VAM 206 | Interview with Lauren Mayfield, Part 2
Welcome to episode 206 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 part of my interview with an accomplished voice actress who just happens to be a former student of mine and one of my class assistants, Lauren Mayfield! Lauren has gone from studying with me in class, to helping me coach my students, to booking work as a professional voice actress, and even securing representation at one of the most prestigious agencies in Los Angeles, Sutton Barth and Venari also known as SBV. I was delighted when she told me that we were both working on the same video game together, providing voices for characters in Starfield by Bethesda. You may also know Lauren’s work in games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III where she plays Raptor, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising where she plays Societte, and Tower of God: New World where she plays Po Bidau Blanc. It’s always so satisfying when I get to watch one of my students navigate the transition to becoming an accomplished colleague of mine in the voice acting world and I’m so proud of Lauren’s achievements!
In the previous episode, we talked about how Lauren got her start as a voice actor. She had loved acting and especially musicals when she was young. Then she’d had the opportunity to work at both Disney World and Disneyland, which she enjoyed thoroughly. However, it wasn’t until she was passed over for a position at Disneyland that she decided to focus more of her attention on voice acting. She took classes in Orange County, California where she was living, and she also took classes with me at Voice Acting Mastery. She was a dutiful actress who tried to do everything right and follow what seemed to be the conventional wisdom at the time about how one could break into voice acting. This included booking parts in anime dubs at first, and then moving on to other projects after that. This was certainly my experience when I started as a voice actor in the late 90’s. Lauren discovered, however, that her path was going to be different. After struggling to make much headway in anime, she finally found her niche in video games which is where her career really took off. Her success in games helped her secure agency representation, which has opened even more career opportunities for her!
In this episode, I ask Lauren what inspired her to become a performer in the first place. She revisits how she loved performing and especially musical theater from a young age, and shares how she had a passion for fantastical, larger than life storytelling. She was eager to explore how she could pursue a career as a performer. Over time, she began to realize that a musical theater career would not give her the kind of stability she desired, neither financially, nor in terms of lifestyle. She didn’t want to have to travel for work, and the life of a theater actor tends to be very nomadic. Voice acting became a way for her to pursue acting, apply her vocal and singing techniques, and still remain close to home. This subject leads quite naturally into a discussion about how important it is to be always checking in with yourself to make sure that you’re pursuing goals that are truly what you want and that you aren’t working towards some accomplishment that won’t give you satisfaction. Lauren and I also discuss how competitive voice acting has become in recent years due to the rising popularity of games, animation, and anime.
After that, I ask Lauren to share her advice for the aspiring voice actor. While she knows that teachers and coaches will often stress how much work it takes to be successful as a voice actor, and Lauren herself can personally attest to the amount of time, effort, and dedication she has put towards achieving her voice acting goals, she also says that it’s important to know when to relax and trust that you’re doing good work, so you can avoid trying to force things to happen. One way to achieve that balance between effort and relaxation is to make sure that you’re as well rounded a human being as possible, with activities and interests outside the field of acting. Another method is to take the pursuit of voice acting less personally and to decouple your own value as a human being from your professional accomplishments. Ironically, the less personally you take things in the voice over industry, the more relaxed you’ll become, and the more authentically you’ll be able to share your own artistry with others. These insights from Lauren are a lovely way to wrap up our discussion, and I’m so glad I get to share them with my listeners!
VAM 205 | Interview with Lauren Mayfield, Part 1
Welcome to episode 205 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!
As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:
http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast
Welcome to the first part of my interview with an accomplished voice actress who just happens to be a former student of mine and one of my class assistants, Lauren Mayfield! One of the things that I love most as an acting teacher is when a student of mine is able to achieve a level of success in their career where the two of us can graduate from being teacher and student to being fellow colleagues in the voice over industry! Lauren has definitely achieved that! I first met her when she started taking some of my acting classes back in 2016! I admired her talent, her commitment to the craft of acting, and her generous spirit, so I eventually asked if she would be willing to assist me with my classes, and she graciously agreed.
