Welcome to episode 228 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 previous episodes of this podcast, I’ve stressed how important it is for my listeners to become familiar with some of the best acting performances out there. In episode 204, I encouraged you all to go hunting for the best acting and storytelling you can find, especially in genres and forms of media that you might otherwise not have considered before. Way back in episode 105 of the podcast entitled, Know Your Genre: Better Voice Acting Through Immersion, I explained how crucial it was for an actor to familiarize themselves with the most popular and influential stories in media. And in my most recent interview with Alejandra Reynoso, she shared how she had the opportunity to experience some of the best films in existence because her father worked as a projectionist at movie theaters in Los Angeles. She spent much of her youth watching and enjoying a variety of films with her father.

I’ve also suggested that my listeners do their best to consume quality entertainment because it is far too easy to allow the algorithms of social media and platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and even Netflix to decide for us what we should watch next. The algorithm chooses media based on what it thinks we want. It gives us more of what we’ve chosen to consume in the past, but it has no conception of what we might need to experience as artists in order to grow, nor does it care. It’s only job is to monetize our attention, which is why in episode 221 I talked about the value of serendipity and how useful it can be for you to break your habitual patterns of media consumption in order to expose yourself to new and inspiring types of art.

In all of the episodes I’ve mentioned and more, I’ve focused on helping my listeners to consume the best, most artistically nourishing media that exists. However, for this episode, I want to do something very different. I want to encourage you not to consume more media, but rather to find moments in your life where you actually seek out and embrace silence. While it is definitely important to build your knowledge of characters, stories, and exceptional acting performances, it turns out it is equally important to find quiet, introspective time to allow all of that knowledge to consolidate in your subconscious so it can inform your choices and your instincts as an artist.

Without that silence, your creative mind cannot engage, it can only imitate and regurgitate what it’s seen before. If you are doing nothing but consuming a veritable firehose of media and you never take the time to listen to your own internal creative spark, you risk never creating anything that isn’t just a copy of what’s come before. This inner wisdom is exactly what differentiates the human mind from the current Large Language Models that power what is spuriously referred to as Artificial Intelligence. AI as we call it today is extremely good at consuming media and regurgitating it somewhat accurately. It can remix the sources it’s trained on and deliver relatively polished results. I’m not sure I’d call that intelligence per se, but many people do find the results impressive. What AI lacks, however, is the power to truly innovate. AI is incapable of being introspectively silent and listening to the quiet voice of inspiration that has fueled some of the greatest artists on the planet.

In this episode, I want to impress upon you just how valuable it can be to sit in silence, even if it feels uncomfortable at first. Our subconscious creative power resides in that silence, and it can only be heard if we take the time to get quiet, be still, and listen to what it has to say. So if you’re ready, I invite you to join me for an exploration of silence and what it has to offer us as artists and performers.

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #228 Here (MP3)