Greetings Voice Acting Mastery listeners! I have a big announcement to share with all of you.

As you know, we started our sister podcast, the Voice Acting Mastery Field Report, back in October of 2015. Our correspondents have produced some amazing episodes including in-depth interviews and detailed special reports on a number of important topics! It has been so great to learn along with them as they explored many relevant and helpful subjects that continue to be of value to our listeners.

However, all good things must eventually come to an end, and it’s time for me to announce that the next episode of the Field Report, episode 36, will be our last.

I’m grateful to all of our correspondents who have contributed to the Field Report, and I’m very proud of the work they put into their episodes. Each correspondent has shared their unique insights into the world of voice over as they’ve pursued their own voice acting careers.

In fact, these careers and other aspects of their lives have gained so much momentum that our intrepid correspondents inform me that they have less and less time to commit to the Field Report! So even though it’s bittersweet to say goodbye, I’m so happy for their success and wish them much more in the future!

For our last Field Report episode, I’ll be doing a final round table interview with our current correspondents, DanWill McCann, Tom Bauer, and Maureen Price. They’ll be sharing with us how their careers have grown over the past couple of years, what lessons they’ve learned from working on the Field Report, and what they’re all looking forward to in the future!

I hope you’ll enjoy our farewell episode and that you’ll continue to gain insight and guidance from all our existing Field Report episodes, which will remain accessible here at VoiceActingMastery.com and on iTunes. I also encourage you to follow the achievements of our correspondents as they continue in their careers! I’m sure they’ll all have more information to share via their own social media channels!

You can find their websites here:

DanWill McCann
Tom Bauer
Maureen Price

Thanks again for listening and for joining us for the Field Report. We truly appreciate it.

(P.S. – For those of you who are about to ask: Yes, I’m still releasing monthly episodes of the main VAM podcast on the 3rd Wednesday of each month, so please continue to tune in for those. Thanks!)

Greetings to all my podcast listeners!

As some of you may have noticed, I have not been so good at responding to comments over the last year or so on the site. I apologize profusely. My schedule has been crazy and with the limited time I had, I decided to prioritize getting podcast episodes out on time.

I feel very bad that I’ve been so remiss in responding to people’s wonderful comments and thoughtful questions. Please know that every one of them has been appreciated even if I haven’t been able to respond.

In order to resolve this delay, I’ve asked my good friend and fellow voice actor, Brenda J. Wong, to help assist me in moderating and answering comments here at Voice Acting Mastery!

Brenda has been helping me behind the scenes with other Voice Acting Mastery business and I’m incredibly grateful that she’s offered to handle comments as well!

Brenda will be using her knowledge of the voice acting world to help answer questions and respond to comments from my podcast audience. If for any reason someone asks a question that is outside of her knowledge base, she may ask me to comment as well. I’ll do my best to do so.

Thanks for your understanding and patience, and please give a warm welcome to our new comments moderator, Brenda J. Wong!

Greetings faithful podcast listeners!

As I announced in episode 100, I have changed the release schedule of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast.

New episodes of the podcast will be released on a monthly basis instead of a bi-weekly basis.

I just wanted to post this reminder on the blog to anyone who hadn’t had a chance to listen to episode 100 and may be confused by the new release schedule.

Now I know that many of my faithful listeners may be disappointed to hear this, but I have some good news as well! By changing the podcast release schedule to only once a month, it will give me time to focus on some new and interactive ways to reach my listeners. I’m really excited about what’s on the horizon, and I hope you will be too. So don’t worry, the podcast has been very effective so far and I have no plans to stop it. I just want to free up some time to make way for some new developments at Voice Acting Mastery.

To reiterate: I will now be releasing new podcast episodes the third Wednesday of every month. Episode 101 will be available on May 20th so look out for it!

VAM 095 | Interview with Phil LaMarr, Part 3

Welcome to episode 95 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 third part of my interview with the amazing Phil LaMarr.

Phil has played major roles in such animated shows as Futurama, Justice League, Star Wars: Clone Wars and Samurai Jack.

In the last episode, Phil and I discussed how his passion for improvisational acting helped shape the trajectory of his early acting career. We also discussed how the difficulties he faced during that time helped him face and eventually let go of the judgements that were holding back his progress towards becoming a professional actor.

In this episode I ask Phil what inspired him to become an actor in the first place. This is a very important question to ask, especially of one’s self. Often people have a vague notion that they’d like to try acting because it looks like fun, or maybe they’re interested in getting attention or in becoming famous. However, pursuing acting as a career can be a very challenging road to travel, and during times of adversity, one’s conviction can really be tested. I have found that when the going gets tough, when the hardships increase, when it’s not clear what can help you continue on in the face of difficulties or discouragement, it is very important to have solid reasons for what you are doing so you can remind yourself why acting is so important to you.

In this section of our interview, Phil is generous enough to share with us the single, fascinating experience he had which drove him to pursue an acting career. I think you’ll find that hearing what inspired Phil to pursue acting will help you discover your own inspiration as well.

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #95 Here (MP3)

Here’s an amazing interview with one of the greatest voice directors in America, Andrea Romano. Andrea’s resume is littered with some of the most popular cartoon series of all time including the original Batman, The Animated Series from the mid 90’s, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Teen Titans and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Andrea talks about some very important ideas to remember when approaching voice acting:

1. Her first question is always, “Is this person I’m thinking of casting a good actor?”
2. Her second question is, “Do they have voice over experience?”

Microphone technique and animation acting, you can teach in a very short time. I can’t teach acting in a four-hour recording session. Acting is something that they’ve got to bring to the table themselves.

That is why I stress so much that you must be a capable actor before you can be truly successful as a voice actor. No matter how much time you spend in the booth, recording on a microphone or polishing your voice, if you do not have the acting ability to support all of your wonderful technique, you won’t be able to bring a good performance to the project.

So do whatever you can to get more acting experience. Take acting classes. Join your local or school theater group. Get online and join a voice acting group. Whatever it takes to give you more opportunities to practice playing pretend as characters.

Enjoy!

Hey there everyone! It’s now official. The Voice Acting Mastery Podcast is listed in the iTunes Music Store!

Now you can subscribe to the podcast directly from iTunes by following this link:

Subscribe to the Voice Acting Mastery Podcast in iTunes
http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast/

If you’re enjoying the podcast, I would really appreciate it if you could give me a positive review in the iTunes Music Store! Here’s how:

1. Follow the link to the Voice Acting Mastery Podcast in iTunes. Your browser should open up to a page listing the podcast.
2. Click on the View in iTunes button which looks like this:  in order to view the podcast in iTunes. (NOTE: You must have iTunes installed on your computer for this to work)
3. Once you’re inside the iTunes program, click on the stars to rate. They look like this: