VAM 207 | Acting Is Inherently Uncomfortable, That’s Why Great Acting Takes Courage
Welcome to episode 207 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
While the majority of my podcast episodes in recent years have been interviews, I wanted to take this episode to talk about a problematic misunderstanding that I see too often lately amongst people who are thinking about getting into voice acting. It’s a misunderstanding that I’m finding more and more common in my students as well, so I thought it would be a good idea to address it head on. I get the impression both from reading online comments on social media sites, and from my interactions with my students in my classes, that too many people out there think that voice acting is the easiest form of acting, that it requires less of you than other forms of acting like film or theater acting, and that acting as an activity should be comfortable and easy to do. This mindset often boils down to a belief that goes something like this: “How hard could it be to talk into a microphone, get attention, and get paid?”
There’s many reasons for this flawed belief. Some of these reasons have been around for a while, and some have been exacerbated by social media and the increased mental and emotional health challenges reported by more recent generations. Never in my teaching career have I had so many students citing “anxiety” as their number one stumbling block when it comes to acting, and never have I seen such a mismatch of expectations vs. reality when it comes to what people think is required of them to become professionally competitive as a voice actor.
While historically, people have often assumed that acting was the least demanding of the performing arts, online marketers have taken this misconception and turned it into a selling point, using the leverage of the internet and social media platforms to advertise just how easy it is to work and make money as a voice over artist. I can’t tell you the number of ads I’ve seen from “voice acting experts” who say things like, “If you give me 10 minutes of your time, and watch this video to the end, I’ll share with you the secrets that the voice over industry doesn’t want you to know!” Or, “Let me show you this one weird trick that will allow you to make money on demand by recording yourself at home in your pajamas!” Or, “There’s so much work out there that there’s no competition. People want to pay you to just talk into a microphone, with no artistic development, personal improvement, or familiarity with the industry required!”
Okay, that last one was a stretch, but not a big stretch, and unfortunately this kind of messaging is all too common online today. It offers quick solutions, cheat codes, or easy income with minimal effort, when building a voice acting career really takes artistic dedication, diligent practice, and a lot of self-actualization. This predatory grift really upsets me. It not only promotes greed and laziness, but it also targets the anxiety issues that I mentioned earlier. Anxious people want to hear that voice acting is easy and that they can make money by hiding in their closets and talking into a microphone.
And perhaps they can, for a while. The democratization of affordable recording equipment and the ability to work remotely have indeed fostered an environment where it seems like anyone can make money in voice over. But the specter of AI is looming over the horizon, and soon the market for that so-called “easier” voice work will start to erode. As AI voices proliferate and are used more often for entry level or lower budget projects, an aspiring voice actor will need to become much better than AI in order to compete in the marketplace. Soon there will be nowhere to hide from the reality that professional acting requires one to overcome their limitations, not capitulate to them or look for hacks to avoid facing them.
I’d like to explain to my listeners exactly why acting is such a tricky art form to master, why becoming a professionally competitive voice actor is so challenging, and to hopefully bring some honesty and clarity to what it really takes to embody characters in such a way that you captivate and delight an audience. This advice is not meant to discourage any aspiring voice actors, but rather to inspire them to meet the challenge of pursuing a voice acting career head on, with a clear understanding of the true skills and mindset they need to become successful.
VAM 206 | Interview with Lauren Mayfield, Part 2
Welcome to episode 206 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 second part of my interview with an accomplished voice actress who just happens to be a former student of mine and one of my class assistants, Lauren Mayfield! Lauren has gone from studying with me in class, to helping me coach my students, to booking work as a professional voice actress, and even securing representation at one of the most prestigious agencies in Los Angeles, Sutton Barth and Venari also known as SBV. I was delighted when she told me that we were both working on the same video game together, providing voices for characters in Starfield by Bethesda. You may also know Lauren’s work in games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III where she plays Raptor, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising where she plays Societte, and Tower of God: New World where she plays Po Bidau Blanc. It’s always so satisfying when I get to watch one of my students navigate the transition to becoming an accomplished colleague of mine in the voice acting world and I’m so proud of Lauren’s achievements!
