VAM 209 | Interview with Zeke Alton, Part 2
Welcome to episode 209 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
Get ready for the second part of my interview with the hardest working actor I know, Mr. Zeke Alton! Zeke is a multi-talented performer who does voice acting, performance capture, and also works on-camera. He’s been in major AAA game titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Starfield, and the Callisto Protocol. He’s also worked on TV shows like S.W.A.T and movies such as My Dead Friend Zoe starring Morgan Freeman and Sonequa Martin-Green. Zeke is not only a member of the actor’s union, SAG-AFTRA, but also serves on many of their contract negotiation committees helping to secure artistic rights, fair wages, and safe working conditions for his fellow union members. In addition, Zeke is also a founding board member of NAVA, the National Association of Voice Actors, who work tirelessly to promote the interests and protect the rights of all voice actors regardless of union affiliation.
In the last episode, Zeke outlined for us the fascinating journey of how he transitioned from being a pilot in the Navy for 20 years, into becoming a working actor in Los Angeles. It’s a very inspiring story and if you haven’t heard it yet, I strongly encourage you to listen to the previous episode before continuing with this one. Even though he decided to purse an acting career later in his life, Zeke didn’t let that dissuade him from breaking in to the entertainment industry. In fact, knowing that he might be at a disadvantage, he made sure to be methodical and diligent in his approach. This focus and determination served him well. It not only allowed him to develop the necessary skills to be professionally competitive, but more importantly, it helped him hone a mindset that gave him the resilience and the resourcefulness to deal with the challenges he faced. One of the resources he found helpful at the time was this podcast! He started listening to my episodes back in 2015 and he thanked me for the helpful advice he found on my show. I’m so honored to have contributed to his success!
In this episode, I ask Zeke what inspired him to become a performer in the first place. For Zeke, the moments when he’s acting feel like absolute magic. He goes into what some describe as a “flow state” where the rest of the world falls away, and the only thing that matters is him performing as the character. He finds this state so compelling that he’s willing to manage and deal with all the more mundane aspects of an acting career in order to experience it. Zeke also shares with me his advice for the aspiring actor and how important he thinks it is for actors to understand that if they want to be commercially successful, they need to think of themselves as contributors to an entertainment business enterprise. We then talk about Artificial Intelligence, a subject I dearly wanted to discuss with Zeke because of his extensive knowledge about not only the technology of AI, but also the current business practices of the companies trying to use AI in their creative projects. There’s great advice in this episode, both about developing your performance abilities, and about protecting those hard won skills from being exploited by technology. I hope you find it as insightful and useful as I did!
VAM 208 | Interview with Zeke Alton, Part 1
Welcome to episode 208 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 very pleased to present the first part of my interview with one of the most industrious men I know, Mr. Zeke Alton. Zeke works in many different areas of the entertainment industry including voice acting, performance capture, and also on-camera. You may know his voice acting work as Terrell Wolf and William Peck in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Quantum in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Mike Abadio and Lendel Green in Starfield, and his amazing performance as Elias Porter in The Callisto Protocol. Zeke also works on camera and has been in The TV series S.W.A.T. as well as the movie My Dead Friend Zoe starring Morgan Freeman and Sonequa Martin-Green. Zeke is a member of the actor’s union, SAG-AFTRA, and serves on many of their negotiation committees helping to secure artistic rights, fair wages, and safe working conditions for performers. As if that weren’t enough, Zeke is also a founding board member of NAVA, the National Association of Voice Actors, who work tirelessly to promote the interests and protect the rights of all voice actors regardless of union affiliation.
We begin our discussion with Zeke telling me how he broke into the world of show business. His journey is incredibly unique. His father was in the Air Force and stationed in various places in Europe. Zeke was born in Italy and raised in England where his mother’s family resided. Eventually his father moved his family back to the U.S., and after spending his early childhood overseas, Zeke ended up going to High School in America. While he did study acting in elementary and high school, he didn’t act in college, but instead got a scholarship through the Reserve Officer’s Training Corps, commonly known as ROTC, and focused on pursuing a military career.
