The VO Meter Episode 14, Otakon 2017

The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Hi everybody, and welcome to Episode 14 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
I’m Sean Daeley.
And I’m Paul Stefano.
We have an exciting episode planned for you guys today. I know Paul went to his first anime convention, that’s pretty cool. But before we get to that, current events.
So Paul, what have you been up to?
Well, let’s see. I’ve been doing some e-learning with the large e-learning company I signed up with a few months ago. I was actually picked up in Voice Over Extra, my blog post that I did about it, where I was talking about how July was a really successful month for me.
There was some Facebook chatter amongst some pros that July was their worst month ever. And I chimed in on my blog saying, you know, I think it might have been my best ever because I have these two projects from the eLearning company and then a third that is pending. And they were both completed and I wrote a little blog about it.
And thankfully, or I’m thankful to John Florian for picking it up and once again featuring me on Voice Over Extra, so that was fun. And I’m in the middle of recording four audiobooks for myself in various stages of completion. One’s in the can, one was released today.
Another one is being edited by one of my editors right now. And I’m recording a local author as well in my studio. I think I mentioned I did that once before, but we’re doing it again.
So how did you advertise your studio? How did authors know to find you?
Well, it’s all word of mouth. The first one was a friend of a mom whose kid I coached in soccer. She told me about this book and it was really successful in paperback.
So I reached out to the author and said, do you want me to do your book? She said no, but I want to do it. And I brought her in and re-recorded it and it’s been doing pretty well so far.
And then this next one is actually my pastor at my church. He and his associate wrote a very successful book. It was in the top selling list for religious books on Amazon.
And I asked them same thing, do you want me to do their book? They also said no, but also because they wanted to do it. And my pastor is a really dynamic speaker.
So I’m actually glad he’s doing it because we’re about halfway through it now. And he’s fantastic. He came out of the booth one day and I was like giddy, like a little child.
And I said, I knew you would be good at this. I’m so proud of you. So I just basically did all through word of mouth.
That’s awesome. That’s very cool.
So that’ll be out in the next couple of weeks. I think we’ll probably finish at the end of August and hopefully have it released before the end of September. And then I just finished my rebranding with help from our coach, Sean Pratt, and launched an entirely new website, put it out yesterday, and the response has been fantastic.
Yeah, it looks great.
So if you haven’t had a chance to check it out, please go to www.paulstefano.com and let me know what you think. What’s going on with you, Sean?
Well, it’s that time of month again. I’m gathering…
That time of month…
Where I’m super, super moody and I can’t get any work done, but I met for my regular e-learning clients, duh. Oh, of course. What do you think I met?
Every second or third week of the month, I’ll get the scripts in. I go over them, make sure there are no errors, and then I send it out to three or five different narrators from… First, it used to be all over the US, because Paul, you’ve done it for me before, and kind of same thing with Word of Mouth.
I’m like, hey, my friend Sean is looking for more voiceover actors, and so I grew my roster that way. And then we got a request for more international voices, because he wants to try people who… He wants to challenge our listeners with accents that are technically English, but might be more difficult to understand, like say New Zealand or South African or Scottish.
I’m seeing a lot of demand for South African recently. I don’t know what that is. Are you seeing that too?
A little bit, yeah. I don’t know where… It’s a well-kept secret, I guess, because I see all the requests, but none of the actors.
Yeah, exactly.
So there you go. But yeah, so I’ve been working on that. I’m working on my first official audio book for Learning Ally.
So…
Oh, cool.
Yeah, so it’s actually The Giver by Lois Lowry. I mean, a lot of people in my generation might have read that when they were in high school, as recommended rating and stuff like that. And I know I got made into a movie with Jeff Bridges a couple of years ago.
So excited about that. I actually visited my aunt and their family for my cousin’s wedding last weekend in Montana. And she’s a teacher and a principal and spent decades in the education system.
And she is just so giddy. And she’s like, my nephews are narrating The Giver. It’s so happy.
I’m so proud.
That’s awesome.
So I told her I’d get her a free copy when I’m finished. But so that’s all I’m working on right now. Actually, we just got a really cool elevation Q&A webinar for the Global Voice Acting Academy with David Rosenthal.
So every month we have these two Q&A sessions where you can kind of pick the brains of Christina Melizia and David Rosenthal who are just very, very talented voice actors who have with decades of industry experience between the two of them. And we had a big turnout for this webinar because there was a bit of an upset this week when we were recording the podcast because a certain pay-to-play site aggressively bought a certain voice agent network. We don’t want to talk about it too much in this episode because it would completely ruin the focus and has nothing to do with conventions.
So we’re just going to leave it right there. But there’s plenty of resources online that you can learn and figure out what the debacle we’re talking about is. But anyways, so yeah, speaking of conventions, tell us about your experience, Paul, because I know this is kind of like your first one at this kind of con, right?
Yeah, so first of all, I don’t know if we mentioned yet, it was Otakon, which is a Japanese anime-focused convention in Washington, DC. I was a little bummed because up until this year, it was in Baltimore, and somehow the local tourism board lost it, and they’re now in DC for the foreseeable future, but this was the first year in DC. So it’s still not too far away.
It still takes me about an hour to get down there with a drive or maybe an hour and a half on the train. But I went down there, and we actually had a co-host on site, friend of the show, Chris Dattoli from New Jersey. He came down and was doing a panel discussion on voice acting for the convention, and then in his spare time, he helped us by doing some interviews and then some co-hosting.
So it was a lot of fun. There was a lot to see. As far as the convention itself, it was kind of mind-blowing for me, really, because like you said, I had never really been to a quote unquote con before, and just walking in the door, the moment I saw 5,000 people dressed in costumes, you know, all the cosplayers, it just was completely overwhelming.
So I spent the first maybe hour just wandering around all the rooms by myself to see what was there.
Just like slack-jawed?
Pretty much, yeah. And I am not a cosplayer because honestly, I barely even knew what that was before this week. Although I do like to dress up.
And you could say that maybe I was a cosplayer 20 years ago. I think, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I was actually the mascot for my university. So…
Oh yeah, you did tell me that before.
I dressed up in a furry tiger suit and got in front of tens of thousands of people. So in some ways, I’m like an old school cosplayer.
You did it before, it was cool. Oh man, I know a bunch of anime fans are just groaning at that one, Paul.
Ha ha ha.
Interesting note though, cos I realised it’s called Otakon. So the Japanese word otaku actually is essentially nerd or geek, or someone who obsesses over one kind of nerdy geeky thing.
Oh really, okay.
Yeah, yeah. So that’s probably where…
So it’s geeked on.
Essentially, yeah. Sometimes it’s used in a pejorative way, but I feel like nowadays, and especially for non-Japanese people, they kind of use it as a term of endearment. But I just thought that was interesting.
Yeah, so we had some great guests that were actually on the show, and some that we didn’t get a chance to talk to. We did talk to Man at Arms Reforged, which is a web show that they build weapons based on video games and anime shows, and they actually create the real weapons. They’re based here in Baltimore as well, which is kind of cool.
They work for a company called Baltimore Knife and Sword in their spare time, and then they do Man at Arms Reforged. So we may have some fans that have seen that. Have you, are you familiar with that show?
I fricking love that show. So I went, actually, like, think about me. I haven’t done it in a while, but I have a sword collection, actually, of like, this was especially when Lord of the Rings films were coming out, and so I got a bunch of those.
And I just loved reading fantasy books when I was a kid. I remember going to like Germany when I was 18, and we went to a castle, and in the gift shop, they had like a functional mace, and I was like, I don’t need any other souvenirs. I’m just gonna get that.
Yeah, I was a huge fan of the Man at Arms show. Back when it, before it was reforged, it was a different guy based out of California, I think.
Yeah, exactly.
And then they only did one season, and then they moved to the Baltimore one. And these guys are great, though. I mean, they do all their own voice overs, which I’m sure you talked to them about, and they use a lot more modern machinery and engineering techniques to sort of craft these weapons.
But it’s still really awesome to watch.
Yeah, they were awesome. And we did talk about the voice overs, and because they’re local, I offered to help, gave them a business card, little two-for-one deal. So you’ll hear that in the interview.
Some good stuff there. And then we talked to Vic Mignana, who was an anime voice actor. So the focus basically, at least in my mind, was to go there and talk to the voice actors and see how they got into it and what they were getting out of the anime side of things.
Man at Arms was kind of a bonus because I didn’t actually ask to interview them. So you have to put in a proposal and they tell you who you’re granted access with. And Man at Arms was sort of a last-minute thing where they said, we have some openings for Man at Arms who wants to talk to them.
And Chris particularly was like, yes, we want to talk to them definitely. And it turned out great because they were awesome guys.
Yeah, yeah, I would be stoked about that. And I never, that’s the funny thing about cons is sometimes you never expect who the guests are gonna be because they’re kind of like obscure or like you just don’t know what the draw is gonna be. But I’m so happy you guys are able to do that.
Yeah, so then, like I mentioned, we talked to Vic Mignana, we talked to Jamie McGonigal, we talked to Stephanie Shay and Chris Neosi. And they’re all voice actors. You may know them from some of their anime shows.
And then a lot of them are doing more, I don’t know if I should say more traditional because it just seems that way to me, but…
Western animation.
Yeah, they do some Western animation commercials as well. And then, let’s see, there’s some audio that we have coming up with a panel discussion on voice directing, voice acting directing, and some people that do directing for anime. We heard from Tony Oliver, Lex Lang, and Michael Sinternicholas.
And those guys were all great. I actually got up to ask a question, and so did Chris. So we hear that audio where we played that back.
And then there was a panel that I went to by myself. Chris was, I think, setting up for his own panel with Toshio Furukawa. Oh, I forget the other lady’s name.
I have to look it up.
So these were actually Japanese voice actors? Some of the latter ones?
Yeah. I thought you might know this guy.
Well, in case some of our listeners aren’t familiar with some of the earlier names, Vic Mignona is probably most popular for playing Edward Elric in Full Metal Alchemist. And he tends to play a lot of short blonde teenage superheroes. And then Stephanie Shay, I think I knew her from a show called Bleach, which is basically like Dragon Ball with swords.
