The VO Meter… Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. The VO Meter is brought to you by voiceactorwebsites.com, VocalBooth2Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, JMCDemos, and IPDTL.
And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 43 of the VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
We are extremely excited about today’s guest because I’ve been chasing him since probably the first day I ever started talking to a microphone, or maybe professionally at least. But we’re pleased to welcome the one and only pig himself, Bob Bergen, who you may know as the voice of Porky Pig for the last several decades, but has done a number of other things as well, and we’re so happy to have him on the show.
That’s all folks. Actually, no, we have an entire episode coming up. But yes, thank you so much Bob preemptively for joining us on our podcast.
We are so excited to have you.
Walgreens, because it’s flu season, you live in a place with doorknobs, handrails, and people.
We tried booking a vacation rental on one of those other websites. They don’t always tell you everything.
We are back live from the red carpet. California leads the way for change in America, and so does Kamala Harris.
Rated M for Mature. Claire Redfield.
And who exactly are you?
So yeah, what hashtag should I use to describe a grown man in a tuxedo wrestling a goat?
And prior to 1933, many of them belonged to a variety of political parties that were now outlawed in Germany.
This is the story of how Q got Curly.
Michael here. Thanks for listening to the VO Meter podcast. It’s one of my favorites.
If you’re looking for a great demo like the ones you just heard, check out jmcdemos.com for more information.
We’ll have Bob on the podcast soon, but before that, we wanted to talk about some of our sponsors. First off, VocalBooth2Go. All right, so if you have been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that we’re huge fans of VocalBooth2Go.
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Thanks to all the fine folks at VocalBooth2Go once again. As you’ve seen on all the social media channels, I’m always promoting their products whenever I can because I just love them that much. So thanks again to VocalBooth2Go.
So before we get to our esteemed guest, Bob Bergen, we’re actually going to go into our…
Voice Over Extra brings you the VO Meter reference levels. Uh, seriously guys, that’s the best you could come up with? Hey, it’s your show.
So Sean, what’s going on in your VO world?
Oh my gosh, a lot. It has been a crazy month. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff for my own VO career and for Global Voice Acting Academy.
I just represented them at VO North in Toronto about two weeks ago. I met a lot of wonderful new voice talent, got to reconnect with some industry professionals that we’ve seen at a few of the other larger conferences like VO Atlanta or MAVO, the Mid-Atlantic Voice Over Conference, had a wonderful time. And then I had an amazing training opportunity right in my own hometown in Seattle called the VO Roadshow with some amazing voice over coaches in various genres with Scott Parkin going over the importance of improv and in theater training and then Marilyn Whistler working on commercials and then working on promo and narration with Jeff Howell.
It was just so packed with VO knowledge and insight and just so many wonderful tips and techniques. It’s just an amazing day.
Tom Pinto was there too, right?
No, he wasn’t, unfortunately.
I wasn’t there for this one?
So Tom does work with the VO Roadshow, but the lineup changes depending on their schedule and where they’re going. Oh, okay. But yeah, so it’s usually…
It’s helmed by Marilyn Whistler, and then depending on who else can go, the lineup will change, like I said. So but if you ever have the chance, like this is some of the best training in the country, if not the world, that you can get. So keep an ear out for the VO Roadshow coming…
Like they do workshops throughout the United States. So definitely keep your ears posted for that. I just finished my monthly e-learning projects, and Paul, you actually helped me out quite a bit this month.
Like not only did he voice some scripts for me this month, but he also helped do some sizable editing for me. And my tendonitis thanks you very much.
Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity.
Oh, hey, you’re a good, reliable talent, and you’ve got quick turnaround when I needed it. So thank you again. And then last but not least, I was helping my good friend of the podcast, Steven Reisberg.
He’s a booth director out of Hollywood, California, and he’s doing his Introduction to Commercial Voice Over class with Global Voice Acting Academy. So I was just kind of moderating that and making sure everyone got equal time at the mic, and just kind of helping fielding questions for Steven. So I guess the theme of the month has been education all around.
Yeah, you should never stop learning if you’re doing it right.
Definitely not. And I’ve actually been talking with some people, like with a friend of mine, who is kind of… I couldn’t help but notice that he had kind of not really progressed in the last year or two.
And a big part of that… Thanks, Paul. No, not at all, man.
You don’t sit on your laurels. You’re a rolling stone. But anyways, and that was the thing, is he hadn’t really invested anything.
And unfortunately, it was kind of the thing that was holding him back. He wasn’t investing in training or any kind of workshops or classes or anything like that. And he felt stuck.
And so I was just kind of like, you just you have to get back to basics. Like you can’t cut quarters or take shortcuts because you’re just shortchanging yourself and you’re not going to get the results you want if you don’t have a competitive product that you’re selling. So I think a lot of people kind of they enjoy some initial success due to their own their own talent and their own persistence and perseverance.
But then eventually you hit plateaus. And when those happen, I think it’s more important than ever to kind of get back to fundamentals and maybe get an outside opinion on your reads and make sure that they are as competitive as you think. And if they’re not, then train accordingly.
Yeah, we’ve talked about it before, but I like to make a lot of sports analogies and every Major League Baseball team has a specific hitting coach because even though they’re the best players in the world, they still need to tweak their technique every once in a while. Actually, they tweak it daily in some cases to make sure they’re on top of their game and that’s the way we should really approach it too.
Definitely. I mean, once you get bitten by the VO bug, I think you’re kind of like… you’re stuck for life pretty much.
There’s always more things to learn and more ways to improve.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, anyways, I’ve been ranting about my current events for a while. What about you, Paul?
I have a couple of cool things going on, mostly on the audiobook front, which is where I’ve been spending most of my time. I just wrapped a production on the sixth book in a series for my pseudonym, and another title also for the pseudonym, the fourth book in that series. And I’m about to embark on the fifth for the same author.
So that’s rolling well. And I also signed with a new agent, a local agent, sort of. It’s in Philadelphia.
As listeners may know, I live in Baltimore, but I’m from Philadelphia. So I was lucky enough to be introduced to an agency in Philadelphia by Lisa Leonard, who’s been on the show. We interviewed her at Mabo last year.
And I’m now proud to be part of the Reinhard Agency in Philadelphia. They do some on camera. They do print and film and TV, but also voiceover.
So I’m really excited to be working with them and looking forward to some cool auditions from them.
Very cool. Congratulations.
Thank you. Yeah, it’s something… I was talking to another talent, speaking of events.
Uncle Roy’s Barbecue is recently, and I was talking to John Henry Krause there, who’s also on that roster. And the main thing I really wanted to have was representation in what I still sort of consider my hometown. I was born and raised in Philadelphia.
So having that on my website… Yeah. So having that on my website as being represented in my home city makes me feel pretty good.
So excited about that.