After graduating college, Zeke joined the Navy as a pilot and subsequently achieved the esteemed status of test pilot, flying new and experimental aircraft. He ended up serving in the Navy for 20 years. He knew that after those 20 years were up he had some options available to him: he could choose to stay in the Navy which most likely would have led to a distinguished career being promoted up through the ranks, or he had the option to retire and enter civilian aviation as a commercial pilot which was another common career path for Navy fliers. Zeke did neither, however. Instead he chose to pursue a career as an actor. It was a momentous decision, and one that he did not take lightly. He knew that if he was going to pursue a career in entertainment, that he would need to approach it with the same focus, dedication, and commitment as he would give to any goal that he attempted in the military.
Zeke took years to study, plan, prepare, and train as an actor before he finally decided to make the move to Los Angeles. He arrived in LA in 2019 and has made great progress in his acting career ever since! The story of how he went from being a Navy test pilot to deciding he had to pursue a career as a performer is a fascinating study not only in what steps you can take in order to be successful as an actor, but also in how important it is to adopt an effective mindset so you can achieve your acting goals. Zeke attributes the bulk of his success to the professional attitude he adopted, which helped him approach his acting goals in a reliable and effective manner. I hope my listeners can take inspiration from his journey, as well as adopt his practical approach to pursuing an acting career. So without further ado, here’s Zeke!
VAM 203 | Interview with Crispin Freeman, Part 4
Welcome to episode 203 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 fourth and final part of an interview of me, hosted by my good friend and fellow voice actor, Julie Nathanson! As I mentioned in episode 200, Julie had offered years ago to turn the tables on me and interview me on my own podcast! I thought it was a great idea and I’m so grateful that she agreed to take over as interviewer for this 4 episode series!
In the previous episode, Julie and I talked about how I began my voice acting career working on anime dubs in New York city in the late 1990s. We talked briefly about my demos before we dove into a longer discussion about AI and whether I think artificial intelligence and machine learning can create meaningful storytelling. She then shared more questions from our voice acting colleagues, including one from Steve Blum about whether or not my deep analytical knowledge about storytelling ever gets in the way of my spontaneity as an actor. This gave me the opportunity to articulate my personal acting process with more specificity and nuance than I’ve ever done before. It was a very satisfying conversation and if you haven’t already, I would suggest that you listen to the 3 previous episodes of this interview before continuing with this final segment.
We begin this episode with some more questions from my voice acting colleagues. The first is from JP Karliak who says that even though voice actors may be facing some new and daunting challenges recently, he’d like to know if there’s anything about the voice acting industry that makes me optimistic and excited for the future. The next comment is from Stephanie Sheh who talks about how my willingness to admit my shortcomings as a director allowed her to be more honest and trusting with me as an actor. The final contributor is Jennifer Hale, who wants to know if there’s any question that I’ve never been asked, but that I’ve always wanted someone to ask me.
Jennifer’s query prompts me to share with Julie three stories or wisdom fables about the artistic process. While I’ve occasionally told one of these stories in previous interviews, I’ve never told all three of them at the same time. The stories were originally told to me by Rinde Eckert, a virtuosic theater artist and composer, and they are educational metaphors that are densely packed with wisdom. Furthermore, they encapsulate some of the core pieces of advice that I would want to impart to any aspiring voice actor. These stories also segue quite elegantly into my definition of the word “mastery” and how it applies to the artistic process. It’s a wonderful way to bring my time together with Julie to a satisfying conclusion and I’m so glad for the opportunity to share these insights with my listeners!
VAM 202 | Interview with Crispin Freeman, Part 3
Welcome to episode 202 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 part 3 of an interview of me, hosted by my good friend and fellow voice actor, Julie Nathanson! As I mentioned in episode 200, Julie had offered years ago to turn the tables on me and interview me on my own podcast! I thought it was a great idea and I’m so grateful that she agreed to take over as interviewer for this 4 episode series!
