VAM 226 | Interview with Alejandra Reynoso, Part 1
Welcome to episode 226 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 excited to present to you my interview with the very talented Alejandra Reynoso! In the world of animation she’s probably most famous for playing Flora in Winx Club for Nickelodeon and Sypha in the popular Netflix animated series, Castlevania. In games she’s played Gallica in Metaphor: ReFantazio, Neon in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, and Dawnbreaker in DOTA 2. In anime she’s Monica Everett in Secrets of the Silent Witch, Hitomi Takamine in The Medalist, Asa in the series of Mononoke films, and the lead character Liko in the new Pokemon Horizons series!
I first came across Alejandra and her work when we were both cast in Pokemon Horizons where I play the adventurous Pokemon professor, Friede. I heard Alejandra’s performance as Liko and found it hopeful, idealistic, and endearing. Then, I was pleasantly surprised when right after Pokemon Horizons, we were both cast in the anime movie Mononoke: Phantom in the Rain where she voiced one of the main female leads, Asa, and I voiced the Medicine Seller. In that film, Alejandra played a grounded, confident young woman who was negotiating the complicated politics of the Japanese Imperial court. After hearing her in both roles, I was really impressed by her acting range and I knew I had to get her on the podcast!
The beginning of Alejandra’s acting journey almost sounds like it was lifted from a Hollywood fairytale! Her father worked as a film projectionist in Los Angeles and she would often accompany him to work in order to spend time with him and watch movies. When she was only 9 years old, an agent saw her playing in the lobby of the movie theater and thought she might do well as a child actress in commercials. Initially, Alejandra’s parents were nervous about her becoming an actress. They were all too familiar with the pressures put on child actors and they worried it would affect their daughter negatively. However, they didn’t want to restrict Alejandra from doing something that might bring her satisfaction, so they decided to ask her if she’d like to take acting classes to see if it would be something she’d enjoy.
Alejandra was open to the idea, and started studying at a school for child actors. It wasn’t long before she had caught the eye of another agent who wanted to represent her for commercial and on-camera work. After working with that agency for around 6 years, her agent then recommended her to their voice over department which was looking for young talent. Alejandra happened to book the very first audition the voice over department sent her which was for the animated show GI Joe: Renegades, where Troy Baker played her father. Alejandra instantly fell in love with voice acting and realized she wanted to make it her primary focus!
After graduating college, she had to make another choice about what career path to follow. She had been offered a job at a technology company who wanted her to work in their marketing department. While it seemed like a reliable choice, she lacked enthusiasm for the opportunity. She couldn’t stop thinking about pursuing an acting career instead. Fortunately, her parents supported her decision, so she notified her agents and told them that she’d be back in LA soon and was available for auditions. Her agents then sent her an audition for a character named Sypha for a new Castlevania animated series which she booked. It was an auspicious sign! It was as if the universe was endorsing her decision to pursue acting!
Much of Alejandra’s journey to becoming a voice actor can seem so serendipitous as to be almost magical, but if you listen closely, you’ll begin to detect the methods and principles that were supporting her on her path. The actions each aspiring voice actor must take in order to be professionally successful will obviously be unique to every actor, but the fundamental skills and mindset underneath those action journeys is very consistent. Pay attention to the things Alejandra did and the mindsets she adopted in order to be in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves. I think you’ll find it very helpful as you pursue your own voice acting goals!
VAM 221 | Breaking Behavior Patterns – How Serendipity Makes You A Better Actor
Welcome to episode 221 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
In this episode, I’d like to expand on some of the ideas I explored at the end of the previous episode, Part 2 of my interview with Jamieson Price. If you haven’t listened to it already, I would suggest you check out both parts of his interview, as well as episode 204 of the podcast entitled, “Go Hunting for the Best Acting and Storytelling”. While those episodes are not required for you to appreciate this one, they can offer you important context for the concepts I’m going to address here.
One of the big pieces of advice that Jamieson gives to his acting students is to go out and live life. In the previous episode, I defined “living life” as maximizing the interactions you have with other human beings by participating in their emotional lives as well as engaging with their ideological beliefs. These life experiences are what an artist draws upon in order to bring authenticity and believability to their artistic creations. Having diverse and enriching life experiences can help broaden your expressive capabilities as a creative in any field.
In the past, living life usually meant getting out of your house and interacting with people and with the world around you. The further away from home you got, the more likely it would be for you to have new and unique experiences that you hadn’t encountered before. It was as if reality was a random experience generator that increased in novelty the more you explored it, like opening up new areas on a map in a video game.