Well, very cool. Well, speaking of reaching out to agencies and stuff like that, I actually was able… I was actually training to…
Or I’m kind of soliciting one agency that I’ve had in mind for a while, but they have a very stringent submission process, including two scripts that they have on their website that they want talent to submit. And so since I had worked with Steven Reisberg recently, I was like, hey, Steven, do you mind if I book some time with you and we can kind of look at these things and make sure I’m giving them what they want? And so, and that’s another thing I recommend when you have an important audition or like in a submission script like this, get an outside opinion, like a trusted coach or colleague or someone like that to kind of help you through it.
So like I feel I felt pretty confident about my reads before, but now now I’m extremely confident about my reads and I’m not really worried about submitting. So I’m just going to set it and forget it and hope for the best.
That’s great. Some coaches we’ve worked with or talked to in the past actually have a service for a fee, but a really reasonable fee. They will do audition-specific coaching.
Everett Oliver is one that comes to mind. He still has that service at myboothdirector.com, and I’ve used it a lot for really important auditions where he gets you ready for that one specific read and you feel much more confident afterward. Mm-hmm.
I mean, it’s all about confidence. It just comes across in the reads and then you just feel like, whether you get it or not, you feel good about the performance.
Right. And then two more event-based things we want to talk about. I was at the vocation conference, the inaugural vocation conference, and hopefully some of our listeners have listened to some of the mini-sos I’ve put out over the last couple of weeks.
That was really a great experience. I really want to thank Jamie Muffet and Karn Gilfrey for allowing the VO Meter, first of all, to be present there, and then also allowing me to present at the conference. We’ll have a whole episode devoted to that and VO North, but I just want to mention, if you haven’t already, go and check out some of those mini-episodes because I have to say, not to toot my own horn, but I got some really good interviews with some of the people there.
Definitely. I highly recommend it. I wish I could have been there too.
Yeah, but it was the week before VO North, and I really wanted to be in Toronto, but I really couldn’t do both, and I know you couldn’t either. So it was good we could divide and conquer like that and get to both events.
Divide and conquer. Exactly. It was great.
We’ll have to reconnect in Virginia or something. Who knows?
There we go. And the last event-based thing I want to mention is I’ve been invited to be a presenter again at the Camp VO Conference, which is happening April 30th through May 3rd. It’s going to be in Texas.
It’s being put on by Liz Atherton at Cast Voices. And some of the people you mentioned actually are going to be there. Scott Parkin is going to be the emcee and presenting.
Everett’s going to be there too. Uncle Roy’s going to be there. And a bunch of other coaches and talent all at an actual camp, which is going to be fantastic.
So everything’s going to be camp-themed. Y’all ride a campfire, singing campfire songs and roasting s’mores and sleeping in bunks.
There’s going to be an obstacle course?
Maybe. Maybe some canoeing, some kayaking. I don’t know.
It’s going to be really exciting though. I can’t wait. That’s a paddling.
So registration is open now. If you want, look up on Facebook. I know there’s an event page there.
If not, contact me and I’ll send you the information on how to register. There’s only 150 participants capped. So if you want to get in, get in now.
And we’ll see you at Camp VO.
Very cool. Well, congratulations on that too, man. It sounds like it’s been a big month for you.
Yeah, it’s been fun. So we’ll get to the interview with Bob Bergen in just a moment. But before we do, I want to tell you about our sponsor, Tim Page and Podcast demos.com.
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Now Tim has actually done podcast demos for both Sean and I, and all I can say is that he and his team were amazing. His script writer created original scripts perfect for my voice and personality, as well as reflective of current popular podcast genres. I recorded in the comfort of my own home studio, and Tim worked his mastering magic.
The whole process only took a couple of days, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Tim is a consummate pro and so easy to work with. So thank you again to Tim Page and Podcast Demos.
All right, thanks again, Tim and podcastdemos.com. So we’ll get into our interview with Bob in just a few minutes, but before that, it’s time for our…
Questionable Gear Purchase.
So, Questionable Gear Purchases. Do you have any QGPs this month, Paul?
I do, unfortunately.
I was joking.
We talked about this might be a transitional point for us on the podcast, maybe. I mean, seriously, I doubt it.
I don’t know if I can take it seriously, but we should tell them what we’re talking about first before they’re too confused.
Yeah, so you actually brought up the topic, so why don’t you introduce it?
So I was joking with Paul the other day, and let me just prequisite this by saying, I am very happy and blessed to have all the equipment I have. I’m very happy with the microphones I have. I’m happy with the setup I have.
But even so, I was looking on all the usual spots on eBay and Reverb, and the Sweetwater used gear marketplace and what have you, and I was like, oh, look at all those TLM 103s for $600. And then Paul was like, no, Sean, work off the ledge, what’s wrong with you, man? And I was like, I’m just looking, Paul, it’s okay.
This was me talking.
I know, and that was the weirdest thing. It was like a Freaky Friday kind of moment.
And so I think that’s part of it is that I mean, I’ve been using the same setup now for probably like the last, at least half a year, if not like eight months or so. And then I think the only other thing I’ve bought since then was the Apogee mic that I mentioned a few episodes ago. And again, that serves a pretty specific purpose.
But it was just funny to me, it’s like this idea that even though you’re completely happy with your setup, I mean, you’ve got all of your knobs dialed in and you’ve got all of your plugins or what have you, or everything is kind of adjusted to you. There’s still that little shoulder devil, that little voice in the back of your head that’s like, what if you had that 103 again? You used to love it.
You love the sound, Sean. Why did you let it go?
And distant stuff make the heart grow fonder, I guess. But, I mean, there comes a point where, I mean, you just have to put the practical hat back on and be like, no, you’re fine. It was too sensitive.
It was not meant to be. Maybe another time. And so, luckily, I was able to kind of prevent, I talked, or thanks to Paul, I kind of, we talked me off of the cliff and I didn’t make any questionable gear purchases this time.
So, yeah, we basically are thinking maybe we might have to sunset the segment. Again, I don’t trust myself nor Sean to really do that, but the idea is we think we’ve hit the point of diminishing returns, and I’ll go out with a bang with this last hurrah in the segment. I’m now using, for the third time, a RØDE ProCaster dynamic mic.
And the weird thing is I actually think I bought a defective one before and didn’t realize it. I ended up returning it because I didn’t like the way it sounded. But what happened was when I plugged it in, it had no gain whatsoever, and I thought that was just the way it sounded.
But it turns out that I must have had a defective one because I plugged this one in and it was just sweet, and I have enough… it’s a dynamic, but I have enough gain from my AGO6 that I can power it without any distortion whatsoever. And it’s kind of exactly what I need for the audio books and long-form narration.
And honestly, I’ve been using it for most everything lately. We had an interview that’s coming up in a couple of weeks, maybe a month, with the folks at Lotus, and they said, hey, that sounds great. So if they think it sounds great, who am I to argue?
And that’s my… the point I’ve come to right now is that I need to stop because I’ve hit the point of diminishing returns. At some point, you have to be happy with what you have and know that because you’re booking work and people are paying you for it, you probably don’t need to mess with it.
Next month on Questionable Gear Purchases, Paul goes off the deep end. But…
Always… I make no guarantees.
