.

A zillion schemes float around every nano moment trying to beckon you in like micro bouncers out front of so many Cyber strip joints. "Roll up! Roll up! c'mon Smiley, in we go, see the amazing Karina and her curious carpet snake! Roll Up! Just opt in here, Sunshine, give us an email address and all your dreams can come true."

Maybe they can. I know some people on the web are shovelling in the cash, and you know that too.

Though has anyone really come up with the perfect business model? I have, but I'm not telling anyone. It is so simple and real and fun it would just be a monster success. I just don't get time to do it. I like the real world. Tree's and sunlight, the noise of the urban drainforest, with it's mysterious creatures roaming and rambling through it's streets and corridors. I can only put a certain amount of time in online before I get twitchy and need a little action. Know what I mean?

As a communication portal though, it is unparalleled. If we can just get our apple translators to work properly, maybe we can finally learn to speak to each other intelligently and realise that the separation is an illusion and that we are truly one. One heart, One mind, One Love.

I doubt that though, due to the general proliferation of fuckwits per capita. Could we give it a shake anyway? Might be fun.

Things are heating up.

2009-08-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

With the advent of this micro world that now takes up so much of our time, time that used to be engaged with other non techno related activities. You wonder what people actually did back then. You know? back in the dawn of time, 1984 and all that. I was there and I am beggining to forget how I actually made arrangements with people. In fact how did anyone ever manage to find anyone or organise anything without mobiles phones?

Did we really go home and check the answering machine first? I can't remember. Frankly I don't want to remember. I like my nanopod and all things macintosh. As a scientific instrument makers apprentice in the early eighties I used to dream of toys like these. I used to name everything "pods" too, no joke.

Now finally, they are here. I can record a voice over, here at my desk and send it to you right now. For anything you can think up. That's so cool. I can work with fantastically interesting, intelligent, brilliantly creative people anywhere on earth, from right here on my comfortable Cappellini chair. Hey, I can even work with unmitigated fuckwits! which is great too, because you don't need to be in the same room. That's just a small example of the astounding flexibilty that's available to us all right now, 247, on the acronym loaded zone we call cyberspace.

We have entered this new arena without a big bang, just the sound of a customized ringtone. I can do those too, if you want one, just click my face and follow the link. Love your work and it'll love you back.

Have another beautiful day in paradox.

Cyberavalon and the valleys.

2009-08-25T23:03:00.000-07:00

I have decided that even though no one reads this blog I am going to add to it continually, daily over the next month. I have decided to describe the kinds of crazy things that happen in the voice over world. It is a world unto itself. Or in movie trailer speak "In a world, where everyone is speaking, what do you say?" The great booming La Fontaine is lost to us now, so where are the originals? The new distinctive characters. No one does Humphrey Bogart anymore. So what do we do? All I see is rehashing the old A/V haberdashery from the twentieth century.

But not everywhere. There is some amazing shit happening in cyberspace. Positive, ecclectic, interesting, did I say positive? As the cathode said to the annode. An electric world sits buzzing alongside our old world. It is the externalization of imagination in technology. We may currently interact with it in any way we can fit on the platform. So methinks only a large slushies worth off the iceberg, of an inrode, into this world, has yet been imagined.

Will we look back at this point of the c21 from c22 and say "wow, it was so obvious! how couldn't those primitives see it?" Are we at flat earth stage in our relation ship with Cyberspace? The new equivalent to the feature movie is yet to be. Experiential interactivity is attractive to artists & creators of content in all emerging genres. Especially alluring is it to voice over artists who trawl the web daily looking for an mp3 deal. Or a spoken word document. Or a twelve part animated series watched by zillions.

Anything. They all have studios too, i.e. they own a mac. Or portable studios, an iphone. Voice artists' works are scuttled around the globe via the interweb to over 100,000,000 people with active online bank accounts. Ready to consume. So what's on the menu? This menu has an event horizon that is continually re-emergent. The new C word is content. We gotta have content, we need to generate some cooooonteeeennnt. Everybody wants it.

So where is it? Who has it? To whom do we turn? To lead us from the flat earth primordial mists of Cyberavalon?

Voice over guys, that's right! Voice over guys. "Yeah, O.K. Do it again, without the exclaimation mark." I can do it, too. Check out my demo. I can record anything you want.

www.rmk.com.au/troy_planet

You hear us everyday yet you never see us and all we really want to do is to appear on TV or in Cyberspace. A Zillion downloads a day.

