VAM 192 | Interview with Greg Chun, Part 1
Welcome to episode 192 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 so happy to share with you the first part of my interview with the talented and supremely affable, Greg Chun! You may be familiar with Greg’s voice acting work in games, where he plays the lead character Takayuki Yagami in the Judgement series, Emperor Shaohao and numerous other characters in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, Ujimasa and Takeshi in Ghost of Tsushima, and a personal favorite of mine, Dr. Harold Winston in Overwatch. In anime he’s played Muzan Kibutsuji in Demon Slayer and Ryoji Kaiji in Evangelion. In American animation, he’s played Barbie’s father, George Roberts in numerous projects, and in live action dubbing he’s received great acclaim for his portrayal of the lead character Seong Gi-hun in the hit Netflix show, Squid Game.
Greg and I begin by discussing how he first got started as a voice actor. It turns out it was a very circuitous path! Greg’s original dream was to move to Hollywood to become a film composer. He had taken piano lessons as a child, and had eventually learned to play by ear. His college friends also wanted to become involved in film making as directors and actors and were eager to work with him on their projects. However, when Greg moved to LA to pursue his dreams, things didn’t go quite as he had planned. He had gotten a computer science degree in order to reassure his parents that he would have a stable job, and he initially found work at a newly formed studio at the time called Dreamworks. He was hired to help maintain their computer systems while they were producing one of their early animated films, the Prince of Egypt. In addition to his computer work in LA, Greg was also able to land some jobs composing music, but for commercials, not films.
He admits that during the next few years, he probably got a little complacent and lost some of his focus towards becoming a film composer. He also became disenchanted with the LA lifestyle and realized that he needed a change. So he decided to go back to graduate school for computer science in order to get his Master’s degree and eventually pursue a Ph.D. During his time in grad school, Greg’s friends kept asking if he was still interested in composing music for their projects. Eventually, the lure of the entertainment industry became too strong, and rather than continue his computer science research, Greg decided to try one more time to find his way in Hollywood.
He returned to LA and found work on an original musical adaptation of the story of the 10 Commandments. He started as a rehearsal pianist, but eventually got promoted to musical director for the show. During that time, he met an actress in the production who just happened to be married to the famous movie trailer voice over legend, Don LaFontaine. Greg was able to befriend Don and the rest of Don’s social circle, and they often played cards together. After watching Don work in the studio, Greg realized that he was becoming fascinated with the idea of becoming a voice actor himself. His time spent composing music for commercials had exposed him to the voice over world, and watching Don go through his workday made Greg realize that voice acting could actually be a viable career path for him as well.
Greg decided to apply himself diligently to the pursuit of voice acting. He worked with a voice over coach on a weekly basis for 8 months. He studied the voice over industry and learned as much as he could about voice actors and the studios that hired them. He went to classes and conventions for voice over. And even with all this commitment to learning his craft, it still took Greg 3 years before he turned a profit as a voice actor, and another 4 years before it became a fully viable source of income for him.
I love Greg’s story because it shows just how unique everyone’s journey towards becoming a professionally successful voice actor can be. Even though he decided to pursue voice acting slightly later in his adult life, he did it with a sense of fun and playfulness. His ability to be both relaxed and focused served him very well as he navigated the voice over world. There are so many empowering things my listeners can learn from Greg’s positive mindset and I’m very glad that I get to share his journey with you!
VAM 191 | Interview with Courtenay Taylor, Part 2
Welcome to episode 191 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 and final part of my interview with the extraordinary Courtenay Taylor! You may have heard her performances in games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Resident Evil, Fallout Legacy, and the Mass Effect series. In animation she’s starred in the Regular Show and OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes. In addition to her voice acting work, she’s also helps run NerdsVote, a non-partisan organization that encourages nerds of any fandom to register to vote and participate in American democracy! You can find out more about it at NerdsVote.com.
