VAM 182 | Interview with Larry Reiss, Part 1
Welcome to episode 182 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 my listeners today! This is the first part of my interview with booth director and voice over agent, Larry Reiss! Larry works at my voice over agency, Arlene Thornton & Associates. Arlene herself is the founder and president of the agency. Larry works as her employee where he wears many hats! I’ve worked with Larry primarily in his role as booth director. Back before the Covid-19 pandemic, when I was called into my agent’s office to audition for voice over projects, Larry would often be the one recording me and directing me in the booth. I came to rely on his keen insight and his helpful feedback whenever I came in to audition. These days, voice actors are expected to record from home and direct themselves. This is not an ideal situation. It can be very difficult to effectively direct or critique your own acting. It is far easier and more productive to have someone whose feedback and direction you trust, and I always trust Larry to help me bring out my best when I’m acting!
Larry isn’t just a booth director, however. He also helps manage the mountain of e-mails, phone calls, and auditions that come into the agency at all hours of the day and night! It’s quite a challenge to coordinate all of that communication between casting directors, producers, and the agency’s acting clients! In the midst it all, Larry still finds time to give feedback on actors’ auditions and to promote his acting clients to producers who are looking for talented people to work on their projects! I thought Larry would be a great person to interview so my listeners could get a better sense of what an agent does, what their workday is like, and how an actor can best collaborate with an agent in order to further their career!
We begin this interview by talking about how Larry got started as an agent. It turns out, he and I both joined Arlene’s agency around the same time in 2003! Initially, Larry had studied to be a recording engineer and was planning to get into music production. While he was exploring his employment options, he discovered that there were many studios that needed engineers to help record voice over classes which were often held in the evenings. He became interested in how voice actors could bring such nuanced emotion to their performances. He eventually had the opportunity to work at a casting director’s office in Los Angeles where he spent most of his time helping to cast commercial voice over projects. He and I actually first met at that casting director’s office, where I took one of my first voice over classes shortly after I arrived in Los Angeles at the end of 2001. Imagine my surprise when I signed with my agency two years later and discovered that Larry had been hired there as an agent! It was great to see a familiar face and to get to work with such a talented and knowledgeable booth director!
Larry is not only a wealth of information and experience, but he’s skilled at articulating his insights as well. I’m very grateful that he was willing to spend so much time talking with me. If you’ve ever wanted to understand how an agent thinks and what they’re looking for in the talent they represent, listening to Larry is your chance!
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