But anyways, she played one of the female protagonists, Orihime. And then you’ve got Lex Lang, who’s a voice director and producer, does a lot of impressions and ADR looping work. And then some of the other ones I wasn’t familiar with.
You were mentioning Jamie McGonigal and Tony Oliver.
Yeah, they’re both pretty famous. Jamie and Tony both have done a ton of characters, even some more traditional cartoons that have been on. Jamie was like five different characters in the Pokemon series, so that was cool.
And then that panel that he was on with Michael Sinternicholas, he was Leonardo in one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, so…
Yeah, he actually plays Dean Venture on the Venture Brothers, if you’ve never watched that. Sort of like a dark interpretation of Johnny Quest.
Okay, cool. So I didn’t get a chance to sit down with him in person, mostly because I didn’t know who he was and I didn’t ask about it. But maybe we’ll have him on the show sometime.
I’ve actually reached out to him. We’ll see if he responds.
Cool.
Maybe he’ll remember me for my panel question, because he was really helpful there.
Excellent.
And the final two I wanted to mention were Toshio Furukawa and Shino Kakinuma. They are both actually living and working Japanese voice actors and actresses. And they are married, which I didn’t know.
So during the panel discussion, there’s some funny stuff with those two, although they don’t speak English, at least not enough to be conversational. So they had an interpreter. Oh, okay.
That was interesting, where the fans would ask the panel questions, the interpreter would send it back and forth, and then spit it back out to us. So you’ll hear some audio from that too. But Toshio, or Furukawa-san, as they were calling him, I guess his most famous role is Piccolo from Dragon Ball.
Is that right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that’s one of his most famous roles you might know him from.
But all in all, it was really cool. We got some absolute gold from some of the guests as far as how to be a voice actor. And the theme that you’ll hear is that it really is about acting.
We didn’t prompt these people, and you’ll hear that every one of the people we interviewed brings it back to being an actor, taking acting classes, continuing to take acting classes. Over and over again was a theme. And it was good to have that backed up.
That knowledge to be reinforced, because we hear that from our coaches all the time. And it’s good to hear that from working pros that really is the key.
Wonderful. Well, I’m glad you got to experience that. Cause I know, like, I’m a big comic book geek.
So it’s kind of, like, it’s almost tradition to go to that every year. And as you mentioned before, it can be a great networking and or marketing opportunity for aspiring voice actors.
Yeah, so we’ll have to get you East side, East Coast side next year. So we can both go.
Next one, next one.
Maybe we’ll even be panelists ourselves.
You gonna buy my plane ticket?
Maybe, I don’t know, we’ll see. Or maybe I’ll come out to Seattle.
Yeah, that brings up a good point, because there was like a voice actors panel, very much like the one that Chris hosted, but it was actually some local Seattle voice actors. But I was kind of, like certain things were a little cringe worthy, because like, yeah, they’re actors at the top of their game and stuff, but they were a little disconnected because they got started like 20 years ago. So like they’re recommending like, well, this great blue snowball mic, it was just like, we can do auditions with that all day long.
I’m like, no. Well, it’s just a different perspective, you know? And that’s, I’m like, yes, once you’ve built a relationship with your agent, they will care less about your audio quality.
But when you’re getting started, you need all the help you can get to set yourself apart.
Or maybe it just doesn’t matter. George and Dan on VOBS are fond of saying, it’s not the microphone, it’s the acting, or is the acting stupid? And that was backed up at Otakon also when we talked to Jamie and Chris Neosi, Chris Neosi, Jamie McGonigal.
Chris Neosi literally did not know what microphone he uses in his studio. He said, if one of his friends set it up, he has no idea what it is. And Jamie, similar thing, he said he had a Sennheiser, and he didn’t have any idea which one it was.
And I said, is it a 416? He said, I don’t know. And I said, is it tiny like a shotgun?
And he said, I think so. But these two are at the top of their game, at least in anime, and it doesn’t matter what mic they use to them.
We should just end the podcast now. We’re doomed.
I know, really.
So that’s actually a great point. And I think it’s a hilarious time to bring up our questionable gear purchase.
So Sean, what did you purchase since our last episode?
Well, I’ve been trying to be good and avoiding any major three digit purchases and above. So I was just kind of, I was picking up a little things to kind of make my workspace a little bit more ergonomic. So I got like, it’s not very exciting at all, but I got this laptop stand that you’re supposed to use to kind of, basically you can put it on a table, it raises the height of the screen, so you’re not tilting your neck down.
I spend hours of editing almost every day. And so I’m noticing that my whole posture is really starting to bother me with all this tension in my shoulders and my neck. So I wanted to fix that.
And I was actually trying to get it so I could place my audio interface underneath it. Oh, cool. Because from the pictures, it looked like it’d be plenty of space.
Like that’s what it’s for, is to kind of free up desk space and allow like your laptop fan to vent underneath the laptop. So that’s kind of a flaw of many laptops, is like if you just put it on a flat surface like you’re supposed to, it heats up, because there’s no ventilation from underneath. So that’s what I bought that for.
But unfortunately with it underneath, I can’t really access the controls on the Crayon. So it’s more of just kind of like a storage thing when I have it out, but when I’m not using it directly. Other than that, yeah, nothing too exciting.
What about you, Paul?
So I’m an idiot, as everybody knows, and I went and bought another Audio Technica 875R, the short shotgun. For those that are keeping track, this is the third time I’ve bought this mic. And the reason I did this time is because I was having a session with our good friend, Everett Oliver, who is amazing, by the way.
Everybody should go to myboothdirector.com and hire him right away. He helped me with some auditions for an agent, or two agents, actually. Just knocked it out of the park.
I couldn’t believe the difference between what I was about to submit, the crap I was about to submit, and how it was after he was done with me. But one of the things he said was, you need to stand during the auditions. And he said, are you standing now?
And I was like, because I didn’t have the camera on. I said, no. He said, do you have the ability to stand?
I said, no. Because a couple of months ago, I made the choice to sit all the time when I’m recording, which 90% of the time works out for me. But Everett scared me, so I went and bought the shotgun mic again because it’s the best one I’ve ever had in here in the standing up position.
So I put it right back where it was eight months ago, and it’s in my standing space now in the booth. So next time I have a session with Everett, I’ll be happily jumping up and down in the standing.
So was the CAD that you’re using, did that not sound as good in the higher up position? Was it just bouncing off the ceiling or something?
For some reason, it doesn’t work in that same position. Maybe because it’s too close. Right now, it has a little more room to breathe.
It’s kind of in the middle of the booth, and I’ve always placed the shotguns, whether it be the AT875R or the Sennheiser 415. I’ve always had it up in the corner, and that’s the only place I can get those to sound right. So I think I’ve mentioned this booth has very specific sweet spots, and I know where they are.
So in order to make that work for Everett, I had to get that same mic again.
Well, at least you’re not afraid to buy it again.
That goes back to what we talked about, know your voice, and I know that works for me, even though I went on this crazy…
I was like, then why did you sell it?
Because I’m crazy. I didn’t think I’d need it again. So this time I’m going to keep it.
No, I won’t. Yes, I will. I’m going to keep it this time.
I really want to keep it this time.
Your little gear demon is like materializing as we speak.
I know, it’s crazy. But other than that, that’s really the only purchase. So I didn’t really go too crazy.
No, I’m proud of you.
I didn’t buy an interface this month.
Well, I didn’t actually buy this, but I got to do a review of the newest version of the vocabooth2go.com Carry On Vocabooth. So their 3.0 version. And I was really impressed with it.
The only real complaint I had about the previous unit, and this is kind of a similar flaw in a lot of those portable acoustic solutions, is that there was no great treatment behind you. So they made these sort of framework with their acoustic blankets. Like they added an additional piece, and you can just kind of put it over the lip of the booth and like, boom, no more reflections.
I admit like it might not be the most comfortable solution, but if you’re traveling a lot and you want to have a consistent sound, or you absolutely can’t dedicate a space in your apartment or what have you to like a full booth setup or even a blanket or closet booth setup, it’s a great option. And one I heartfully recommend.
Awesome. I forgot to mention during the current events, I actually had a deal, Ali of the owner of vocalboothtogo.com here in the studio a couple weeks ago. Yeah, he asked me to help him out with some testing of a new product they’re working on.
I don’t think he’s ready to announce it. Actually, he mentioned it on our show and it’s still a prototype. It’s called the Mobile Voice Over.
It’s all he’s got so far. He doesn’t even have a complete name. Is that the glove one?
No, it’s different than that, although it might be an evolution of that. It’s to house a cell phone or a really small camera or pocket recorder. So for like field recording, so we basically put it on top of a tripod and wrapped it around the phone.
And the idea, he really wants to market it to YouTubers, people who want to travel really light and are constantly doing quick recording to improve their… Audio quality, yeah. Streaming, yeah, their audio quality.
So the thing he mentioned was people who are doing makeup ads or makeup selling.
There’s a surprising amount of those videos on YouTube.
Right, and it made sense when he said, he said, and they’re always doing it from the bathroom, so it sounds terrible. So we actually went into my bathroom and recorded it here at the house and then did a control sample without the MVO and then when the MVO wrapped around it. And it was a really big difference.
I never would have thought about that. Yeah, it’s interesting.
I think there could be a huge market for that, for people that are just looking to improve their quality because it’s a really quick setup. It was just wrap it around the phone and markedly improve the audio.
So that’s like using that actual phone microphone to record?
Yeah, we used the phone microphone and basically treated that, treated my phone with this mobile voice over unit. And it was pretty cool.
I’d like to hear it with some of those, like those little thunderbolt, or not thunderbolt, the lightningbolt microphones that they have out, like from Shure and Rode and stuff like that. I wonder how that…
Oh, the ones that plug right in like a headphone?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that would be cool. I’ll tell you what, we don’t want to get too far into it, but it was really good for the high frequencies, which is not unlike the carry-on vocal booth. It didn’t do much for the lower frequencies.
So we actually took it outside, right in front of the highway, on my deck, where I have, if you listen to the podcast, you know it was notoriously bad for sound. It’s the entire problem I have. So the highway was still there, but what we did find out was that it was really good at eliminating the crickets.
So we had a ton of crickets when we were recording, and they were really loud without the the MBO unit on there. And then without it, the crickets were completely gone. So it did a really phenomenal job at eliminating certain frequencies, and it could be really helpful for some people.
Yeah, I know. I know sometimes you’ve got no other option other than using your phone to record an audition, so that could be helpful. So that pretty much wraps up everything for questionable gear purchases, but we really want to get to the audio footage from Paul and Chris’ ventures at Otakon.
So without further ado, let’s have that sweet con footage.
Okay, everybody, welcome to episode 14 of The VO Meter. We are live at Otakon 2017, and I’m here with Chris Dattoli. How you doing, Chris?
I’m doing well, Paul. How are you?
I am great. I’m excited about the show. Joe, what are you looking forward to most?
I’m looking forward to the most. I’m looking to the voice acting panel that I’m gonna be hosting on Friday night, which is tonight, around 7 p.m. I’m gonna give out a lot of tips about, you know, people who want to get started in voice acting, give some valid information, where to find coaching. And I’m also looking forward to that other voice acting panel that’s happening on Saturday around 2.45 with Lex Lang and Tony Oliver.
And we are actually interviewing Lex Lang on Sunday. So that’s one of the things I’m excited about. We are having interviews with Lex Lang, Chris Neosi, Stephanie Shea, Vic Mignona.
I don’t think I said that right. We’ll get to that later. And there’s one more I’m missing.
Oh, Jamie McGonigal.
Jamie McGonigal, yes. I’m actually looking forward the most to interviewing him. I’m a huge, huge fan of him.
So once again, we’re here at Otakon 2017. Can’t wait for the show. And we’ll talk to you all after our first interview.
See you then.
All right, so we are here with Matt, Bill and Ilya from Man in Arms Reforged. And we are talking about their experiences at Otakon and the show itself. And we’ll get into a little bit about the business of actually forging the material.
So first of all, guys, tell us how you got started. Was it first an interest in metallurgy or was it more an interest in video games and creating the materials for that?
Sheesh. You asked us the long question. Well, I think all of us started working with metal a long time ago.
I was a teenager. He was a kid. Bill and I have been working together for 19 years or something like that.
But as far as the show comes, I mean, our base business is Baltimore Knife and Sword and we make stage combat weaponry, some custom weaponry as well, and have been doing that for 30 years. The opportunity to do the man in arms of the show came up three and a half, four or so years ago now. And we’re all nerds in our own right, whether it’s video games, anime, or we all have our different areas that we love.
So it was pretty much a no-brainer once we got all the details worked out to go ahead and do that show. And it’s a really unique opportunity for us because we’re not just making weapons, we’re not just making a TV show. We get to interact with the fans so much with that show and really bring their favorite things to life.
So, I mean, this answer of how we got started could be quite breathy, but in the long run, we were friends with Tony Swatton, the guy who did the original show. After he decided to not do the show anymore, the fi media looked around the whole country for what knife makers and sword makers could do that show. Since we do six items in about eight days, that’s a tremendous amount of work to do in that short period of time.
Most shops and the custom knife makers can’t do that. So pretty much everybody pointed their fingers at us and we kind of just went from there.
That’s awesome.
Yeah.
In the business now, is it mostly producing for the show or do you do a lot of work to supply the materials locally?
I’d say it’s not, most of our business is not for the show, absolutely. We film about three and a half to four times a year for Reforged. Like I said, we do blocks of six.
So they come out for about 10 days. The crew takes two days off, but we’re filming for eight days and we film six episodes. So they come out every two months or so.
In the meantime, we’re making stuff for Renaissance festivals. That’s pretty much what we do.
What are the similar ones that you supply to? Obviously the Maryland one. What are those festivals?
We’re in almost a hundred different shows annually.
Colorado, Texas, Arizona, California.
Yeah, we’re everywhere. So it’s pretty… There’s only a handful that don’t have our weapons.
Legacy Forge is one of our big dealers that goes to all the different renderers, but we’re primarily wholesaling at this point.
And now you mentioned you get yourself, you do some voice over.
Well, doing the voice overs for the show, which if you watch Carrie and I both, like the first season of Reforge, we were awful at it. I mean, just bad. We’re pretty good in conversation talking to people, but when it came to that, it was like, and now Ilya does this, and now Ilya does…
So it took a while. It took maybe even three, four seasons before I started really taking some notes, taking and listening to different podcasts. Actually, people talking about voice overs and just the whole theory behind it.
Be more conversational. You don’t have to say, this is happening, this is happening, because they can look and they can see that that’s happening. So…
You’re doing it right?
It sounds like you might have.
A little bit, not anything professional. Of course, our producers all have had our input. Sit up straight, talk a little deeper.
That was one of his things. I talk a little deeper. I don’t stutter as much.
Little things like that. So that’s been a whole nother thing we’re learning. Because, I mean, obviously, learning as a craftsman, that just comes naturally.
That’s what we’ve done our whole life. But then, literally, having to re-teach myself how to talk is kind of funny. It’s been a fun ride.
It’s a whole new world, as most of our listeners know.
I think it comes easier for him doing voice overs and stuff, just because he has a natural accent, actually. That actually helps a little bit.
Well, in part is that, when I was growing up in Russia, they always make us talk to the class. So you do your homework, you go to the board, you write down the homework, proving that you actually did it, and explain it to the class. In language classes, it was always the case, you have to memorize a poem overnight, and say it out loud to the rest.
So public speaking was a big part of the curriculum. Second part is, anytime you’re in a setting where people expect a certain quality of an explanation, you have to learn how to speak. It’s not what’s in your head.
What’s important is how you deliver it very often. And consequently, having an accent allows me to hide some of the speech defects or technique defects. And since English is not my first language by far, it is fairly easy for me to separate myself from what I’m saying in my head because most of my thoughts are still in Russian.
And okay, this is how I’m going to say it. All right, accent a little bit here.
And he can turn that accent up, and he does often turn that up.
And then I show him my shaft.
But, and for me, what actually is fairly hard in talking in English and talking for the show is if I’m doing research, and the research is audio books from England, I start unintentionally imitating some of the pronunciation. I cannot help it. Oh, we all do that.
It messes it up. And then Matt always makes fun of me. Why are you saying it like that?
I don’t know. This is how you say it, and I’ve been researching a lot. And when you find out…
A lot of us voice actors will go around mimicking people we know, or just in the mall. We’ll trail people, not too close, and mimic them. So we had that voice in the back of our heads.
Everybody here mimics John. I’ll weld her at the shop.
Everybody has a different voice.
Aw, man.
So where do you record the actual voice overs? Do you have a studio? Do you do it in the shop?
We have… Because I have to say, the quality is really good, actually.
Yeah, the shop where we’re doing most of the filming is about a couple hundred yards away from where we do the voice overs. We actually have a church building that’s been converted into another kind of workshop that we don’t really usually film in. If you see me doing the AutoCAD on the computer, we do the voice overs right next to that computer.
Okay. It’s not always the best place because there’s no sound deadening room kind of thing, but I’ve got pretty nice microphones and stuff, so it usually turns out pretty well. We usually only have to do one take.
They fix it in post.
And sometimes…
That’s what we say.
Sometimes they get to edit together and the voice over that we may have recorded for that process might be too lengthy, too short. So, you know, Carrie and I are just… Even sometimes Ilya will just re-record something on our own and send it over since the equipment stays there.
So, it’s cool.
I want to ask about your projects and the craft work. What would you say is the most difficult piece you’ve ever made to date that you can talk about?
Well, this is a multi-layered question. If you’re talking about difficulty in terms of how detailed a piece has to be and how 100% right on it has to be, so far it’s been Excalibur from Kings of Avalon. I’ve spent one month engraving the blade on it pre-building because you can’t do it any faster than that.
That’s how long it takes. And it’s been 16 hours of engraving straight every day for a month. So that one is the most difficult in terms of, all the work is finicky and finicky work is maddening.
It drives you insane because it’s all small. You work one inch per day, blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth. And at the end of it, your eyes just don’t want to be in your head anymore.
They just want to run away because you’re abusing them. In terms of how physically straining something is, let’s say Optimus Prime, it’s a pretty big sword. It was a sponsor build, so everybody was a little bit stressed because it’s a big sponsor for the media company, means it has to be 100% right, but it also has to be big, it has to be impressively big.
Right. There’s multiple levels just to complexity of our builds. Sometimes it just is the sheer size of something, whether that means huge or small and tiny and detailed, like all of that goes into it.
Or like any katana build.
Yep.
For example, any katana build is absolutely insanely hard. And the reason is because there’s a whole school of craftsmen right now who are like, ah, you didn’t do that right.
There’s a point where you’re not allowed to slack and there are certain things that other craftsmen will pick up that we also have to include there, even when the regular viewer won’t. The other thing is the ways of appreciating that specific type of sword require us to always fight with the lighting guy, always fight with the director of photography. No, you have to get this at this angle.
Well, I know what I’m doing. We also know what we’re doing. So that’s always hard.
It’s always stressful for everybody, especially the beauty shots on those things, because it’s a different type of sword appreciation school. And we also always have to have that conversation with everybody. Always have to stress ourselves over polish, which was never quite as good as we want to, so on and so forth.
So I myself dabble a little bit in craftswork, primarily leatherworking, but still I worship your guide show quite often. I love the work you guys do. So do you have any advice for those who wish to partake in this, any words of encouragement or any professional advice you can give?
I mean, there’s tons of advice.
What was your favorite piece?
I mean, one of the things about the show, and I hate to kind of flip this question a little bit, it’s just been a great opportunity for us. We get emails, comments on the YouTubers saying, hey, you know, I’m not a blacksmith. I know I’ll never be a blacksmith, but you guys inspired me to go grab granddad’s sewing machine and start sewing it.
I mean, that’s just awesome. I feel maybe five years ago, I just felt like, wow, this generation coming up, nobody’s working with their hands anymore. Nobody’s making anything.
And since the show has come out, and other shows like us, just the whole DIY YouTube phenomenon has really, I think, brought that back in cosplay. I mean, cosplay is amazing. I just got back from San Diego Comic Con, and maybe a half a percent of the people were there in costume.