In the previous episode, we talked about how Lauren got her start as a voice actor. She had loved acting and especially musicals when she was young. Then she’d had the opportunity to work at both Disney World and Disneyland, which she enjoyed thoroughly. However, it wasn’t until she was passed over for a position at Disneyland that she decided to focus more of her attention on voice acting. She took classes in Orange County, California where she was living, and she also took classes with me at Voice Acting Mastery. She was a dutiful actress who tried to do everything right and follow what seemed to be the conventional wisdom at the time about how one could break into voice acting. This included booking parts in anime dubs at first, and then moving on to other projects after that. This was certainly my experience when I started as a voice actor in the late 90’s. Lauren discovered, however, that her path was going to be different. After struggling to make much headway in anime, she finally found her niche in video games which is where her career really took off. Her success in games helped her secure agency representation, which has opened even more career opportunities for her!
In this episode, I ask Lauren what inspired her to become a performer in the first place. She revisits how she loved performing and especially musical theater from a young age, and shares how she had a passion for fantastical, larger than life storytelling. She was eager to explore how she could pursue a career as a performer. Over time, she began to realize that a musical theater career would not give her the kind of stability she desired, neither financially, nor in terms of lifestyle. She didn’t want to have to travel for work, and the life of a theater actor tends to be very nomadic. Voice acting became a way for her to pursue acting, apply her vocal and singing techniques, and still remain close to home. This subject leads quite naturally into a discussion about how important it is to be always checking in with yourself to make sure that you’re pursuing goals that are truly what you want and that you aren’t working towards some accomplishment that won’t give you satisfaction. Lauren and I also discuss how competitive voice acting has become in recent years due to the rising popularity of games, animation, and anime.
After that, I ask Lauren to share her advice for the aspiring voice actor. While she knows that teachers and coaches will often stress how much work it takes to be successful as a voice actor, and Lauren herself can personally attest to the amount of time, effort, and dedication she has put towards achieving her voice acting goals, she also says that it’s important to know when to relax and trust that you’re doing good work, so you can avoid trying to force things to happen. One way to achieve that balance between effort and relaxation is to make sure that you’re as well rounded a human being as possible, with activities and interests outside the field of acting. Another method is to take the pursuit of voice acting less personally and to decouple your own value as a human being from your professional accomplishments. Ironically, the less personally you take things in the voice over industry, the more relaxed you’ll become, and the more authentically you’ll be able to share your own artistry with others. These insights from Lauren are a lovely way to wrap up our discussion, and I’m so glad I get to share them with my listeners!
VAM 205 | Interview with Lauren Mayfield, Part 1
Welcome to episode 205 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 first part of my interview with an accomplished voice actress who just happens to be a former student of mine and one of my class assistants, Lauren Mayfield! One of the things that I love most as an acting teacher is when a student of mine is able to achieve a level of success in their career where the two of us can graduate from being teacher and student to being fellow colleagues in the voice over industry! Lauren has definitely achieved that! I first met her when she started taking some of my acting classes back in 2016! I admired her talent, her commitment to the craft of acting, and her generous spirit, so I eventually asked if she would be willing to assist me with my classes, and she graciously agreed.
Since then, Lauren has been a consistent source of encouragement, advice, and inspiration for many of my students, and I’m so grateful to have had her on the Voice Acting Mastery team for so long. Over the years, Lauren has also been diligently building her own voice acting career, and I was delighted to hear from her recently that she and I were both playing characters in the video game Starfield by Bethesda. You may also know Lauren’s work in games like Smite where she plays Deadly Dinner Discord, Smash Legends where she plays Brick, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III where she plays Raptor, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom where she plays Yona. Lauren is signed with one of the most prestigious agencies in Los Angeles: Sutton, Barth and Venari, more commonly known by the initials, SBV, and I couldn’t be more proud of her accomplishments!