In the previous episode, Julie asked me to tell the story of how I got started as a voice actor. While I’ve recounted this story in earlier episodes of the podcast, this time around, Julie wanted to talk more in depth about how my emotional responses to my personal experiences shaped my acting journey. This included how my childhood experiences in Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia helped me relate to the Romanian director of my graduate acting school. Julie and I also talked about how influential J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy literature had been on my psyche and the lessons I took from the values he expressed in his stories about Middle Earth.
In this segment, Julie asks me to describe the next steps that I took to further my voice acting career, and I discuss how I got started working on anime dubs in New York city in the late 1990s. Julie asks about my demos, when I made them, and how they helped me make progress towards my voice acting goals. She then asks me to share my opinions about AI and whether I think artificial intelligence and machine learning can create meaningful storytelling. After that, she continues with more questions from my voice acting colleagues, including one from Steve Blum about whether or not my analytical skills, which have helped me develop a deep knowledge of storytelling, ever get in the way of my spontaneity as an actor. In order to respond to that question, I end up articulating my personal acting process with a level of specificity and nuance that I don’t think I’ve ever done before. Julie has to reframe my explanation twice just to make sure that both she and my audience can understand my thought process as clearly as possible.
Julie is very good at asking me questions that I had not considered in the past, which gives me the opportunity to figure out my responses to these conundrums in real time. I find it very satisfying to tease out my opinions on these topics with her as my sounding board, and I think my listeners will both enjoy and benefit from gaining a deeper understanding of how I approach both acting and storytelling.
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 195 | Interview with Yuri Lowenthal, Part 2
Welcome to episode 195 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 incredible Yuri Lowenthal! You may know his voice acting work in animated shows like Legion of Superheroes, Ben 10, and the 2021 version of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. In games, he’s worked on Prince of Persia, Sunset Overdrive, and Marvel’s Spider-man series. In anime, he’s very well known for playing Sasuke in Naruto. Yuri and his wife, Tara Platt, also have their own production company called Monkey Kingdom Productions where they develop and produce their own original shows and projects. They’ve also written the well known book Voice Over Voice Actor, What It’s Like Behind the Mic.
In this episode, Yuri shares with me what inspired him to become a performer in the first place. This may come as a surprise to my listeners, but he’s not really sure! This uncertainty is actually not uncommon among artists. Often what inspires someone to pursue a career in the arts is not an intellectual or rational motivation, but rather a gut feeling that they need to explore a field of expression, like acting, in order to fulfill some need for psychological or spiritual satisfaction that can be difficult to articulate. Yuri does admit that he loved storytelling on a deep level and that drove him to explore it first as a writer, and later as a performer.
One huge influence on him when he was young, was when his father gave him the Dungeons and Dragons basic game set and then sat down and taught Yuri and his friends how to play. Yuri credits playing D&D for contributing to most of the things he likes about himself today. D&D inspired him to read more, to learn about mythology and history, to develop his critical thinking skills, and most importantly, to practice storytelling improvisationally, in real time! While playing D&D, not only did Yuri have to use his imagination to visualize the entire world of the game in his mind, but he also had to play as a character in that world as believably as possible. He found that the skills he developed while world-building and playing characters in D&D were directly applicable to the challenges he faced as an actor.
Yuri is a huge fan of genre storytelling such as Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, etc. His appreciation for these genres also helped contribute to his desire to try pursuing a career in the arts. However, he knew that simply loving storytelling was not enough, and that he also had to develop professionally competitive acting skills in order to have something to contribute artistically to the stories he so admired. In this segment, he and I talk about how he balances his fandom for the projects he’s working on with the need to approach each project as a consummate professional. Since so many of my listeners are often avid fans of the games and animated projects they want to work on, it’s an important topic to explore!
After that, we end our discussion with Yuri’s advice to the aspiring voice actor and how vital he feels it is for someone just starting out to get as much practice acting as they can, even if it’s just reading out loud every day to develop your cold reading skills. He also stresses how important it is to actually finish projects that you may be working on. Bringing a project to completion and moving on to the next one will teach you far more than tinkering with the same project endlessly. It’s a very practical approach to pursuing a career as a voice actor, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with all my listeners!