Since then, Lauren has been a consistent source of encouragement, advice, and inspiration for many of my students, and I’m so grateful to have had her on the Voice Acting Mastery team for so long. Over the years, Lauren has also been diligently building her own voice acting career, and I was delighted to hear from her recently that she and I were both playing characters in the video game Starfield by Bethesda. You may also know Lauren’s work in games like Smite where she plays Deadly Dinner Discord, Smash Legends where she plays Brick, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III where she plays Raptor, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom where she plays Yona. Lauren is signed with one of the most prestigious agencies in Los Angeles: Sutton, Barth and Venari, more commonly known by the initials, SBV, and I couldn’t be more proud of her accomplishments!
In this episode, I begin our discussion by asking Lauren how she got started as a voice actor. As she recounts how she became interested in performing at a young age and started pursuing not only acting, but musical theater, I was amazed to discover how many similarities that Lauren and I had in our childhood experiences! We both would reenact scenes from our favorite movies for our parents, we both had an appreciation for classic MGM musicals, and we both came to the realization that neither of us really had the temperament to pursue a full time theater career in New York City.
Lauren is a California native who grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and spent time both there and later in the Los Angeles area where she went to college. She also had a love for Disney theme parks and worked at Disney World in Florida right after she graduated, and then returned to California where she worked at Disneyland. While there, she applied for a special ambassador-style program in addition to her regular duties, but was passed over for the position, even though all of her co-workers in her department were chosen. Feeling disappointed, and having more time in her schedule, Lauren decided to pursue something that had always interested her: voice acting.
She started taking voice over classes at a school called Del Mar Media Arts based out of Orange County, California. She also started taking classes with me at Voice Acting Mastery, and at Bang Zoom Studios in their Adventures in Voice Acting program. She fell in love with voice acting and decided to commit to pursuing a professional career in voice over. During our discussion, Lauren shares with me not only the detailed action journey steps she took to try to further her voice acting goals, but also the adjustments she had to make to her mindset, and what preconceived notions she had to let go of in order to find her own way of breaking into the LA voice over market place. Even though we’ve known each other for many years, I learned so much from diving deep into Lauren’s voice over journey, and I hope you will as well!
VAM 197 | Interview with Josh Petersdorf, Part 2
Welcome to episode 197 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 voice actor and theme park voice performer, Josh Petersdorf! You may know Josh from his work in games like League of Legends, Fire Emblem: Engage, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, and Overwatch. He’s worked on the English language dubs of anime shows like Aggretsuko and on live action shows like Project “Gemini”. He’s also the voices of both Megatron and Optimus Prime at the Universal Studios Theme Park during the live action show that takes place before the Transformers 3D ride.
That last time we spoke, Josh shared with me how he became a voice actor. He was inspired to pursue performing at a young age after watching his sisters perform in dance recitals. However, during high school, he focused more on athletics, and it wasn’t until after he was living on his own that he realized that he wanted to pursue voice acting as a career. He moved to LA, started taking classes, and was fortunate enough to be able to book work at the Universal Studios Theme Park and to also get agent representation. He started booking voice over work, but when he landed the role of Roadhog in Overwatch, it definitely took his career to a new level.
In this episode, I ask what inspired Josh to become a performer in the first place. He shares with me how much the artists from his childhood influenced him to try to create things himself, and how his love of pro wrestling and his nostalgia for 80’s cartoons still inform his artistry today! The characters from the entertainment he consumed often served as role models for him and helped shape not only his creative sensibilities but his personal development as well. He and I also talk about how the most successful voice actors are always looking to expand their capabilities and grow into different areas or niches of the industry. And finally, Josh gives me his advice for the aspiring voice actor, which at its core seems to contain a paradox: He suggests that actors both be ready to work hard and also be easy on themselves. He thinks they should both be demanding when it comes to their own skills, but forgiving as well. It’s a fascinating contradiction that I actually think you’ll find very insightful as we explore it in this episode.