I know, I know. I’m just teasing. But that’s the thing is it’s like, it’s so easy, and people go through this at all stages of their career.
This idea that the equipment will somehow give you, like, will give you an edge or give you the edge, you know? And it’s not true. I mean, just yesterday, I was helping a colleague of mine, Sunday Muse, who’s this wonderful animation actress who works out of Canada and LA.
And there was somebody there who’s just like, what is the best animation mic? Do I need that? I was like, no, you don’t need the most expensive mic.
Not everyone is going to benefit from a U87 or a 103. And I was like, there’s plenty of mics in the 300, 200, and now sub 200 category. That will be just fine for wherever you’re at.
And if you get to that point, and we also talked about whether or not an isolation booth, like a whisper room or studio bricks was necessary, and I really feel like you will know, like you will be able to answer for yourself these questions when they become an issue for you, because if you realize I need quiet 24-7, yes, you need a controlled space, which might be an ISO booth or a purpose-built room. Like if a studio asks you, do you have a 103 or a 416, then maybe you need those things to work with those people. But until you’re being presented with those questions, whatever you have, whatever you can afford, is probably doing you just fine.
Yeah, absolutely. So hang in there with whatever you have. We’ve quoted our friends at VOBS quite a bit, but I’ll say it again, Dan Leonard likes to say, the best mic for VO is the one you have.
With a few exceptions.
With a few exceptions, yeah.
So check back next month where we’ll be absolute liars.
Completely contradict ourselves.
But hopefully we’ll come up with something else to fill this hole in the episodes.
Sensible gear purchases?
Maybe.
Maybe. So that wraps up this month’s questionable gear purchases. Before we jump into our interview with Bob, I just want to tell you about one of our great sponsors, IPDTL.
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Hi, everybody, and welcome to this interview portion of the VO Meter. Our guest today really needs no introduction, but his list of credits is so impressive, I’m going to do one anyway. So you probably know him as the voice of Porky Pig, but not only has he also voiced Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, and numerous other iconic characters from the Looney Tunes franchise, he’s provided countless voices for commercials, cartoons, video games, anime, and animated features for the last 40 years, including my personal favorite, Bucky the Squirrel from The Emperor’s New Groove.
In addition to this impressive list of credits, Bob has spent the last 30 years teaching and mentoring aspiring talent from all ages and walks of life. Ladies and gentlemen, our guest today is the incredible Bob Bergen. How are you doing, Bob?
That was a little booming. I’m just kidding. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
It’s a pleasure to have you.
Bob, thanks for being here.
Fight over me, guys. Fight over me.
Bob, before we get started, I just want to say thanks, because you may not know this, but I’ve talked about this on the show, how there are a certain few people that I really credit with launching my career, a career as fledgling as it is. But you were one of those people that took me under their wing virtually early on and gave me some great advice. It really set me on the right path.
And I want to thank you in person to all of our listeners for doing that and being such a great mentor.
Well, I appreciate that. And let me just say that you were one of those people who I saw just asking the smart questions and asking those of us who work, guys, what do I need to do? How can I make this better?
So I appreciate that you were so driven.
Well, again, it’s mostly due to your expert tutelage along with the other people I mentioned on the show. But I just want to thank you again.
My pleasure.
And just tagging…
Or never mind, go ahead. It’s going to be too long if we just spend the next hour just talking about how great Bob is.
Although we could do that.
I just want to tack my thanks on to Paul’s.
My pleasure, guys.
So Bob, we have a lot of new talent that are listeners and subscribers of the podcast. And as such, the first thing we want to ask you is, now in the year 2019, how would you suggest people go about starting their career in voiceover?
I think they need to answer that question by asking themselves another question. What do they want out of their career in voiceover? Because the answer of how you started is based on what you want out of it.
Okay, fair enough. So let’s say someone started their journey and they’re looking for information, or maybe even started jumping in doing some recording. What’s the biggest mistake people make when jumping into VO?
They’re starting to record. You don’t record because you want to. You study acting, you study improv, you become the best actor you possibly can.
Then you study voiceover, and you allow this process to happen organically. You know, those of us who are working in the business and those of us who started when I did, didn’t just buy home studio equipment and say, now I’m ready to record. You might be ready to push buttons, but you’re not necessarily ready to go out there and show your wares.
So my suggestion to anybody, no matter what you want out of your voiceover career, is study acting. Become a really, really, really good actor. Study improv.
Then you study voiceover, and you figure out where you fit into the industry, and that’ll also happen organically. As you hit the copy, as you take different classes, you might find, oh my gosh, well, everybody has to do commercials, but you might go, hey, I love doing commercials, I hate doing promo. I love doing promo, I hate doing narration.
I can’t stand audiobooks, but I love games. So that just happens with time and experience. But it has nothing to do with having a home studio.
So do you find that’s what, since you’ve worked with so many different acting students, do you find that’s what they struggle with the most is just lacking that foundation?
Yes and no. For what I do, I don’t allow anybody to take my class unless they’ve got an acting foundation. What I found is, and this has happened with, I’ve had Emmy and Oscar-winning and nominated actors take my class, and I found, oh, they can’t do it to a microphone.
They’re wonderful actors for a camera, but they have a difficult time adjusting technically for the mic. So that’s what they need to learn, is how to do the technical aspects of voiceover and still keep their acting authentic. But the majority of the people pursuing, at least animation today, are actors.
And they come to the mic, they come to the class with a solid acting background. Now when I say solid acting background, for me, that could be college drama, that could be high school drama, but you can’t use my class as your introduction to voiceover because you’re going to be spinning your wheels and wasting your money. I can’t take your check if I’m your first class because it’s a disservice to you.
Wow, that’s great to hear. So you actually turn people away if they’re not a right fit for your style and coaching curriculum, right?
Oh, almost every day of my life, someone will contact me and say, I’m interested in your class, and my class does have a long wait list. So if they don’t have any experience, I’ll still put them on my list and say, now you got three years to study acting. So if they’re really interested in doing this, they’ll take my advice.
If what I’m advising them to do, which is to become a good actor, turns them off, they’re not right for this to begin with.
So we were talking a little bit about sort of technical adjustments, like how on camera have difficulty, or on camera actors have difficulty transitioning to voiceover. You have this longevity to you because I feel like you have this adaptability when it comes to different genres and mediums, so do you really approach, say, like an animated feature differently from a video game or a commercial?
Not in the acting, but I do technically, because in an animated feature… Well, you know, it’s interesting you use those as the comparisons, because an animated feature, as well as a game, you’re working solo. Not Han Solo, by yourself.
So your scene partners are rarely, if ever, in the room with you. You mentioned The Emperor’s New Groove. I never in my life have been in a studio with Patrick Warburton, but we have fabulous chemistry together on screen because of a really good director.
For a game, you’re working all by yourself. The acting choices are identical. You’re still looking at the script, and you’re still thinking to yourself, all those acting choices that we have to do, be it voiceover or on camera, who am I talking to, what’s our relationship, where are we in this scene?
