Welcome to episode 231 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 the previous episode, I explained my method for taking direction as an actor without taking it personally. If you haven’t checked it out already, I strongly suggest you listen to that episode before continuing with this one. I will be referencing some of the ideas and strategies I shared in that episode and it will be important to be familiar with them as I talk about the different types of directors you may interact with in the industry.

As a quick recap for those who have listened to it, hopefully you remember that I began by explaining how important it is to be able to modify your performance based on feedback you get from your director. No matter how good an actor you are, if you cannot take direction quickly and effectively, you become a liability to the production rather than an asset. I also shared an intense experience I had working with a director who was so aggressive in his approach that he was willing to use insults to try to elicit a change in my performance. Hearing his words, it was difficult not to be upset by them, especially when it felt like his criticisms weren’t just of my acting, but of me personally. While we able to reconcile later, and I grew to understand that he really did want the best for me as an actor, that experience stuck with me for two important reasons.

The first reason was that such a dramatic event really forced me to evaluate my own process as an actor. I had to decide whether I cared enough about acting to deal with any similar difficulties that might come my way. Was I going to let one person’s words said in the heat of the moment derail my artistic goals, or was I going to develop resilience in the face of an intimidating obstacle? Eventually, the tactic I developed to handle this sort of caustic direction was to identify with the larger universe of possibilities in my psyche, rather than get attached to any individual persona I might adopt in the moment. That way if the character I was currently playing was criticized, I need not take it personally, even if that character was my everyday persona that I used to interact with people in the real world. Again, I strongly encourage you to internalize the stories and lessons I shared in the last episode so you too can handle any critiques you might receive as an actor.

The second reason that experience stuck with me, was how drastically different that director’s behavior was towards me depending on the situation. In class, he was critical and dismissive, yelling at me forcefully to try and shock me out of my habitual patterns of acting. Later, when it was just the two of us in his office, he was more inquisitive and relaxed. He sincerely wanted to find a way to help me grow and his manner was more quiet and gentle. Experiencing this helped me realize that the best directors know how to change their approach in order to assist the actor they’re collaborating with. I’ve watched masterful directors quickly evaluate an actor in front of them, decide what tactics might be most effective to get the performance they’re looking for from that actor, and then adopt a completely different persona so they can help that performer achieve those results.

What if we, as actors, could do the same? What if an actor could quickly identify the kind of director they were working with and then was able to modify their behavior to collaborate with that director more effectively? That’s what I want to help you accomplish in this episode. To achieve this, I’ll be sharing with you my taxonomy of some common types of directors I’ve come across in my career. This is not an exhaustive list by any means; it’s merely my shorthand for identifying the kinds of directors I tend to encounter in the industry. Hopefully it will be a useful starting point for developing your own director classifications and I encourage you to add to it based on your personal experiences. Just remember, the goal is not to reduce, over simplify, or dismiss the director in front of you, but rather to discover how you can adjust your approach so as to mesh more seamlessly with that director’s workflow.

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #231 Here (MP3)