But you come back on the East Coast, and over half the people here are in costume. Most have been made by themselves or with help with a friend. And it’s just a great thing.
My biggest advice is, whatever you have a passion for, do it. There’s a video out there probably showing you how to do it. Just start and work with your hands.
Whatever you… There’s gonna be something you’re good at, you know?
For me, I’ve gone from working with metal and working with cosplayers. Working in stuff I’ve never worked with, but using some of my same tools, tools with leather and other stuff, and just keep pushing, keep learning, keep trying different things. What works when it’s leather, it’s certain thicknesses of leather don’t work doing certain things, but you can also take a big chunk of leather, boil it in hot water, and make it rock hard.
And another thing, we have cosplayers and stuff come up to our booth at conventions like this all the time and say, wow, check out my prop that I made. It might be a prop with a sword that we also made. They’re like, wow, you guys did it so well.
I just made mine out of foam. It’s real crap. And I look at it and I’m like, how did you do that out of foam?
I try to do some of that. I cosplay as well sometimes. It’s harder for me sometimes to think how to make it out of foam than it is to go grab a piece of metal and grind it to shape, or forge it to shape.
So it’s all, I appreciate all of it.
Yeah. One advice that will be helpful long-term, if you specifically stay with it, don’t do what you’re already good at ever, because the odds are you will not learn anything. Pick things when you’re within your respective discipline that are incredibly hard and learn how to do those.
Do things because they’re incredibly hard to do, and you will fail 100 times. You will fail. You will feel like you’re not worth anything, like your hands grow out of your ass.
But from that experience, first of all, you will actually land at least 70% the way there. So if the end goal is 100%, you’ll get to the 70% no matter who you are. Those 70% will teach you way more than anyone else who hangs out with you has ever tried to learn.
So if it’s leatherwork, pick the hardest leather braiding, leather stitching techniques you can find and learn those. If it’s metalwork, pick the fiddliest or most complicated detailed projects and just be prepared to crash. But the end result will be rewarding.
Absolutely.
Well, Ilja, Bill, Matt, thanks so much for joining us today on the VO Meter.
Thank you.
We really appreciate it. Tell our listeners where they can find your businesses.
Yeah, AllMe channel on YouTube. That’s where you find the Man-at-Arms Reforged Show or baltimoreknife.com to check out our regular products.
Great. Thanks again, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Okay, so we’re back live at Otakon 2017. We just finished our interview with Man-at-Arms Reforged.
What did you think of those guys, Chris?
I’m a huge fan of the show. I love those guys. I also love the advice Ilya gave about doing what’s hard.
That can be used for so many things. Voice acting, forging, what have you. And it was very inspiring to hear him say that.
Yeah, definitely on point. I found that myself. Even doing this podcast, just jumping into things, feet first, things you’re not familiar with and maybe not necessarily comfortable with.
But starting with the things that are hard will definitely help you along your way to learning more and expanding your craft.
Absolutely. Do the hard things first and then the easy things will seem simple, so we’re second nature.
So coming up, what’s our next interview? We have Chris Neosi on Saturday. That should be fun.
That’s right. We’ve got Vik Minyata too on Saturday as well.
And we will see you following those two interviews.
We’ll see you then, guys.
We are back at the VO Meter. Chris, pronounce your last name for me before I screw it up.
No problem. It’s Neosi. It’s like Neo from The Matrix and then the letter C, Neosi.
Okay. Without getting too personal, I’m guessing you’re a Paisan like Chris and I. Yes, of course.
Names have been butchered our entire lives.
That’s all right. Too many Italians, too many Chrises. We got to do something about this.
Yeah, that’s how it works. So tell us how you got started in the business. Was it something you always wanted to do?
So, funny story. I’m first and foremost still to this day animation. And I took an interest in voice over way back in the day when there was this little website called TV Tome, which is now defunct and kind of turned into a different website.
But I kind of learned about, oh, like, all these voice actors that I grew up with, wait, the guy who played da-da-da on this one show is also so-and-so on this other show? Whoa, my mind is blown. I’m in, like, middle school, like, slowly becoming this, like, encyclopedia of all this weird, trivia stuff that my friends can attest to.
I’m a walking, talking, like, rolodex of voiceover stuff. And I got interested in it originally kind of from almost the casting perspective of, like, who would I get to voice all my cartoon characters in my shows and movies and games I’m gonna make someday, you know? And then when I started making my own cartoons, I, you know, didn’t have access to voice actors until, like, way later when I was learning there was kind of a whole community on the internet of people that were interested in doing it professionally.
And now a lot of them are working professionally, people that I’ve known for years now. And so I was kind of aware of that world and I started to, I guess, sort of teach myself, like, enough of a standard of what made good and bad voice over, especially when it came to anime, where, you know, there are lots of great dubs and some bad dubs. So I kind of determined that difference myself.
And then I went to a convention, much like this one, where two different ADR directors were basically holding sort of a contest thing. I entered it completely on a whim at last second. I was like, yeah, why not?
And I ended up winning it. And by winning it, I got my first audition, which was for Pokemon. And I didn’t think too much of it.
I didn’t think I was going to make it into a career or anything, but I went in for my first audition. This would have been like 2009, I think I did it. And they said, hey, so I know that we like owe you because of the contest, but I wouldn’t really call you into this show if I didn’t think you were good.
And I was like, oh, okay, maybe I could do this. And then after that, my second audition ended up being my first job that I booked. It was a character called Cory on the Diamond and Pearl season of Pokemon, had about five episodes.
So my first job was a great starting point.
That’s a great way to start.
Yeah, especially with a show I grew up with for like 10 plus years. I’m like, oh my God, I’m on this. Now all the people who made fun of me for liking Pokemon and middle school pay, I made a paycheck on it.
I was like, I don’t have problems. No, it was a great first experience. The director was awesome.
The producer was great. Everybody was super cool, and they worked really hard on the dub of that show, still to this day. Yeah, and then after that, I wasn’t really sure if I was going to keep doing it, but more opportunities came up.
And then when I moved to California about three years ago, I had a lot of help from other people in the business out there that kind of took my name around and started taking classes a lot more. And then now I blinked and suddenly I’m here and I’m in Sailor Moon, and I’m like, what happened? What is my life?
So is that long-winded enough of an answer to start with?
That’s excellent. Now for animation and character, do you feel it’s important to find sort of your niche in it, or is it you want to try out different things?
I think that the first and foremost most important thing to do is just to have a strong grounding as a performer. I think that unfortunately a lot of people get this misconception of like, oh yeah, you got to just like… It’s either like, oh, I have to find my niche, like what’s my archetype that I’m always going to get?
Which yes, that does happen a lot, you know, unfortunately. But even on the opposite side, some people, oh, I just got to learn how to do a billion voices. And I’m like, you can either do a billion voices and be really good at character stuff, or you can have just your one voice and like the different, you know, kind of facets of that.
But you still have to have the good acting to back it up. And a lot of people, unfortunately, skip that step because they think of the voice part of the voice acting, even though the second part of the word is better, as Scott McNeil would often impress people. So that’s why, again, when I moved, the most important thing I got was taking classes.
Like Richard Horowitz, who’s the voice of Invader Zim and a billion cartoon characters. He does this amazing six-week course that just really breaks a lot of bad habits out of you. It gets you to completely change your line of thinking.
I’ve met a lot of veterans that understandably get frustrated that new people coming in don’t even take the actor’s journey. It’s just like, oh, I just like cartoons and video games. I want to do this.
I don’t care about acting. And it’s like, well, you should, because if you want to do this as a career, that’s what it’s about, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I mean, in terms of… I think that it is important to, like, you know, stretch your range and not be, you know, like, nailed down to one particular thing. I think it is important to show that you have a lot of range.
Because I mean, even if you’re just playing one character and that character has a lot of range in and of itself, you have to be able to know… Sometimes even… I’m surprised when, like, I’ll get auditions for something and it’ll be, like, one scene of a character and then I’ll find out later that they’ll be like, oh, they’re going to be screaming and yelling and dying and all these crazy things.
And I’m like, well, thankfully, I’m prepared for that, but my god, if you got someone who was only good at doing that one side of them at the time, you know, they might fall flat. You never know sometimes. So, yeah, being prepared with just, like, as much performance experience as you can have.
This is coming from someone, by the way, who’s never done theater, never done radio. I don’t have a traditional acting background. I’m an animator, but I taught myself enough and learned enough from other people to be able to know enough of what I’m doing, as I would hope from the amount of stuff I’ve done by now.
So nobody’s found out that I’m not an actor yet. Fooled enough people. They haven’t caught you yet.
No.
So you mentioned the courses with Richard Horvitz. What other things do you do to train yourself?
Well, in terms of vocal stamina, I sing. I don’t consider myself a singer, but I do sing, which I think is important for just maintenance and expanding your vocal prowess in terms of, I guess, just stamina. I said that already.
I also… I haven’t done this in a long time, and I do honestly miss it, but I used to play a lot of… And you can do this also with books and comics and things.
I used to play a lot of video games that didn’t have any voices, like RPGs and things from N64, Super Nintendo era. And I just do all the voices. Especially little exercise, little advice for anybody out there.
If you and someone of the opposite gender want to play a game together, and you do all the boy parts, and you do all the girl parts, or sometimes you can even switch off. I’ll play this girl, and you play that boy or whatever, and just experiment around. Even if you only wind up by the end of that playthrough of that game or reading through that novel or whatever, if you only end up with maybe one or two fully fleshed out character voices that like, oh, I’m actually pretty good at that accent or that personality, or oh, I just came up with this thing off the cuff.
I don’t even think about it. Just come up with weird stuff for all these characters off the cuff, and you’ll do great. And then you might have some cool material to put on your demo someday when you make that.
Maybe even record it.
Yeah, yeah.
USB mics are ubiquitous.
Stream it. Hell, go nuts with it. You can do lots of fun stuff with that.
Going back to when you said when you moved to California, and a lot of professionals recommend you, when you actually went to the animation studios, what professional advice can you share with people when going for an audition and meeting all the big leagues or a director?