And how you deliver that performance is based on those choices. The difference is, your scene partner is not there. The difference in on camera is, you can’t rely on a glance, a look, that eye contact to convey your acting.
It all has to be done vocally. But as far as your acting technique, it’s exactly the same.
So Bob, I’m curious. You mentioned turning people away who don’t have an acting background for your courses. I’m curious how many people or what percentage of people that you’ve done that with.
You actually see stick around and maybe pop up a year or two later versus how many just put their head down between their legs and say, oh, well, I’m just going to give up then.
I don’t know. I mean, I can tell you that in the 30 plus years I’ve been teaching, and I vet people pretty well when they call me about my class or they email me just to find out what their background is, I think I can count on just one hand the people who the first time I saw them at the mic realized, oh, they’re not nearly as advanced as they think they are, and refunded their money right there and then. I’ve only had one other person, one person during that process who begged to stay in the class, and I said, okay, and it was a huge mistake because they wasted their money.
They were not, they didn’t have the skill set to make choices and take direction. Without that skill set, you know, I can’t advance you. I can’t take you from point A to point B.
My goal is to take you to point M if I can. But if I can’t take you a few steps more than what you came in with, it was just not a good fit. So now I’m a little bit more specific and strict with my own rule that I’m sorry, I just, I cannot in good conscience take your money if I don’t think that you’re going to grow in this class.
But those who contact me, I would say the majority of the people that contact me really do have an acting background. First of all, I teach my eight week class in LA. So the people pursuing voice over in Los Angeles have more of an actor’s philosophy than people who study voice over outside of Los Angeles.
And because animation is primarily done in LA, there’s a perceived, I guess, pecking order in pursuing animation voice over in LA. So there’s more actors, more of a serious actor mindset here than elsewhere. And I do teach weekend classes around the country.
For my weekend classes, I’m a little bit more lenient, because my eight-week class in Los Angeles is an entree. The weekend classes around the country, that’s an appetizer. I’m teaching those classes for the person who goes, oh, my God, I want to do this, and how do I do it?
Well, you got to move to LA. I’m booked. I’m teaching the weekend and the convention panels to look for that one person.
I’m looking for me. I’m looking for the person that mirrors who I was when I was starting out. And everybody else is going to decide, animation is not right for me.
I don’t have it in me to move to LA. I don’t want to work that hard. I just want to do what I’m doing right here in my home studio.
I’m loving my e-learning, I’m loving my audiobooks, and that’s fine with me. But sometimes you don’t even know if what you’re doing is what you want until you try other things.
Well, for our listeners to hear that, I want you to know that this is not Bob being mean or not wanting to help people. This is a sign of a good coach, someone that will actually turn you away if they don’t think you’re a good fit. So take those words to heart.
I also think that a really good demo producer won’t take somebody’s money if they don’t think that they’re at demo level. And any good demo producer can make any lousy actor sound brilliant with enough direction and some superb editing. But it’s a disservice to the actor, also a disservice to the demo producer when that actor tries to get noticed from that demo, gets a meeting with that agent, gets up to the microphone to fresh copy, and can’t live up to that demo, because that agent is going to say, who did your demo?
Because that agent or that casting director is going to make a mental note or even sometimes a written note to avoid that demo producer because they’re sharks. They will take a dollar from anybody who has a checkbook, and that to me is unethical.
Absolutely.
Wonderful. So we talked a little bit about skillset, and can you give us some basic idea of what you feel skills and mindset-wise are important for a successful animation voice actor?
Well, I will say that it is to your advantage to be versatile vocally, but it’s not necessary. You have to be a brilliant actor. The script is a skeleton.
Your job is to give it a body. You need to be able to see that script. And if it’s a full writer script, which has exposition and the other character’s dialogue, that’s gold.
We don’t always have full writer scripts. Oftentimes we just have the dialogue scripts. But if you have the full writer script, you’ve got things to act and react to.
So the really well-trained actor is going to see between the lines and find intent to react to. Where the untrained actor or the mediocre actor is just going to see their lines and read their lines, even by making choices, in a funny voice. Or just try to give it variety without the layers.
And there are many layers of specific intent that you’re storytelling, that you’re reacting to, that you make choices of what your character’s intent was before the scene ever started. Which is what makes your audition interesting. Which is what gets you a callback.
These are the difficult parts of doing animation that Dee Bradley Baker and Billy West and Debbie Derryberry, I can go on and on and on. Candy Milo, do without thinking. It’s instinct because they’re so brilliant at what they do.
It’s how Streisand approaches a song. It’s in her soul. It’s in her DNA.
I don’t think she has to sit around and go, how do I tell this story accurately? She just does it well, and she’s been doing it well since she did nightclub performing back in the 60s. I think you’re born with this skill, but I think what acting classes do is they teach you or they bring to you very specific techniques so you can recreate these skills at will consistently.
Well, you get to the point where it becomes muscle memory, right? Or even brain muscle memory. If you get to that point, you’re much better off focusing on your performance than having to focus on every nuance in the script.
When you’re at that point, you’re demo ready. It’s not, do I have enough voices for a character demo? When you’re at that point where you can take any script and give it a contemporary, believable read.
Here’s the other thing that people need to understand about cartoons. Well, I’ll ask you guys. Now you guys do various genres of voiceover, correct?
Yes, sir.
So you both do commercials?
Yep.
So when it comes to your commercial demo, you want to make a commercial demo that reflects commercials in 2019. You’re not going to take a piece of copy from 1980, right? Same with promos.
You’re going to do a promo for your promo demo that reflects programming today. That’s something that was on ABC in 1990, correct?
Correct.
Here’s the mistake people make in animation demos. They want to show off how many voices they can do, how many different characters they can do. Here’s what they’re not thinking about.
It’s the same thing that we think about for other demos. Where do I fit in today’s animation landscape? How do I fit into adult swim?
Let’s say robot chicken at midnight on Cartoon Network, as opposed to PBS Kids at 7 a.m., as opposed to Bob’s Burgers on Fox Network, as opposed to Cartoon Network at 3 p.m., as opposed to Disney XD. And who directs those shows, and who casts those shows, and who produces those shows? Because you’re going to know, if you want to do a State Farm commercial on your commercial demo, you’re going to research online, what is the State Farm’s current flavor?
Who is their intended audience? What are they advertising, and who are they advertising to? This is the layer to the character demo and the game demo that people don’t think about.
The ones that think about it get an agent from their demo, because they’re one step ahead of the herd, who are just going, but I’ve got great voices. It’s not about how many voices you do. How do you fit into the landscape of today’s animation industry?
That’s brilliant.
I hope our audience is taking notes, because first they got a master class on acting, and now they got one on marketing. So where to next?
Wherever you guys want to go.
All right.
Well, Bob, you mentioned how demo production has changed in animation. What has changed most about the industry in general since you started several decades ago?
When I started out, it was so much more difficult to break into voiceover. When I started out, I took my first class in 1978. I got my first cartoon in 1982.