In the previous episode, Courtenay shared with us how she got started as a voice actor. We talked about the rather unconventional path she took which included her getting her start in a high school play, not as an actor, but rather as a make-up artist. Her experiences backstage piqued her interest in performing so she tried taking acting classes in both high school and college. She developed a sincere interest in acting which was put to the test when she decided to audition for a graduate level acting program. The man she was auditioning for told her that her voice sounded so damaged and raspy that she would never work in the theater. Courtenay relayed that feedback to her acting teacher at the time who encouraged Courtenay to pursue voice acting. That led to Courtenay falling in love with being behind the microphone and deciding to devote her attention to building a voice over career.
In this episode, we dive deeper, not only into what inspired Courtenay to become a performer, but how any negative feedback she received would often energize her rather than discourage her. I find this aspect of her psyche fascinating because it differs so greatly from my own! When I was criticized during my acting journey, it would often sap my enthusiasm, but for Courtenay it spurred her to prove the naysayers wrong! She and I also discuss how unlike some of her colleagues that studied extensively at acting schools from a young age, Courtenay had to rely instead on the wisdom of her life experience and her ability to share her raw emotionality when she was performing. After that, we end our conversation with Courtenay’s advice to the aspiring voice actor and how she uses the metaphor of emotional fish hooks in order to help her identify more deeply with a character and find the places where her emotional life and the character’s emotional life overlap. I love hearing about an actor’s unique journey and personal process, and Courtney has a lot of insight to share!
VAM 190 | Interview with Courtenay Taylor, Part 1
Welcome to episode 190 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 extraordinary Courtenay Taylor! Courtenay has a signature sound to her voice that she’s been using to great effect in both commercials and character work since the early 2000’s! You may have heard her performances in games where she’s played Juhani in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Ada Wong in numerous Resident Evil titles, the Female Player Character in Fallout Legacy, and Jack in the Mass Effect series of games. In animation she’s famous for playing Starla in The Regular Show and K.O. in OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes. In addition to her voice acting work, she’s also helps run NerdsVote, a non-partisan organization that encourages nerds of any fandom to register to vote and participate in American democracy! You can find out more information about it at NerdsVote.com.
In this episode, we begin our conversation by discussing how Courtenay got started as a voice actor. Her acting background is a little unconventional. She initially got involved in theater in high school as a makeup artist. She was a fan of the punk band, Siouxsie and the Banshees and would often do her own makeup in the style of the lead singer. A theater teacher at her high school admired her look and asked if she would help do the makeup for a show that he was directing. She agreed. Working on the production made her curious about acting, so she tried an acting class in High School, but she did not find it rewarding.
In college, she decided to try again and enrolled in another acting class, thinking that it would be an easy way for her to get a good grade. She was surprised at how hard the class turned out to be and at how demanding her teacher was. Fortunately, Courtenay tends to excel when she is challenged, or when people think she won’t be able to achieve something. That sort of criticism motivates her to prove the naysayers wrong, so she redoubled her efforts to improve her acting abilities. She was certainly put to the test when she later auditioned for a graduate level acting program. She was told by the man auditioning her that she would never work because her voice sounded too damaged and that the audience in a large theater would never be able to hear her clearly.
When she told her acting teacher about this negative feedback, the teacher suggested that she try taking a voice over class. As soon as Courtenay got behind the microphone, she felt like she was home. Voice over allowed her to explore her emotional life without needing to project her voice to the back of a large theater. She also didn’t have to memorize her lines, a skill she had always struggled with when working on stage.
Once she realized that voice over was her niche, Courtenay had a clear focus to her career. She eventually moved to Los Angeles, where she faced many other challenges while breaking into the business. But I’ll let her tell you that story in her own words!
VAM 187 | Interview with Lucien Dodge, Part 2
Welcome to episode 187 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 back to the second and final part of my interview with voice actor and voice director, Lucien Dodge! You may know Lucien’s voice acting work from anime including Sailor Moon, Gundam: The Origin, Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway, Sword Art Online, Demon Slayer, and Fate/Zero! He’s also worked on games such as Dust: An Elysian Tail, League of Legends, Mad Max, and Smite. Lucien also voice directed me in the dub of the anime Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon where I played the main antagonist, Kirinmaru. We had such a great time working together that I was eager to get him on the podcast to talk about his own voice acting experiences and his approach to the art form.