Well, I’m actually kind of sad to say that since going to California, I’ve really only ever had a very small handful of in-person auditions since then. Most of the stuff that I was doing before I got my agency, I’m with Arlene Thornton and Associates, along with a lot of other great folks, people Sean Chammell, Kyle Ebert, Keith Silverstein, Steve Blum, Debbie Derryberry, Mona Marshall, a lot of really, really talented folks.
Oh, those people.
Yeah, them, man. Never heard of them, you know, whatever. Yeah, now that I’m with them, I get a lot of my auditions through them, and sometimes they’re right down the road for me, so I’ll just go there and I’ll record with some of the engineers who are wonderful.
I love doing auditions in person, or at least with somebody to give feedback, like if I can, because it just feels much more kinetic. I’ve learned to do auditions from home without being miserable, because I used to hate it. But, and, you know, the fact is, most stuff is done that way these days.
But in terms of, to actually answer your question, it’s just really important about staying professional, knowing when to ask questions, because asking questions can be helpful in showing that, like, you know, you are invested in care about what it is that you’re doing. But also not being too, I don’t want to say fanboyish, but like, you know, or fangirlish. Being too much of a fan and being too, like, asking a billion questions and not knowing when to turn it off and just focus on the job at hand, you know.
And also being prepared. Sometimes they might be like, okay, that was good. You got anything else?
Which might mean, like, yeah, that’s okay, but try something different. Because we like you, but maybe we don’t like that voice that you did or maybe we’re not entirely sold on it yet, you know. That’s something I learned from Ben Diskin, who’s been doing this since he was basically in the womb.
Not a joke. But, yeah, I think that just, yeah, being prepared, maintaining a professional attitude, and, you know, and just being cool. Really all you need to work in any business, no matter what, is being cool and being good.
Because if you’re good, you get the job done. If you’re cool, they want to work with you. And then being cool, that could mean any number of things.
Just being cool in whatever way that you are cool and natural and not being a tryhard.
So tell us about your home studio. You mentioned doing some auditions from home. Do you have a fully set up studio or do you…
It’s a closet. It’s a closet with a preamp and a chaotic eyeball.
Really?
Yeah, I forget what type of microphone. And it was all set up lovingly by my good friend Ben Diskin after my basically kicking and screaming of not wanting to make my closet into a booth. He basically just did it, and then it’s what I’ve been using for all my home auditions since then.
And it’s quite nice.
What’s the percentage of time you do auditions from home versus going to the studio or your agent?
Probably like about 60-40 home to agency. Just because out of convenience. Even sometimes my agency will send me stuff to do from home.
And I’ll just do it that way if I have to. I’ve gotten used to it. It’s not my favorite, but it’s like you got to adapt with the time.
All right.
Well, Chris, it’s been a pleasure. We appreciate your time. And I look forward to hearing more from you.
Yay. Look forward to Sailor Moon Supers or Unvoicing Pegasus. That’s coming out soon.
If any of y’all are big old school anime fans and stuff, love that show very much. Thanks for having me, guys.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
So we’re back at the VO Meter with Vic Mignana.
Excellent. You nailed it. He shoots, he scores.
VO Meter. That’s kind of cool, as opposed to a VU Meter.
I like it.
Very cool.
Thank you very much. And we are talking about how he got into the business. My first question, really.
How did you get into the business, and was it something you always wanted to do, or was it something that…
It’s noon. That means it’s noon, everybody. That’s my gratitude alarm.
I set an alarm that goes off every day at noon to remind me to be grateful for my life.
That is fantastic.
Yes.
Yeah, that’s really positive.
So we’re going to take these two, three seconds right here of silence.
I can do that.
Thank you. You know, I never intended to be a voice actor. I’d been acting since I was very young.
And I just loved acting. I loved performing. I did a lot of singing, and musical theater, and stage plays, and got into it anywhere I could.
But I never intended for it to be a career. It was just something I enjoyed doing. You know, it’s like if you play the guitar, you know what I mean, or whatever.
And you never imagine that you’re ever going to be a rock star. You just like playing the guitar, or drawing, or whatever. So about literally 18 or 19 years ago now, I was working in Houston, Texas.
I was doing video and film production work and writing music professionally for ad agencies and producing records for people. I do a lot of music work. And a guy that I was working with on a video production said to me completely out of the blue, I don’t even know why, we may have been imitating people or making little funny voices, or whatever.
And he said, hey, you’ve got a lot of acting experience, don’t you? And I said, oh my gosh, yes. I’ve been acting stage, theater, on camera since I was young.
And he said, you ought to go and audition for this place here in Houston, called ADV Films. They buy these Japanese animated shows and they dub them into English, and they’re looking for actors. He didn’t say they’re looking for voice overs.
He didn’t say they’re looking for announcers. He didn’t say they’re looking for DJs. They’re looking for actors.
And that’s all I heard. I heard, oh, they need actors? Well, I love acting.
So I went and auditioned, and I got cast as Vega in Street Fighter II. And I did it. I didn’t know what to expect.
I’d never done it before. And I did never expect to do it again. I thought it was a one-time weird little thing that somebody asked you to do.
Never really thought about it again. And like two weeks later, they called me, and they said, hey, we’ve got another Japanese anime show. Do you want to come and do a voice in it?
I said, sure. And more and more and more. And at this point, anime was very small.
It was very much of a little niche thing. And so I didn’t even know what they did with these shows after we finished. I thought, I mean, I assume they sell them somewhere, right?
They distribute them somewhere. They got to make their money back. I didn’t know what they did with them, what happened to them after I voiced the thing.
I thought it was a fun. It was yet another outlet for acting. And it just grew from there.
And I, after that, somebody invited me a couple years later. Somebody invited me to an anime convention. And I was like, wait a minute, there are conventions for this stuff?
And I went to the convention, and I met people from other studios, Funimation in Dallas, studios in LA, studios in New York, and they asked me to come and do stuff in their shows. And so I did. And next thing you know, it’s been 18 years, and I’ve done over 300 different animated series and video games, and I never charted this course.
I never strategized. How am I going to get into the voice acting business? I just…
door opened. Seemed like it would be fun to do, and I kind of stepped through it. I had no idea where it would ever lead, and here we are.
Which is why I have a gratitude alarm set. Kind of a full circle, you know? Because I didn’t plan this.
I didn’t, you know, I didn’t send out hundreds of demo tapes and knock on doors and try to get into studios and auditions and scour the internet for… Nothing. A door opened and I kind of stepped through and I had no idea where it would lead me, and it led me here.
So I am among all people most grateful.
It’s not an uncommon story, actually, among voice actors, especially those that started before, say, the last 10 years.
Oh, it is uncommon. You’re right. It is not uncommon at all.
Most of the voice actors I know, with the exception… I probably have a hundred friends that are voice actors, and I can think of two that did not do any actual acting before they started into voice over. I mean, like, voice acting was literally, for most of us, was literally just another avenue to express your acting love and passion.
So yeah, it’s a very common story.
Do you have any suggestions for those that are maybe starting out now? Because the landscape has changed quite a bit, especially with the advent of the internet.
You know what? It really has changed a lot. And I hate to be one of those people that kind of is a downer, but the reality is, because it’s so big now and because so many people want to get into it, it’s hard, a lot harder than when I started, you know?
Like when Henry Ford started making cars, there weren’t a lot of people making cars. Not a lot of competition. And when I started, with very few exceptions, there just wasn’t a lot of anime readily available, and there weren’t a lot of people doing it.
And you would never expect Houston, Texas, why in the world would you ever think that somebody would be dubbing anime into English in Houston, Texas? You think entertainment, you think LA, New York, right? Houston.
But I was in Houston when that happened, and so I was very fortunate. I often tell people that if I were to try to get into it today, I probably wouldn’t ever get cast. I would probably not even be good enough or whatever, you know?
But I was fortunate enough when it was small. Now it’s a lot harder. There’s a lot more competition.
But that’s the nature of almost any creative endeavor. If you want to wash cars, you could probably get a job tomorrow. If you want to, you know, make burgers, if you want to fix plumbing, things that there is a specific skill set to do.
You know the skill, you get the job. It’s really that easy. But when you start talking about creative endeavors, acting, singing, writing, drawing, dancing, whatever, you know what I mean, name it.
There are so many people who want to do it and so few opportunities in those fields that it’s a lot harder. And you need a lot of tenacity. You can’t be somebody that gets discouraged easily.
That’s for sure. If you’re somebody who is easily disappointed by not getting what you wanted or things not working out right away, then creative fields are not the thing for you. And they’re unpredictable.
You can be a big superstar today and then tomorrow nobody will hire you. And what happened? Yesterday I was really good and nobody wants me.
You never know.
I wake up every morning extremely blessed and grateful that I get to do what I do.
But if you’re interested in getting into the business, into this business, one of the main things you need is acting experience. As we talked about a minute ago, that’s one of the commonalities with most of us that are regular working, veteran, have been doing it over and over again, is that before we ever got in front of a microphone, we were acting. Some of us have college degrees in theater or drama.
So acting experience is the key. It’s not about making funny voices. It’s about playing a character and playing the character authentically and believably so the audience buys into the character and the story.
Do you call yourself a voice actor now, or do you just not even go there with that terminology? Are you still just…
I’m a voice actor. I’m certainly… But I’m an actor first.
You know, a voice actor acts with his voice. I mean, you’re still an actor. I’ve often said the operative word in voice actor is actor.
You know, I’m never going to get cast to be the drive time DJ on a rock station. You know, I just don’t have that kind of a resonant voice. You know, 25 past the hour.
I can’t… That’s not me. But I can play certain characters.
And that’s where the acting comes in. I certainly would never want to discourage anybody from it, but just know what you’re getting into. Be prepared at things…
You’re not going to just move to Dallas and start working for Funimation. That’s highly unlikely. It’s not impossible, but be realistic.
The parents out there would hate me if I didn’t tell their kids, be responsible, learn a trade, figure out how you’re going to pay your bills and take care of your bills and have a place to sleep and some food. Feel free to continue to pursue your dream. But be realistic and go into it responsibly.
Mick, that is just an absolute goal that you just gave. We did want to get into one quick question about your work because we do have some fans.
Oh, sure. Absolutely.
Is the majority of the work anime or original animation? And how is recording for each genre different?