At that time, we had three networks. These networks, all they had was Saturday morning cartoons, a three- to four-hour block.
The people working in animation, who were Janet Waldo, Dawes Butler, June Ferre, Frank Welker, Michael, they had everybody they needed. The opportunity to break in and play with these heavy hitters who could cover… And they didn’t hire kids back then.
They hired adults to do kids’ voices. And there were no animated features. Maybe one every five to seven years.
It was so much more difficult to break into animation back then. Cut to today. We have 24-7 animation networks.
We have every major studio in Hollywood with a thriving animation department. We have primetime animation on multiple networks. We have games.
We have webisodes. We have Amazon, Hulu, Netflix that are producing animation both for children and adults. There are more opportunities to break into animation today than ever before.
For people to complain that it’s difficult to break into animation should have tried in 1982.
Does that make it easier or harder for someone who’s looking just to get started? For instance, can there be a paralysis by analysis or an embarrassment of riches where they say, well, I just don’t know who to start with because there are so many networks. Whereas when you were coming up, you just had to contact three producers or three heads of a network.
And how did I find them?
Probably physically knocking their doors.
I actually had to wait to get an agent to introduce me to them. Now, I was fortunate that a family friend introduced me to Casey Kasem, who introduced me to his agent. I called Mel Blank at home.
I called Hannah Barbera, and they introduced me to Dawes Butler. I had a phone book. But people today, they’ve got the internet.
You can, from LinkedIn, to Twitter, to Facebook, to Instagram, there is not one person from the studio head to the working actor who is not accessible. The least people can do today is decide what they want out of their career. Let’s say what they want out of their career.
I used Robot Chicken as an example before because I worked on the show. Let’s say their goal in life is to work on Robot Chicken. You go to IMDB and you see that list of credits from writers to actors who have worked on that show.
You see the list of actors and you cross-reference who their agents are. You’re going to see the same agents. Atlas, DPM, CESD, SBV, AVO, Abrams Artists.
Logic tells you, you’ve got to be with one of those agents if you’re going to get called for this show. And when these actors working on the show are called, if you’re with the same agent, that agent can pitch you, along with that other actor being booked. So then you go to that agent’s website and you listen to their demos.
The availability to research what you want out of your animation career is so accessible and available to every human being on the planet. Now, you might also look at that information and go, all these people live in Los Angeles. Hey, the logical brain side of my head says, I gotta live in Los Angeles.
Da, da, da, ding, ding, ding, yay. So I’m telling you right now, it is so much easier to prepare and plan. I’ll tell you what else you can do.
If your goal in life is to do, let’s say, a Marvel animated series. Well, just research every Marvel animated series over the last five years. Who cast it, who voice directed it, who acted in it, who were their agents.
You will see casting directors, voice directors like Colette Sunderman, Christie Reed. Those are the two that come to my mind right now, because those are the two I’ve worked on with Marvel. Well, so let’s say you get to the point where you are ready for representation.
Hell, let’s say you’ve got an agent, and you get that audition from your agent for a brand new Iron Man series. And you say to your agent, who’s voice directing it, who’s casting it? It’s Colette Sunderman.
Go back to your research. Okay, she did three Spider-Man series. She did Marvel’s Avengers Assemble.
Let me watch a few episodes. I get the feel. Let’s see who’s producing this show that I’m auditioning for.
Ask your agent. Let’s see who produced these past shows. Ooh, a couple of the same producers.
I know the feel. I know the style. So you can prepare your audition based on what they’ve done before.
Is it what they’re looking for? You don’t know, but odds are pretty good. So my point is, people, there’s no excuse not to know how to pursue this business today.
There was a huge excuse back when I started because I didn’t know. But I’ll tell you what I did do, guys. I made sure that I met and rubbed elbows with Don LaFontaine, Danny Dark, Ernie Anderson, Frank Welker, Don Messick, June Ferre.
I made sure that I, for what I wanted out of my career, which was the top, I did not associate with anybody who was below the top, whether it was socially or through business. I worked my ass off. I didn’t want my name associated with anything less than what I really wanted out of my career, because that was a waste of my time.
This is gold. It’s so, I mean, it seems so incredibly valuable and so refreshing to hear, because even though the, obviously the means of research have changed with the internet, like that mindset of initiative and confidence in your own ability to find this information is a rarity these days. So I think it’s really important for people to take note of that and understand that they can, especially in this age of social media where you see people trying to reach out to the wisdom of the crowd to try and kind of help them plot out the point that they should be deciding for themselves.
Well, I will say this, and I’m not patting myself on the back, but I do think my kind of tenacity is a rarity, but it always has since the very beginning of show business. This kind of nothing will stop me. I know what I want out of my career and I will do anything to get it, has always been there for the likes of Meryl Streep, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Robin Williams.
I could go on and on, Dustin Hoffman, with the people who did not get into this to make a dime, got into this to be the best. There’s a difference. To this day, I don’t wake up every day auditioning hoping to book it.
I don’t wake up every day hoping to make money at it. I wake up every day blessed that I can act. And if I can get a booking out of it, that’s icing on the cake.
I was at a Christmas party a few years ago at an agent’s office, and I was talking with Rob Paulson at the buffet table. And I said, buddy, did you get into this to make money? He goes, I’m still not into it to make money.
I never think about making a dime at this. I’m fortunate. That’s a fortunate byproduct to make money at this.
I said, but buddy, everybody’s getting into this to make money. He goes, well, I know, and that’s a shame because that’s why people settle. That’s why people do Fiverr, because they just want to get paid at it.
They don’t want a career, and they don’t want to be the best. And when Rob and I got into this business, all you wanted to be was the best. The best actor you could possibly be.
So I believe we know the answer to this. I mean, you’ve got this, like we said, this incredible drive, and you were wonderful at researching your goals and kind of working toward them with this laser-like focus. But aside from being a great self-promoter, you seem to have an incredible relationship with your agents.
So I wonder, do you feel that they’re still important today, and do you think they will still have that level of importance in the next five or ten years?
Depends what you want out of your career. I was told early on in my career, do not base the kind of representation and respect you get from your agent on your income. If your agent says, yes, I want to represent you, you have as much value as the actor who’s making seven figures.
But what you need to do, because your agents are not psychic, is to know exactly what you want out of your career and give your agent the very specific tools to be able to agent you. I’ll give you an example. Here’s something I teach my students.
If you’re interested in working in animation, to tell your agent, I want to work in animation, who doesn’t? Everybody does. But if you want anything out of your voiceover career, the more specific your goals, the more specific in your results.
So for people at the level of having a voiceover agent for animation in Los Angeles, they’ve done certain things. They’ve probably trained, they probably have a great demo, they’re probably SAG-AFTRA, and they probably met a handful of the animation casting directors and buyers. So what I tell my students is, so let’s say you are with…
I’m going to make up an agent right now just for sake of conversation. You’re with AVO. That’s Sandy Schnar, who’s the animation agent.
