Welcome to episode 153 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

Welcome to the second part of my interview with the Emmy award winning voice actress, Maile Flanagan! Maile is probably most famous for voicing the character of Naruto in the long running anime franchise of the same name. She also won an Emmy for her performance in the animated show Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks. Maile is an accomplished on-camera actress and comedienne as well! She is one of the few actresses who works almost equally in voice acting and on-camera and I was excited to bring her on the podcast to share her experience with my listeners.

In the previous episode, Maile and I discussed what inspired her to become an actress in the first place. Her international upbringing, her family’s penchant for wry humor, and her training to become a spy for the CIA were all big influences on her! These varied experiences helped her hone her observational skills which served her incredibly well when she was studying other actor’s performances. Each of these environments also provided her with opportunities to test her social skills and to learn how to communicate effectively with a wide range of people.

In this episode, I ask Maile what advice she has for aspiring voice actors. Maile teaches voice over workshops so she has lots of hands on experience working with students and helping them understand what it takes to succeed as a professional voice actor. She shares with me some of the common mistakes she sees her students make and she emphasizes how important it is for an aspiring voice actor to “do their homework”, as she puts it. We go into great detail about how voice acting homework differs from more traditional homework you may have been assigned in school. Learning how to immerse yourself in a character requires a different mindset than figuring out algebra problems and Maile has some great insights on what you can do to improve the believability of your performances!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #153 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 152 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

Welcome to the second part of my interview with the Emmy award winning voice actress, Maile Flanagan! Maile is probably most famous for voicing the character of Naruto in the long running anime franchise of the same name. She also won an Emmy for her performance in the animated show Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks. Maile is an accomplished on-camera actress and comedienne as well! She is one of the few actresses who works almost equally in voice acting and on-camera and I was excited to bring her on the podcast to share her experience with my listeners.

In the first part of our interview, Maile and I talked about how she broke into acting. Although she joined an improv comedy group when she was in college, her primary focus in school was training to become a spy for the CIA. After she graduated, and was waiting for the CIA to give her an assignment, she connected with some of her fellow improv classmates and decided to take a chance, form a group, and travel to Cape Cod to perform comedy for tourists over the summer. That decision changed the path of her life! After that summer, she realized that she wanted to pursue a career in acting instead of one in espionage!

In this episode, we discuss what inspired Maile to become an actress in the first place. While she did not receive any formal acting training while she was in school, her upbringing played a big role in helping her learn how to observe people and communicate with them effectively. Her father was a spy for the CIA and their family moved around a lot. This meant that Maile had a very international upbringing and had to learn how to relate to many different types of people. Her family was also very funny! They often used humor to interact with each other and the ability to joke around with her family members was an important skill that Maile developed at a young age. These experiences helped her hone her observational skills which served her incredibly well when she was studying other actor’s performances.

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #152 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 151 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

I’m really excited to share with you the first part of my interview with the Emmy award winning voice actress and accomplished comedienne, Maile Flanagan! Maile has performed in theater, stand up comedy, television sitcoms, feature films, and numerous voice acting roles! She’s probably most famous for voicing the character of Naruto in the long running anime franchise of the same name. She won an Emmy for her performance in the animated show Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks. You may also recognize her as Principal Perry in the Disney XD show, Lab Rats as well as her many other roles in shows like Grey’s Anatomy, The Mindy Project, and Modern Family. Maile is one of those rare actresses who work just as often in voice over as she does on-camera and I wanted to share with you her unique perspective on the industry!

I’m actually fascinated by Maile’s approach to voice acting because it’s so different from my own! If you’ve listened to early episodes of this podcast, you know that I attended a lot of acting schools in my youth. I took theater classes in high school, college and even went to graduate acting school to get my master’s degree. By contrast, Maile jumped into acting with almost no formal training whatsoever! Her approach to learning how to act was based on her keen observation of talented performers as well as her international upbringing. Maile’s father was a spy! He worked in counter intelligence for the U.S. government during the 1970s and 80s which meant that Maile’s family lived in many different countries as she was growing up. She was born in Hawaii, but moved to Bangkok soon afterwards. Later she lived in Nuremberg and Munich and eventually went to college in Boston. All of this moving from place to place meant that she had to learn to adapt to many different social environments. In order to survive, she became a quick study of people and their behavior!

In the first part of our interview, Maile and I discuss how she became an actress. She initially planned to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a spy herself! However, while she was waiting for her first assignment, she decided to organize a group of her fellow classmates from college into an improv comedy troupe and perform in venues around Cape Cod, Massachusetts during the summer. That decision ended up changing the entire trajectory of her life! It’s an amazing story and I think you’ll find it very intriguing!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #151 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 148 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

Welcome to the third and final part of my interview with the mind-bogglingly talented Dee Bradley Baker! Dee has worked on hundreds of animated movies and shows including Cow and Chicken, Dexter’s Lab, The Box Trolls, American Dad, Avatar the Last Airbender, and Star Wars: the Clone Wars just to name a few! Dee has a special affinity for creature voices. He’s often called in to voice characters that don’t speak a human language, but communicate through non-verbal sounds.

In the previous episode, Dee and I discussed what inspired him to become a performer in the first place. We talked about his passion for monster movies and how that helped him find his special niche doing creature voices in animation and games. Dee also explained how important it is to replenish your own well of creativity by pursuing artistic projects that you find satisfying. He compared it to cultivating a terrarium where new ideas can sprout and grow. For Dee, his terrarium includes his fascination with macro-photography which he shares at deebakerphotography.com. Being playful and creative with photography has helped Dee nurture his own psyche and avoid becoming overwhelmed by the professional demands of being a voice actor.