The vast majority of my work is anime. And you know what’s interesting is that most people, even in the business, even people that do what they call pre-lay, even people that do original animation will tell you that anime is the hardest kind of voice acting because it’s not enough to just give a believable performance. You have to do it within a very strict, finished confines of mouth movement and the flaps of the character.
You don’t have the freedom to do the line however you want. That makes voicing anime much more difficult. It’s actually much harder.
And it doesn’t pay anywhere near as well. It’s nowhere near as highly regarded. A lot of people in the voice acting business consider anime kind of the redheaded stepchild, so to speak, of voice acting.
And yet people who have done both will immediately tell you that it’s a lot harder than original animation. I have done some original animation, one that I’m working on right now, Ruby. Great show.
And it is so freeing because I can perform the line however I want. I don’t have to pause right here because the character stops talking, and I don’t have to race through the last part of the line because the character goes real fast. I don’t have to perform the line very loudly because the character’s facial expressions are so big that you have to match what the animation did.
Pre-lay, original animation is much easier and more freeing, and it pays a lot better. But I’m predominantly an anime voice actor.
Excellent. Thank you for that. Well, Vic, I think we’re out of time.
I’m so sorry that our time went so fast.
Well, you’re a popular guy.
You are. I appreciate you guys taking the time to chat.
We appreciate having you.
Thank you so much.
So we’re back live at Otakon 2017 with Stephanie Shea, and we are going to talk about the VO industry. How you got into the business is my first question. I’d like to know, for our listeners, how you got into the business and maybe what they could do if they’re looking to get into the business as well.
Well, they cannot follow how I got into the business because I have a very strange, unique story, I guess. I was a fan, and then there was a startup that was starting an anime company, and they didn’t really know anything about dubbing or anything. And then they were like, oh, you have a mass communications degree, and you’re also an actor.
Why don’t you come and do our dub, do our English production wing? And so I was hired as a producer. It was like 23, maybe.
I didn’t know how to do anything. We got two licenses. It was Tenchi ni Narumon, I’m Gonna Be an Angel, and Furikuri, and those were my first two titles.
And then because I worked there, I auditioned for roles, and then I got cast, and that’s kind of how I got started. So it’s…
Where is your degree from? Because I had that same degree.
UCLA.
Oh, cool. Mine’s from a local school here at Towson University.
Mascom, that was my degree. Yeah, so that’s kind of how I got started. So I can’t really recommend.
Get a job as a producer in a startup anime company.
So from a voice director standpoint, what advice can you give to those starting off in professional attire and how to condone themself in the booth from a voice director perspective?
I think the most important thing is to be an actor. Take acting classes and to take improv classes and do as much training and work experience as possible. Because I think right now there’s a trend to use newer actors and younger actors and actors from the fandom.
And having worked and listened to demos and listened to auditions, the thing that I have… I think that my biggest kind of gripe with that new crop of talent is that they’re not actors and you can hear it. They’re really good at mimicking sounds, but then they don’t take direction well.
Most actors don’t really prefer line reads because they like the process of exploring and discovering and creating a character. I find that the newer actors just want to be told how to do it and they want to mimic you. So I think one of the things that if you go to a panel with original animation voice actors, when they’re always goofing off doing things, they have created a character and they embody the character and if you wanted them to do a scene and to improvise and to do whatever in said character, they’re able to do it.
It’s harder for dub actors because they’re kind of doing an adaptation of another character. But I find it even harder, like I find newer actors struggle even more because all they know how to do is parrot a sound. So yeah, my advice is to actually get acting background and acting training and it doesn’t have to be voice acting specifically because I think the core elements of acting, your motivation, your wants, your needs, your psychological state, all of those things are really important when creating a character and voicing a character.
I’d also suggest for people who are really nervous and insecure to work that stuff out. Like don’t… be a professional.
Don’t bring that into the booth with you. If you need to get therapy, then get therapy. There’s nothing wrong with that.
And if you need to take class, then get class. I don’t understand that I’ve encountered some newer actors and they think, oh, well, I’ve been in a few shows. I don’t need to take acting class.
I still take acting class. Anytime there’s an acting class, I jump at the opportunity to take it because I don’t think as an actor that I’m ever going to be at a plateau. The arts is something funny.
You can always be better at it, which is what is always appealing to me at the arts. You’re never going to be like, oh, well, I’m now an expert in this field because there’s so much to explore. If you’re an actor that’s like, I don’t need to take class, that makes me wonder how serious you are about the craft and how serious of an actor you are.
What kind of acting classes are we talking about? What’s the best resource to start out? We have a lot of listeners that I know are approaching this from a second career.
If you don’t have that theater background and it’s too late for you to go back to your undergrad, what’s the best resources to take acting classes?
I think it’s going to vary depending on where you are, but for me, I didn’t get… My degree is in mass mutations. I didn’t get a theater degree.
UCLA at the time had a strange thing where you are allowed to double major, but certain majors you couldn’t double. You have to pick a more major major. It had to be a prominent major, then you had a second less prominent major.
But then certain majors, that one had to be your prominent major. And so if you were an acting major, that one had to be your prominent major. If you’re a mass comm, that one had to be your major.
So I could not double major in that way. So I think you can take whatever classes that are available. I will look up and I ask my actor friends for their opinion on stuff.
You can look at community college courses and just open the yellow pages. I think that if you’re unsure about a teacher or a class, ask to audit. They should be able to audit.
So that means that you sit in one class for free and you observe. You don’t get to work, you don’t get to perform, but you get to see other people perform and you say, is this something that I can get something out of? It can be theater, it can be scene study, it can be improv.
Music lessons also really help because you’re using your voice. You get to learn about your instrument. Music also gives you a better sense of timing.
And specifically with anime, you have to match lip flap. So having a good sense of timing is good. Knowing how to use your breath is good.
So yeah, beyond that, there’s also voice over classes as well, specifically for voice over. But I really do think that any sort of… If you have no background at all, then any sort of class should help you.
And then as you learn more, you can get pickier and pickier.
Again, for the voice directing, what are some skills you look for when casting?
As a director? So directors don’t always get to pick who they want in their cast. Sometimes they get a say, sometimes they don’t.
But as a casting director, if you’re talking about anime, there’s things that I look for. One is vocal type. Does the vocal type match the Japanese?
Because that’s the trend nowadays, that they really want it to sound similar to the Japanese. Same voice type. It doesn’t have to sound like exact voice match, but just is it low or high?
Is it textured? Is it nasal? Is it clear?
Things like that. So that is one of the most important things. It’s kind of like when you cast for a movie, if someone doesn’t look the part, then you don’t consider them.
If the role is for a Latina character and this person doesn’t look Latina, then they’re kind of not going to fit the bill. That’s like the vocal equivalent of that. And then beyond that, you want to look for what are they doing with the…
Does it sound real in the moments and the lines? Does it sound pushed and faked and very like high school theater acting? Is it very on the nose?
I like to listen to see if this person has ideas. Is it very generic? Are their reads very generic?
Or is it fresh and exciting? Do they have a sense of presence of the body, which means that if this is a line that’s called out, is it called out? You like to…
For voice over auditions, all you’re hearing is audio, so you don’t get to see what’s going on. But it doesn’t mean that as an actor, you don’t have an idea what’s going on, right? You should know if your character is sitting or standing, are they walking around, and it should sound like they’re walking around if they’re walking around.
It should sound like they’re sitting down or lifting something. All of that should be in the voice. If it all sounds the same projection, the same energy, the same just words on the page, it gets really stale in voice over, and I think that’s what makes it sound kind of dubby, where everybody’s talking at the same level, and everybody’s like, there’s no difference between someone who is sitting right next to you and your energy level, how you’re talking, to someone who’s a little farther away, like across the room, to someone who’s even farther away.
I’m not shouting, but there’s a little bit of extra something. All of that has to come into play, and I need to hear that the actor is aware of that to make it real and to make it a real entity instead of just a disembodied voice.
I think we’re close to running out of time, but along the lines of directing, do you prefer people who focus just on anime when you’re directing them, or do you have a preference for people who have a wide variety of acting backgrounds?
I do not actually look at that when I’m casting. I just prefer good actors, and if that person is a good actor and they’ve only done anime, great, so be it. If that person has done a lot of stuff, great, so be it.
It does make me nervous sometimes if the person has only done anime, because usually anime is the easiest to get into, right? It’s much harder to book an original animation job. It’s much harder to…
I will… So I guess it could give me pause, but as long as the audition wins and the audition is good, I’m fine with that. If I’m getting an audition and I’m on the fence and I look and they’ve only done, let’s say they’ve done a lot of commercials, that would make me worried, because commercial, you use your voice, but there’s not that much acting in it.
It’s a different type of skill set. It’s definitely a VO skill, but it’s not necessarily… I would be worried that if I brought them in, they wouldn’t be able to deliver.
I would be nervous if I got an audition and they’ve never done… If they’ve only done other acting, they’ve never done VO because the experience might be a little strange to them. They might not be able to match the lip sync.
But then I weigh in and I just say, is this audition good enough that I will work extra hard to get them where they need to be at that place? There’s always risks when it comes to it, but I would never say never to anybody who’d never done anime or to anybody who has only done anime.
And anything you want to promote before we go?
Let’s see. I guess Gundam Seed, the redub of the remastered, is coming out. That’s awesome.
The other thing that I want to give a shout out to, but this is for US audiences, but hopefully it will come to US., is we worked on the dub of Napping Princess, which is an amazing movie. And then we also worked on A Silent Voice.
And A Silent Voice is a movie about bullying and there’s a deaf lead in it. And I was fortunate enough to be able to cast a deaf actress. So I don’t think it has a US distributor yet, but it is a really, really important film.
Maybe someone will inquire and sign on to distribute.
Yeah, that would be awesome. And then I think your name, Blu-ray, comes out this fall.
Stephanie, thanks so much for your time. Enjoy the rest of the show.
Thank you.
I want to play the voice of the witch that appears in the Disney movie, and I’m practicing. I can do it anytime.
So I really want to do an old lady. So my image of an old lady doing this is the queen’s old lady form in Snow White. So every day I’m practicing that.
So I’d like to do a sample right now.
I agree that the major change throughout the years was the shift from analog to digital.