Look at Sandy’s roster of actors, and you’ll see names like Candy Milo, you’ll see Gray Griffin, you’ll see some really just brilliant animation actors, and go to their IMDB and see where they’ve worked. Cross reference to who you’ve worked with, who you’ve had auditions for, who you’ve had callbacks for, and have a sit down with your agent, and say, now listen, I’ve met Colette Sunderman, I’ve met Wes Gleason, I’ve worked for Charlie Adler, I’ve had final callbacks with Christie Reed. You represent Gray Griffin, who was on this series with Christie Reed.
You work with Candy Milo, who was on this series of this series and this series with Colette Sunderman. When your actors get called for their series regular, please pitch me as an incidental. In fact, last week, I just did a cold reading workshop with Christie Reed, and it went really, really well.
So the actor represented by the agent has to sit down and give them a body of work and goals to represent. Most actors, the moment they get that agent, they’ll pop on Facebook, congratulate me, I just got an agent. Who cares?
That’s not a reason to post. That’s an ego brag, by the way. If you want to talk about how to ruin your career on social media, ask me that later.
But I don’t care if you have an agent. I don’t care if you’re with JE or Stars in San Francisco. I don’t care if you’re with somebody in Orlando.
You do the same thing for your career. You sign with a regional agent, you’re living in Dayton, and you sign with an agent in Portland, you fly out to Portland, and you have a dent… You take that agent to dinner, and you give that agent a road map for what you want out of your career.
99% of her actors or his actors will not be doing this. The cream floats to the top. And if you really want to have a career in mind, give that same information to every agent you’ve got.
It’s amazing how many people forget this is a relationship business. I’ve talked to so many people about contacting their agents, and they say, well, I don’t know if I should be bothering them. Should I be asking my agent this?
I remember one time I sent… I put a note on Facebook, which you’ll probably not like, that I sent all my agents Christmas gifts. And somebody said, wow, what a great idea.
I said, no, it’s not. It’s just common courtesy to be a human being. It’s a relationship business when it comes down to it.
It is a relationship business. I mean, that’s all actually it is, is just a series of relationships. I just posted on my Facebook page ways to get an agent’s attention when submitting.
And, you know, you don’t put seeking representation in a subject line because that’s what everybody says who won’t get representation. You don’t do a laundry list of jobs you’ve done because who cares? You give a list of the ad agencies, the commercial buyers, the casting directors, the relationships that you bring to the table, because that’s what you have that has value.
If the agent has the same relationships with the same buyers, you’re a very easy sell. If you bring a relationship the agent doesn’t know, you bring added value, but you nailed it. It is all about relationships, certainly talent, certainly your skill set, but there’s so many talented people out there that cannot get arrested in this business because they have absolutely no idea how to put the business in the term show business.
Yeah, it really is amazing. So Bob, you talked about how living in LA is still a must for doing animation. Do you think that will ever change?
And if so, how?
I do think it will change, and here’s why. Thirty years ago, if you had told me that the majority of voice over would be non-union, people could make a decent living non-union, and they would be living outside the major markets, auditioning for major products, I would have said, you crazy girl. Today, that’s the reality.
So I can remember a few years ago, I was working at Disney, and I asked the executive producer on a feature, would you ever consider hiring a voice over actor outside of Los Angeles? And he said, not today. But he said, he goes, look through that glass.
What is the difference between looking through that glass at the actor in the booth, or looking at a big screen TV over some technical marvel where we could direct them remotely? If they’re what we need, we’ll do that. But fortunately, we have enough actors here today to do this.
Now, they will go to New York to hire that Broadway actor who can’t fly to LA to sing the song in the animated feature. But I think we’re many, many, many, many years away from that technical reality. But I would be arrogant to say that will never happen.
Wonderful. So Bob, I find… We talked about this a little bit, and you see it on social media all the time.
This almost… This resistance, sometimes even bordering on animosity, of sort of pursuing the traditional channels of going through agents and going through the union to become a successful working actor. So I feel like a lot of people just don’t understand how the union can benefit their career and feel like they don’t always have our best interests in mind.
So I know you have been a huge proponent for the union and have actively worked within it to try and make more positive changes for the voiceover industry. Would you mind telling us a little bit about that?
Well, I mean, I’ll also be the first one to say that I do understand and appreciate why the union is not for everybody. But that’s only because over the last 20 years, the union has allowed the non-union landscape to grow. Why is the union important to me?
Well, again, I didn’t go into this to make money. I went into this to have a career. I could make money selling burgers, flipping burgers, selling shirts.
I can make money. I had four years of day jobs, night jobs, seven days a week, seven nights a week, to pay my bills so I could pursue acting in what was considered a professional way. What is professional?
It’s not getting paid for it. See, that’s the difference in today’s world. People will call themselves a working actor if somebody cuts them a check because they acted.
That’s not what I consider professional acting. I consider professional acting with professional standards, which comes with pension and health and residuals. You’re vested in your pension if you’re a union actor if you make benefits in ten years.
And benefits means you make a certain minimum every year. That was important to me because at 18, I knew someday I’m going to be 65. I knew that I needed health plans and whatnot.
That’s any smart business person. I needed legal representation in case I wasn’t paid. That’s what comes with working union.
But we’re generations in with actors making a fabulous living at Voice Over without the need of a union to supply their pension because they’re investing in stocks like most Americans do, and they’ve got private health care, and they’ve got Obamacare, whatever. So I totally understand people not wanting or needing the union. But here’s the thing, guys.
It was always difficult to join the union. It was always hard to get vested. It was always difficult to make the minimum for health benefits.
Nothing has changed there. The only difference is there are more people today going, I don’t want to work that hard. I just want to make a living at Voice Over doing what I love and the privacy of my own home.
And I’m happy making any kind of money. And oh, my gosh, now I’m making six figures doing this and I still don’t need the union. Well, that’s great.
So mazel tov. That’s terrific. But I will tell you guys, I get emailed every day of my life.
I’m doing really well in non-union. I’m making a lot of money. I’m supporting my family.
I’m living outside the major markets, and my cost of living is less, but I really want to do cartoons. Okay, you got to walk away from all that and come to LA. Yeah, well, I can’t do that.
Do not give me that excuse. I attended a taping of Inside the Actors Studio years ago, and Jay Leno was the guest. And he was asked about, you know, how difficult was it to get the tonight show?
And Jay Leno’s rolling his eyes. It’s always been difficult. It’s difficult.
It’s difficult to get into the comedy. It’s always difficult to get in front. Guys, it’s no different today.
It’s just actually there’s more opportunities if you do want it. But why is the union important to me? Can I touch upon why there’s animosity?
Yes, please.
Absolutely, yeah.
Okay, so here’s what a lot of non-union people don’t understand. So when we see, oh my God, this paid… Is it called GVAA?
Is that what it’s called?
Yes. They’re a sponsor of the show, actually.
And my employers.
Well, when people say, hey, it needs the GVAA rates, that is good. That’s a great thing. People don’t understand.
