Arthur Chu, after bitterly clawing his way through one of the most prestigious and selective educational institutions in the United States, finally got his Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Swarthmore College, and found himself lost in the milling sea of 20somethings wondering what to do with a degree in the humanities from a liberal arts college and running up against his quarterlife crisis.
After a brief period of meditation and bouncing from job to job, he realized that his passion had always lain not with his planned vocation in academia but with his avocation, which, since high school, had been theater and performance. Moreover, he realized that his happiest and most productive times had, whether they had been hosting a talk show on college radio, voicing video promos for the Free Culture student activist movement he helped found at Swarthmore, or performing as a disembodied voice for a production of Joyce Carol Oates' radical performance piece "Tone Clusters", been related to the field of voiceover.
Never one to be deterred from a challenge, he relocated to LA, bought as many books about voiceover as he could carry, sought out the best training he could and is now on the cusp of launching a brilliant career, marred only slightly by his arrogant, never-broken habit of writing performance bios in the third person.
College career:
Acting I (Swarthmore College)
Theater Production Ensemble (Swarthmore College)
The Phoenix (Swarthmore College newspaper), columnist, production assistant and opinions editor
WSRN (Swarthmore College radio), four-year talk show host
Post-college training:
Private coursework with Nancy Wolfson (Braintracks Audio)
Stage performances:
Twelfth Night (Malvolio)
Hills Like White Elephants (American)
Tone Clusters (Voice)
Spring Awakening (Moritz)
I currently own an Audio-Technica AS2020 USB mic. It's a bit basic, but it suits my needs and my budget and is a quality microphone for the price. We're all in lean economic times right now and so I'm sticking to the basics, recording through my Dell laptop on Audacity, and I've had no complaints about the quality of the recordings compared to recordings I've done at a professional studio.
Since I commute between LA and other cities on a relatively frequent basis, I've found Harlan Hogan's Porta-Booth to be a lifesaver; it provides a warm, natural sound free of background noise or echo even in relatively noisy environments.
I plan to save up in the next few years and upgrade to a more permanent setup, but for now I'm doing fine with what I have.
For jobs for which my home studio might be inadequate, I have a good working relationship with Voicetrax West, a fully staffed and equipped state-of-the-art recording studio with phone patch and ISDN capabilities within driving distance of my home.
Classically trained actor, accomplished fiction writer and copywriter. Tech-savvy, can do basic audio editing. Wrote an undergraduate thesis on the field of advertising and have done work for consulting and research firms; strong background knowledge of business, marketing and PR.