For example, when we recorded the first episode of Sailor Moon, that was the first time everyone, all the voice actors got together, and there was like 20 people. It’s the first time seeing the film, and it’s the first recording ever to happen. But to finish one episode, we only spent like 2 hours and a half.
So we are back at Otakon 2017 with Jamie McGonigal, and we are going to talk about all things voice acting. So welcome, Jamie. Thanks for being here.
Thanks very much for having me.
Of course, thank you. So Paul and I are both voice actors. We’ve done commercials, e-learning.
What advice can you give to do the transition to anime?
There’s something very different from doing commercial voice over to voice acting in the anime or any kind of animated features, cartoons. And the acting is different. It’s creating a character.
So I think frequently people say, hey, I’ve spent my life making up silly voices, and I do a great job with it. And those are the people who come into the booth, and they’re sometimes great, and they have something to offer. But I would much rather hear in a booth someone who started out as an actor, someone who has that background as an actor, and can bring that element of being able to create a character to the role.
It’s not about silly voices. The operative part of the term voice acting is acting. So I think the best advice I can give is to get as much experience as possible acting.
And that can be on stage. It can be in your living room. It can be being an extra in a film somewhere, just as much experience possible before you step into a booth.
Directors always want to see… It’s easier for a director to make you be smaller. I’m a stage actor by trade originally, and so I could go into a booth and do a damn musical in front of you if you want me to.
And make the character huge. And Mike Sinoniklis, for instance, has directed me in a lot of things, and he’s great at taking that huge character and making him intimate enough for the microphone. And so that’s, I think, that stage acting, any kind of acting experience you can get is helpful.
Great. So you mentioned acting and directing when you’re in the booth with a director like yourself. What can folks do when they’re self-directing, because so much of the world is going that way now with self-submission.
What can you do when you’re self-directing? Some tips you can give to get that performance.
Self-directing. I think you have to watch as much as possible. You have to figure out what you’re trying to get out of yourself.
And if there’s any opportunity for you to bring someone else, whether it’s your boyfriend or girlfriend or a mom or dad, to come in and give a listen, a lot of people maybe don’t have directing experience, but they know what they like to hear. So having an extra eye is always really, really good, or an extra ear in this case. Yeah, I think that’s…
I definitely advise to, if it’s at all possible to have someone else come listen and give you feedback, and someone that’s honest, that’s not just gonna say, oh, you’re great, honey. That’s awesome. You’re wonderful.
You know, that’s the mom approach is, it would be good. It would be good to have some sort of critical eye or ear.
That’s funny you mentioned that. I actually wrote a blog about that a couple weeks ago. That I had my nine-year-old son sitting outside the booth because he was being punished and wasn’t allowed to play any video games.
If I said, just sit and watch me work, okay? So I was in the booth. And the performance was so much better because I knew he was there listening.
He had the headphones on. And just having him there with almost no experience or critique, just having someone there that I knew was listening to me, helped tremendously.
Yeah, and honestly, kids are the best critics and the best and worst critics in the world.
Oh yeah, when I came out, he told me he was bored, which gave me all the direction I needed.
Yeah, I mean, I remember doing in college, the best training that I ever had was doing children’s shows. And you have an auditorium of 2006 to 12 year olds. If you’re not holding their attention, you are gonna hear the creaky seats.
And the best compliment I ever had, I was playing kind of a, actually very scary character for a children’s show, I thought. I was like Jack Pumpkinhead from Wizard of Oz, but it was like a different Wizard of Oz story. And it was a terrifying character.
And there was one little kid in the front row, and I looked at him and he was holding his program over his face. He couldn’t look at me. And then I was cleaning up the theater afterwards, and I find his program on the floor with an actual hole chewed through it.
Like it was bite marks. You could see the bite marks through the program. I was like, yes, I did well.
So touching base on the voice director thing, what advice can you give to any actor when stepping in the booth, seeing a voice actor for the first time? What advice can you give for handling that situation?
Any actor seeing a voice?
Maybe their first session in person, as opposed to doing months, years of self-submitting.
Oh, okay. Yeah, and just listen. It’s the director, trust the director to do what they need to do.
It’s okay to mess up. You can be overly critical of yourself in a booth if you’re not giving the director precisely what they want on the first take. That doesn’t make you a bad voice actor.
So don’t be overly critical. Listen to the director. That’s, you know, they’re there to guide you through this.
Obviously, with ADR, with any kind of animation recording, usually they make it pretty easy for you. You have a script in front of you. You have the, usually the animation in front of you.
You have the three beeps in your ear before you’re supposed to start. So it’s pretty easy once you’re in there and once you have the job. The tough part is auditioning, and that’s 90% of what most actors have to do.
The job is auditioning. The job is not actually getting on stage or getting in a booth. And yeah, I think just trust the director, listen, trust yourself, and don’t be afraid to make big, stupid sounding choices.
That’s what gets noticed when you are, here’s my musical theater background that allows me to go into a booth and be completely crazy. And my first four kids’ role was Zoda in F-Zero, and they wanted me to play a villain. And I see this big purple guy with this yellow tube coming out of him, and they said, we just want him to sound crazy.
And so I just started screaming basically, and he was, you win the dollar prize! Just, I don’t know where that voice came from. It’s nothing I’d ever practiced, but obviously, it’s something that got me the role.
And then the tough part then was making sure that I still had a voice at the end of a two hour recording session. But yeah, trust yourself is the biggest one. Make bold choices and trust the director.
Awesome. So we have a lot of gearheads on this show, especially the hosts. We go through a lot of equipment trying it out.
Do you have a home studio currently? If so, what’s it made up of?
I have a Sennheiser mic and in a… This is strange. So in our house, we live in a bungalow in Hyattsville, not too far from DC.
And underneath the eaves of the house, it’s a very small space that I pretty much can only sit down in. And it’s quiet. It’s super, super quiet.
It’s carpeted on the floor and parts of the walls. So it makes it easy for me. But yeah, I have a Sennheiser mic.
I don’t know what brand it is or anything like that, or what style and model it is. It’s something that a friend gave me.
Is it like a shotgun?
Yeah, it’s a shotgun.
Okay, so it’s probably the 416.
Sure. I wish I was more of a gear head. Mike Sinternicholas is the biggest gear head I know.
Yeah, so if you chat with him, he will know all of those things.
As you’ve said, and actually everyone has focused on, it’s the acting. It’s the acting stupid, you know? It doesn’t matter the equipment.
If you’re good, you’re good.
Yeah, that’s absolutely. I mean, you can use your built-in Mac microphone if you need to. And frequently, if I’m traveling, I’m not traveling with a studio, but if I’m in San Francisco for work, or something like that, I don’t have a studio in front of me, and sometimes I have to count on what I have on my MacBook if someone says, hey, I need this audition tomorrow.
So yeah, it’s the acting stupid, absolutely.
We sat here yesterday with Chris Niosi, and he didn’t even know what kind of mic he used. Didn’t even have any idea. Doesn’t matter.
He’s working with it.
Yeah, exactly.
Absolutely.
So what style of director do you feel works best with actors? Are you more tough-loved? Do you like to work with the actor to make sure they understand their character?
What do you feel works best?
I think every actor works differently with different directors. It depends on the actor. It depends on the director.
For me personally, I like someone who can be as detailed as possible. I don’t mind doing a hundred takes if that’s what’s necessary to make the character great, but I need someone to be specific with me. And sometimes they don’t necessarily pick the right word.
Sometimes they say things like make it gayer, and that’s the most utterly inappropriate direction I’ve ever received, because voices aren’t gay. Shouldn’t be an adjective. Yeah, exactly.
So it’s a problem. That’s a problem. And then I’ve had directors say, make it more purple.
And I’m like, that’s not a thing I can do with my voice. And in those cases, sometimes you can tell they’re not necessarily seasoned directors, and you just say, yeah, okay, I know exactly what you’re talking about, and then you just do the same thing again. And they’re like, yeah, it’s brilliant.
But yeah, directors, tough love versus a soft hand. I think gentle, gentle, but precise is my favorite kind. Mike Center-Nicholas, hands down, best director I’ve ever worked with.
Excellent, thank you. Yeah, my pleasure.
Jamie, we’re out of time, unfortunately. We thank you for being so gracious, and have fun with the rest of the show. What’s left of it?
Thanks very much, thanks for having me.
Get training, that is the most important thing. You wanna work on your craft before you go and dive in any equipment. You learn so many things.
We’ll go over coaches later on, but that is by far the most important thing. Before you invest in a mic, in a booth, in anything, you have to work on your craft. It’s sort of like you’re buying tools to be an electrician without learning how to be an electrician, right?
Yeah, and in training, they’ll teach you techniques and ways to use the microphone or be able to use your body to create these amazing voices that sound like they’re at work in World of Warcraft versus the little accountant that’s sitting there trying to steal all of your money from your bags in an MMO. There are people that play both of those kinds of roles, and that’s only through training that they really get to discover how to reach those characters and really bring that forth through the script. So training is very important for that.
But as we were mentioning earlier, business cards, they’re useful, but to an agency or to anybody in the business, this is great, but what they really want to hear is your demo. They want to hear what you sound like doing these particular types of roles.
There are actually USB business cards that another voice talent gave to me. I’m like, here, here’s my card, and that’s actually a USB chip. You plug it in your computer and my demos are on it.
So they’re a little more pricier than your average business cards, but if you’re giving it to an agent or a big marketing firm or Anaplex or what have you, that’s a good idea.
Also, if you’re treating this as a career, you have to think of stuff outside of just your voice now. Now you have to think about your equipment. You have to think about how you’re going to market yourself, how you’re going to make people aware that you exist as a voice actor and you want to get going somewhere.
And also figuring out the difficulty to charge people because that’s not an easy charge to find. It’s not like something you can just quickly Google and have the best prices available, especially when you’re not signed on with an agency or with a union. You basically have to figure out your way for yourself.
And of course, getting representation. We’re going to go over all of this and break it down into each one. What are the most important traits that voice directors look for in voice actors or actors in general?
The most important traits that voice actors and directors look for?
Wow, it depends on what they’re playing, but for me, it’s first of all, confidence in acting. It’s not enough to sound good. You have to have something behind it.