VAM 196 | Interview with Josh Petersdorf, Part 1
Welcome to episode 196 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 share with you the first part of my interview with voice actor and theme park voice performer, Josh Petersdorf! Josh works extensively in games where he uses his booming voice to embody characters such as Galio in League of Legends, Morion in Fire Emblem: Engage, Stonefist in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, and most notably, Roadhog in Overwatch. He’s worked on the English language dubs of anime like Aggretsuko and live action shows like Project “Gemini”. He’s also worked for many years at the Universal Studios Theme Park portraying the voices of both Megatron and Optimus Prime during the live action show that takes place before the Transformers 3D ride. This process involves a stilt walker putting on a large Transformers costume and interacting with the people in line for the ride. Josh then provides the voice for the person in costume, speaking in real time to the park goers and improvising dialogue to keep them entertained. It’s an amazing collaborative performance that is fascinating to watch!
As we begin our interview, Josh explains to me how he got started as a voice actor. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, where he watched his younger sisters perform in plays and dance recitals, and he decided that he wanted to be a performer as well. He got into an advanced theater class at his school when he was in 7th grade, and participated in the debate team. However, when Josh went to high school, he got more involved in sports, specifically water polo, and had less time for acting. After high school, he attended college briefly, but decided to leave college to pursue his interests in music. He made friends with many creative musicians in the Bay area who also had access to all sorts of recording equipment. In addition to making music, he and his friends would have fun doing fan dubs of live action Japanese Power Ranger-style shows like Kamen Rider. Over time, Josh realized that he wanted to pursue acting more, so he eventually moved to Los Angeles with the goal of becoming a voice actor. He started taking classes to develop his skills, and was also working a restaurant job in order to support himself at the time. A friend at the restaurant told him about an opportunity to audition to be a voice for the live Transformers show at the Universal Studios Theme Park. So Josh auditioned and booked the job. As his confidence grew, he was also able to find agent representation, and one day, his agent sent him an audition for a character in a new game from Blizzard Entertainment which turned out to be Roadhog in Overwatch. Josh was then called back and eventually cast as Roadhog which helped his career blossom even more.
Listening to this overview of Josh’s journey towards becoming a professional voice actor, it might seem like his path was relatively straightforward and almost inevitable. What the summary leaves out, however, are all of the challenges, setbacks, and uncertainty that Josh endured on his way to discovering what he truly wanted to do and how to go about achieving his goals. He and I spend the majority of this episode talking in depth about all of these issues. Josh is very candid with me about what he went through and what it took for him to grow both as a person and as a performer. It’s always been my goal with this podcast to share the reality of what it takes to become a successful professional artist, and I’m so grateful for Josh’s willingness to give both me and my listeners these honest insights into his struggles and his triumphs. I think you’ll find his story very inspiring!
VAM 193 | Interview with Greg Chun, Part 2
Welcome to episode 193 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 part of my interview with voice actor and voice director, Greg Chun! You may be familiar with his acting work in games like the Judgement series, World of Warcraft, Mists of Pandaria, Ghost of Tsushima, and Overwatch. In anime he’s worked on shows like Demon Slayer and Neon Genesis Evangelion. In American animation, he’s played Barbie’s father, George Roberts, and he played the main character in the highly acclaimed English dub of the hit Netflix show, Squid Game.
As we continue our discussion, Greg shares with me what inspired him to become an actor in the first place. Unlike many voice actors I’ve interviewed, Greg was not initially passionate about being an actor. He confesses that he’s only truly fallen in love with acting in the past few years. Regular podcast listeners will know that many of my guests discovered that they had a passion for acting, before they decided to dedicate a significant amount of time and effort to pursuing it professionally. Greg’s process was very different. For him, voice acting began simply as a fun activity that held a certain fascination for him. The more he pursued voice acting, the more his fascination grew. Instead of committing to achieving a voice acting career and then doing whatever it took to achieve that goal, Greg instead did his best to follow what he felt was fun to do. Those enjoyable experiences compounded over time until his fascination with voice acting became a true passion for the art form. It’s a very different approach to pursuing a voice acting career and he and I dive deep into the psychology of his approach in this episode!