While this can still be the case, a new factor has been added to modern life, the world of online algorithms. Platforms like social media sites and even media streaming services like Netflix, YouTube, or Spotify, analyze your behavior online and try to guess what you might like next based on your clicks, likes, comments, watch time and other points of data. The ultimate goal of these platforms is to keep you engaged with them in order to fully monetize your attention. It’s even been revealed that certain dating apps can employ algorithms whose goal is not always to find you the perfect match, but instead to provide slight mismatches so that you’ll stay engaged with their platform longer, as you continue to look for a more satisfying romantic partner. The financial pressure on these algorithms to curate your experiences so that you won’t leave their respective platforms is immense.
These algorithms also affect real life interactions and shape society in ways we still don’t fully understand. Social media sites can affect not only who we believe we are and who we choose to interact with both online and in real life, but also how we behave when interacting with them. Online algorithms have changed dating and relationships, and also how we relate to family, friends, and perceived foes. We form opinions based on repeated impressions gathered from social media, and algorithms influence the frequency of exposure to certain mindsets. We may believe or disbelieve anything we see online, which then can affect our behavior not only socially, but politically as well. Online interactions can and often do set the tone for in-person interactions. The online world and the real world are no longer separate territories. They overlap constantly and cross-pollinate, in an ever-shortening news cycle of action and reaction, feeding off one another and often spiraling into absurdity. It’s a constant challenge just to maintain one’s equilibrium in the online battle for our attention spans and engagement.
As our lives are managed more and more by algorithms tuned to maximize this engagement, randomness in our everyday interactions is greatly reduced. The algorithm wants to give us something just slightly different from what we had before, but not too different or it risks losing our attention. It wants to keep us on its treadmill so it can make money off of us, and this diminishes the possibility of truly random experiences.
I want to suggest that it’s time to add some randomness back into our lives, both as artists, and as human beings! One of the best ways to do this is to break out of your habitual patterns of behavior. We can become so lulled into submission by the algorithms that provide us with entertainment and other inputs, that we can lose the personal impetus to reach for something new and different. One way to break this pattern of hypnosis is to make a decision that is completely the opposite of what you would normally choose. Do you always go left at a certain intersection? Why not go right this time, and find out what’s down that street you always skip? Do you always pick the same thing off the menu at a certain restaurant? Why not choose something radically different this time, and see what you think? Have you always watched or listened to a certain show, piece of music, or even the same podcast you always go to? Why not explore the kind of entertainment that you might normally ignore or even avoid? What would be the harm in that? If you try an episode of a show that is completely foreign to you, and you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep watching it, but if something in it does intrigue you, you may develop an appreciation for something the algorithm would never have chosen for you, if you hadn’t decided to be different on purpose.
Breaking your habitual patterns of behavior brings an important element back into your life, and it’s called “serendipity”. The serendipitous experience is the one that you were not expecting, and never could’ve planned for, but somehow turns out to be extremely enlightening or beneficial in some way. Our online algorithms tend to limit the chances for a true serendipitous experience, and I’m going to take this episode to explain why I think breaking out of your habitual patterns, and inviting serendipity back into your life is so very important for you at this time, both as a person and as an artist.
VAM 220 | Interview with Jamieson Price, Part 2
Welcome to episode 220 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 man with the amazing voice, Jamieson Price! You may be familiar with his work in anime shows like Gurren Lagan, Fate/Zero, Witch Hunter Robin, and Gankutsuou: The Count of Montecristo. In games he’s worked on World of Warcraft, Persona 5, and the .hack//G.U. series. Jamieson has extensive theater experience and even played a part in Mel Gibson’s film, the Patriot.
In the previous episode, Jamieson shared with me how he got started as an actor. He fell in love with acting in elementary and high school, and eventually majored in theater in college. After working as a theater actor in regional theater for many years, he decided to go to graduate acting school to advance his skills. He got a Master’s degree from the California State University at Long Beach. Right after graduating, he got cast in a show where he met an actress, Dorothy Fahn, who was working on the anime Digimon and suggested that Jamieson audition for parts in the show. Jamieson started booking smaller parts, which led to larger parts, which eventually prompted him to choose voice acting as his primary occupation since it allowed him to spend more time with his family and still be an actor.
In this episode, Jamieson shares with me what inspired him to pursue acting in the first place. It turns out, he was naturally attracted to acting because he so enjoyed playing pretend in imaginary worlds. Immersing himself in a story and in a character was appealing to him, even at a very young age. A pivotal experience for him when he was in middle school was seeing a production of Shakespeare’s play, The Taming of the Shrew, done in the style of Commedia dell’arte Italian mask theater. This performance piqued his fascination with acting specifically, and he started participating in plays himself.
When he went to college, he decided to major in psychology because he thought it would be a more financially reliable career path than pursuing acting. When he became disillusioned with psychology, he decided to follow his inspiration and embraced an acting career whole-heartedly. Once he made that mindset shift, the universe started presenting opportunities for him that he made sure to take advantage of.