We don’t give a shit. Can I say shit? Sure.
We don’t give a shit what our session fees are. That is not the value that we have on this voiceover job. It’s that this pays into our pension and health.
It’s that it might pay residuals. We don’t make a living on session fees. We make a living on residuals.
Now, over the last 20 years, 80% of voiceovers gone non-union. Let’s go back 20 years ago. 80% more of this work was union, which meant that 80% of this work paid into our P&H.
Now, every time an actor works in a union job, a portion of what the producer pays goes into the pension pool. Not for that actor, for the entire union. When I got into this business, if you made benefits, you had zero monthly premiums.
Once you made a minimum, you just got health benefits for a year, for you and your family. As the work started to erode, going more and more non-union, I can remember that that first premium payment we had to pay was 50 bucks a month. Now, the average working American is going, I wish I only had to pay 50 bucks a month.
When you go from paying zero to 50, that was a punch in the gut. But it was going away. The union work was going away.
It was being taken by these non-union actors. And as much as we begged them, please don’t do this to us. We wouldn’t do this to you.
See, before the internet, very few people worked non-union because they didn’t want to hurt their fellow actor. They didn’t want to drive the work non-union. They didn’t want to give buyers more non-union options to hire.
And as anonymity took hold because you’re working in the privacy of your own home, and as we got further and further away, both technically and geographically, from what a union actor was, people don’t relate to each other anymore. But it’s still… the outcome is the same.
Less of the work is union. It’s much harder to get union opportunities. I mean, let’s be honest, guys.
If you live in Dayton, how many union auditions will you see a day? You can’t just walk away from your thriving non-union career and go, I’m only going to work union. But we let that happen organically.
Now, I will tell you that I do have a proposal in play at the union to reclaim the union work. But part of my proposal allows today’s non-union industry to join the union and continue working with their non-union buyers for a period of time. It’s radical.
Wow, that’s huge.
It’s huge. It’s been approved by two major committees. I’m waiting to hear about more.
I’m not holding my breath, I’ll be honest with you. But to me, it’s the only way, the only way we’re going to reclaim some of this work. And it is to…
We cannot ask people to walk away from a five- and six-figure non-union income for the luxury to try to compete in the union world, especially when they just don’t see a lot of auditions. It’s asinine to ask anybody to walk away from that.
Again, these are smart business people. They have created a really great business life. And we have a very arrogant group at the union who don’t A, know what kind of money people are making in the non-union landscape, and don’t realize that they like it, and they appreciate it, and they’re having fun.
People forget that, and this is something I’ve argued online, people are bitching and moaning about fiber and the $50 job. I laugh because it’s relative. It’s the same conversation the union people had with the non-union people 20 years ago.
Please don’t do this. Well, the non-union people who are doing the GVAA rates, and they’re good rates by the way I’ve seen it, they’re good rates, are begging, please don’t do fiber. Please don’t do these tiny little pay to play things.
People, wake up and smell 20 years ago. This is the same repeat of history that we had with the union and non-union world. But when you make minimum wage, and you’re flipping burgers, and all of a sudden somebody’s offering you 50 bucks to talk in your pajamas, and you get to hear your voice come out of the television or the radio, you hit the lottery.
It’s all relative, and you can’t fight it, because you need one person to say yes. Sadly, there’s millions who will say yes to this deal. Just like there became millions who were happy to take a voiceover job that should pay $1,000 pension, health and residuals, and they were happy to take $500, even $1,000, for that session fee, and forgo residuals P&H.
And it has snowballed into what we now have as an 80% non-union voiceover industry. But it’s all relative, guys.
Well, I appreciate your frankness on that, Bob, and the way you framed it actually makes a lot more sense to me, because I’ve seen these arguments online a lot of times with you, arguing for the union, and I really… The way you framed it makes a lot of sense, and hopefully it’ll make sense to our listeners as well.
And by the way, I do appreciate 100%… There are a few people, I used to be one of them, who would be like, I won’t even discuss non-union… I won’t even discuss FICOR.
I won’t even talk. You guys have hurt me and my industry so badly. I remember the first time I went to…
I taught a workshop in St. Louis, and I never talk about union. I never talk about what you can make in cartoons, because A, they’re a union, and B, there’s a minimum scale. There’s no reason to talk about it.
But the first time I ever heard about a voiceover job being referred to as a client, and I was like, what do you mean client? A voiceover… That’s not a client.
You’re a client. The advertising agency has a client. That’s the person that owns the company they’re advertising for.
But your job… That’s not a client. That’s like a plumber has a client.
You’re not a client. They’re not a client. And I had to get educated that people today, when they’re hired just one time for a voiceover job, they now call that a client.
That doesn’t happen in the major markets. And here’s why it’s hurting people in the non-union markets. So let’s say that you guys do a job for McDonald’s.
Let’s say you do a corporate narration for McDonald’s. You’ll put on your website, recent clients include McDonald’s. Well, we’ve gotten to the point where you submit your demo to Buckwald, Paradigm, Atlas, et cetera, because you want to take your career to the next step.
That client list means nothing to the agents anymore because they know that any job you have, you call a client, and it could be a corporate narration for 300 bucks. In my day, and I hate saying in my day because it makes me feel like I’m a hundred, but in my day…
Get off my lawn.
In my day, a client was a contracted gig. You were the voice of. You were the voice of McDonald’s.
You were the corporate branded voice. So there’s no weight to a list of clients to the major markets, the major agents. It means nothing to them.
And I really think it means nothing to the smaller markets either. But it’s an ego brag for the voice over actor. They just don’t realize they’ve taken the value away from it by calling it a client.
But they do treat their job. And I get it now. It took me years to get.
They seek out. They do cold calling. They actually invoice.
Well, when you’ve got a small business, those are called clients. As a professional actor, I don’t do any of that stuff. I just act.
My agent does all that stuff. But I do understand the business mindset of today’s voice over actor who considers their hire a client. I get it.
It took me a long time to get it. I had to be kicked in the face by a horse.
Well, Bob, you’ve come around.
Well, I’ve come around, but I can also voice the damn horse. So there you go.
There you go. Well, moving away from the business talk for a little while, we want to end the, or at the end of the interview, really, we want to end by talking a little more philosophically. So you had this laser-like focus that Sean talked about, wanting to be the voice of Porky Pig.
Now you’ve accomplished that. And looking back, is there a genre you wish you had studied more, or even now could book more of?
Okay, genre of animation or voiceover in general?
Voiceover in general. Let’s say you always want to do audio books, and you just never got around to it. Is there a genre like that?
It’s a really, really good question. I can tell… The only genre of voiceover that I’ve never had a desire to do, nor will I ever have a desire to do, is audio books.
I would rather sit and watch a great food grow than sit and read a book I would not read for enjoyment. And whoever was the schmuck years ago who said, let’s take a fee based on our finished edited hour, screwed it up for everybody. Nowhere in the history of show business voiceover did anybody say, oh yeah, it should be based on the edited hour.