In this episode, I begin our discussion by asking Lauren how she got started as a voice actor. As she recounts how she became interested in performing at a young age and started pursuing not only acting, but musical theater, I was amazed to discover how many similarities that Lauren and I had in our childhood experiences! We both would reenact scenes from our favorite movies for our parents, we both had an appreciation for classic MGM musicals, and we both came to the realization that neither of us really had the temperament to pursue a full time theater career in New York City.
Lauren is a California native who grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and spent time both there and later in the Los Angeles area where she went to college. She also had a love for Disney theme parks and worked at Disney World in Florida right after she graduated, and then returned to California where she worked at Disneyland. While there, she applied for a special ambassador-style program in addition to her regular duties, but was passed over for the position, even though all of her co-workers in her department were chosen. Feeling disappointed, and having more time in her schedule, Lauren decided to pursue something that had always interested her: voice acting.
She started taking voice over classes at a school called Del Mar Media Arts based out of Orange County, California. She also started taking classes with me at Voice Acting Mastery, and at Bang Zoom Studios in their Adventures in Voice Acting program. She fell in love with voice acting and decided to commit to pursuing a professional career in voice over. During our discussion, Lauren shares with me not only the detailed action journey steps she took to try to further her voice acting goals, but also the adjustments she had to make to her mindset, and what preconceived notions she had to let go of in order to find her own way of breaking into the LA voice over market place. Even though we’ve known each other for many years, I learned so much from diving deep into Lauren’s voice over journey, and I hope you will as well!
VAM 202 | Interview with Crispin Freeman, Part 3
Welcome to episode 202 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 part 3 of an interview of me, hosted by my good friend and fellow voice actor, Julie Nathanson! As I mentioned in episode 200, Julie had offered years ago to turn the tables on me and interview me on my own podcast! I thought it was a great idea and I’m so grateful that she agreed to take over as interviewer for this 4 episode series!
In the previous episode, Julie asked me to tell the story of how I got started as a voice actor. While I’ve recounted this story in earlier episodes of the podcast, this time around, Julie wanted to talk more in depth about how my emotional responses to my personal experiences shaped my acting journey. This included how my childhood experiences in Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia helped me relate to the Romanian director of my graduate acting school. Julie and I also talked about how influential J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy literature had been on my psyche and the lessons I took from the values he expressed in his stories about Middle Earth.
In this segment, Julie asks me to describe the next steps that I took to further my voice acting career, and I discuss how I got started working on anime dubs in New York city in the late 1990s. Julie asks about my demos, when I made them, and how they helped me make progress towards my voice acting goals. She then asks me to share my opinions about AI and whether I think artificial intelligence and machine learning can create meaningful storytelling. After that, she continues with more questions from my voice acting colleagues, including one from Steve Blum about whether or not my analytical skills, which have helped me develop a deep knowledge of storytelling, ever get in the way of my spontaneity as an actor. In order to respond to that question, I end up articulating my personal acting process with a level of specificity and nuance that I don’t think I’ve ever done before. Julie has to reframe my explanation twice just to make sure that both she and my audience can understand my thought process as clearly as possible.
Julie is very good at asking me questions that I had not considered in the past, which gives me the opportunity to figure out my responses to these conundrums in real time. I find it very satisfying to tease out my opinions on these topics with her as my sounding board, and I think my listeners will both enjoy and benefit from gaining a deeper understanding of how I approach both acting and storytelling.
VAM 199 | Interview with Sara Secora, Part 2
Welcome to episode 199 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 honored to share with you the second and final part of my interview with the resourceful Sara Secora. You may have heard Sara’s voice acting work in games such as Genshin Impact, Warframe, and Fallout 76. In animation and dubbing she’s worked on Enchantimals, Boonie Bears: Back to Earth, and Rumble Garanndoll. Sara also works as a casting director and voice director on games like Smite, and Paladins. She’s also written a book on voice acting called The Anywhere Voice Actor about what it takes to work as a voice actor no matter where you live. You can find her book on Amazon, and you can even get private coaching sessions with Sara by going to Jennifer Hale’s amazing website, skillshub.life.
