Ventriloquist David Pendleton talks with Tom about his ventriloquism practice techniques, isolating skills and the benefits of video review.

Video Transcript:

Practice is a dirty word to a lot of amateurs. I can understand why it is to some pros, too.

I still don’t really practice enough. I was highly motivated when I had that new figure, and I think that’s probably when I practiced the most—when I was introducing a new figure into the show. But in terms of practicing just to stay sharp with my existing act, that’s kind of a different story. It’s hard to get motivated to do that.

Yeah, well then that just ruins what I was going to ask you—because I was going to ask you to share your practice routine.

Well, I just told you a couple of things. You know, I try to isolate the skills, just to keep it more interesting. There are times I’ll just get in front of the mirror and practice difficult phrases so I can focus on lip control and lip control only. Other times it’s just manipulation that I’m working on.

There’s nothing like watching video of yourself in live performance to improve your skills. It’s amazing the things you do that you don’t realize until you see them back. You can learn so much by watching video. But there are two things about that:

Number one, you have to be disciplined to actually do it—to go through the hassle of setting up a camera and recording yourself. That’s a pain.

Number two, you have to be disciplined enough to actually sit down and watch it. Even after going through all the effort of recording yourself, it’s still hard to sit down and watch.

But there are so many things you can learn from doing that. So that in itself is an element of practice, because it forces your attention on what you’re doing. Then you can go back to the mirror and work on whatever little quirk you noticed on the video.

Sometimes it’s just how you hold your face, or the expression on your face during a certain part of the show. You don’t always realize what you look like. Even practicing in front of a mirror isn’t quite the same, because when you’re performing in front of an audience and recording it, you finally see what the audience actually sees.

That is so critical. I think I finally started to get better when I made myself do that.

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