Here’s an amazing interview with one of the greatest voice directors in America, Andrea Romano. Andrea’s resume is littered with some of the most popular cartoon series of all time including the original Batman, The Animated Series from the mid 90’s, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Teen Titans and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Andrea talks about some very important ideas to remember when approaching voice acting:

1. Her first question is always, “Is this person I’m thinking of casting a good actor?”
2. Her second question is, “Do they have voice over experience?”

Microphone technique and animation acting, you can teach in a very short time. I can’t teach acting in a four-hour recording session. Acting is something that they’ve got to bring to the table themselves.

That is why I stress so much that you must be a capable actor before you can be truly successful as a voice actor. No matter how much time you spend in the booth, recording on a microphone or polishing your voice, if you do not have the acting ability to support all of your wonderful technique, you won’t be able to bring a good performance to the project.

So do whatever you can to get more acting experience. Take acting classes. Join your local or school theater group. Get online and join a voice acting group. Whatever it takes to give you more opportunities to practice playing pretend as characters.

Enjoy!

Welcome to the ninth episode of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!

As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:

http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast

In this episode, I address an issue that’s come up a lot here on the Voice Acting Mastery Blog. In fact, it’s one of the most common questions I get from aspiring voice actors:

What can I do to be more confident?

It’s an important topic and one that I felt deserved an in-depth answer. I do my best to outline the actions any person takes to try and bolster one’s confidence. However, I also reveal the important mental shift that must take place for any of those actions to have a truly lasting effect. I also tell the story of what I went through when I was trying to find my confidence as a young actor. I think you’ll find it enlightening.

If you have any questions, please post your question as a comment to this blog post. Chances are, someone else has a similar question. By posting your question here on the blog, I get to communicate with all of you at once.

Thanks for listening!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #9 Here (MP3)

Here’s a great blog post from a good friend of mine, Juan Carlos Bagnell. Juan works as a casting director at one of the most prestigious casting offices in LA, the Voicecaster. He uses the online moniker of “SomeAudioGuy” but trust me, he is THE Audio guy. Not only is Juan a fantastic director, but he can articulate how he does what he does which is invaluable!

I highly suggest you check out his blog post on “The Art of the Pick Up” or how to recover once you’ve flubbed a line in the booth. Juan shares some great insight as someone who works with top talent voice actors every day. He sees what works and what doesn’t and his eye for subtlety and nuance never ceases to amaze me. Whenever he’s directing me in the booth, I know I’m in the best hands.

You can also check out his online web series called, Movies You May Have Missed or MYMHM for short. He does wonderful reviews of seldom seen but valuable movies with his show partner, Lee. He’s even done an interview with me about zombies, vampires and other mythological subjects in film and horror.

Welcome to the eighth episode of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!

As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:

http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast

This is the third and final part of my interview with Wes Davis. If you’d like to learn more about Wes, feel free to check out his voice acting website:

http://www.gimmeamic.com/

In this episode, we get into some of the most important issues when pursuing a voice acting career including:

1. Where does your confidence come from?
2. How do you warm-up before a voice acting job?
3. How do you achieve your goals?
4. What do you say to yourself to keep from being discouraged?

In the next episode, I’ll be addressing an issue that has been asked many times in the comments here on the website: “What can I do to be more confident?” I look forward to giving you my take on it in the next episode!

As always, I welcome your questions and feedback! If you feel inspired, please leave a comment on this blog post.

Thanks for listening!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #8 Here (MP3)