After that, Greg also shares with me his advice for the aspiring voice actor. He’s started teaching voice acting classes himself, especially classes on dubbing live action TV shows. He admits that he’s learned a lot by having to articulate to his students his own process for approaching voice acting, and he takes great joy in helping them succeed. He loves striving for greatness with all of his students and I share that passion for helping aspiring voice actors become the best that they can be. I love Greg’s uplifting and positive approach to creating authentic performances and I’m so glad I get to share it with you!
In this episode, I mention that I will be compiling a list of Recommended Media that I think exemplifies nuanced, believable acting. You can find that list in the Recommended Media section of this website.
VAM 192 | Interview with Greg Chun, Part 1
Welcome to episode 192 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!
As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:
http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast
I’m so happy to share with you the first part of my interview with the talented and supremely affable, Greg Chun! You may be familiar with Greg’s voice acting work in games, where he plays the lead character Takayuki Yagami in the Judgement series, Emperor Shaohao and numerous other characters in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, Ujimasa and Takeshi in Ghost of Tsushima, and a personal favorite of mine, Dr. Harold Winston in Overwatch. In anime he’s played Muzan Kibutsuji in Demon Slayer and Ryoji Kaiji in Evangelion. In American animation, he’s played Barbie’s father, George Roberts in numerous projects, and in live action dubbing he’s received great acclaim for his portrayal of the lead character Seong Gi-hun in the hit Netflix show, Squid Game.
Greg and I begin by discussing how he first got started as a voice actor. It turns out it was a very circuitous path! Greg’s original dream was to move to Hollywood to become a film composer. He had taken piano lessons as a child, and had eventually learned to play by ear. His college friends also wanted to become involved in film making as directors and actors and were eager to work with him on their projects. However, when Greg moved to LA to pursue his dreams, things didn’t go quite as he had planned. He had gotten a computer science degree in order to reassure his parents that he would have a stable job, and he initially found work at a newly formed studio at the time called Dreamworks. He was hired to help maintain their computer systems while they were producing one of their early animated films, the Prince of Egypt. In addition to his computer work in LA, Greg was also able to land some jobs composing music, but for commercials, not films.
He admits that during the next few years, he probably got a little complacent and lost some of his focus towards becoming a film composer. He also became disenchanted with the LA lifestyle and realized that he needed a change. So he decided to go back to graduate school for computer science in order to get his Master’s degree and eventually pursue a Ph.D. During his time in grad school, Greg’s friends kept asking if he was still interested in composing music for their projects. Eventually, the lure of the entertainment industry became too strong, and rather than continue his computer science research, Greg decided to try one more time to find his way in Hollywood.
He returned to LA and found work on an original musical adaptation of the story of the 10 Commandments. He started as a rehearsal pianist, but eventually got promoted to musical director for the show. During that time, he met an actress in the production who just happened to be married to the famous movie trailer voice over legend, Don LaFontaine. Greg was able to befriend Don and the rest of Don’s social circle, and they often played cards together. After watching Don work in the studio, Greg realized that he was becoming fascinated with the idea of becoming a voice actor himself. His time spent composing music for commercials had exposed him to the voice over world, and watching Don go through his workday made Greg realize that voice acting could actually be a viable career path for him as well.
Greg decided to apply himself diligently to the pursuit of voice acting. He worked with a voice over coach on a weekly basis for 8 months. He studied the voice over industry and learned as much as he could about voice actors and the studios that hired them. He went to classes and conventions for voice over. And even with all this commitment to learning his craft, it still took Greg 3 years before he turned a profit as a voice actor, and another 4 years before it became a fully viable source of income for him.
I love Greg’s story because it shows just how unique everyone’s journey towards becoming a professionally successful voice actor can be. Even though he decided to pursue voice acting slightly later in his adult life, he did it with a sense of fun and playfulness. His ability to be both relaxed and focused served him very well as he navigated the voice over world. There are so many empowering things my listeners can learn from Greg’s positive mindset and I’m very glad that I get to share his journey with you!