In the previous episode, Sara shared with me how she got started as a voice actor. Her journey was quite unique since she has a disability that keeps her homebound. She was gracious and courageous enough to talk about her agoraphobia in detail and explain how it prohibits her from traveling to a recording studio in order to work. Despite this challenge, she has been able to develop both her acting abilities and her business skills to a professionally competitive level. Sara got her start in the world of independent video games and has expanded into commercials, American Animation, Anime and AAA video games. I’m very impressed by her bravery and tenacity in the face of such difficulties.
In this episode, we begin by discussing what inspired Sara to become a performer in the first place. In fact, I ask Sara to go back to the time before she decided to pursue voice acting, and to explore why she originally wanted to become a YouTuber. She explains that her love for games and her wanting to share this enthusiasm with others helped motivate her to create a YouTube channel. The more she and I discuss this, the more she begins to realize that she has always had a deep desire to entertain other people. Even prior to becoming a YouTuber, Sara would share silly videos with her friends just to make them laugh or smile.
I then ask Sara how she began working as both a casting director and a voice director and to share some of the challenges she faces in both of those pursuits. Then, we wrap up our discussion with Sara’s advice to the aspiring voice actor. She always begins any of her coaching sessions by asking her students what they want to accomplish as a voice actor and even more importantly, why they want to do it. If her students express the desire to pursue voice acting professionally, Sara has a lot of practical advice to share with them from her own time “in the trenches” so to speak. She always wants to make sure her students have realistic and actionable plans that can make their voice acting goals practically achievable and not just dreams that never come to fruition. I love Sara’s no-nonsense approach to voice acting and I think my listeners will really benefit from hearing more of her journey and insights.
VAM 198 | Interview with Sara Secora, Part 1
Welcome to episode 198 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 first part of my interview with the resourceful and multi-talented Sara Secora. You may be familiar with Sara’s voice acting work in games, where she voices Dunyarzad in Genshin Impact, Mathila in Warframe, and Pat Myers in Fallout 76. In animation and dubbing she’s played Radia Rainbowfish in Enchantimals, Avi in Boonie Bears: Back to Earth, and Hayate in Rumble Garanndoll. Sara has also worked as a casting director on games like Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Smite, and Paladins, and she’s voice directed the games Smite, Paladins, and Overload. In addition to all of that, Sara has somehow found the time to write a book on voice acting called The Anywhere Voice Actor about what it takes to work as a voice actor no matter where you live. You can find it on Amazon. Sara has been so successful that she was invited to be a coach on Jennifer Hale’s amazing website, skillshub.life where she’s available for private coaching sessions.
One of the reasons I was so eager to get Sara on the podcast is because she has built her entire voice over career without leaving her home studio. Sara has a disability that keeps her homebound which we discuss in detail in this episode. Despite this challenge, Sara has not only been able to book voice over work that would normally be possible to do from home, such as commercials, independent games, and narration work, but she’s also been able to break into areas of voice acting that have traditionally required performers to move to the city where such work was being done, such as animation, dubbing, and AAA video games. Sara’s ability to achieve so much while negotiating her limitations is a testament to her ingenuity, her determination, and frankly her courage in the face of adversity. What she’s accomplished is truly admirable and I hope my listeners can gain some inspiration from her journey.
Sara and I begin our discussion by talking about how she got started as a voice actor. She was initially a YouTuber who enjoyed playing horror games and decided to create a YouTube channel where others could watch her play. Many of these horror games would have letters or notes that the characters had written, revealing information about the world of the game. Usually these important pieces of text did not have any voice acting associated with them, so in order to keep things interesting, Sara would read the letters aloud to entertain her audience. Her impromptu performances became very popular with her fans and many of them encouraged her to pursue voice acting. After receiving enough of these supportive comments, Sara eventually decided to reach out on twitter to a voice actor whose work she had admired. He was kind enough to respond and to give her suggestions, including some advice on getting training as an actor.
Sara took these suggestions to heart and started applying herself diligently to creating a voice acting career. While her success speaks for itself, I’m very eager to let her share her story with you in her own words!