Honestly, I tend to go for people who are more calm, who are not nervous at the audition, who tend to come and just kind of give me what they have, even if it’s not right. I know if they’re that calm, I can take them where they need to be. If they’re too wrapped up, then I can’t really move them where I need them to go because they’re too worried about doing a good job, and the minute you start worrying about doing a good job is when you start doing a bad job.
I know for me, if the actor is malleable, and we can actually form the character a bit together, that’s very good. If they’re not too rigid in the sense of they have a preconceived notion of what that character should be, sometimes an actor will come in and go, well, I have a feeling I know what this is gonna be. And so first we say, okay, let’s hear what you got.
But if it’s not the right for the character, then it’s very important for that actor to be able to switch it up and be very flexible with what they bring to the part.
I look for a lot of money. It’s a pay to play thing. If you give me a lot of money, you can have a part.
I’m so kidding. If everything they said to Yes And and Piggyback, directability is huge. I’ve had people come in who are perfect for the role, but then they cannot be redirected.
So if they just happen to have the wrong idea about a certain line or scene, you can’t fix it. And that means you can’t fix it.
Well, also in anime, a single change in a read in episode one can absolutely affect the last episode in the series because that’s the way the stories are written. So you gotta be… You know, sometimes the actor won’t understand.
Well, but it’s perfect.
This, yeah, that’s great, but that character attribute needs to be different in order to make the end work. So that’s part of what we are. We’re story…
We’re the guys that are in charge of making sure the story gets told.
That’s a very good point. We are the crafters of the storytelling.
Thank you very much.
Hi, everybody.
Hello.
Nice for being here today. Tony, you mentioned making the actors comfortable is a big part of your job. What can actors do before they get to you in the booth to make themselves comfortable, especially if it may be their first time in a directed session?
I have a whole four week class about that.
Where did I sign up?
It’s called How Not To Voice Act, by the way. Getting out of your head, How Not To Voice Act is the name of the class. It’s, I don’t know.
I wish I had it. I wish, look, if I could write a book and give you the 10 steps to feel comfortable on by yourself, it’s stuff you have to do before you get there. It’s a matter of getting comfortable with yourself, which is a really hard thing to do as an artist, to be just comfortable being who you are.
When you get in the booth, the things that you don’t want to be thinking about is how do I sound? Am I any good? Is the producer or director like me?
Am I doing the best job ever? All of those things are performance killers, okay? Because they put you in here.
You need to be acting from here. The best thing to do is figure out how to turn this off so that you are just there when you’re focused on that, the words, the script, and what the feelings are. And if you can focus on that, the rest of it kind of melts away and there’s less to be nervous about.
So when I got cast as Leonardo for Ninja Turtles, I thought it was a mistake. And for the first entire season, I went into every session thinking I’m gonna be fired. Not helpful.
And I talked to a couple of people like, you’re crazy, what are you talking about? I’m like, okay, I’m crazy, that’s not helpful. But it was miserable, and I could have cost myself the role.
The thing is, when good people cast, it’s not just for a vocal type, it’s for something else that you bring and no one else really can. There’s something real specific about the way you play a hero, not just I’m a hero, but what kind of hero is that? Like when, Optimus Prime, when Peter went into audition for that, his brother was like, who I think was in the military, was like, what are you doing today?
Yeah, he’s like, well, I’m auditioning for a truck. He’s like, what, a truck? He’s like, yeah, he’s like the leader of some robot race, and he’s like their leader and his hero.
He’s like, well, if you’re gonna go in there and be a hero, don’t just be some truck. Be the best goddamn hero you can be. So he goes in there with Optimus Prime, and like it was kind of revolutionary, and it was great, but he did something that was…
He’s such a, I met him a few, about six months ago.
He’s the dad of one of my wife’s colleagues.
Yeah, so there’s that thing. So if you can trust that you were picked for a reason and it wasn’t some grand mistake or a prank, then that’s step one. The other thing that I learned, and this is a rule for me, hopefully you’ll have a wonderful director like one of us, but if you have a hard ass like some people, then do this for yourself.
Never say sorry. It puts you in the wrong mental state. Don’t go, oh, if you get a redirection, it’s an opportunity to make it better.
Maybe you did something that makes it worse now.
Maybe the response is, oh, great, thanks. Yeah, thanks for the input.
That’s my rule. So say thank you, not sorry. If you wanna say sorry, go, thank you.
And it will literally just like, even just forcing yourself to use those words will change your mindset and make you ready to play.
It’s a really interesting, changing mindset is really important. And one of the things that I do teach is that if you wanna change a read, you have an emotion that director says, I need something different. If you try to just change the way it sounds, it’s just not gonna quite do it.
I went with this to a director, I was eight, nine takes, I’m still not getting it. So finally, I just kind of set back to basics, let me think differently. So I’m gonna feel this and just let it come out.
And then, well, that’s the take, we got it. So it’s just by changing a thought, I was just automatically changed the way it came out of my mouth. So I guess the last little bit of advice is don’t try so hard.
As actors, we make it really hard on ourselves. We try so hard, and then trying is the head stuff. You need to be feeling.
Love me, love me, love me.
We’re all sick though.
All actors are insecure, pretty much. That just comes with the title of act.
It’s a coping mechanism.
Okay, everybody, we are back live at Otakon 2017. It’s Paul and Chris, and we are wrapping up. So Chris, what were some of the highlights of the conference for you?
I loved our interview with Vic Mignotta. He gave out such valuable tips, and he’s really an inspiring man, just saying every day at 12, he just stops and gives thanks for everything that he’s done, and thanks for how far he’s come, and so many great things. And what he gave us was pure gold, and I loved him.
I loved meeting Stephanie Shea and Chris Neosi, seeing a fellow geek like myself, seeing someone who it’s really inspiring to see someone young get into the business, and knowing the same attributes that I have can really succeed.
Yeah, that’s awesome. For me, it was eye-opening, because I had never really been to a con, quote unquote, before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. So I walked in here, and my mind was immediately blown seeing all the cosplay people, all the artists’ alley, the exhibitors downstairs.
It was just amazing to see the scope of the convention, and that was the most impressive thing for me. And then as far as the interviews, I think the big takeaway was that each and every person, both in person and then on the panel discussions where we sat in, they all mentioned being an actor and taking acting classes.
Absolutely.
And you’ve worked with coaches, I’ve worked with coaches, that’s what they tell us in person, but it was really good to hear that reaffirmed by the people who are at the convention and successful in the business.
Yeah, it’s almost like they’re trying to tell us something.
Yeah, you think it got through the thick skull of you and of me, I’m not sure.
I think so, maybe a little bit.
So I’ve actually signed up for some acting classes at a community college. It was one of the things that Tony Oliver mentioned yesterday and it’s been canceled three times.
Really?
I don’t know what it is. It’s my local community college in Baltimore County. I’m gonna try again in the fall.
I tried the winter semester. I tried the spring semester. There wasn’t enough interest.
I think it was just me. Maybe I was signed up. So if you’re out there, especially in the DC metro area or the Delmarva area as we call it, sign up for the freaking classes because I wanna be involved.
Yeah, if you’re ever up in Jersey in the Freehold area, there’s actually improv classes that I signed up for at a local theater there off on Main Street in Freehold. So I’m actually starting those around September.
Awesome. And I was so inspired that yesterday I went home and I immediately contacted Sarah Jane Sherman out in LA. I’m not sure if you know her.
She used to be a casting for Disney. And I signed up for some classes with her. So we’re gonna go with some character development classes probably as soon as next week.
All right, excellent.
So I’m definitely inspired. How about you?
Oh, I’m definitely inspired. I signed up for Tony Oliver’s classes for September up in New York. Already?
Yeah, I just signed up for him last night.
You sound like me.
It’s really reassuring to say like, you know it’s difficult to get in, but if you put your best foot forward and if you focus on the acting part, you could do it.
Awesome. Well, thanks everybody for joining us at Otakon 2017. And we’ll see you in the next episode.
We’ll see you then.
Wow, that was great. I mean, you guys did a great job with those questions. That’s really, really cool.
And I love how just again and again, you hear the actors emphasizing that voice acting is acting. So like again and again, do not think about like obviously voices and being able to do different voices is important, but is not the most important skill. Like it’s acting, it’s voice acting with a capital A.
And get excited about it. I know Chris and I were both inspired. Chris mentioned that on the spot he signed up for classes with Tony Oliver because he got that bug planted in the back of his head.
And so did I. I actually came home on Saturday and immediately emailed Sarah Jane Sherman, who I think we’ve talked about before, to take some acting classes with her. I’m starting next Tuesday and…
Very cool. Does she do Skype or…
Yeah, she does Skype, because she’s in California now. She’s actually from Maryland, but now she lives in California.
Well, when you work for Disney, they want you nearby.
I couldn’t convince her to come back home. Yeah, we’re doing it by Skype. We start next Tuesday, so that should be fun.
Very cool. Yeah, I love going to cons. It’s definitely a very reinvigorating event for people like us.
Yeah, I think we should try and do that again. Maybe book ourselves at another conference, maybe even San Diego next year. We’ll see.
Baby steps, baby steps. But hey, I love Emerald City Comic Con, man. It’s the biggest one in the Northwest.
You know, I’ve actually never been to Seattle, so maybe I should plan to come out to that one next year.
Yeah, cool.
That would be awesome. But coming up…
Oh yes, we got some exciting announcements for next episode.
Yeah, we are going to do an audiobook roundtable. We have confirmations. We haven’t actually scheduled it yet, so pending everyone’s schedule being open, we have confirmations from Stephen J.
Cohen, Sean Pratt, Andy Arndt, and Scott Brick. Nice. And Deborah Dion from Dion Audio.
So we wanted to mix in a producer, a production house in there as well. So it should be fantastic.
And what a production house. I mean, Dion Audio prides itself on the quality of its narrators and their projects. They’ve won numerous awards for all of their productions.
So I can’t, I’m super excited about this. Like, and I don’t even do audiobooks yet.
Well, maybe you’ll be inspired a little bit more.
I’m sure I will.
But until then, this has been Paul Stefano.
And Sean Daeley.
For The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We’ll see you next time.
Have a great day, everybody. Thanks for listening to The VO Meter. Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.