In this episode, Lucien describes what inspired him to become a voice actor and how therapeutic the process of acting was for him, especially early in his career. He goes on to talk in detail about the Meisner Acting Technique and how foundational it was in helping him develop his own acting skills to a professionally competitive level. We then discuss how a technique like Meisner applies to playing cartoony characters and how much traditional acting training supports the more wacky or zany character voice acting you might hear in some animated shows. While an audience might initially be struck by the voice qualities of a certain character, such as Daffy Duck’s lisp, or Bug’s Bunny’s Brooklyn accent, what makes those characters compelling beyond those vocal pyrotechnics is the emotional authenticity of the character. That genuine emotional believability can only be achieved through top-notch acting skills.
Lucien is obsessed with finding that emotional authenticity in all of his work, and I could feel his sensitivity to sub-text when we were working on the dub of Yashahime. That’s why I was so glad to get him on the podcast, so he could share with my listeners how important it is to develop that nuanced understanding of human emotions and what it takes to be able to portray them believably in an acting situation. I’m not the only one who noticed this quality in Lucien. The famous voice actor, Corey Burton, also could see Lucien’s passion for acting and they developed a friendship over the years. Lucien learned so much from Corey about having a professional mindset, especially when Corey invited Lucien to watch a recording session for the animated show, the Boondocks. By observing some of the most talented voice actors in the business, Lucien truly understood just how competitive he needed to be in order to succeed as a voice actor in Los Angeles.
As this episode draws to a close, we wrap up our discussion with Lucien’s advice for the aspiring voice actor. He emphasizes how important it is for your own mental health to realize what aspects of your career are in your control, and what aspects of the voice acting world are not. If you can stay focused on developing the abilities you need to further your career, and let go of the aspects of the voice over industry that are beyond your power to influence, it can help you pursue your voice acting goals with less stress and more ease. Lucien also credits my interview with Jack Angel as helping him develop this more positive mindset.
It’s a great conclusion to our talk together, and I’m excited to share it with you.
VAM 186 | Interview with Lucien Dodge, Part 1
Welcome to episode 186 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 very pleased to share with you the first part of my interview with voice actor and voice director, Lucien Dodge! You may be familiar with Lucien’s voice acting work in anime including Zoisite in the Viz Media dub of Sailor Moon, Amuro Ray in Gundam: The Origin and Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway, Keita in Sword Art Online, Akaza and Kazumi in Demon Slayer, and Waver Velvet in Fate/Zero! In games he’s played Dust, in Dust: An Elysian Tail, Mega Gnar in League of Legends, Buzzard in Mad Max, and Dr. Vanus in Smite. Lucien also voice directed me in the dub of the anime Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon where I played the main antagonist, Kirinmaru. I had such a great time working with Lucien on that dub that I thought it would be a good idea to have him on the podcast to talk about his own voice acting experiences and his approach to the art form.
Lucien and I share a lot of similarities when it comes to our voice acting journeys. We both have a great appreciation for anime, we both were incredibly shy when we were young, and we both became fascinated with what it took to be able to share the most authentic and believable acting performances with our audiences. Lucien grew up in Ithaca, NY where he went to a private school with very small classes. While his school didn’t have an acting program per se, they did encourage all of their students to participate in a play every year. You might think that since Lucien was so shy, he would not have any interest in participating in the school play. It turns out that the opposite was actually the case. Lucien found that playing a character gave him permission to be more courageous and assertive than he would be if he had to perform in public as himself. I had a similar experience when I was young! Acting as a character gave me an opportunity to build up my own courage and confidence without feeling like I was making myself personally vulnerable to criticism.
Fortunately, Lucien’s mother noticed how much acting seemed to be helping him overcome his shyness. She encouraged him to pursue more acting opportunities, and helped him to attend acting classes based on Sanford Meisner’s techniques. She also helped him attend a convention for radio dramas known as the National Audio Theater Festival. But it wasn’t until a family friend gave Lucien the video box set of the anime series, The Slayers, as a birthday present, that Lucien discovered his love for anime. Coincidentally, that was the first anime show that I ever worked on! After Lucien saw it, he was hooked. For his next birthday, his father gave him a microphone and a small 4 track cassette recorder so Lucien could start practicing his voice over skills. Lucien became obsessed with trying out different kinds of voice acting with his new tools. Fun fact: I also had a 4 track recorder when I was young and actually recorded some of my earliest attempts at voice acting on it!