Check out this new clip I voiced with The Unicorn Hunters bit of a laugh, on you tube, for fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv91URj2UoI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv91URj2UoI

Accidents Happen Opens at Tribecca

2009-04-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

The film has opened at Tribecca check out this link to have a quick look. I feature in this promo in a still photograph that Gina Davis is holding, her comment is "what did he do? eat an ice cream truck?" The photo shows me as a twenty one year old photo shopped into a US navy uniform. My character in the film is a massive 175 kilos of mysogenistic malcontent. One immediately gets a sense of my broad range from this one moment of onscreen stillness... not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te0SCqVeXx8
Have a look and let me know what you think. I see many of you aren't leaving any comments, in fact none of you are. That's OK, I'm hardly going to let being completely ignored by the entire population of the online Earth get me down. I'm in a movie with Gina Davis! I think that Harrison kid is going to be a star if the business doesn't crush his hopes and dreams before they are realised.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te0SCqVeXx8

2009-04-18T08:49:00.000-07:00

Suddenly I realised The Blog is our new conscious interface with the physical universe. Such an unfortunate word Blog. It sounds somewhat stone age. Perhaps that is where we truly are with the notions and applications of technology. We are at the stone tool phase. We can make fire and kill a Yak at forty paces but we are only at the very beginning. The true evolution of our relationship with technology and communication begins when we transcend it's technical limitations and move it interdimensionally into truly more evolved aspects of thought and practice. We see the seeds of this all around us in 2009 but the crucial question is upon us. Can we survive our own propensity for stupidity and our addiction to disruption and chaos? Only TIME will tell, you may say, but the fact is, time never tells, we always have to tell the time. It's telling that. A telling moment with a momentum well told. I think it is fascinating to know that any thought, random as these, can be immediately published and seen by the odd high net worth individual on the internet. Even the low net worth individual with a penchant for the reading of a short script may view it for a dollar or less if he knows where to go. A local internet cafe portal can catch a ride on the global code based super position. We ahve manifested a type of Akashic record in cyberspace. The BLOGASHIC RECORD. Check it out, more than a thousand, thousand entries every day. You'd ahve be to interested, wouldn't you? (That's how I spell ahve now, it is deliberate, fuck it, if a t-shirt can get away with fcuk I can have, ahve. Ahve is the new Have.) Or you'd ahve to be interesting enough for people to tune in, either way, if anyone ever does decide to give a fuck and it's all written down, published, live, it definitely saves on those pesky printing costs. Eventually everything could be on the net. Unless someone turned the internet off, then the BLOGASHIC RECORD would be well and truly fucked. What's more if it was scuppered by some meglomaniacal uber nerd who finally figured out how to pull it's plug. There would be no record of it, because no one has printed any physical books or large stone walls with all the internet info carved in deep. I wonder if that's what happened in AtlantiS? No record of that either, apparently they were very high tech too. :)

Accidents Happen Hits Tribecca Next Week.

2009-04-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

Accidents Happen will premier at Tribecca Film Festival next week and I can't wait to hear some feedback from Anthony & Andrew. This week I have been doing a bunch of voice over stuff for TV. I am now the new voice for those Bank West ads that have people either loving or hating them, so that's been fun. More and more interesting little projects popping up on the web. The 'Batman's Gonna Kick Your Ass' song I did with Oli Chang has caused some ripples too with over 100,000 hits in the week it came out. We are working on some very funny new stuff so stay tuned.

Accidents Happen

2009-04-05T17:29:00.001-07:00

Just saw 'Accidents Happen' on the weekend, we had our cast and crew screening. I play a guy called Tiny Post who is basically the Father in the 'Accident' that sends the story into it's deeper drama. Another cameo for me, this time in fat suit. 'Tiny' is about two hundred kilos of miserable, alcoholic, middle America. Fun stuff to play. It is a brilliantly executed, darkly funny and deeply emotional film. We made competition at Tribecca Film Festival April 22 to May 3 so hopefully it will cause a stir and go on to sell some popcorn. It Stars Gina Davis. 'Accidents Happen' is set in the USA in the late Seventies but was all shot in Australia with an all Australian cast except for Gina. Who is such a great actress. A genuinely intelligent, convivial person, who, for a big star, was very unaffected and easy to get along with. It was real buzz getting to hang out with her on set. On screen, 'Tiny' is already dead so our characters don't hang out together so much. It is Directed by Andrew Lancaster and Produced by Anthony Anderson. When it hits Australia you must come and see it. I think it is quite different for an Australian film, can't wait to hear what David and Margret have to say about it.

Gone Global

2009-03-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

Some very interesting new projects around. More and more stuff going online. The line between TV, Radio and the net is blurring more everyday. In the past week I have done some animated pilots for the web and TV with strong musical content featured as I can talk more about these new projects I'll post the updates here. Last week I had a session that had creatives in Hong Kong with a client in the UK recorded here in Oz. Cool. The global market place has arrived on our desks. I can't think of a more exciting time to be in such a creative field.

Dorzal Fin

2009-03-09T22:37:00.000-07:00

I have been working with Oli Chang (composer) and Jin Lau (animator) on a pilot for a new web based character called Dorzal Fin. He's a social commentator. A shark in a suit. As in, an animated anthropomorphic White Pointer in a suit with his own Tonight Show. I'll have a clip up in the next 24hrs. Stay tuned.