Even with all that early inspiration and later theatrical success, he was still motivated to continue improving his acting skills. While grad school was a useful place for him to advance his abilities, his wife actually turned out to be one of his best acting coaches. She helped him understand the true effect his behavior had on others, both on stage, and in real-life. This helped Jamieson become more aware of his own demeanor, which in turn allowed him to become a more nuanced actor.
After discussing this, Jamieson and I wrap up this interview with his advice for the aspiring voice actor. He stresses three topics that voice actors should focus on. First: establishing solid, fundamental acting skills. Second: developing a strong imagination in order to immerse yourself fully in a scene, and Third: developing good vocal health routines so you can maintain your vocal instrument over time. We also talk about how important it is to be able to express yourself with emotional abandon, while also having good technical vocal production skills supporting your acting. This will allow your performances to feel both immediate, and masterful at the same time. It’s the kind of acting discussion I always love to have and I’m so glad we get to share it with you.
VAM 219 | Interview with Jamieson Price, Part 1
Welcome to episode 219 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 first part of my interview with a man who was seemingly born with a voice acting sound, Jamieson Price! As of the release of this episode, he has over 500 credits on IMDb! You may be familiar with his work in anime where he’s played Lordgenome in Gurren Lagan, Rider in Fate/Zero, Zaizen in Witch Hunter Robin, and The Count Edmund Dantes in Gankutsuou: The Count of Montecristo. He’s also played parts in such classic anime as Akira, Appleseed, Lupin III: Castle of Caligostro, and Perfect Blue. In games he’s played Blaine Bloodhoof in World of Warcraft, Sojiro in Persona 5, and Ovan in the .hack//G.U. series of games. Jamieson worked extensively in the theater before he began his voice acting journey, and even played a part in Mel Gibson’s film, the Patriot which was released in the year 2000. Jamieson’s voice was one of the first that I heard when I came to Los Angeles to start working as a voice actor back in 2001 and it’s a pleasure to speak with him about his lengthy career.
Jamieson fell in love with acting as a young student. In 4th grade he participated in a school play. When a piece of the set fell over, he showed the amazing presence of mind to fix the set and keep on going with his performance. That’s when his parents knew he might just be an actor. When his 8th grade teacher introduced him to Shakespeare, Jamieson was immediately hooked. He participated in plays in both high school and college, but he planned to pursue a degree in psychology because he thought it was a more stable and reliable career path at the time.
Halfway through his college experience, he became disillusioned with psychology and decided that he would pursue an acting career instead. He was fortunate that his college required their theater majors not only to act in mainstage productions at the school, but also to work backstage in technical jobs. This technical theater training served Jamieson very well since it meant he was qualified to work as a technician at theaters, even when he wasn’t being hired as an actor!
After working in theater for many years including on some famous outdoor theater productions in Ohio, Jamieson felt like he had plateaued as an actor and decided he needed to go to graduate acting school to improve his skills. He was accepted at the California State University at Long Beach and earned his Master of Fine Arts degree there. Right after he graduated, he got cast in a play at the Long Beach playhouse, and happened to meet Dorothy Fahn, an actress who was working in anime at the time. Dorothy thought Jamieson might be a good fit for some of the characters on Digimon which both she and her husband Tom were working on. Jamieson started booking parts in anime dubs, which eventually lead to roles in video games and other voice over work as well.
While Jamieson had been pursuing on-camera work in addition to voice work after grad school, he quickly realized that voice over afforded him the opportunity to spend more time at home with his family, while still working as an actor. He decided to do his best to maximize his voice over opportunities and worked technical theater jobs for additional income.
Jamieson is one of those people who was born with a distinctive voice, which you’re about to experience in this interview! However, even gifted with such a resonant instrument, Jamieson still had to put in the time and effort to make sure his acting skills were professionally competitive in the Los Angeles marketplace. He started off playing smaller roles, and didn’t expect to land larger characters without proving himself first. By patiently applying himself, developing a reputation for being reliable and easy to work with, and constantly improving his acting skills, Jamieson has been able to carve out an impressive voice over career for himself, working on hundreds of projects. But I’ll let him fill you in on the details!
VAM 218 | It’s Not About You: An Actor’s True Purpose Is To Serve The Art, Not To Become A Celebrity
Welcome to episode 218 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 was inspired by my recent interview with Mara Junot to address a very important topic: the true goal or purpose of acting. If you’ve listened to my interview with Mara, she described her mother having a vision of her speaking to a large crowd of people and affecting them positively with her uplifting message. It was an image that was corroborated by other people in Mara’s life as well, that somehow she would do something powerful with her voice to improve people’s lives. This metaphor became a guiding principle in Mara’s voice acting journey and helped her achieve amazing goals and manifest all kinds of success.