As we wrap up our interview, I ask Dee to be more specific about how he’s able to pull ideas from his artistic terrarium. How does that process actually work? In response, Dee shares with me his concept of a ladder of ability. It’s an incredibly useful metaphor to help you understand your own growth as an artist and to be able to chart your progress along the way to mastery in any artistic field. We then dive into Dee’s advice to aspiring actors. As I’ve mentioned in previous episodes, much of Dee’s advice can be found on his website, iwanttobeavoiceactor.com. I ask Dee about this amazing resource for actors and find out what information on his website is too often overlooked. Dee’s comments are both thoughtful and generous and I can’t wait to share them with you!

In the interview, we talk about Dee’s creative projects outside of voice acting. You should totally check them out!

Dee’s Macro Photography can be found at:
www.deebakerphotography.com

Pictures of Dee’s Halloween yard decorations can be found at:
creepyyard.com

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #148 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 147 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

Welcome to the second part of my interview with the mind-bogglingly talented Dee Bradley Baker! Dee has worked on hundreds of animated movies and shows including Cow and Chicken, Dexter’s Lab, The Box Trolls, American Dad, Avatar the Last Airbender, and Star Wars: the Clone Wars just to name a few! Dee has a special affinity for creature voices. He’s often called in to voice characters that don’t speak a human language, but communicate through non-verbal sounds.

In part one of our interview, we discussed how Dee got started as a performer. His route was a serendipitous one. He did not follow any established plan or recipe for becoming an actor. He didn’t even take many acting classes! Instead, Dee let his guiding principle be to follow what fascinated him. He was open to taking any job possibility that came his way as long as it seemed interesting. If it also had a performance aspect, so much the better! However, regardless of what he pursued, he always did it with gusto and discipline. He wasn’t just aimlessly wandering through life, he was actively testing things to see what truly appealed to him and what didn’t. He would always do his best to learn as much as he could from every opportunity, and then move on once he felt he had learned as much as possible. It took a while for him to realize that the majority of work he was getting was as a performer and that he could make acting his primary vocation. After he moved to Los Angeles and decided to focus primarily on voice acting, he discovered that he was also fascinated by creature sounds. He had always loved dinosaurs and movie monsters, so he had a natural affinity for voicing creatures of all shapes and sizes! If you haven’t listened to episode one of this interview where I played some audio of his creature acting, I highly suggest you check it out. Alternatively, you can head over to Dee’s website at deebaker.com and listen to samples of his genius there!

In the second part of our discussion, Dee and I talk about what inspired him to be a performer in the first place. Dee has always been a quiet intellectual which may not initially seem like a personality type that would be conducive to becoming an actor. However, performing allowed Dee to learn how to interact with people and adapt to society and the world at large. It was a way for him to develop as a human being. It helped him improve both his inner emotional life and his external relationships. I completely identify with Dee on this point! I too was a shy, quiet, introverted boy when I was young and I learned a lot about myself and others by studying acting.

Also in this segment, Dee and I delve deep into his love of movie monsters and how his passion for dinosaurs, Japanese Kaiju like Godzilla, and even dressing up like a Jawa from Star Wars, helped inspire him to work in some way with these creatures. Initially he thought he might become a special effects makeup artist, but it was only later that he realized that his best contribution would be to give voices to the characters he loved so much. It’s incredibly apropos that the first movie he saw as a child was Dr. Doolittle, a movie about a man who can talk to animals by mimicking their sounds! Dee has been making good on his own fascination with animals ever since!

Later in the interview, we talk about Dee’s creative projects outside of voice acting. You should totally check them out!

Dee’s Macro Photography can be found at:
www.deebakerphotography.com

Pictures of Dee’s Halloween yard decorations can be found at:
creepyyard.com

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #147 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 146 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

I’ve got a very special treat for you in this episode! I’m honored to bring you the first part of my interview with the stupendously talented Dee Bradley Baker! As of the release of this episode, Dee has over 500 credits to his name on the Internet Movie Database! He’s worked on hundreds of animated movies and shows including Cow and Chicken, The Angry Beavers, Dexter’s Lab, Ben 10, The Box Trolls, The Fairly Odd Parents, Phineas and Ferb, American Dad, Avatar the Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, Star Wars: the Clone Wars, and the list goes on and on! Dee has great comedic instincts and has played numerous characters over the years, but he also has a special affinity for creature voices. He is often called in to voice characters that don’t speak a human language, but communicate through non-verbal sounds. It’s a highly specialized skill and Dee excels at it. He can do small animal and bird sounds, large scary monsters, and every kind of swamp creature in between all without the use of pitch shifting or electronic alteration. He just gets in front of a microphone and is brilliant!

I was really excited to get Dee on the podcast because I wanted to talk to him about his acting process. While the vocal pyrotechnics he can produce are impressive, Dee doesn’t just get hired because he can make crazy sounds with his throat. His special skill is to convey emotions through creature noises, in other words, acting. He combines his amazing technical prowess with his road-tested acting abilities in order to make his creature sounds so expressive and believable.

In this first segment of our interview, I ask Dee how he got started as an actor. While he did get involved in theater at a very young age, his journey to becoming a professional voice actor was anything but typical. He didn’t take many acting classes in school and he never planned on having a career as a performer. Instead, he simply did what sounded fun to him in the moment and gave himself permission to try any interesting opportunity that came his way. This meant that his journey has been filled with serendipity and synchronicity. He never had a concrete plan for his career, but rather followed his fascination and did his best to capitalize on where his skills overlapped with his interests. His story is as inspiring as it is unconventional.

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #146 Here (MP3)