After high school, Lucien decided to pursue voice acting as a career. He spent a year in college, but quickly realized that it didn’t serve his purposes very well, and decided to dive into the voice over industry in New York City. I too began my voice acting career in New York. Lucien and I even got our first New York anime dubbing jobs from the same studio, TAJ Productions where I got my start on The Slayers and he first worked on an episode of Pokemon. Lucien faced many challenges pursuing voice acting in the Big Apple, and during his eventual move out to Los Angeles, but I’ll let him tell you all about his adventures himself!
VAM 185 | Interview with JP Karliak, Part 2
Welcome to episode 185 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 and final part of my interview with the fabulous JP Karliak! You may be familiar with his extensive work in animation including Boss Baby: Back in Action, Spidey and His Amazing Friends, TrollsTopia, Dogs in Space, and the New Looney Toons! In games, he’s worked on Skylanders, Crash Bandicoot 4, and Marvel Avengers Academy. You can also hear him in anime shows like Fate/Grand Order the Movie and Neon Genesis Evangelion. He’s also the founder of Queer Vox, a not-for-profit training academy and community for LGBTQIA+ voice over talent, and co-founder of the non-partisan voter action group, NerdsVote.
In the previous episode, JP shared with us how he broke into voice acting. After seeing Disney’s animated film Aladdin as a child, he was convinced that only celebrities were cast to play animated characters. He pursued a more traditional acting career on stage and screen, but was pleasantly surprised to discover in college that his classmates appreciated his voice acting in their student film projects. One of his professors at the University of Southern California suggested he start taking voice over classes with professionals in the Los Angeles area, and JP quickly realized that he had found his niche!
In this episode, JP tells us what inspired him to become an actor in the first place. It turns out that JP had some very personal reasons why he found acting appealing. As a queer kid growing up in a small town culture that didn’t always approve of him, he had to spend a lot of time pretending that he was actually a straight person in order to fit in. Acting as characters in stories gave him the opportunity to play pretend without being self-conscious or worrying about satisfying other people’s cultural expectations. It was especially exciting for him if the character he was portraying was a powerful villain like his childhood favorite, Skeletor from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe! Inspired by his story, I then share with JP my personal reasons for pursuing acting, including the fact that I didn’t always fit in with the macho male stereotype that I felt pressured to adopt as a young boy. I’m sure JP and I aren’t the only ones who felt drawn to acting because it helped us explore and develop our emotional lives in a healthy way.
We then talk about QueerVox, the academy and community for queer actors that JP helped found with his colleague, and earlier guest on the podcast, Sarah Elmaleh. JP explains the inspiration for starting QueerVox, and how it has less to do with whether or not someone has the acting skills to be able to play someone other than their sexuality or gender identity, and more about making sure that queer actors benefit financially from the rise of queer characters and queer stories in entertainment. We also discuss how the industry keeps moving from a broadcasting paradigm where producers are trying to appeal to the broadest audience possible, to a narrowcasting paradigm where a show’s authenticity is important for securing a smaller, but more loyal fanbase. JP then talks about the different services that QueerVox offers both to aspiring talent, and to producers and casting directors who are looking to hire them! You can find out more about all of it at QueerVox.org.
After that, JP and I end our discussion with his advice to the aspiring voice actor and how he encourages all of his students to simply relax around their fellow industry professionals. It helps if you have interests and hobbies outside of voice over that you can share with your colleagues. That’s something that Dee Bradley Baker also mentioned in my interview with him back in episodes 146 and 147. Not only can sharing outside interests help you build a natural rapport with other voice over people, but it can also help replenish your own artistic well of creativity. Exploring this topic is a wonderful way to end our discussion and I’m happy I get to share JP’s insights with you!