Voice-over work in Indiana wasn’t too lucrative, so Daniel Geduld made a classic actor’s move: He headed for L.A. And like most Hollywood dreamers, Geduld didn’t get hired for much.
So Geduld combined his creative talents with his abundance of free time. He took footage from the 1980s “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” cartoons, re-edited it and redubbed it to make the evil Skeletor and his cronies into a bumbling gang of losers. Geduld added incongruously peppy jazz by Django Reinhardt, called his farce “The Skeletor Show” and posted episodes on Google Inc.’s YouTube.
Geduld added his e-mail address to the credits, along with this line: “Please give me a job. I’m talented.”
Actually, that was a joke. Geduld didn’t think much could come of it.
But he was underestimating how much the Internet has broadened the ways people get discovered today, often for jobs in the entertainment industry that didn’t exist until a few years ago.
Enough people liked “The Skeletor Show” that it got mentioned on some popular blogs. Before long, several Web sites were paying Geduld to do similar comedic “mash-ups” for them. Video portal Heavy.com hired Geduld to be a voice for its new horror channel.
When he got the first e-mail inquiring about his services, Geduld, 30, was shocked. “Oh my God, this actually worked!” he thought. The first few gigs paid only around $500. But now he’s making “enough to support myself,” and offers keep coming. A tech company asked if he’d do promotional material. He got invited to a sci-fi convention.
Photo by Daniel Geduld.
No comments yet.