Rand Unwrapped by Frank Catalano Page A

right and a hallway, which lead to additional studios. But that day, my focus was on the first door on the right, that’s where all the actors were going in and then, of course coming out.
    Now I want to stop for a moment and just fill in a bit. Most auditions, I’ve attended, for animated projects usually have a some sort of story board or illustrations of characters to be voiced, short descriptions of each character and of course sides containing the lines to be spoken during the audition. The term “sides” refers to several pages or dialogue selections from the full script. Each character had individual line selections or pages from the script that are used in the audition. By reading the actual lines of a character the producer or director can have a clear cut idea of how that character will actually sound in the full production. Now that day, at the Robotech audition, I don’t remember seeing anystoryboards or pictures of any kind. There may have been all of these materials available, but I just don’t remember ever seeing them. They might have been part of what was scattered all over the wooden desk or on a wall in the lobby area. But, I don’t remember ever seeing or using them. However, it doesn’t mean that they weren’t there. I want to make this distinction because I want you to know that I had no idea of what kind of project Robotech was and what kinds of characters were part of it. As I sat there that day, wondering about the audition, I thought to myself, “I haven’t done animation or lip sync this for a long while and a really haven’t a clue of what’s going on.” But then I thought, “what the hell, voice over is just like riding a bike. Once you do it, it stays with you for life. So, I should be fine.”
    The wait to get into the audition room with the door on the right seemed to take forever. Some actors went in and then came right out and then there were others that seemed like they were in there for an hour. Finally, my name was called and I approached the door on the right that I think said simply Studio A . When I got inside the room was dark, (much darker than the room I was waiting in) with the exception of a small stand with a script on it and in front of it all a rather small television monitor. Behind me, was a glass wall that housed the engineer’s booth. It was a friendly atmosphere and I put on the headphones and was told to check out and voice a character. It was not one of the major characters that we have all come to know. It might have been a pilot or someone like that saying something like, “Yes, sir!” I had to match the line on the page to the character’s lip movements and what was physically happening on the screen. No problem. Right? Well, not so easy. The first thing you do at a voice over audition is slate your name. That means when you are cued to do so, you simply state your name into the microphone. After you do that, you are cued to begin. I was cued and then slated and then cued to begin. The images on the small television monitor moved by quickly and then I quickly looked down at the line on the script, as I had done thousands of times before, but just couldn’t remember it as I looked up at the screen. I tried again and the results weren’t much better. So much for riding a bike. I thought to myself, “When I did this in Hawaii, the screen was much larger. I wasn’t used to such a small television monitor.” In the studio, there was silence and then in an instant it all started to come back to me. I did one last take and that one was a keeper with perfect sync. And that was it. Before I knew it, I was going out the Studio A door and another actor was coming in. It all happened so fast and I suddenly found myself walking out the front door and walking back to my car. When I made it back to my car and noticed that the meter had run out but I hadn’t gotten a ticket. This is a