Because can you imagine actors being paid for 30 minutes worth of work when they do a sitcom? I just don’t enjoy the process of audiobooks. I’ve got many friends who are great at it and love it.
I know many people who wake up every day going, that’s what I want to do. Bless you because I love listening to them. And when I hear an actor who is a brilliant audiobook narrator and takes those characters and makes them real, I have such admiration for that skill, I don’t have it, and I don’t want to learn it.
Everything else, I do. I do because I work my ass off to get to it and to do it, and I train for it, and I still train for it. I work out with coaches.
If I have a major audition for a trailer or a promo, I will work with a coach, because if it’s a contracted job and I really want that contract, you bet I’m going to hire somebody to get me out of my head and take me to the next level. But there is not a genre of voiceover or an area that I sit back and go, God, I wish I had gotten that, because I’ve done it all.
Wonderful. So since you managed to accomplish all of your previous goals, what are some of your new ones for the future of your VO career?
To keep doing exactly what I’m doing, honestly. I mean, the nice thing about what I do is I wake up every morning and there are those new auditions and they’re new. And one of those cartoons might be the next SpongeBob, and one of those commercials might be the branding voice of Toyota.
And I might be the voice of a brand new network that has never launched. So what I love about this business is everything I’ve done for the last almost 40 years, I can continue doing if I knock wood for another 30 or 40 with the same enthusiasm. Guys, I approach every audition with, I get to do this again.
I drive onto a studio lot and go, really? Me? Still?
I have not lost that same giddy, oh my God, I’m doing this, that I had when I started out when I was 18. It has not changed one bit, which is why I still enjoy talking to new people. And I still get so excited when I talk to somebody who still has that, starting out that same, holy crud, I still get this.
And I’ve talked to famous actors who still have it. I mean, you know, I’ve had some famous actors take my class. Lily Tomlin took my class a few years ago, because she wanted to learn and grow.
And she and I have had many a conversation that she still, to this day, when she works on a film, is just as giddy and excited as she was when she first did Nine to Five and Nashville and some of those early films. So nothing has changed in my approach, in my philosophy, and in my enthusiasm and passion for this.
That’s fantastic. I have to think that’s probably… that the people who are still doing it successfully at a high level, they probably mostly have that same attitude.
Our last episode featured Kay Bess, and she just went back to acting classes a few years ago to tighten up her skills even at her advanced career stage. And I think if you have that attitude, it’s probably what keeps you young and keeps you working.
You know, what’s interesting is that people on Broadway during the day, they’re in dance class, they’re in voice class. There are people pursuing voice over. Rarely are they the people in the major markets.
It’s usually in the flyover states who get to this, I’m above training, I’m above acting classes, I’m above improv classes, where those of us who are still striving to be better than we are, we’re still trying to be better than we are. So again, it’s not about making more money, and it’s not about booking more. It’s about being great.
It’s about excellence. And I cannot stress enough that whether it’s an on-camera actor, a theater actor, a Broadway actor, a soap actor, or a voice actor, those of us at a certain level just want to be better.
Yeah, we’ve compared on the show frequently to professional athletes. I’m not sure if you’re a big sports fan, but every professional golfer from Tiger Woods to Roy Malkaroy, they still have a swing coach they work with pretty much every day. And it’s a very similar way that we approach being a great voice actor.
Of course, of course. But that word actor, that’s the most important word.
There you go. Well, Bob, you’ve been so gracious in the way you’ve helped the VO community, fought for union rights, and you’ve been so gracious with us today. We really appreciate your time.
I can’t thank you enough for coming on the VO Meter.
Well, thank you for dealing with my technical issues because… Our emails went back and forth. Yeah, my course is not connected.
My IAS is not DN, and I have no idea how to record this on my end. So, bless you guys.
No worries. We’re happy to do all the hard work for you. I mean, you have such an admirable and inspiring perspective into the industry and that striving for excellence, that laser-like focus and drive, and you’re a true gem and resource for the voiceover community, whether it be through your direct teaching or your mentorship or just your example.
So, we’re truly honored to have had you on the podcast today.
How many times has this happened to you? You’re listening to the radio when this commercial comes on.
Not unlike this one.
And this guy starts talking, not unlike myself.
Or maybe it’s a woman that starts talking, not unlike myself. And you think to yourself, jeez, I could do that.
Well, mister, well, missy, you just got one step closer to realizing your dream as a voiceover artist, because now there’s Global Voice Acting Academy. All the tools and straight from the hip, honest information you need to get on a fast track to doing this commercial yourself.
Well, not this one exactly.
Classes, private coaching, webinars, home studio setup, marketing and branding help, members only benefits like workouts, rate and negotiation advice, practice scripts and more. All without the kind of hype you’re listening to right now. Go ahead, take our jobs from us.
We dare you.
Speak for yourself, buddy.
I like what I do. And you will too when you’re learning your craft at Global Voice Acting Academy. Find us at globalvoiceacademy.com.
Because you like to have fun.
Thanks again to Bob for joining us on the interview portion. Like I said during the interview, I’ve been so helped by him, and so blessed that he’s been a friend and mentor to me. And I’m so happy he was finally able to join us on the podcast.
So yes, thank you, Bob. And amazingly, he’s been extremely helpful in my own career. We mentioned during the interview, we both met Bob through the VO Bulletin Board, and he both just kind of took us aside and gave us words of encouragement, and kind of put us on the right, gave us the right mindset, and set us on the right path to do this in a professional way with integrity.
And I know he’s done the exact same thing for hundreds, if not thousands, of voice talent everywhere. So before we leave today, I just want to remind you all to check out Bob Bergen’s site, bobbergen.com, where he actually has a whole voice acting FAQ page, where he talks about a lot of the things he mentioned in the podcast, and the same kind of professional mindset and pursuing voice acting with integrity that he preaches in all of his online postings.
And don’t forget to check out Ask the Pig, where he hosts a Facebook Live event. I think it’s weekly, actually. But check that out, and you can ask him questions, anything that’s on your mind, and as long as he has time, he’ll answer it.
Okay, with that, it’s time to wrap up Episode 43 of The VO Meter.
Measuring Your Voice Over Progress.
Coming up, we have interviews with Debbie Hirata, voice talent out of your neck of the woods, Sean.
Yeah, she’s fantastic. I met her at a documentary narration workshop hosted by Pat Fraley. So she was previously a student of his, and then she kind of went on to carve her own path and achieve her own success.
And she’s a multi-award-winning voice talent. She’s been awarded the Sovas Awards numerous times in numerous genres. And so we’re going to talk about what it takes to have that kind of versatility and longevity in voiceover.
And then following that, we have Jim Cannelli and Sam Euphret from Lotus Productions in New York City. And then finally on the docket is Tracy Lindley, who will tell you about the LinkedIn Edge program she has.
Very cool. Very excited to learn more about that.
So that’s it for this episode. We’ll see you next time.
Thanks for listening to The VO Meter. Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. To follow along, please visit www.vometer.com.
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