Notice, that the vision wasn’t one of Mara becoming popular, or getting accolades and attention from others. Rather, the focus was always on Mara reaching out to help, uplift or offer a service to others. This notion of being of service as an actor is the subject I’d like to explore in this episode. Too often I get the impression from aspiring voice actors, especially online, that the reason they want to become performers is to receive attention and approval. After all, these days more and more voice actors are compelled to promote their work on social media, which usually results in a slew of likes, comments and positive feedback from their fellow actors and from the public. Many aspiring voice actors will also express how much they’re looking forward to attending conventions as guests, where they will get applauded at panels, and adoring fans will line up to spend time with them, get their autograph, and pose for a selfie, which they can then post online for even more likes! This sort of public affirmation can be very appealing, and I’m seeing more and more people approach voice acting with the specific desire to get some of this attention for themselves.
What is particularly distressing is that this attitude can be exacerbated in the voice acting space, sometimes even more than in other forms of performance like on-camera or theatrical acting. This is due to the mistaken perception that the barriers to entry for voice acting are somehow lower than for on-camera or theatrical acting. It’s almost as if people see voice acting as the shortest path to achieve celebrity with the least amount of effort, and while I’d like to think that over 200 episodes of this podcast are a testament to the fact that voice acting is not necessarily easier than other types of acting, this misconception still persists. So in this episode, I’d like to talk about why the true purpose of being an actor is not to pursue what seems like the easiest path to accolades. The true purpose and noblest goal of an actor is to serve a character, a story, and the audience to the best of your ability. The great irony of this, is that if you succeed in being of great service, then celebrity is almost guaranteed. If audiences find your performances inspiring and meaningful, you won’t have to go out of your way to get their attention and admiration.
However, if you pursue any sort of acting career merely to get attention, not only will you be far less likely to achieve the kind of artistic mastery that will lead to public acclaim, you will be chasing other people’s approval for the rest of your life. That’s not only detrimental to creating great art, it’s also corrosive to your emotional wellbeing. So allow me to explain why being of service is the true purpose of acting.
VAM 217 | Interview with Mara Junot, Part 2
Welcome to episode 217 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 vocal shape-shifter, Mara Junot! As I mentioned in the previous episode, Mara identifies as non-binary, but accepts both “she” and “they” pronouns. For the purposes of this podcast, I will be using “she/her” when referring to Mara so as to avoid pluralization confusion during these episodes. You may know Mara’s voice acting work in animation on shows like Curious George, Boss Baby: Back in the Crib, Blaze and the Monster Machines, and Arcane. In Video Games she’s been in Destiny 2, League of Legends, Mortal Kombat and Marvel Rivals. In Anime she’s worked on Ishura, Tezuka’s anime, Pluto, and Mara and I are both cast in Pokemon Horizons.
In the previous episode, Mara explained how she got started as a voice actress. She originally started in voice over as a radio DJ, and thought that was going to be her dream job. However, because of management changes at the station, and her own desire to grow artistically, she decided to leave radio and pursue voice acting full time. After spending 16 hours a day on average researching and studying voice over, she began to build a career for herself working remotely, first in Louisiana, then later in Colorado. After booking a role in the hit animated series Arcane, she realized she needed to move to Los Angeles to take her career to the next level.
In this episode, I ask Mara what inspired her to become a performer in the first place. She shares with me a vision that her mother had of Mara standing on a stage, speaking to a large audience who was enraptured. This idea of Mara using her voice to uplift others became a guiding principle in her life. She and I then talk about how important it is to have a good work/life balance as a performer. Mara has found it too easy at times to overcommit and burn herself out! She’s a big believer in naps, which I endorse heartily as well!
We then go back in time to when Mara first performed in the theater as a child, and how an experience she had on stage which could’ve been very embarrassing, actually helped her feel more empowered as a person and as an artist. It’s a formative story from her youth, and discussing it on the podcast helps Mara realize just how much it has influenced her artistic journey ever since! She then shares with me her advice for the aspiring voice actor, and how important it is to be patient with yourself as you pursue an acting career. Mara is a big believer in finding your authentic self and sharing that in your performances. Finding and revealing your true self can take a lot of introspection, self-honesty, training, and courage. The world is full of actors who seem to have become overnight successes, but if you ask them about it, you’ll find out that they’ve actually been practicing their craft for years! Mara encourages you to be good to yourself as you grow as an actor. She is courageous not only in the pursuit of her career, but also in how willing she is to share her own trials and tribulations as an artist. So without further ado, here’s Mara!